DS has great stats and full scholarships to a couple of great schools. Yet, he is now saying he wants to attend our state flagship, which has offered a small amount of merit money (state budget problems limit merit). Our state flagship is relatively low stats; our public high schools rank as some of the worst in the nation and the state flagship admits low stat kids as a result (no minimum SAT required, willing to allow students under 3.0 GPA in). I don’t understand why he wants to attend our state flagship. It is actually more expensive for us. I am concerned that the low stat environment will drag DS down. So many of the freshmen end up on academic probation. Should I simply be supportive and tell him it is his decision and keep quiet? Or, should I push him a bit on his reasoning? I’m not horrified, but I am truly disappointed and dismayed in what looks to be his college choice.
@jade100, Since your son has great stats, I’m guessing that he would enroll in the honors program or college at the state university. If he does this he is likely to have a majority of his interactions with other students who have a strong academic background. Also, at a state flagship he will have wide variety of courses and programs of study.
There’s not enough information. What are your son’s goals: hedge fund partner, local bankruptcy attorney, or public school teacher(etc.)? Depending on his career, where he does his undergrad may matter a great deal or none at all.
Based on your other posts, your state is Oregon, and your son is interested in becoming an officer in the US Navy through ROTC.
Oregon State has a Navy ROTC unit, but University of Oregon does not.
So, engineering is the goal. He didn’t apply for the honors college because this was a safety school that he did not have any interest in last fall - he put all of his energy into scholarship essays for the schools he cared about at that time - netting enough money to pay both tuition and room and board. I could have him check to see if honors is still accepting apps - but I’m guessing too late.
I dunno. I am baffled as to why he wouldn’t walk across the street to spit on this school in September, but now it’s his top choice? Also, he hasn’t visited the campus even - he canceled on a tour. But has visited other schools.
You need to have an in depth conversation with your son, or probably a series of conversations. Just what are his reasons? Does he understand the financial aspect?
If you didn’t set financial perameters before, I don’t think it’s fair to suddenly say he has to go the least expensive place. But you might ask him to ante up if he chooses a more expensive option, as in work more, take on some debt, etc.
Your best chance at “convincing” him to choose what you think is a better school/offer, is to avoid trying to convince him. Find out his point of view. Try to avoid dissing State U & implying he won’t hold his own in that environnent, he may get defensive. Emphasize the benefits of other schools & the perks of better aid, such as low/no debt, more money available for other things, etc.
In the end I feel it is mainly his decision & you should be supportive even if you don’t agree with his choice.
ABET accredited engineering will be decently rigorous everywhere.
Hmmm, could there be a girl involved, lol?
That makes sense. DH is going to probe the reasoning and is particularly questioning why DS hasn’t visited as a part of the decision making process. It is quite easy to drive to state u. I can’t help but wonder if a girl is involved - in any case thanks CC for letting me vent here and not to DS - that would certainly backfire.
Both UO and OSU are in the top 150 schools NATIONALLY out of thousands. They’re hardly bottom of the barrel. And with more than 20,000 students at each, it’s impossible that your DS, no matter how bright he is, won’t be able to find other equally bright students there. Of COURSE bright kids go to state U’s all the time!
Several of DD’s high-stats friends have chosen to “go local” because they’ll be closer to home-maybe that’s weighing on your son? It drove my ex’s decision to turn down MIT (yes, really) to go to OSU. He worked at places like IBM and MS, and retired at 55 from Google, despite going to a generic state college, and yes, he had plenty of smart friends-but here’s a clue-not all “average” kids will “drag” smart ones down. Some people like to have friends of different abilities.
A more recent example is our nephew, who graduated from UO. While he didn’t major in engineering, he WAS in our district’s gifted program and yet found students of like abilities there. He’s happily working at a start up here. In IT.
It IS worth finding out why your son is doing a turn about. But I would hardly classify either state U as a place for losers who will drag your son down. Good luck.
I think a good reaction right now would be “Let’s go visit.” If necessary, say that the visit is for your benefit as well as his – you don’t know as much about the school as you would like to know, and since it’s now his top choice, you want to know more about it.
A few other points:
It is not unusual for tech kids to turn down honors programs. Honors programs often have a liberal arts focus, and tech kids may not want to divide their attention between a demanding major and honors.
If it’s a girl, it helps that the school is a big one. If they break up (as is common among freshmen), they are unlikely to see much of each other afterward.
It could also be that your son is rethinking his academic and career choices. Perhaps he’s wavering about ROTC and he had chosen the other schools on his list largely because of their ROTC programs. Or he’s thinking about changing his planned major.
Another possibility is that your son is questioning the quality of his academic preparation. If he comes from an inferior high school and is aware of it, he may think he’s better off at a college that accepts a lot of kids with gaps in their preparation, rather than one where he would be competing with kids with much better academic backgrounds.
If it’s not a girl and it’s not a change of career plans and it’s not academics, it may be a realization that he would feel more comfortable staying close to home – and you might have to tread lightly here because he might be embarrassed by that feeling. But I think this feeling plays a role in many kids’ choices to attend home state universities.
There’s something about being on a campus that you’ve heard people talk about for years – and knowing that there are a hundred or more people that you already know on the same campus – that makes it easier for some kids to adjust to college. This may be true even if the student is not very familiar with the campus itself. My son was one of these kids. He went to our state university – which he had visited only once – in part because it was in his comfort zone. It felt familiar to him even though it was a new environment. And he couldn’t walk across the campus without seeing someone he knew. At that point in his life, going to a distant school where he knew no one just felt wrong. Four years later, he had changed completely. He moved to the opposite side of the country with no qualms and has lived there ever since.
@lakeviking - That was exactly my first thought as well!
The transition from college to high school is hard on a lot of students. They feel the milestone deeply.
Does he want a gap year before one of the out of state colleges? Then he could become used to meeting new people and handling the ‘no longer in high school’ change to his social life.
My opinion…any opinions you had about schools,should,have,clearly been stated up front before applications were sent. In other words, if you objected to a school, the time to make that clear was BEFORE applications were sent.
Now that the acceptances are in…I would your kid make his matriculation choice. Remember…HE is going to college, not you.
You could encourage him to make a list of ours and cons from HIS point of view for each school to which he has gained acceptance.
There are smart kids at every college. In engineering, he is not likely to find slouches…they will get weeded out after one term…or year.
I believe that kids will thrive in an environment that suits them and at a college they want to be. If he does not want to be at those other colleges then he will not thrive. This is his life and he needs to feel comfortable there. You may in the end get your wish but you will not truly know if he only went there because you pressured him. Is that the relationship you want with your son? As long as you can pay for the state U cost, then it should not be a problem. Many of us wish we were in your same shoes where we had affordable options. If this is the worst of it, they you are blessed.
I think your S owes himself the privilege of doing “due diligence” visits at all of the schools that he has an acceptance to. These are very different than the pre-admission visits because these visits are made with your S having “hand”. It will allow him to think critically about each option and learn something about himself that he probably didn’t know. After doing that, I think you should respect his decision if you can afford it. This kind of visit was critical for my kids in coming to their ultimate decisions.
Ideally these should be overnight visits with an existing student and should feel like a day in the life. Parental involvement should be limited to the transportation to get there.
I’m also wondering if there’s a girl involved, if so, welcome to my life. I’d get more info for sure and definitely plan a visit.
The Navy doesn’t care where he goes to school. It actually might be wise to go to the easier academic and location choice if he’s going to be spending a lot of weekends working for the Navy. I’d just drop it and let him go if that’s what he wants to do come May 1. It’s not a bad choice by any means.
With my eldest I told her to put together a list of colleges for us to visit Junior year. She likes to investigate things on the internet and she put together a list. She wanted something within a 3-4 hour radius from our house. She had a big state Us, Polytechnic types, and a couple of Ivys. I also talked to people and researched and came up with a good value OOS State U (she had many State U’s on her list) that met her criteria. I told her to consider it but she didn’t have to pick it. It turns out she went there because it met her needs the best. It was not the cheapest, but it was in the cheaper tier of her schools. She went on to Columbia for her Master’s.
She ended up graduating a year and a half early because of their generous IB policy and a few summer courses.
For my youngest, she wasn’t as keen on researching colleges. So I took her requirements (smaller schools, within 2 hour range) and helped her come up with a list. I thought she would like one of our good value in state colleges…she liked it so much she applied ED (after we visited a bunch of other schools). She was selected for the honors college.
So I basically requested them to take a look at my “parent pick” and they both ended up going there. They both had common majors (Math, Psychology) so that did not help winnow down the list of colleges. They ended up being under 30K per year (we would not get need-based aid) but are very well respected institutions.