<p>Please share your good experiences with prep school and college parent clubs or parent associations. George Washington University and Stanford offer "best practices" relative to parent clubs. Would like to know what other schools have opportunities to get parents involved.</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>I think the “parents clubs” at college level are mostly there to make parents more inclined to make donations. They want the parents to feel “part of the family”.</p>
<p>I think the MIT parent association is very helpful.
They organize gatherings to send off freshmen to college in local cities.
They organize parent orientation meetings at MIT.</p>
<p>They seem to be primarily to give parents who are sports fans the opportunity to show their “school spirit.” As well as encourage them to donate. </p>
<p>Except for one school I can think of where the parents seem to use it as an opportunity to indicate that they are members of an elite club and you aren’t. Maybe they don’t mean it that way, but they sound exactly like it’s a social club and they can afford to be members and you can’t. Fine with me…I plan to have money left for my retirement. ;)</p>
<p>The Stanford parents club is great fun for the whole family…and they are doing a great job…birthday cakes delivered when you live far away…speakers relative to parenting a various seasons…etc…
Wanted to know of others</p>
<p>The Harvard Parents Club is known as the Harvard Parents Fund, so it’s pretty clear what their focus is. We also belong to the Harvard Club - which is the alumni association. Or maybe we parents aren’t actual members but sort of associates or adjuncts. But we do get e-mails inviting us to Harvard Club events. I don’t go to them, so I don’t know how valuable they are.</p>
<p>Boston University has a Parent something or another. While our kiddo was a student there, we got tons of mail from them, always asking for money (as if we weren’t sending them ENOUGH money already). To be honest, I was so put off by their constant solicitations that now that DS is a grad, I still don’t make donations to that fund (or whatever it is).</p>