Ranger course has been recently open to women. Some women have already passed the course and earned the Ranger tab:
SON IS GOING TO COLLEGE!!!
He’s not yet back from his visit but he did decide that if he’s going to college, this is where he’d like to go. It’s not the Ivy, which we hoped for… It’s hard not to feel bad about that. It feels like a missed opportunity.
I know all our friends will be a bit shocked… But the University of Virginia is a good school, they have ROTC, and son feels like he’s found “his people”. There are also many Koreans and many international students so it helps.
Again, thank you all for your feedback!
That’s a bit of an understatement. UVA is a GREAT school which is an elite university in its own right. Congrats to your son.
'uva is a good school ’ = understatement of the day !! It’s a public Ivy, as respected as Penn or Cornell. Only friends who don’t know anything about colleges would be shocked or even surprised, and you’d have a good opportunity to explain things to them.; -)
Check out Arabic offerings and study abroad opportunities : I’ll he be able to do a full year study abroad ?
Congrats! You listened to him. He listened to you. Compromise reached. Everyone is happy. Doesn’t get better than this.
Best wishes to you all on this particular journey.
Fantastic! As @sax says, this is the best outcome - you listen to him, he listens to you. And you both learn what’s important to the other person.
Don’t feel bad he’s foregoing the Ivy. UVA has all the academics as the Ivy and better sports.
It’s a fabulous school. Enjoyed your posts, light1012, how you’ve tried to both listen and guide. Best wishes.
U VA is a great school! A wonderful choice for him. So glad to hear that you were all able to listen to each other and that he chose this route. My heart lifted when I read your post. 
I can see that this kid is climbing a really big mountain when it comes to trying to not be a disappointment to you. No wonder he freaked out and was trying to re-define himself and find his own worth in another direction.
I’m sure he’s picking up on your disappointment with regards to him not choosing the ivies. Bummer for him. UVA is an excellent school, and you’re turning it into something other than “amazing job son, well done! we’re so proud!”, which is all a parent should ever say about a kid getting into college.
It doesn’t matter what school you go to for ROTC. Prestige means nothing in the military. It will not get him promoted faster, it will not make him stand above his peers and no one will even know where he went. In fact, easier schools are better for ROTC because they only look at GPA for job selection. A 3.0 from Harvard/Yale is viewed the same as a 4.0 from the University of Paste Eating. You’re splitting hairs over where he’s going to school.
The best school for ROTC is the school that gives him the most money, and that doesn’t hate the military, which would describe most Ivy League student bodies. Maybe you didn’t know, but Ivy League campuses banned ROTC activity on them and they just reversed this policy a few years ago. They “secretly” hate the military, and your son would hate being there if he’s interested in the military.
The banning of ROTC from some campuses has a lot to do with the military’s discrimination against gay and lesbian members. Those schools do not allow organizations that do so.
This does not necessarily equate to “secretly hating the military,” although I will grant you that the long shadow of Vietnam and the anti-war movement may well play into it to some degree.
But this is not the place to argue about that.
BTW, @MotherOfDragons, parents often use this space as a place to vent feelings that they would NEVER reveal to their children.
Remember…this whole college process is not about getting into the most prestigious colleges but finding an affordable option that is the best fit for the student.
@Consolation It’s primarily the student body who would hate the military. They’re the exact type of students her son says he doesn’t want to be around.
“parents often use this space as a place to vent feelings that they would NEVER reveal to their children.” @Consolation , I agree (and have used CC for such), but the kid’s behavior suggests that they’re doing a very poor job of keeping those feelings to themselves in this case.
How do you know that, motherofdragons? The mom may be doing the happy dance in front of her son. You may be correct, but also may be completely off track. In this case, the parents took the time to listen to their son, to offer options, and to find others to explain to him the potential downside of going into the military. They did not forbid him from doing so. I think you are reading a lot into the mom saying that turning down an Ivy is hard, as I think many of this classmates and their parents (esp if in-state for UVA) would feel the same way.
Congrats!
i have to side with MotherOfDragons on this one, PLEASE show nothing less than absolute unconditional excitement and enthusiasm about him choosing the GREAT university UVA, and don’t EVER say anything like, “Well, it’s not the Ivy you got accepted to that I wanted you to attend, but hey, it’s pretty good.”
A couple of random private comments from OP misses how she wrote about them talking together. It’s been a long thread.
I wonder what all my (judging from their Facebook walls) arch-conservative, overtly patriotic friends who attended Penn would think about such claims…
But more on-topic for the thread, really, given what we’ve learned about the OP’s son from this thread, UVa is probably a better fit (as someone else noted, great academics plus great sports), and there’s no reason to be disappointed at that choice. I have family in Virginia who would have auctioned off a limb to be able to get their kids into that school.
“How do you know that, motherofdragons?”
Um, because he wanted to run off and join the army out of the blue with the explanation that he wanted to do something “real” and “worthy”. To me this says that he doesn’t feel valued for his current accomplishments. And based on what the OP is typing here, I’d say there’s a reason he has issues with self-worth. Anything less than an Ivy is a disappointment-that’s a hard metric to live up to.