Absolutely. The school is very low key and I haven’t met anyone who isn’t friendly, including the administration. I like the price. Laramie is a small town but there are a lot of outdoor activities in the area, and the school has lots of things for the kids to do, most of them free with an ID. There are a number of club sports that are low cost, the theater and dance departments are quite good so there are concerts and shows, there are several museums on campus. It’s about an hour to Ft. Collins and two to Denver, so they have access to shopping and sports if they need them.
Hi Everyone,
I too decided to join CC to participate in this thread. Like many of you, I’ve been a fan of the 2017 thread.
S18 has a 3.2-3.3 UW but had his moment of clarity last Oct when he received a 34 on this ACT. (Like some others, we are trying to get a handle on his ADHD - inattentive, with some positive results)
We are in CA, and have been advised that the majority of UCs are far reaches (due to his GPA), and so are very eager to (continue to) learn about private and OOS options. We locally toured Santa Clara and St Mary’s (along with UC Berkeley and Stanford for the sake of perspective) and he seems open to and invigorated by what’s available for students in his situation.
For us parents, this is new territory as both sides of the family has mostly dealt with UC’s and other competitive CA schools. Our discoveries through all this have been eye-opening and uplifting; we hope to continue the journey with you all.
Not sure how I missed this! I wonder why it is not going higher in the forum? Is there a way the moderators can put it in the Parents of 20XX threads?
I’m mostly a lurker on CC but I’ve learned so much. Thought I would join in on this thread. We don’t quite fall into the specs as S has a 4.5W GPA. I don’t know his UW but I’m sure it’s taken a hit this year. Junior year has been rough with him mostly feeling burned out and frankly being lazy about homework. He’s seems to have woken up after the last report card and the reality that he has to do well to salvage this semester.
At any rate his first pass at the SAT yielded a 1220. Waiting on the results of March but he didn’t put in a lot more studying so I’m not expecting much improvement. He is scheduled for the April ACT. A practice test he took at home was a 29 so we are optimistic. He’s aiming for a 32 for the Alabama presidential scholarship.
Current plans are chemical eng with an emphasis on biomedical engineering. He has a lot of passion for band and music and part of me wonders if that would be a better path for him. For now he is just planning on keeping with marching band and/or concert band in college.
So that’s our story. I look forward to getting to know everyone.
Welcome @chippedtoof, @TexasMom18 and @go2mom !
Does anyone else think it’s totally crazy that we have these nice, smart kids who seem to have no chance at getting into a decent school (struggling to come up with an adequate adjective)? It seems our best chances are either an expensive private or a state school in the middle of nowhere with horrible reputations (I can’t seem to guage whether these reputations are even accurate). There was an affordable state school that had been on my list for awhile. Then all I read on here was how it was the most horrible school in the state, so I took it off – and can’t see myself re-considering though I know, intellectually, that all schools have the drinking/partying contingent and all have serious sides.
Honestly, I vascillate between hopeful and completely desperate!
It’s quite difficult to choose schools from a distance! But I suppose it would be just as tough if I were on the West Coast trying to choose a school in the East. I use personal anecdotes that I read here to judge a school’s atmosphere, but how realistic can that be? I’ll fall in love with a school based on someone’s description of it, add it to my list, then realize it’s in a rather conservative area and cross it off the list because I’m sure my daughter won’t fit in (very short hair, unconventional looks, straight but androgynous, very definitely not a southern co-ed type, yet not extremely liberal either. I suppose I worry that with her short hair and the boyish way she dresses there’s the assumption…). But, then, how do I know who fits in and who doesn’t – even in the South or at a Christian school? Sometimes there will be a lot of comments that the kids at a certain school are “weird;” that sounds good, but maybe dd isn’t that weird after all (she wouldn’t be into trading Pokemon or Magic cards, for example; she did that in 5th grade!). Argh! 
It’s quite a process, isn’t it?
I think there’s a horrible distortion occurring that has ruined both the vocabulary and underlying fabric of college applications when anything off the Top 50 or 100 fails to qualify as “decent”. It’s not you, it’s the crazy level of expectations that are heaped on kids and parents by easy access to lists and info, a system that rewards both kids and schools from collecting trophy apps and acceptances rather than making good matches, and the corrosive notion that your life will be ruined if your college doesn’t get you launched properly. (That one really frosts me as it wasn’t too long ago that getting into the right high school was going to make the difference, or the right middle school, or maybe day care. By now it should be clear recent accomplishments count for much more than Montessori vs Classical elementary models or whatever churned the waters ten years ago. I digress.)
Don’t fall for the tyranny of brand name schools. There are literally thousands of schools out there, most of them quite good, and your kid (statistically speaking) will not be the smartest or dumbest kid in the room. The dark secret is that there is no single best fit, so the job is to find a good match from the entire list. Two broad steps: make sure your DD knows who she is and what she needs to be successful over the next four years, and then go find schools that suit her.
As far as figuring out what schools are really like, that’s kind of the $64k/year question. With DD16 she visited a fair number of local schools (beyond her favorites) just to get a feel for being on campuses and feeling different vibes. We looked a a bunch of different sites that have student reviews to get a broad sense of what’s there: niche.com has good curated reviews, studentsreview.com is a sloppy mess but it can be enlightening, ■■■■■■■■■■ has some, RateMyProf.com and its ilk can give a different look, etc. We just searched and spelunked. We also visited the ones that were serious candidates, and she stayed over at the one that was the top of her list. She was an athlete, so going to practice and hanging with the girls for the evening was very helpful: she knew it was a good fit. But touring really helped eliminate some schools that initially looked good on paper.
We used as quick and dirty tests things like Greek participation under 50%, freshman retention % and loan default rates. We ran a lot of Net Price Calculators to check affordability. Read the student newspaper. And we dug through a lot of sports sites to estimate her chances to play at her sport. If your DD has a particular interest use that to narrow the field, for example. Because really, if you’re doing this with an open heart (instead of an open copy of the USNWR rankings) you should have way more choices than time.
Maybe as a fun exercise have DD find five schools she’s never heard of that sound interesting even if they are way out of her geographic or financial range. Colleges That Change Lives has some great regional schools most people don’t know about, and the PrincetonReview.com has a bunch of strange lists that go 50 deep. Anyway, have fun with it and never let anything show in those moments of parental despair 
EDIT: One more thing: ask specific questions here at collegeconfidential.com. People have been to both Gettysberg and Muhlenberg, for example, and can tell you the differences. They’ll help you out if you want to find a program similar to the one you saw way across the country. This place sees a lot of schools and is very generous.
@Kardinalschnitt Maybe I missed the point of your post (perhaps this is not what you meant) but based on the 35+ schools I have seen between D15 and D18 I would weigh the campus culture itself MUCH more heavily than that of the town/location. If the campus culture is the problem and fit is in question I completely understand. But if the school itself seems great and the location/region is iffy I would encourage a family to still pursue the school. In the end, when acceptances come in and choices are being made, location will come into play and could be an important factor. In the meantime, however, a family struggling to find the right schools at the right price shouldn’t write off certain schools simply because the location itself isn’t perceived as a fit.
Even the ‘decent’ private schools that are in bustling metropolis are going to be expensive. Even if they are in the Top 10 they are going to be expensive. I have one child at an extremely expensive (to me) school at COA $58. Has everyone heard of this school? Hardly anyone - except employers! And it is almost free to her as she has grants and scholarships and only has to take a little in loans. It’s in a resort town with a lot of retirees, so the college kids have to make their own fun. Other daughter goes to a state school in the middle of nowhere and loves it. Horrible reputation? I don’t think so, nor do the other 10k kids who go there. Will she be getting a job on Wall Street after graduation? No, but she wouldn’t be getting that job if she went to Brown either. She would have been overwhelmed at Stanford or Cal or Texas or many of the schools ranked in the top 100. She’s a good student in some classes but really struggles in others. That’s why her gpa was a 3.4. That’s why the top schools wouldn’t have admitted her if she’d applied. There are thousands of schools that are a good fit. I don’t think there is a snooty or pretentious kid at the school. There are even some kids with short hair and boyish ways who aren’t gay. Cowgirls. Artists. Theater kids. Republicans (gasp!). Just a regular group of kids.
We looked at some schools that you’d consider decent - Smith, Kenyon, UF -and they just weren’t right for my kids.
@Kardinalschnitt I would suggest that you start with the Kiplinger best values report – http://www.kiplinger.com/tool/college/T014-S001-kiplinger-s-best-values-in-private-colleges/ This is the link to the private college best values but they also have it for public universities as well. We have always focused on schools that offer merit aid so you can apply that filter. Your daughter sounds like a lot of kids I know here in the Northwest. She should definitely look at Reed, Lewis & Clark, University of Puget Sound. All offer merit aid and are very welcoming to kids who aren’t caught up in what you look like. We visited Clark U in Wooster–would send my nerdy hipster there in a heartbeat. At the end of the day, we may be able to only afford an in-state or WUE option because the merit aid will have to be there. Right now he’s in love with Loyola Chicago. I’m sure he’ll get in with his stats but whether or not they provide any merit assistance is another story. And I refuse to let him go into debt with student loans or for me to forego my retirement for an undergraduate education. And for our smart kids, they will make good decisions but we have to be real with them all the time about their prospects and our abilities to pay.
@StPaulDad Thanks for the helpful post. We certainly aren’t falling for name-brand. Kids at dd’s school apply to a handful of schools. She is definitely different. Are you from St. Paul? Dd would love to go there!
@lr4550 Thank you for the tip. We have some schools on our list that are in more conservative areas. I’m not especially worried about them, so I wonder what does motivate my concern. I guess a certain vibe from the school website or from comments I read here.
@twoinanddone Yeah, I was not comfortable with the word decent. We have a number of in-the-middle-of-nowhere public schools on our list. I don’t personally have an idea of what a “decent” school is. I really need to stop reading threads like “post your own state’s college reputation.” There was a school that came up numerous times as the worst school in the state. Actually several on our list came up as the “worst school in the state” or didn’t even figure in anyone’s list. Hard to ignore.
@go2mom Yep, dd wanted to spend her senior year in PDX. Reed would be perfect if they had dd’s major. Lewis & Clark is a great school for Third Culture Kids. I’m not crazy about the location since she wouldn’t have a car.
Yes to being real. I tend towards, “You’ll figure it out! You can make it work!” and need to get tougher! I did have her cross OSU and UM-Twin Cities off her list. I told her she can go to UM Morris and transfer. UM Twin Cities has been top on her list since the beginning.
Loyola Chicago seems like a really nice option!
I’m still confused, @Kardinalschnitt , about what type of school you are actually looking for. Lewis & Clark is in a city, no car required (I used to live near there, would drive to school and park in the lot and take the bus to downtown. Very easy to get around). I do not think it is for Third culture kids, and found the students to be a little ‘preppy trying to be hip’. I think you are crossing off schools for a reputation of drinking when there might be a few who engage in that behavior and plenty who don’t. The bigger the school, the more groups. At a small school like Reed, if you aren’t into the main society, it’s going to be tough to find a sub-group. A friend’s daughter went there last year and lasted a semester. She wasn’t into smoking pot and couldn’t find a comfortable group. Where did she transfer to? CU-Boulder, where there are plenty of kids who smoke pot (legally and otherwise) and yet plenty who don’t.
I’d suggest not crossing off schools until you investigate them. What’s wrong with UMinn-TC? What’s wrong with OSU? The list is going to take shape based on interests, costs, friends, distance, sports (or no sports), chatter from other students about food, parties, trips.
@Kardinalschnitt there are some small privates that are less than expensive OOS. There are also expensive OOS that can be generous with merit. It simply takes a lot of research.
As a Seattleite who frequents Portland and knows a ton of kids who go to L&C (and adults that went there) I don’t understand the concern for the location at all either. Most schools don’t allow freshman to have a car, regardless of location.
@go2mom I had asked the Mod’s to move the 2017 3.0 thread at one point and they did not. Threads will be up and down depending on how active it is. As time goes on, it will be more at the top. But if you bookmark it, it won’t matter where it is, you’ll always be able to find it.
Go2boy fancies himself a bit of a Renaissance man–loves to debate serious topics, refuses to get his driver’s license (nothing wrong with public transportation) and is a bit smug when it comes to schools that focus on sports. We made the error of looking at both Marquette and Xavier during March Madness. Marquette had just lost (lots of glum hungover faces) and Xavier had just won (lots of euphoric hungover students). We’re hoping to also look at University of Denver, Goucher and Rhodes. Anyone visited any of these schools?
I live by DU and have been there a million times. My kids did a lot of their sports there as kids (hockey, swimming, lacrosse). As far as ‘urban’ goes, it is a contained campus but just off the highway and on the light rail line that will get you downtown in about 15 minutes and even to the airport (on days when the train feels like running - many problems with that line). The school is very good in IR, music, business. I think it is a good size, has a lot of student activities, and is competitive in D1 sports without a football team - hockey, lacrosse, skiing and gymnastics are the big guns (still in it for hockey this year). The sports complex is very nice with an (ice cold) olympic pool, 2 sheets of ice, a rec center with a climbing wall, gymnastics practice gym and performance gym, lacrosse stadium and extra practice fields, tennis courts, etc. I know a few prof and they are intelligent people.
I used to live near Goucher. It is not what I would call an urban school, as it is set off by itself, not that far from Towson U, and Towson gets all the publicity. Very different in size and feel from DU. I don’t know Rhodes except that two sisters my kids went to grade school with are student athletes there and their parents are very happy with the school. Both were top students too, so I’m sure the decision was based on where they could play while getting a top education.
We visited Goucher. Very modern campus, new freshman dorm. It was interesting as my son had a wonderful interaction with them at a CTCL fair and an interview (so applied and was admitted) but the actual visit to be honest, was a bit of a disaster. Just not right for him at all. He sat in on a class (info Environmental studies) that he felt was covering items he’d had in his first week of APES. The faculty meeting after, made it worse. That said, it was definitely a program issue/problem. Had those gone well he might well have had a very different impression. I know many others that have had acompletely different tour/visit experiences.
Hi all, I too am delurking for the Class of 2018, 3.0-3.4 Thread. I learned a lot of valuable information and insights from the 2017 thread and went back to older year threads too. This is a great resource for parents of students who truly have a 3.0-3.4 gpa and are college bound. Like many other parents, I and my siblings or other kids each earned a path to elite or Ivy League schools; it just worked out, But not the right path for all kids; my Class of 2018 D would be miserable.
We are in the Bay Area, CA and as an early poster said, almost all UC’s are out of the question with a 3.2-3.4. We are not touring Stanford or Berkeley for perspective (though one is an alma mater). We are looking at the Pacific Northwest for small and mid-colleges this spring break. We have extended family there and are drawn to the area for multiple reasons, My daughter is smart enough (does not lead with that though), athletic (her hook), and she cares a lot about diversityand social justice ideals in a school culture.
Part of why I am posting is to clarify what I hope this thread will become - a resource for 3.0-3.4 kids. Not for kids who are over 4.0 weighted, not for kids who scored a 34 or 35 the first time they took the ACT. Those measurements offer entirely different options that are the focus of many threads. This thread is so valuable because it is significantly different, not because it is similar, to other CC profiles.
Felt the need to post because the vibe on this new thread feels a bit different than the Class of 2017 – already!!
Back to reading now, thank you.
@PrettyGrownUp, I was on the 2016 thread when our oldest was searching. He was a NMSF with a very high weighted GPA. He had D’s on his transcript, though. That limited his options, though. I do see your point. Our S18 has a similar unweighted GPA to his brother, without the abysmal English grades or the high grades in advanced math classes. His SAT is likely to be in the 1300 range based on his PSAT. His options will definitely be different. Our issue with him is that he’d like to be at a school with a big Division 1 sports program (he’s looking at Penn State from OOS, for instance). My wife and I see the mid tier state school or the public liberal arts school in a neighboring state as a better match for a kid whose anxiety issues and tendency to wait until the last minute to do assignments has caused problems in the past. He also shows less willingness to talk about college than his brother did.
@PrettyGrownUp I hope my post wasn’t one of those that skewed the tone of this thread vs last year’s for you. It certainly wasn’t my intent. I myself wanted to find more opportunities to share opinions and findings about schools that I never explored in the past other than vicariously through the postings of others here.
My son’s school history has been filled with brief moments of hope crashing back to earth time and again due to some “mishap” related to “immature”/“forgetful”/“clueless” behavior related to his condition. I was surprised (but maybe not so) that many here have actually felt the range of parental excitement/frustration/depression that we’ve experienced over the years. I read the 2016 thread and couldn’t help empathizing with each up and down episode they endured (and overcame) because that was, and is, my family too. The most frustrating thing is to notice that, in his moments, there is this wonderfully bright person discovering himself, trying to find his true legs. If only these schools could just get a glimpse of THAT, perhaps they could get as excited as we do during the good times.
In any case, he surprised us all with his act score, and it is now a long journey trying to see how we can leverage it and find him a home that fits him… really fits him… or we may just crash back down again. We feel that he’s just needs to percolate in the right environment and he’ll be fine. He really is starting to show us that now.
I can share our brief impressions of Santa Clara and St Mary’s if people are interested. His tours of the mid-sized research (stanford) and the large research (berkeley) schools didn’t seem to spark anything special, so I’m guessing we are somewhat on track with LACs and Jesuit schools.
@twoinanddone It’s okay, I’m confused, myself, about what type of school dd – and I – want. Actually, I think I’ve made that abundantly clear. I grew up on the eastside, went to HS downtown, but haven’t lived there since I was 18. I may have a skewed memory of the location of L&C, but from what I remember it’s a bit isolated up in the hills, not easy to access downtown or the cool places on the eastside. I was not aware that a bus passes by the area. I still feel dd would feel a bit isolated up there, but it’s not a big deal as it has never been our list of schools. Third Culture Kids are kids who have grown up in a culture outside their parents’. Some people consider regular expat kids (ie. two American parents living abroad) to be TCKs, some consider TCKs to be those with at least two citizenships who have grown up in neither of those two countries (a third culture). L&C mentions TCKs on their website and has a society just for them – as does Macalester, for example. When I said L&C is a great school for TCKs I meant it. And, yes, I’m crossing off schools for reputation and not feeling very comfortable about it; I thought I had expressed that. I’m trying to say that it’s difficult to guage a school from a distance. I crossed off OSU and UMTC because they are reaches with dd’s GPA and I’m trying to be realistic about which schools to apply to as we do not have endless funds to apply to every school she likes. We checked our school’s stats for OSU, for example: Only three applied but none got in, and their stats were better than dd’s. So, in the end, I am going to try very hard to focus mainly on program, cost and acceptance rates and try not to worry about reputation because it’s all subjective, isn’t it?
@eandesmom I explained above about L&C. Dd is currently focusing on urban schools, which L&C is, but I think she’d like to walk off campus directly into the city (Hillsdale and Capitol Hwy are very different from European urban; not bad just different from what dd would think of – and, yes, I know she can get downtown if she wants). Reed would be a slightly better choice for this (though she can’t get in with her stats) but even there it’s only Woodstock – and maybe Sellwood – within walking distance. I think dd is looking for a different kind of urban, though she does love Portland. If we did PDX I think it would be PSU or even PCC (for gen ed reqs/aviation).
@PrettyGrownUp I totally agree with you. I find there’s enough difference between 3.0 and 3.4 already.
I should add, for future clarity, that dd is not stuck on the whole urban thing; it’s simply one of many things she is considering in schools. We created a good list last night of LACs with her program and good merit for her stats; affordable public schools with her program and higher acceptance rates; very affordable publics without her program but where she could complete pre-reqs and perhaps transfer; and affordable flight schools. I think we’re done with the list and I’m not going to mess with it any further. Now it’s up to her to choose which to apply to. But most important right now: She needs to keep her grades up!