@mominthemiddle I think your approach is a good one. Take her to schools, have her write out the pros and cons, talk about it calmly. She may still make the choice you don’t want her to make, but it sounds like all options are solid schools. We have drawn a few lines, but in the end will leave it up to D17. She was also accepted to Cal Poly Pomona, which isn’t far from the bf’s California choice. My husband explained to them she could not choose Cal Poly Pomona over Cal Poly slo, one schools was clearly superior and she couldn’t choose a far lesser school just to be closer, but not that close, to the bf. They both seemed on board when we explained it. Another thing that helped for them was I made spreadsheets so they could compare cost of attendance, faculty ratio, us news and Forbes rankings, etc… I think it’s helped guide the conversation apples to apples, this school is ranked lower, why would your parents want to pay double in out of state tuition so that you could go to a lesser school? If it helps you at all, US news ranks all three schools you are discussing similarly, Pitt ranks slightly higher, then U Del, then IU, all are in the top 100 for national universities. Are the costs of attendance comparable?
@mommdc @socalmom007 UPitt gives nothing - she got something, she got something at each, very similar in range of cost. When I look at who wants my daughter, Scranton and IU email her weekly. When we went to the academic session at IU, the woman who gave it just seemed to genuinely care about the kids. I got warm fuzzies. The administration just seems so passionate about the kids - it just oozed through the whole day - didn’t get that at UD, can’t get anything out of them, she seems like a number to them IMO, did get it at UPitt,
She has had access to the freshman class at each since acceptance so in IU’s case since November since it was her first; the only students she will look at or communicate with are UD. She doesn’t want to be too far, I can reach IU by plane quicker than I can reach UD by car. My sis is 2 hours from IU, S15 is 2.5 hours from IU. I can show her stats, I can show her spreadsheets - doesn’t matter. Student/Faculty ratio at the College of Arts and Sciences is something like 12:1 being that she is a direct admit. The cons are the size, but seeing that her college has a total of 10K students and she wouldn’t really be involved with the other colleges there unless she wants to be, that’s sort of irrelevant. She can create her major at IU and it’s what she wanted, now that it was presented to her as a pro at IU, she supposedly doesn’t want it.
I woke up at 3, couldn’t sleep. We may take another drive down to UD this weekend, see if she still loves it, see if we can warm to it. Pretty discouraged. I have a feeling that unless lightening strikes her, she is going to give up the school that checks off more of her boxes, that offers her the best academic options for what she wanted to end up with.
@mominthemiddle wrote
As someone who leads (strongly) with their feelings, I can understand where your daughter is coming from. Also, I’m married to someone who leads strongly with logic, so I can understand where you are coming from.
I have a few questions because I’m trying to understand your situation better.
- When you say "have been through this so many times" do you mean your daughter has made an emotional choice in the past that she has come to regret later?
- Is she trying to pick a school that the BF will be at as well?
- What's the worst that could happen if she goes to the school that she has strong feelings about (vs "better academic fit"?)
@socalmom007 I’m with ya on the spreadsheets-I find them enormously helpful. And the visual learner in me likes that I can color code stuff. I color coded how strongly my kid felt about certain things at certain schools.
@SincererLove wrote
I posed this question to my CS daughter (who applied but did not get into MIT).
She replied without missing a beat “Vandy for undergrad, MIT for grad. It’s a no-brainer to follow the money and I’d still get to do the fun stuff at MIT eventually”.
Catching up…
@firstwavemom & @twoforone99 Congratulations on UVA! A friend’s son liked his undergrad experience there so much that he stayed on and is now completing his first year of grad school at UVA. And congratulations on S’s choice of W&M, twoforone99!
@itsgettingreal17 Congratulations on UGA! Go Bulldogs!
@socalmom007 I’m glad D and BF have some good choices where they can be together (UMass) or nearby. I forgot - are Cal Poly and UC Irvine the two that are 3.5 hours apart? I can’t wait to hear their final decision. I must say I admire your calmness and your ability to offer guidance and advice while leaving the final decision up to your D.
@LoveTheBard @Cubanmom3 and @HSCounselor2 Congratulations on the Wash U scholarships and hooray for HSCounslor2’s D committing!
@mamaedefamilia Thanks for sharing the info on How College Works. D’s college does a 5 day orientation right before the first day of classes. Parents are invited to attend the first 2 days.
@mizuno22 Congratulations on the acceptances and good luck on the decision.
@TimEnchanter Thank you for sharing D’s experiences at KY and Chapman and what went into her final decision. Congratulations on committing to Chapman!
@morningside95 Congrats on St Olaf!
@youcee Feels great to be moving forward, doesn’t it? I hope your S has a great experience at UCLA!
@RightCoaster and @shuttlebus Same thing here. D17 loves nature and finds big cities suffocating. S22 has fallen in love with every big city we’ve visited and says he wants to go to college in Toronto! I guess they each take after a parent. Our local REI store opened the week I met DH. I bought a tent, we started dating, I didn’t use said tent for 7 years! First use was when D was 2. When DH saw how happy camping made her, he softened a little, but the kids and I do a lot of backpacking/kayak camping/regular camping trips without DH.
@SincererLove That’s a tough decision. If both were full pay or close to full pay, I’d definitely choose MIT. But the Vandy scholarship is enough to be a game changer IMHO.
@mominthemiddle If you remove the BF from the equation, which school does your D think would be the best fit? FWIW, I chose my undergrad based solely on academics (it had the #1 ranked program in my major) and I spent 4 years being miserable there. It was such a misfit for me culturally. Because of my experience, I advised my D to prioritize fit over academics.
Is anyone else following the UMass Class of 2021 Accepted Students Thread?
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/university-massachusetts-amherst/1934518-umass-amherst-2021-decision-thread.html#latest
As a MA resident, I am appalled that students are still waiting to hear their decision, and that admissions is stonewalling them on when they can expect an answer. As a parent, my heart goes out to these kids who are getting strung along. And I recall the same thing happening two years ago when I went through this with D, so it’s an ongoing problem. Apparently the situation was discussed on a popular radio talk show. I sincerely hope this means a front page Boston Globe article is in the near future. I’m not dissing the education kids can get at UMass, only how their admissions process appears completely deficient.
Does anyone know of other schools who still haven’t released all of their decisions?
Parent of a D13 and D16 here. The college years are a great opportunity to reflect upon the transitioning of the parent-child relationship.
It’s only the beginning of many years ahead where our adult children will be making decision upon decision upon decision about their lives. Some of these decisions will meet our approval and we will cheer, and other decisions will, well, keep us up at night.
It’s always been helpful for me to think about how the kids might be “hearing” what I’m saying. Despite meaning well, despite being “right”, my kids might hear what I’m saying as criticism, judging, interrogating, lack of confidence in their ability to make sound decisions, and an intolerance for bad decisions/bad outcomes.
Big picture, I can see what kind of relationship I’d like to have with my adult children. The college years are a good time to practice, for everyone! Practice, practice, practice!
Good luck! It’s NOT easy to watch your child make a major decision you don’t agree is best. Alas, this is life!
@LoveTheBard, I haven’t weighed in on the MIT/Vandy discussion, because I thought I didn’t have anything to add. It indirectly came up in conversation with my wife last night, though (talking about D19, and whether it’ll even be possible to find a program that balances her even-more-disparate-than-D17’s longstanding interests), and my wife pointed out that she was admitted to both MIT and Maryland. MIT offered her pretty much bupkis, while Maryland offered her enough in the way of scholarships that she actually made money off of attending college.
MIT was tempting, but she went with the money, and hasn’t regretted it. Yeah, MIT has prestige and such, but for an engineer prestige doesn’t really matter, ABET does—I mean, we’ve got locally important engineers who went to places like UNC-Charlotte, and it hasn’t hurt them, even remotely.
Not to mention that size is important. Your daughter doesn’t feel like Vandy’s work hard/play hard ethic resonates, fine—but with >10k students, I can’t imagine that everyone there acts that way. Presumably there are a few thousand that do, a couple thousand who word hard and then chill, a couple thousand who work hard and do nothing else, and probably a few hundred genuine slackers. The ratios may be different at MIT, but when you’ve got a couple thousand people to choose from either way? It doesn’t really seem like that big of an issue.
@Midwest67 easy to say if she was footing the bill and if that were the case - go for it - otherwise if hubby and I are paying the bills, we’d like to see the best use of our money. I have S15 - so been through this once before - nothing like this at all.
@NolaCAR D17 says she knows the fit academically is IU but UD has the feel. Part of that is that she has 100% gotten involved with the incoming students of UD and has not contacted 1 student at IU. Almost like she won’t because she might like someone. She does has a boy from her HS at IU - loves it - went there not knowing a soul - is thrilled with it. She had the opportunity to meet up with him twice, refused to. He wanted to really show her his school.
@MotherOfDragons Yes, been through this. She HAS to do things her way, always out to prove she is right, life is wrong. Things don’t work out and she has regrets. It’s like she is darn and determined if someone says this is the only way to do something, she is going to devote her life to proving to you that is can be done another way that doesn’t exist. She’s a middle child. I often feel like she is trying to pave her own way, but adamant about going in the opposite direction and expects to arrive at the same destination and doesn’t after a long trip and really wishes she turned where the arrow said she should.
Haha - my D in a nutshell, determined to prove the GPS is wrong! But we’re paying for the gas as she drives around…
@mominthemiddle, so the costs are very similar at Pitt, IU and UDel?
And the costs would be similar if she later decided to transfer to one of the other schools?
@mominthemiddle I have to agree with @Midwest67. All of your daughter’s options are great options. It’s ok that you prefer a different school for her, but the decision should ultimately be hers. Furthermore, I don’t see IU as being greater than UDel. She’ll be fine at any of those schools. I wouldn’t keep pushing it and potentially strain your relationship with her over this.
@SincererLove I’m probably in the minority, but I don’t think MIT is worth that much of a difference over Vandy. The name on your diploma only gets you so far, and only for a short time. And if there is any question in either of your minds regarding the rigor and stress at MIT, run. I know way too many kids that chose rank despite their better judgment and then ended up having to take a forced sabbatical for one reason or other or otherwise did not enjoy their undergrad years. Elite colleges don’t like to talk about that, but it’s real. Is athletics also in the equation? I may be confusing posters, but would your daughter swim at Vandy and/or MIT. I’d factor that in as well. It’s a huge stressor on top of stressful academics.
Good luck on the decision!
@mominthemiddle The advice given by @midwest67 is really important. If really helps to find your footing as parents and determine how you want to interact with your adult children. For our neurotyoical children (we have a dependent autistic adult child, so this does not apply to him), we reached the decision that we share our opinion once-- our concerns and the possible long term consequences-- and then we leave them to make their own decisions. They are aware that they will also have to live with those decisions. (In our telling them our opinion, the making a decision contrary to what we believe is the one with the best outcome, transferring at increased cost to us later would not be an option. Moving home and commuting to a cheaper option would be.)
And if your Dd does choose to follow her boyfriend, as someone who followed her boyfriend to college (much to the dismay of his mother who really interjected her opinion on my decision) and who also walked away from a full-ride scholarship at a great school for a much poorer fit at my boyfriend’s school, I can share that I never looked back and thrived anyway. We have been happily married for over 30 yrs, so things can work out ok. It may end up being OK even if it isn’t what you want her to choose. And if it doesn’t turn out the way she wants, she will have made the decisionand the consequence of that choice is really hers to live with. (ETA: the only thing that suffered long-term consequences for my following dh to his school is unfortunately our relationship with his parents. )
Parenting adult children is way more difficult than toddlers (whoever said the terrible 2s is really hard lied!) Their decisions can be life-altering. But, honestly, it is adult to adult. Not parent to young child.
DS’s friend is weighing on Full ride at Duke vs full pay at Brown. :))
Too each their own.
Rather unceremoniously, “I” clicked the Accept button. I asked DS17, but he said you can do it.
DS17 was not accepted for Honors but will be at UT College of Natural Sciences (Undeclared major.)
Enrollment deposit $200
Orientation $277
Housing deposit to be made $300
Airfare to the June orientation TBD
Price of having the decision - about $1100 and level up to dorm shopping $$ :))
@SincererLove My DS was dreaming MIT since elementary school until … we visited three years ago. We both left campus speechless. He didn’t even apply. I remember that during the admission info session, the counselor was trying to convince us, prospective students if admitted to stop competing and just focus on learning, not one’s ranking in the class, which unfortunately a lot of MIT students struggle to do. And it’s pretty self-explanatory given the cultural background of a lot of MIT students. Like a lot of parents rightly said it’s not for everyone. As long as your daughter doesn’t easily bend under the stress and pressure (the most import point), she feels that she will have a well rounded college experience (#2) and money is not an issue (last in priority list), she might as well spend four years of her life at MIT. I feel that in case of MIT, students’ mental health should be considered before any prestige or ranking.
Congratulations @payn4ward ! What a great choice.
@educationfan, reminds me of my D17 upon visiting Penn. She had (against my strong advice) had it as her dream school since she was little, mainly because I went to grad school there; the tour and (especially) info session knocked it completely off her list.
@payn4ward congrats!! UT is a great choice. I have a couple of friends that went there and they speak highly of the school. Hey you got away with a smaller enrollment fee than me! I think my wife said she had to pay a few thousand to NEU for the London program and another chunk is due by May 1.
@payn4ward I’m jealous! My wallet had a larger immediate hit but I have already bought flights. LOL!
Enrollment deposit $495
Flights for June orientation $785
Extra dorm night pre-orientation $40
Swag order #1 (mandatory hoodie) $38
Swag order #2 (LOR writer thank you gifts, balloons for grad party, a couple of parental items and a few more for the kid) $126
Announcements and Tyou cards (counting these since I couldn’t order till he picked!) $88
Outbound flights for move in $555 (given the pricing for Orientation, I bought for August now)
Hotel deposit for move in date weekend after the kid is checked in (which may or may not happen lol) $177
$2304
While I don’t like the larger enrollment deposit, I do like that it covers everything, housing and orientation, in one fee.
Still need to buy my return flight in August, and possibly a RT ticket for H.
Still waiting on summer program details to purchase all flights for the year. Hopefully soon. Anyone else getting flights all at once?