He is applying to other schools-he’s business and thinking Bentley, Bryant, and he’s also applying to UMass.
He supports her transfer, but also thinks she should stay there for the rest of the semester before transferring. She still wants to stay home because it’ll be easier to look at other schools from here.
Checking for clarity…you are allowing child number two to apply to two exoensive private colleges. Will you allow this student to attend these schools if accepted…or will he be persuaded to attend UMass as well?
Are Bentley and Bryant going to be more affordable than Northeastern or UMass?
Now that I know more, we’ll be submitting the FAFSA to all schools (our EFC worked out to be about 15,000) and seeing what would be affordable and reasonable
Be sure to indicate that you will have 2 in college next year
I still think you should let her come home. Her courses may not be transferable and she is right in that regrouping and preparing to transfer might be easier from home.
I think she should stay. She already agreed to it, it’s already paid for, and she will still be able to make her original graduation goal. The applications to the new schools will not take more than a day each. What’s she gonna do, sit around waiting for a semester and a summer? She can drop a course if it isn’t transferable, but I bet most of them will transfer. My vote is for Simmons! They will give her scholarship even as a transfer…(not as much, but every bit helps).
It sounds like she agreed because she felt that was her only option. If she feels like she really has an out for next year then sitting through this year might be more bearable, but she could also come home and work to help with the cost of the new school. I hope that she can get the information and support she needs to transfer to someplace that is a better fit.
Seems reasonable to me to have the student finish out the semester. Without knowing her, it’s impossible to tell from the post whether she is over-dramatizing the “horror” of large campus life or having serious mental health issues, but it sounds more like the former, especially since she is okay with dorm life (which is typically a bigger stressor.) In the end, she may not like the community classes either; sometimes it’s best to stick with the devil you know.
Let her know your fiscal limits, then she can figure out her next step. Private college is great if she can figure out a way to afford it. Don’t feel badly about making a misstep or two, especially with sending your first one to college. It happens, and the process is complicated.
Did you at all take this into consideration before insisting she go to UMass?
“Don’t feel badly about making a misstep or two”
“I think she should stay. She already agreed to it, it’s already paid for”
WADR, even hearing only the parent’s side of the story on this thread it is abundantly clear that D made her preferences known early on, was not listened to, has made the best of (for her) a bad situation, yet in spite of it all has put in the work to do really well. There was more than a misstep here. It was an effort by parents to squeeze a round peg into a square hole, and the result has been misery for the student.
What I am simply not understanding is that OP goes to the trouble to post nearly a week ago after D’s first two days of classes, yet has not been willing to budge after 170 replies. Soon it WILL be too late to do much. Is that what the OP wants? To delay a decision until nothing can be done? I just keep thinking of the comment way back on this thread that the D would rather come home each weekend to a house where there is little communication and no support for her view, rather than stay at school. Really sad for her.
I am amazed by the idea running through this thread that a strong distaste for being pressed between a pair of sweaty strangers during a crowded lecture could be a mental health problem on the part of the student. If so, consider me crazy, I wouldn’t like that either.
Well, not all 170 replies have said to let the daughter withdraw. The daughter could have refused to return or refused to go in the first place. She could have submitted her own financial aid documents to the schools she wanted to go to. I think it is the parents in this case worrying that they will ‘have’ to sign for loans they don’t want so that the daughter can go to a private school. I have no problem with the parents stating that there is $x available for school, and that’s enough for UMass. If the daughter wants something else, she needs to make it work. The parents aren’t refusing to file FAFSA or CSS, just not providing extra money for it. The OP’s child did research some schools, but didn’t research how to pay for them.
No one wants her child to be unhappy, but some kids are determined to be unhappy unless they get exactly what they want and what they want is for the parents to do all the work in setting up college, especially the paying part. Unless you have a child like that, you wouldn’t understand. OP thought she’d given her child a good opportunity, the same opportunity thousands of Mass residents give their kids to attend UMass but the child is determined that it’s not good enough for her. Maybe it’s not, and she’d rather go to no college at all than to go to UMass. That may be her choice next fall. Getting to go to UMass is a gift.
I have a lot of sympathy for the OP. Some of us put a lot of work into making the schools work for our kids. We saved money, we applied for loans and scholarships, we carted the kids from college to college. One of my daughter’s has 5 pieces to her aid (all merit, no need based), the other 4, plus the amount I pay. That’s a lot of organizing for me to do. Kids need to be realistic too. If one of my kids now said “I don’t like this school and I want to switch, even if that causes you more work and more money” I’d have a fit.
I have two kids who are freshmen. One has done nothing but find new and wonderful things about her school. She’d wanted to go to a small (like 3000) school, but ended up at one with 10,000. She has a few classes with 200 students, but makes it work. She knew exactly 2 other kids (from kindergarten) when she started and now has hundreds of friends. She’s not big on football but goes to the games because that’s what the kids do. She invites kids to her hockey games, plays video games even though she doesn’t really like them, socializes with others who aren’t just like her. She doesn’t drink even though she’s in a sorority. My other goes to a smaller school and complains a lot, but that’s her nature. Complain complain complain. She can drop out if she wants to, but she’ll have to find another school on her own because I’m done.
Nothing says “loving and supportive parent” like “complain complain complain”, especially when being compared to a more compliant, clearly more perfect sibling.
Two- the OP explicitly stated that her D was willing to find another school on her own. There is nothing that suggests the D expects her parents to help her in any way, other than allowing her to come home, and to have access to their tax returns so she can find out their EFC.
You can have all the fits you want, but you have misread the facts on the ground with this poster’s D. But glad you got one perfect child to balance out your unhappy one. Must be nice to have all the answers.
I guess I’m in the camp that isn’t so tough on the OP, either. She’s not a college grad herself, and there’s a lot she didn’t know about the complicated process of applying and comparing offers. Live and learn.
I have a friend, a farmer, who told his children he’d pay for any college they wanted to attend as long as it was the in-state land grant university. You can lambaste him all you want. Call him a terrible parent. Decry the serious emotional damage he inflicted on his children by denying them college choices. Or, you can head over to the financial aid board and read a lot of posts from students whose parents refuse to pay anything and pay so little that college really isn’t an option and think, hey, at least his kids got to go to college, and a sleep-away college at that (they all did; they all graduated). As my kids used to say when they came home from preschool, “You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.”
We say over and over on this site that college is four years. College is not the dream in and of itself. So, you don’t “like” UMass. Ok, but the complaints about being “so squished” in a lecture hall that the learning is intolerable? Oh come on. And while if that’s an issue, I do see someone who probably shouldn’t be in nursing, but I wouldn’t jump right to serious mental illness unless there were other issues. And the “I’ll stay, but only if you’ll come and get me every weekend?” Sounds like a manipulative teen to me. I’d say fine. Don’t stay. Classes just started. There’s a refund option.
Personally, I would hope that now that the parents know a little more about how aid works, the d could transfer to any school that is as affordable as UMass. That’s what I would do. But, if parents say, UMass or nothing, I’d expect the d to put on her big girl underwear and finish the degree without all the drama.
Like I said a few posts back… I’m guessing that the drama over U Mass is not chapter one in the parents relationship with the d. Just a guess. Where the kid goes to college is a small issue in the grand scheme of this kid’s adulthood. But if it starts with parents who can’t or won’t listen (or even pretend to be empathetic if the kid is having adjustment issues) it doesn’t bode well long term.
^I’d also be surprised if this were chapter 1.
And who taught her this? The same parents who said, “Stay or we won’t cosign loans for you,” no doubt.
I’m feeling very sorry for the OP here and am in the very small group of posters who think expecting the kid to finish out the year is not at all unreasonable. And, no she would not be coming home every weekend. That is ridiculous and would likely be very unpleasant for everyone involved.
“Nothing says “loving and supportive parent” like “complain complain complain”, especially when being compared to a more compliant, clearly more perfect sibling.”
My kids are totally different (they are not biologically related), but it is a lot easier to get a phone call from the one who is always happy. Doesn’t mean she is more perfect. In fact, I worry about her being taken advantage of a lot more as she’s rather flighty and her complaining sister is a lot more practical. Happy Girl is difficult in many ways too, because she doesn’t see that it matters whether she gets an A or a C in a class. She’s always been that way and doesn’t stand up for herself. It’s also a lot more likely her phone call is going to cost me money. “Mom, I don’t know how this happened but I need…”
My complainer called the other day. Hates school, hates her sport, didn’t want to participate in sorority rush, is flunking calculus (that can mean she got a 60 or a 92, just that she didn’t get 100). The book costs $200. Her roommates left the kitchen a mess. Her butt hurts and she needs to go to the chiropractor. All I could say is I’m sorry because anything else she’d get mad about. No matter what I suggest (talk to the coach, go to the study sessions, ignore the roommates) is met with a growl. “What chiropractor, I’ll check our insurance? Forget it, I don’t want to go.” Like OP’s daughter, she’d complain about too many people in her space. She has a table at the library that she wants all to herself, and she doesn’t like it when someone else wants to SIT near her. She wants her books, computer, ipad, water all arranged just so, and no one sitting at HER table.
My complainer likes to complain. I’ve learned to deal with her by not trying to fix her issues, to let her fix them (if they are truly issues, but usually they are just complaints about the unfairness of life). This is not new behavior. She’s been complaining about the unfairness of life since she was 4.