@jedwards70, how about University of Southern California?
@4beardolls we will take a look. We talked to an admissions rep at a performing arts fair and their new dance department will be amazing. It is a party school?
@jedwards70 I found this old CC thread: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/dance-major/1350242-colleges-in-california-with-good-dance-program.html
You might take a look at UC Irvine. The $23K surcharge for OOS makes the UCs pretty pricey, but UC Irvine would have a good mix of majors if dance is his minor. With 24K undergrads, it would be a good large school to help your son decide what size school he likes.
California Institute of the Arts would not have a wide range of majors, but it does have the advantage of being located in the same city as Magic Mountain/Hurricane Harbor for your vacation.
I see Chapman and Loyola Marymount on the lists of good dance schools. Both are religious, so that may or may not be a good fit for your son.
While not in SoCal, I happened to notice San Jose State University on a list of dance schools. That would certainly have a lot of video game and comic book fans, as it is a highly-rated school for video game design and computer science majors.
Opinions differ on whether USC is still a big party school. We live near a well known āparty schoolā and itās clear to me that students can easily avoid the party scene unless they choose to live in a heavy party area. I donāt know much about USC, other than that parts of the area around the campus can seem somewhat scary. On campus is supposed to be very nice, though Iāve never been on campusājust been to the California Science Center and other museums near there.
Pomona does sound like a good one to look at.
Have fun planning and taking your trip!
@Ynotgo Thanks for the suggestions! I will check out the schools you recommended and see what we can fit in. Uc Irvine sounds promising. I used to work for a company that had their HQ in LA and I loved going there a couple times a year. I am excited to go back. There is so much to do that Iām going to have a hard time narrowing it down to a few things.
S is staying at a university this summer so will get to visit that one by default. Weāll check out our in state colleges in the fall and then probably a spring break college visit trip. I saw that the class of 2016 is giving their impressions of the colleges their kids have visited. Iāll post my two cents here when D gets some real visits under his belt.
D has now visited 15 colleges, all HBCUās, save one. If anyone has an interest in any, Iād be happy to post about them. Sheās also stayed on campus at two of the WA State colleges. Sheās formed some pretty firm opinions on where she feels at home, what she wants in a program, etc. Iām glad we started early.
sseamom, Iād like to hear about the WA State schools!
@sseamom Iād love to hear about all of them. No pressure. 
My S is also interested in languages and I think the business and culture degree at American U sounds interesting. No Swahili though.
Jedwards,
I live in Ca., and have a daughter who danced on high school dance teamā¦ She did not choose to pursue it in college. I hear UC Santa Barbera has a good dance program.Our dance kids think highly of the program.No nothing about Irvine"s dance dept. . USC is a great school. Soaring in the ratings and perceptions. I think it is a well rounded school. Offers everything. Big time sports and rah rah, great education, big greek scene that personifies the party thing. The school also has acclaimed other programs like film, business, and music. I am sure all kids can find their thing. Chapman is a very hot school in so cal. While itās location in Orange is just so so, the campus is nice. They are pouring tons of money into the school. The film school is now quite amazing. I do not know as much about dance, but the arts are great there. I would not be concerned with the religious part of their affiliation. They now have many kids going. Lots of Jewish kids from Los Angeles. I make an assumption that if religion plays a heavy hand, they wouldnāt draw the kids they are getting. It is worth looking at. Irvine is a fine school. Really strong with Engineeringā¦The social life there is a bit tough. Empties out on the weekend, and not as much funā¦or well rounded. Just an opinionā¦
Well, here is the link to my review of the schools we toured last summer. I need to wait until D has a little more time to talk about her recent tour-so far I have bits and pieces. Last year: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1669578-hbcu-tour-p1.html
As for WA schools-she has stayed at WSU (Washington State University) and EWU (Eastern WA University). Her intended major is elementary education, and both have strong ed departments. EWU has had several grads named Teacher of the Year and WSU has a strong minority teachers program that has brought several student teachers and new hires to her HS. EWU has automatic admission for a GPA of 3.3 or above.
D says both campuses are clean, attractive and buildings that are newer and in nice shape. Food is good, and both have excellent student activity centers. Although WSU is pretty spread out (in her opinion) she says itās well laid out and nice to walk around. She will probably apply to both in addition to her HBCU choices. Iāll add more about the schools she saw last week soon.
@sseamom Sam Houston State University has a very good education department and a dance department where she may be able to do her praise dance. There is a group called Ad Deum Dance that may be her thing.The campus has a diverse group of kids and they now have an honors college. Iāll look for the east coast tour posts.
Bigpapiofthree, Iām not sure about usc or uc Irvine. Definitely looking at Pomona and maybe Chapman which you have both suggested. I really want to do fun touristy stuff too.
Looks like I finally need to order the Fiske guide and have him decide on some visits for this summer and next fall.
@sseamom For elementary education, does where she wants to get her teaching credential and end up teaching matter? Iāve heard that some states have cross-credential agreements (but that CA mostly does not).
@jedwards70 and @BigPapiofthree I donāt know much about dance at UCSB; I only know about the science and engineering end of campus. Somewhere I read that UCSB is good for modern dance but not jazz and urban (which both seem modern to me, but I know nothing). They bring lots of dance groups here for community events. We saw Baryshnikov here, but beyond that donāt recognize names in dance.
What kinds of touristy stuff is fun for your family? I got great suggestions for Washington DC tourism on the āgrumpy tweenā thread I started in the Parent Cafe forum.
Ynot-sheās seriously thinking that sheād be happy settling down in any state where she will go to school. Thatās why while sheād be happy at her safety here in WA she would rather not go there because she has no intention of living here permanently. She just canāt stand the climate. I know that many state donāt have the licensing agreements youāre talking about so sheāll need to check into that before making any decisions. Iām not sure what WA does, but most of her teachers are from and went to school in other states.
One week until the SAT and S is still on the āstudy-liteā diet. I so want him to do well so he can be done with testing. He can not or does not see the benefit of pain now. Sighā¦
@mtrosemom My S is taking the SAT next week, too. This is his second time. Fingers crossed that he is done after this one!! Good luck to your S!
Wishing good luck to mtrosemom and Felicitaās sons on next weekās SAT!
My DS is also in study-lite mode for the June SAT, but he has 2 AP tests to get through first. Then I am hoping that his SAT prep will kick into gear for the June test. Since he missed 2 days of school for the CMU trip, he has 3 big tests to take on Monday and a big English group project due this week.
Trip report: The CMU trip with his hacking team was fun for him. We hadnāt realized how utterly huge their College of Computer Science is in number of faculty. Everyone was very nice to them, and if he changes his mind and wants to major in CS, he would definitely apply, though he knows admission is tough.
DS and DH had a separate tour of the physics department. While it seemed nice, it didnāt seem worth the extra expense and distance from California. He said if he wanted a CS major with a physics minor it would be a good fit, but not for a physics major with a CS minor. I think itās good practice learning to figure that out from a tour.
We have the āproblemā that our local UC is generally ranked somewhere from 8th to 12th in physics/astrophysics (for grad school; harder to find undergrad rankings). One has to ask āwhy go far away?ā if the level of research available to undergrads doesnāt seem equivalent. However, there is certainly something to be said for the experience of going away to learn independence in college. If he ends up here, Iād want him to live in the dorm or near campus. We are a 10 minute drive from campus, so you still have to wonder how independent he would end up being.
He was also surprised at how large the āz axisā of the CMU campus is, with major ups and downs even from one side of a building to the other. He said some places would make reasonable ski runs in winter (and it snowed but didnāt stick one morning).
They also saw some of the humanities buildings and heard what a great school CMU is for drama, musical theater, etc. They saw the outsides of dorms but not the insides, and the food they had was university catered. DH said Pittsburgh seems to have improved a lot since previous work visits to CMU a number of years ago.
@Ynotgo, thanks for the CMU trip report. DD will be traveling to Pittsburgh in May and I am hoping she will have a chance to visit CMU.
@Ynotgo My S15 sounds very similar to yours. Heās interested in physics and computer science. Likewise, has had to look at schools based on those two programs and the flexibility to switch from one to the other if he decides to do that.
Itās good that your S is starting to think about that now.
Hi Everyone, I have a D17 and I am so glad to have found this thread. I see it is going all the way back to 2013, wow!
I have an older daughter from HS 2014 class who is a college freshman now and she was our first to send to college which was a huge learning process for me. So I just recently started this process with D2.
I tried going through the earlier posts but couldnāt find much. Did anyone look into the old/new SAT issue for merit scholarships? Are there any colleges that will require the ānewā SAT for either the admission or scholarship eligibility? I hope not but I thought it would be good to confirm.
For those who have kids taking the SAT in June, what is your plan? Do you have a specific score in mind that you would use as a benchmark to direct them to continue with the current SAT or switch to the ACT?
Hi NeedplanB and welcome. From what I understand from our school counselor, our kids will be allowed to take with the old or new SAT. I have not heard that any school will require one over the other. Also, this year at least either the old or the new test may be used to confirm the PSAT score for national merit if your kid may qualify. You may call the college board or the national merit corp to confirm. S will be taking the old SAT next Saturday. I am hoping he does well enough to not take it again, but if he does have to retake, I want him to get all of his testing completed before March of his Jr. Year. This may not happen but it is good to have goals
Welcome NeedPlanB!
Iād found this article awhile back, which claims to list āsome of the top liberal arts colleges and universities with their decisions as to whether they will accept the current (āoldā) SAT for the class of 2017, whether or not they will require the āoptionalā essay, and whether or not they will āsuper scoreā across both versions of the SATā.
The author hadnāt found any colleges that were sure they wouldnāt accept the old SAT. I donāt think thereās much info yet. Everyone is in wait-and-see mode it seems.
I did read somewhere that the scores from the March 2016 SAT wouldnāt be released until the same time as the scores for the May 2016 test results are released, because the CollegeBoard wants a larger data set to use for converting raw scores to scaled scores. Yet another reason to avoid the new SAT for Class of '17, I think.
No specific score in mind for the June SAT here. My gut feel is that he is more an SAT kid than an ACT kid, but Iām not actually all that familiar with the ACT.