<p>
</p>
<p>I wish I could do that. My sons’ two schools both tack on a fee for credit card payments of tuition which negates the cash back reward of the card. When questioned, they say it’s legal in California (it’s not legal in all states).</p>
<p>hmm…interesting the responses to my earlier post here</p>
<p>thought we were sharing how others responded to hearing about our kids’ colleges that were well, kind of awkward. didn’t realize other similar responses would then happen on the thread itself…</p>
<p>oh well, there is a reason it is called New College… :)</p>
<p>“My daughter recently turned down offers from UC Berkeley and UCLA to go to Pomona College, which is actually much harder to get into than the other two. Lots of people have never heard of Pomona, and they give a noncomittal “oh” in response. Then I have to explain how good Pomona is, and it sounds like I’m bragging, but I’m really not, and…you get the the picture.”</p>
<p>I’ve given up on this for my Williams daughter and just say, “it’s a great small school and she is very excited.” <em>smile and nod</em></p>
<p>My effin’ PRINCIPAL, upon hearing that I’d been accepted to Yale, said: </p>
<p>“You should stay in-state… because it rains a lot up in Vermont”. </p>
<p>Yes, he said Vermont. “In-state” is Florida, by the way, where we have hurricanes… obviously without any rain.</p>
<p>^ Oh my, how did you contain yoursef?</p>
<p>“Where are you going?”
“Agnes Scott”
“<em>GASP</em> You’re not going to BYU???”
It’s annoying. "</p>
<p>Based on similar shock, where we live, it seems most people worship Virginia Tech. “For thine is the engineering, and the football, and the low tuition - amen”</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You don’t really HAVE to explain how good Pomona is, though. It’s their problem that they’ve not heard of it, not yours. (Congrats btw!)</p>
<p>@GFG:
Severe tongue biting. I could only eat yogurt for a week.</p>
<p>I know where Agnes Scott is and I think it’s a great school. just saying.</p>
<p>My favorite is when I tell people I am going to UPenn, they say
“Oh, main campus?”
“Um no, wrong school”</p>
<p>*I just want to point out I have nothing against PSU, it is just annoying having to explain the difference to some people.</p>
<p>Late coming to this thread but this is what DD gets:</p>
<p>So where are you going to school?
Rice
Where is that?
Texas
Why would you want to go to Texas? What’s your major then?
Vocal Performance
Music Ed?
No, performance.<br>
What are going to do for a job?
Sing</p>
<p>She can go through the whole routine by rote :)</p>
<p>
:D</p>
<p>
I don’t get it…
If it’s some kind of racial slur, I think I would express my confusion ask the person directly exactly what she meant by it. Watch her squirm on the hot seat for a while.</p>
<p>When people started asking in junior year, there just wasn’t any good answer for my son… very small school, green-eyed monsters everywhere… but it worked out very nicely when he set his heart on a college they’d never heard of, because they had no preconceptions.</p>
<p>A fair number of his classmates did attend the local CC for a wide range of reasons. Happily, I know quite a bit about the place. When they mumbled their plans in embarrassment, I would rave about its many good qualities and how smart they were to get their GE’s done in a great place with small class sizes, reasonable tuition, and faculty who were so committed to teaching. Then I’d ask them what they planned to study and listen as they warmed up to their own plans again. No way should these kids be embarrassed about their futures!</p>
<p>Shining the spotlight back onto the other person usually seems to work out well. :)</p>
<p>I’m with geek_mom. My favorite response to obnoxious jokes or comments is to pretend I don’t get them. “Gonzalez? Oh, you say it’s a Mexican name? Is Stanford particularly popular among Mexicans? No, that’s not it? I get it, it’s because Mexicans are smart! No? Hmm, why don’t you explain…” </p>
<p>By this point the other person is looking for any way out of the conversation and they certainly can’t be mad at you. All you did was ask an innocent question! ;-)</p>
<p>Ha ha, this is a funny thread! </p>
<p>OK, I’ll bite too. Before our older son enrolled in Wesleyan: “Oh, the girls’ school? Where Hillary Clinton went?”</p>
<p>As our second son is preparing to attend Northwestern: “Won’t he hate the East Coast?” (??)</p>
<p>No, Shank. Most people don’t pay anywhere near the attention to colleges and rankings that we here on CC do. I guarantee if I walked to my local Starbucks and asked the people in there to name the schools in the Ivy League, they might get HYP and then throw in Stanford. And they aren’t all aspiring or yearning to send their kids to these schools. It’s just not that big of a deal or priority to most people. (And it doesn’t need to be.) We on this board are “hobbyists” for lack of a better term.</p>
<p>oh…here’s a good one from TODAY:</p>
<p>Aquatics Teacher: rocket, what did you get on your SATs
Me: Well, I never actually took the SATs
AT: Then the ACTs?
Me: Um, I did pretty well (getting more mortified)
AT: And you’re third in your class?
Me: Yes(hoping t his convo ends)
AT: Where are you going?
Me: Smith College
AT: What’s that?
Me: It’s a Seven Sister…
AT: What’s that?
Me: The female equivalent of the Ivy League. But it’s a small liberal arts school. It’s also a women’s college.
AT: Oh(clearly judging me)Why on earth would you want to go there. Weren’t you smart enough to get into Harvard or Princeton?
Me: I didn’t apply to eitehr…but Smith’s a really good school and it will give me alot of opportunity
AT:How on earth will you meet a husband?
Me: I hope I’ll get lucky…(wanting to scream)
AT: I would watch out for the lesbians while I was at a women’s college(seriously as can be)</p>
<p>rocket6, my relative would have added, “A liberal arts college! You cannot get a job with a degree in liberal arts!” I have discussed the different majors offered in liberal arts colleges several times, but it does not sink in!</p>
<p>-where you going next year?</p>
<p>-Duke</p>
<p>-Oh, where is that?</p>
<p>-North Carolina.</p>
<p>-Why? that place is so poor!</p>
<p>^ Really? I picture North Carolina as being pretty and a pretty nice place to live.</p>
<p>Shank, people really DO say these things.</p>
<p>I heard all kinds of nonsense when our S stayed in the local public school system that I won’t even bother repeating since this is a college thread.</p>
<p>At my brother’s wake many years ago I was told many times how “good” he looked-to me he looked dead-and I was told more than once that “At least it wasn’t your father”-now I swear to you these things are burned in my brain so people really are capable of saying very stupid things and very insensitive things.</p>
<p>I hear those racial slurs as well sometimes and if anyone ever says them to me directly I shut them right down-that is unacceptable.</p>