Moving (or not) across states during HS years and its impact

Parent Cafe
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They spent a little under 2.5 years at their final school, so knew a few teachers. Neither attend (or applied to) selective colleges but for the recommendations they needed they did have an opportunity to ‘know’ a teacher. I don’t know if either would have been a leader at the original school (which was much smaller than the other two high schools) but they did not take leadership roles at the final school (except captain of the lax team, and she’d already applied and been accepted before that happened). One daughter had a couple minor roles in the school play, but no leads. I think that would have been different if she’d stayed at the original school.

The two transcripts is not a big deal, the school just included the transcript with their own transcript. My daughter’s gpas were transferred too, which can be a good or bad thing. It makes it harder if the prior school school had tougher graders.

If I had a choice I wouldn’t have had them transfer. Kids often choose to transfer themselves, from a public school to a private, to another school for sports, from home schooling to public. Colleges are used to seeing applications with several transcripts attached, with different grading systems, with EC’s that are all over the place.My kids’ second high school was just outside Camp Pendelton, and literally hundreds of kids transferred in and out every year.

I transferred my senior year of high school. Socially, it was horrible for me. My kids adjusted much better than I did.

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@collegeandi

Engineering is a competitive field in all colleges. PItt, Temple and Penn State are all well regarded programs.

Honestly, in engineering, you don’t need to go to a top 20 university, you need an ABET accredited program.

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Cal Poly SLO has an OOS cost of attendance of about $39,000 this year. If you can pay $33,000 and your kiddo takes the $5500 Direct Loan…you are pretty close on that one even for OOS costs.

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@thumper1, I will gather some more data points to talk to D about it. She is really good in getting into details and regular teen age phase of questioning/debating everything I say. LOL

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Unfortunately, division or major level admission stats are generally hard to find, although some schools may mention them on their web sites (they are not included in CDS or NCES reports).

http://profiles.asee.org/ can show you SAT and/or ACT scores for new frosh engineering students, but the usual caution applies in that SAT and/or ACT scores are nowhere close to the full story on admissions.

Remember that Penn State does have the secondary admission to major by college GPA process for engineering majors.

Pittsburgh has a similar process where frosh enter as pre-engineering students, but need only to earn a 2.0 GPA to declare an engineering major: http://www.engineering.pitt.edu/First-Year/First-Year/Advising/Choosing-A-Major-Banner/ .

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Thank you @ucbalumnus for the links and the cautionary words. Is it hard to get 2.0-2.6 frosh GPA? I know that it is a lot harder than the HS GPA even with APs. But is Pitt/PSU curriculum hard to get the required GPA? I know that some of the Engineering colleges like HM, MiT, Caltech have harder curricula as compared to others. Do Pitt/ PSU have comparable curricula to the UCSD, UCLA, UCB?

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Let’s put it this way…if she can’t get a 2.0-2.6 her freshman year…she should not be an engineering major.

No…the courses at these schools are about the same…freshmen who enter engineering take just about the same courses regardless of the college.

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@thumper1, DH went to very selective Engineering college. He had 1.8 fist semester and 2.2 frosh year. He finally had 3.6 when he passed in 4 years. He went to yet another selective college for masters. I am just taking it as a possibility…

ETA : That was back in stone age when he had a lot of hair on his head :smiley:

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2.0 college GPA is generally considered the baseline of good academic standing. A student falling below that risks academic probation and eventual dismissal if s/he does not bring his/her GPA up to 2.0 or higher. Also, a GPA in that neighborhood is more likely to include D or F grades that may need the courses to be retaken.

2.6 college GPA is not that difficult to meet generally, but some new frosh have adjustment to college issues, so the GPA risk is higher in the early semesters. It is not as big an issue as at some other schools where a pre-engineering student must earn a 3.2 or 3.5 college GPA to get into his/her major.

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Times have changed. With a 2.2 GPA, many schools would NOT allow you to declare a major in engineering…or you would not be able to be accepted into engineering after freshman year.

Your daughter sounds like she is a strong student now…she needs to continue to,build a good foundation for,the courses she will be taking in the future.

My husband is an engineer. He hires engineers. He says…the selectivity of the school doesn’t matter. He is looking for folks with relevant internship or job experience…and a strong willingness to learn. There is a LOT of on the job training done…grads need to come in with a “I want to,learn more” mindset…not a “I know it all” mindset.

In my husband’s area, a professional engineers license is a plus (PE). He is looking for grads who are working towards that standard.

He won’t hire anyone from a college without ABET accreditation unless they have already earned a PE.

Clearly, your family is coming from a completely different background than ours. My husband did NOT go to a selective school…at all.

As an FYI…we didn’t look at all into selectivity or rankings for either of our kids before they applied to college. That just wasn’t our criteria.

One was an engineering major. She looked for schools withna good engineering program…and she had a few other criteria as well. She is a Santa Clara University graduate. They have a fine engineering program.

The second kid graduated from Boston University. Believe me when I say…we had NO idea it ranked 50 when he applied there. But it did fulfill his criteria for a college.

I would strongly suggest that your daughter start thinking about the characteristics she wants in a college…rather than how selective she feels it needs to be. Yes, she should gomto a strong school…if that works out. But in engineering, she will be fine no matter where she goes to college.

Someone else will tell you this,…eventually…but keep University of Alabama in mind. Great engineering origram and facilities…AND if she continues to be a top student, they give guaranteed merit aid based on stats. That could be your real deal school.

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While this is true of several well known flagships which use a weed-out process to filter pre-engineering students into engineering majors (or have progression requirements higher than a 2.0 GPA to stay in one’s already-declared major), not all schools do this.

The weed-out process appears to be most common at flagships, since they have more students interested in and capable of completing engineering majors than they have capacity for. Less selective schools tend not to need to actively weed out students, since they do not have enough strong students to overfill their engineering department capacities. Super-selective schools are often very wealthy private schools that have money to ensure enough departmental capacity, and a student body that may be more interested in banking and consulting than engineering.

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Indeed times have changed…

Thank you so much @thumper1 for laying it out so clearly, especially the after graduation, hiring part! Though H went for selective college, we are not really targeting selective schools for D. The “50” came from a standpoint of possible job opportunity.

D visited many nearby Us where ever we lived for her ECs, volunteer work etc. She is forming a rough idea as to what she wants. I will definitely encourage her to think about what you have mentioned

I will find out more about UoA. From what you describe, it looks like a strong option. D likes liberal environment, lots of friends, activities, decent education. She is ok with large Us but will prefer a medium sized Us. With roughly 38000 student, UoA is a possibility for her!

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Pennsylvania (particularly outside of big cities) and Alabama have reputations of being much more conservative than California, particularly on race/ethnicity related issues.

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I am somewhat aware of it. Are the campuses very conservative as well?

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It’s interesting to me that this thread has mainly focused on the college application process, even though OP also asked “How did the decision affect the child/children and the family? In this context, what tilted the decision in favor of moving? Retrospectively, would you have done anything differently?”

OP noted that the family had often moved due to H’s job and that the kids had always adjusted well. Yeah, that was me too. Dad was a Marine, and we went where he was posted. When he retired from the Corps, we thought we were putting down roots, but wanderlust [and a lot of other things, to be fair to him] kicked in four years later, and we were off again. We moved for the last time [as far as I was concerned] between my sophomore and junior years in high school, and I would NEVER do that to a child. NEVER. Yeah, you can be the greatest kid at making friends and fitting into a new environment for year after year after year, but do it in the middle of adolescence? Not fun. If you have to move, you have to move, but the emotional toll on child and family may be a lot more than you anticipate.

Signed, secure adult but, God, I would not want to relive that time of my life. :)>-

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My daughter is in engineering and she could graduate with a 2.0. However, she’d lose her scholarship at 2.8 so it would be very difficult for her to afford it.

Daughter is in a smaller, tech school and it seems right for her. My sister is convinced her son’s engineering program is MUCH harder, much better than daughters, but they often use the same books for core courses (calc, chem, physics) so she seems to be learning exactly what he is.

Find the (ABET) school that is right for your daughter and she’ll be fine. There are a lot of good opportunities for women engineers.

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College students are typically more left leaning than the general adult population, since young people are generally more left leaning than the general adult population. However, being more left leaning than a typical adult in California may mean something different from being more left leaning than a typical adult in Pennsylvania or Alabama.

In terms of recent election results, Tuscaloosa County (where University of Alabama - Tuscaloosa is) voted heavily R, while Centre County (where Penn State - University Park is) was close to evenly split between D and R. These obviously include non-college-student voters in those counties.

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@collegeandi, are your kids in AP classes? If not, you should be aware that sometimes the curriculum is different in different states and this could cause a problem for your kids. When we moved, my daughter had to retake Algebra because she had not been taught a good part of the new school’s curriculum. Another family I know moved to AL from CT when their son was a senior, and he had to repeat his whole Junior year because he failed the placement tests. Rather than that, mom and son moved back to CT to finish out HS.

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I hear you, @AboutTheSame ! I thought that CA is going to be our home until the travel news came in. That was first thought that went through my mind. H works in a niche area. We have very few choices. I am torn in this decision. Hence this thread! Thank you for sharing your experience. I will definitely check with the kids from this perspective.

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That takes a lot off pressure off. One less thing to worry about! Thank you @twoinanddone.