My son is currently going to Digipen instead of a traditional college for computer science. They do more actual 'job training" than a traditional CS degree. He loves it there and is doing great. Plus, he got an almost full scholarship. They have a really high job placement, so we are hoping that will help him.
Too bad my daughter would hate it there, hehe.
So, we finished our day at UAH. Iāll do a review on the schoolās thread later, but D17 is substantially more confused than she was yesterday. We met with the Dean of the Honors College and he was outlining opportunities that practically made her drool! Poor kidā¦
On to Maryland!
@NerdMom88ācanāt wait to hear it. We have a friend whose daughter is considering UAH.
Hello @mcgeecrew as everyone has said the options your D has are great! I have not personally been to visit the schools you mention, but for what itās worth Pittsburgh is a great college town. When I took my D to visit Carnegie Mellon, I became more curious about University of Pittsburgh. Itās right next door and the campus is beautiful!
I am a big believer in admitted students events and visits in general. Will you have the chance to visit the others?
Congrats to you and your D for the having a nice group of options!
D received an email today telling her she still had time to apply to George Mason University. :))
Mine too @botcom
And mine got an email from George Mason basically saying please please please accept our offer of admissionā¦
Edited for clarity, since thereās a page break from the posts it refers to.
Thanks all!
@IABooks OK - you guys are starting to talk me into it. I really should see if we could squeeze in a visit. Iām a little worried about housing at this point, as we didnāt put down a deposit like everyone else seemed to. I worry that if she did end up wanting to attend that sheād end up at the outskirts of campus in a dorm no one wants :O.
@carachel2 Congrats on the Pitt decision! It must feel good to be finished, and thatās a great school. My daughter is slightly concerned about BME because weāve read that itās harder to find a job, especially if you donāt go on to grad school (which she is hoping to avoid). Is that what youāve heard, and why your daughter is doing Mech E? I was kind of hoping with the growth in the BME field, that more positions at all degree levels would be opening up. Iām also just glad she picked something and is excited about it, for now anyway.
@RightCoaster Good to hear the positive reviews on WPI. From the tiny bit we saw of Worcester, it does seem a little drab, but I am sure there are some cool pockets of the city, right!?! She was excited that Boston is a not too long train ride awayā¦but I have a feeling that trip doesnāt happen very often. It seems whenever we went on a tour of a school that was a train ride away from a big city they would talk it up in the info session, but then when we asked the student tour guides how often they went to the city it was pretty much never. My daughter really had wanted to be in a cool, walkable, college town or city (which is why she was drawn to Pitt and Delaware), but seems to be willing to give that up for WPI. I am really not trying to dis anyone who might be live in WPI. Itās probably a great city.
And you should visit Pittsburgh sometime! It was our first trip, although we are only 4 or 5 hours away, and we thought it was great.
@HSCounselor2 I love the visits also - I think we saw almost 20 schools. I was much more into them than all those years ago when I was looking at colleges for myself. And definitely more into them than anyone in the family (including the senior) 
We toured all three of her top choices last year, and are doing accepted student days at all of them. Pitt was last month, and Delaware and WPI are next. We were slated to do Northeastern in March also, but she decided to drop it from her list. I was a little bummed as I was looking forward to seeing Boston again!
Iām 5 days behind again. Things move fast! We took a short vacation and tried not to talk about college much at all. No college visits; just hiking, snorkeling, and ziplining. We are back home, but the kids are still on spring break. (Iām notā¦)
Congrats to those with DECISIONS!! @Mom2aphysicsgeek @RightCoaster @dfbdfb @mtrosemom @Motiv8tedmom23 !! Iām so excited for your kids!! <:-P =D>
Congrats to those in at USC, CMU, Rice, and others. @Collegecue @CA1543 @thermom and I probably missed a bunch. <:-P =D>
Welcome @mageecrew !
@5redheads So sorry about your DHās situation. I tech write on contract for a large tech company that went through an offshoring phase several years ago. They decided all the device drivers for their boards could be written overseas. It didnāt work out well, and they brought the work home after a couple years. But, itās sure hard on the people in the meantime. Hugs and fingers crossed for a better position soon. Back in the '90s I trained my replacement who visited from overseas to learn, and itās a lousy deal.
S17 recently got good news form CMUās SCS, so he will need to consider his options and whether he really wants to be a physics major or a CS major.
@ynotgo Your trip sounds fabulous - I need a serene trip like that! Itās tough for kids to have to commit right away I think - what kind of flexibility does he have to change majors at each school?
@Ynotgo thanks!! Good news on CMU, thatās great. Sounds like he has some great choices, very exciting.
Boy, seems like page 1987 was so long ago.
Keep pushing people, only 13 pages to go!
I find it very interesting how the kids can use the accepted students Facebook page to see who else they know has been accepted at each college they are a part of.
I bet the pace of posts picks up again tomorrow afternoon and then again on Friday.
We have at least narrowed it down to 3 main contenders!
Unbeknownst to me, D had grown increasingly ambivalent about Vassar as time went on (not helped by her alumni interview with a woman D described as having basically no personality with whom she struggled to converse for even 15 minutes) so finding out last night she was waitlisted was met with a big shrug.
With that, it looks like itās going to come down to Smith, Hamilton or RPI. Sheās gotten pretty much equivalent merit money from Smith and RPI ($20k/yr STRIDE from Smith, $21.5k/yr from RPI) Hamilton offered some need based aid. It would be the most expensive option, but not by enough to make a difference if she liked it better.
Smith was the first school she visited last year where she could really see herself. She also had a very nice alumni interview. The fact that she got the early write and STRIDE scholarship (which comes with a research internship with a professor for her first 2 years) has definitely had the intended effect of making her feel wanted there! This one is a no-brainer, and if it were her only option she would be perfectly happy.
Hamilton is the dark horse because she hasnāt visited it yet. She is very intrigued by everything sheās learned, though - the history and that the current school is the result of a merger between a menās and a womenās college, and she loves the fact that theyāve got lots of math and economics majors in a very traditional LAC setting. She also had a crazy good alumni interview that made her curious as to what kind of place inspires such warm loyalty in at least one graduate!
RPI is going to have to sell itself to D a bit because although sheās a math/science girl sheās not sure how she feels about going somewhere so specialized in that direction. She is impressed with their graduating student starting salaries though, lol, and has agreed to visit with an open mind. One of her best friends loved her visit and had RPI as her top choice until she was swayed by U Rochester (which offered both engineering and Eastman school of music - Dās friend is a musician.)
So we shall see! Sheās signed up for Hamilton and Smithās admitted student open houses. We need to squeeze in an RPI visit for her because she canāt make their official admitted student day. At least itās getting closer!
@mageecrew Oh, I meant to add that one of my Dās other best friends just committed to WPI. She was really impressed with how supportive the atmosphere felt in a solid technical school. Honestly, I wish Iād known more about WPI when I began this process with my D, I would have had her investigate it more. Good luck!
3 great options @thermom! You canāt go wrong with any of them. Best of luck in the home stretch!
@mageecrew I agree with everyone else that your Dd has great options. If $$ is not a concern, no advice. If $$ is a concern, I can share our dsās experience at Bama. Bama loves it UG students and the they do everything possible to help top students succeed. If you Google University of AL and Goldwater Scholars, you will see numerous engineering students (usually chemE majors with a bio focus) have won the award.
My ds has been active in physics UG research since freshman yr. Over the last couple of yrs, he has had REU offers from UMD, Cornell, an international collaboration in Sweden, Notre Dame, Michigan State (#1 in nuclear), Duke, etc. He has fabulous professor mentors and tons of support. He has been able to grad level classes as an UG.
He has zero regrets choosing UA. He was accepted to top ranked schools, but we couldnāt afford our contribution. Nothing came close to competing with UAās offer (he has 4 stacking scholarships from UA.) A lot of people disagree with Malcolm Gladwellās big fish premise, but our kidsā experiences validate his position. (Of the students ds knows at tippy top universities, only 1 student has received top REU offers 2 summers in a row. ) REUs are intensely competitive (hundreds of applicants for maybe 10 positions).) Bama has not held him back at all.
@Ynotgo Super big congrats on CMU! But, wow, tough decision for your ds. It is super rough to face that sort of divided road at 18. Dd faced a similar decision between IR/IS and IB. At USC if she decides out drop out of the French IB cohort anytime after Feb of her freshman yr, she is out of IB entirely. USC is not a good choice for IR/IS. If she wanted to pursue IR/IS, Fordham would have made more sense. (That was her original choice of major, but after numerous dept visits, she decided she didnāt think it was what she really wanted to do.) But, goodness, it is like standing between 2 divergent paths and both lead to very different life choices. A lot of pressure at 18.
@Thermom, congrats! Those are all excellent choices, and yet very different! My personal opinion, is that a young woman who graduates from RPI these days is bound to have unlimited opportunities down the road. I really enjoyed my visit to RPI, and I can see why some kids would love it. If they had given my son any $$ at all I think he wouldāve gone there. But in the end they didnāt, and he said for the same price he might as well live in Boston, minutes down the road. He was torn on the decision though.
Hamilton is a nice place, but Iād say more ātraditionalā college feel vs RPI. More LL bean vs Geek squad, ha. RPI was edgier and diverse. I thought RPI was a bustling place, quite a lot of action on campus the day we visited.
I donāt know much about Smith at all, but sounds like they like her and she had a good visit.
Good luck!