<p>mamom, the weather here in Pittsburgh is supposed to be nice on Saturday, hope your H and S have a great visit. As someone who was good at math/science and steered into engineering, then ended up not liking it, I have never tried to push my kids toward a certain major. My D is majoring in international affairs, and we have commented a few times that she would have made a good engineer, but that is not where her interests lie. My S has applied to CMU’s summer pre-college program (in game design) and we are waiting to hear about that.</p>
<p>Mamabear, Thanks for the weather update. After all the rain we have had the past few days knowing it will be clear skies Sat will help make the long trip more bearable. </p>
<p>I know you are right we shouldn’t push S into something he isn’t interested in. And we have backed off, but as an eng. I keep thinking of all the possibilities. (and we would have paid for an MBA)</p>
<p>My S would love the game design class. We have looked into it and similar classes but it is a little too much money for us right now with two kids in private school. I hope your son gets in.</p>
<p>As one who pushed her S into engineering physics and he almost flunked out of Cornell, I can say maybe rethink that. He should have been a math major which was what he wanted in the first place. It has taken me a long time to learn to listen to my kids on some things. Luckily I listend to my D when she said she wasn’t majoring in soccer.</p>
<p>We already visited 3 Universities: Rice, Wash U and Case. After registration, each of these colleges sent us a packet with campus maps, suggestions on parking, place of the information session, local hotels, restaurants, etc. </p>
<p>In less than 10 days we are going on a NE college tour. We will cover 7 colleges in 6 days. I already registered for the campus tours and information sessions in most of them (the rest doesnt require registration) and booked hotels. Didnt get anything in mail; not every college that took registrations sent a confirmation e-mail, and the ones that did have no information about parking, the place of the information session, etc. Whats up with that? </p>
<p>Anyone has any experience to share about their college visits? My DS LOVED Rice; Case was fine too. But he is thinking about taking Wash U off his list and replacing it with U of Chicago.</p>
<p>mpabon, I think that colleges also use the AP’s for class placement and he will have taken 5 of them. Son really stresses out and does not tend to do that well on these big tests and I just don’t think the SAT subject tests are worth it. Average (non CC) kids do not actually take multiple SAT II’s and AP’s. The majority of Colleges do not require SAT subject tests. </p>
<p>We’re off to Rhode Island and MA this weekend with my SIL and her daughter to look at some colleges. I am so happy that the weather is predicted to be just great. Woo hoo sunshine!</p>
<p>D1 will not be taking SATII tests either, the Pacific Northwest colleges she’s interested in do not require them --thank goodness.</p>
<p>mamom, is your S also going to take a look at Pitt, since he’s in the neighborhood? They can stop and see the dinosaurs at the Carnegie on the way.</p>
<p>keylimepie - could you post your son’s and your impressions of Rice, WashU and Case? D is interested in all these three - but I don’t see us visiting all of them before she applies. We are planning to visit Case in April. Thanks.</p>
<p>Slithey, H and S will do a walk through at Pitt, no tours or information sessions are scheduled for March 20th. Although I (and our 10yo D) would love to see the Dino’s it wouldn’t be something high on my H’s list. </p>
<p>If my D didn’t have a play scheduled for that Sat., we would probably all be making the trip so I could help with the driving. I guess I should consider myself lucky that I can’t go, 1000 miles in a few days.</p>
<p>arisamp- Ill explain first at what we are looking for. My S is planning to double-major in Physics and French (weird, I know). Actually, because both are core liberal arts majors, almost all top colleges would have excellent departments, but for physics we are looking at the research opportunities in and around the campus and science lab resources. My S is pretty competitive, IF the competition is fair and friendly. He will be miserable in a back-stabbing environment.</p>
<p>Now about each college. </p>
<p>Rice We went there in April 2009, so the weather was at its best. The campus is beautiful and well located. Its almost in the downtown area, but has a well defined campus. I dont think I could study there, because the campus looks more like a resort than a university, but my son is more dedicated to learning, so he doesnt think he would have any problems with that. </p>
<p>I was most impressed with the student body. I think we were there a week of (or a week before) their finals, nevertheless, the students looked smart and focused yet relaxed. Rice has the residential college system, similar to Oxford and Yale, and probably because of that the student body is very integrated. I would not be able to estimate percentage of any minority from my observations, because they were all mixed together. All in all, my impression was that my S can find good friends there. </p>
<p>WashU Is similar to Rice as far as the campus feel and location goes. The campus is well kept and dorms and food are amazing. My S response to that was: Why are they throwing money on dorms and not physics labs? I guess he asked about the resources in physics labs, and didnt like what he heard. However, it looks like WashU has lots of money, they are building new dorms, renovating old buildings, etc… You wouldnt think the country is in recession. </p>
<p>Kids in WashU are trendier and less relaxed than Rice kids. And not that much integrated. Asian kids especially tend to stick together. At least, it was my impression. </p>
<p>Case Is my Ss admission and financial safety. He should have no problem getting accepted there and should get merit scholarship as well. </p>
<p>Both of us liked it more than we expected. The campus is not as well defined as Rice or WashU and I thought I wouldt like it, but it turned up not being a problem. We went there during an Open House on Saturday, so we didnt see many current students, but the campus didnt seam empty because it is not isolated from the city and because of all the prospective students visiting. The location has its pros and cons. Art Museum, Natural Museum and Severance Hall are basically on the campus, but some shady neighborhoods are close too. My S is also a decent piano player, and he plans to continue his music studies in college, and he was glad to hear that Case students can take music lessons in the Cleveland Institute of Music, which is next to Case.</p>
<p>Sorry for the long response. If you have specific questions about any of them I can try to answer.</p>
<p>keylimepie, thanks for the great post! It was very informative.</p>
<p>Mine is now recovered from March 13 SATs. If he matches his PSAT, he’s hopefully done with standardized tests. Yippie! Now comes the fun of pruning the list of 20+ schools, and figuring out how to visit at least some of them. I think we are going to do a college fair in April, then we can start figuring out a summer visit plan.</p>
<p>keylimepie, thanks for sharing the campus impressions. As I’ve said before, my ds doesn’t even have a list yet (breathe, breathe, breathe) nor does he know what he wants to study. Actually, he knows what he DOESN’T want to study which might be more helpful in the long term----not English, history, foreign language etc. He leans toward engineering/math/physics, enjoyed bio but not enough for further study, disliked chemistry despite a very strong A. Bums me out because my degrees are in chemistry LOL</p>
<p>We’ve only visited our oh-so-local state flagship which is a beautiful tree-filled campus intertwined with our great main street business district, etc. LuckyBoy really needs to see other school to understand that not every campus looks this nice!</p>
<p>I think he’d be perfectly happy to attend Flagship. He’d be admitted automatically by meeting requirements for in-state applicants. And the in-state tuition is incredibly affordable. </p>
<p>We’ll see what happens this spring with all the testing (PSAT scores were quite good but only commended level—the state NMSF cutoff is one of the highest in the nation).</p>
<p>KLucky - I listened to what my kid wants from the college experience, then bought “Fiske Guide to Colleges” and found 10 schools that I thought we’d like. That how our list started. I wished he’d cut the list to 8, but he added 2 more. He met with his GC this year and after listening to what he is looking for, CG came up with a list that was almost identical to mine. </p>
<p>I wished he would take more initiative in the college search, but he is working very hard in school and with ECs.</p>
<p>Funny thing. I joined CC just 2 months ago and since then added 2 more schools to the list. That’s my only complain about CC.</p>
<p>keylimepie - thank you for your impressions. D is looking at either Math or Bio, so we have had a hard time narrowing down schools. Case seems very promising and like you mentioned, could end up as her financial/academic safety. So, we are definitely going to try and visit Case in April. The other two are more up in the air - she really likes Rice - and has recently started to think about WashU. My feeling is that she will likely apply to Rice, but skip WashU.</p>
<p>My older dd did the ACT in Feb without writing and is doing it again in April with writing. Then she has AP in May and maybe SAT 2 in June but that depends on whether she has made up her mind about any schools she is interested in. So far, she is mostly interested in the ones we visited last August with the exception of two which were rejected. One was rejected by her and one was rejected by me since it doesn’t have the Yellow Ribbon program. As it is, we are so busy with debate right now after finishing her younger sister’s Odyssey of the Mind that I can hardly think straight. </p>
<p>As it is, I have to go off and right a recommendation letter for my dd as I am not only a mom, and her teacher, but also the guidance counselor and she needs a letter for a summer program for which she is applying.</p>
<p>My boy is back in the country. Life is good :)</p>
<p>MilitaryMom, are you homeschooling? I’m going to hs our 10yo for the middle school years starting this fall.</p>
<p>Yes, I am still homeschooling two. I homeschooled my oldest from 2nd grade on and he got into most of the colleges to which he applied. He is now a senior in college. My two girls are loving being homeschooled and work very hard all year round. NOw you don’t have to homeschool all year round but we like to since none of my kids ever wanted to stop learning or to forget things because of a long break. THey generally don’t like breaks for more than two weeks. We are planning a vacation this year which will be two and a half weeks but it is still part schooling since it will be the culmination of their earth science class. (We are going to the Northern Rockies and will have plenty of geology to discuss what with super volcanoes, regular volcanoes, glaciers, floods, earthquakes, and other cool geological sites all around there and no, we are not Young Earthers).</p>
<p>^^
While were were overseas for 2 extended trips–we sort of homeschooled/unschooled our kids…
when we came back to the US and put the oldest back into public school–kiddo was ahead is everything–and that was doing it all very casually and on the fly so to speak. </p>
<p>We had days like…crossing dry lake beds and salt flats, seeing wild camel herds, riding a cmel nearthe medina and then eating camel couscous…</p>
<p>Being back in a classroom was kind of a let down… :p</p>
<p>Militarymom-love odyssey of the mind. My d is in her 9th year of competing. Her team heads to the nys tournament on 3/27!</p>