@twoinanddone there is absolutely nothing wrong with him staying close or going with what I have. My original post was to see if I could find anyone that had any experiences with Aspie kids at these schools. So far I have yet to come across anyone on this site or elsewhere.
There is nothing wrong with Marquette but not sure that he is choosing it as number 1 based on the entire picture.
I had been told many things before I visited.
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Its not in the safest part of town
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t’s basically kids from affluent Chicago suburbs
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The campus set up is not ideal
I figured it was close enough and still a good option for my son, regardless of the paparazzi.
When we visited I didn’t really feel it was unsafe but the campus set up is a bit odd and after visiting Xavier which is almost a completely enclosed campus, I can understand why people would say such a thing. There is definitely a different vibe.
As with most visits you are originally placed in a room for a presentation and then sent off into groups for a tour. There were about 60 prospective students. I kid you not, at least 50 of them were form Chicago (most suburbanites).
Ironically, our tour group consisted of 2 lesbian females (I’m not sure where they were from), one girl from WI and our tour guide hailed from WI. The lesbians asked a lot of questions specific to the LGBT community that our 20 year old male tour guide could not answer. My son found this amusing of course.
When I asked him why he liked Marquette the best his reply was “the people seemed more down to earth”. Totally fair answer based on what he observed.
I do not think this is reality, however. I have a friend on the scholarship board at our high school so she gets a lot of info on the graduating class. She told me 48 kids from the 2018 class are going to Marquette. I’m afraid it will be a lot more of his high school experience.
Shortly after our visit, A friend of mine came over to drop off her younger son. Of course, because he is a junior she asked him about college visits and asked which was his favorite. He asked me what the name of the school was that we had just visited. It was Marquette. The fact that he had to ask me doesn’t have me 100% convinced it truly is his favorite. In fact, when he took his SATs the only school he listed for score submissions was Xavier.
When I mention Marquette people are generally not that excited. I do, however, know people that do have kids that attend and love it.
When I mention Xavier I always get positive reactions. The reason I even looked the school is because inadvertently people gave me some good insight. I was at a fundraiser and someone was taking about Xavier. A mom I know said “My babysitter goes there. He sister babysits for me now and she’s actually better because she’s not as odd and forgetful. She loves it”. Hmmm…odd and forgetful, sounds familiar. People always refer to it as nurturing. The admissions counselor in our area is amazing. When we visiting he was the only kid from the Chicago area. The group was very diverse. We had kids from Florida, Kentucky, Colorado and our tour guide was from Connecticut. I think this would be a better fit as it would lessen the cliques right off the bat and this would be better for him socially. All good things. It may be as far as he is willing to go and he may not even wish to go that far. Even if UCONN proves to be amazing for @overbearingmom(and I truly hope that it does), he may not like the distance. If it does provide services that he thinks would be valuable to him, that may outweigh the distance and he may be ok with it. We will cross that bridge later:)
People have brought up good points, however, about possibly looking for a school with a program that could help with his executive functioning skills. Although Xavier has a lot of positives (I forgot to mention the dining hall which was truly amazing and food is a big deal for my son) it may necessarily work if he truly needs more help living on his own. I would love to throw one of those into the mix as well as an LAC in my area. I had never heard of Lawrence. It was a god recommendation from this thread and looks like a possible fit not too far away. It’s an easy visit for the summer or fall. My husband actually drives to Appleton often to pay a visit to one of his plants in the area so that is a plus.
People have also recommended SLU. That’s a pretty easy one as well. After that, I think he will have enough to choose from. The hard one is going to be the school that offer real accommodations for and ASPIE (preferably in a close proximity). Not sure that we will find that.
At the end of the day I really only want him to apply to 5 or 6 schools max. Anything beyond that may prove to be a painful process