I think Greek life gets a bad rap sometimes. Yes at some schools Sororities are like a beauty and money competition, but at many schools its a way to connect and form sisterhood.
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Iām actually one of those people who has always had a negative opinion of Greek life, and in many ways, still do. However, like some have said, it really saved my oldest from being miserable. She is so not someone I would ever think would join a sorority, but she had a terrible time finding her niche; she is a bit of an introvert. Greek life at her school is low key, no sorority or fraternity houses, only about 20% are in Greek life and it is nothing like the kind of Greek life in the south or schools with heavy Greek life. She finally was able to make some great friends. Sadly, as a senior, she never got to even have much of the fun. She really only had one year of the āfullā experience - they have spring rush, so she joined spring of freshman year, had a normal sophomore year, then spent fall semester junior year abroad, came back and Covid closed her campus six weeks later. Her senior year has been remote so no in person sorority activities. She has only recently been able to hang out with some of her sorority sisters b/c they are all vaccinated now. Anyway, Iām not as jaded about Greek life, especially on campuses where it is not consumed by who wears the right clothes, has the right look, raucous parties, etc. The stories some of my friends tell me about their girls in sororities -yikes!
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My daughter actually just rescheduled her flight to stay on campus an extra week. Now that she and all of her friends are vaccinated she wanted to stay to the end of the semester. It was a hard choice because sheās going to miss two of her sisters last four performances, but one of them is streaming and she caught the other at the beginning of the school year. We are such planners as a whole family and we are coming to terms with the fact that everything for Oxford will happen much later than we would normally like- course assignments, housing assignments, etc. Speaking of housing, she had to get housing for next year ājust in caseā and finally got her first choice selection- of course the years sheās not likely to be there. Ha. It looks like she should finish the semester with a 4.0, but I guess finals could ding that slightly.
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Itās nice to hear some updates and hard to believe our kids are just about half way done with college! Iām sure they learned a lot during this difficult year, and Iām really hoping the second half of their college life can be pretty normal. @3SailAway - so glad your D has had such a good experience with her sorority and that it really helped her stay connected with friends during the fall semester. Thatās pretty impressive that her friends stayed reached out that much to her and sent things. I really enjoyed my sorority experience and still continue to see and go on girls trips with many of the women in that group (we had two trips canceled this past year, but are going to one friendās lake house in May - canāt wait!).
Despite my great experience, I have mixed feelings about Greek life and really didnāt want S19 to join. However, he went through rush and pledging last year and I think heās happy he did. When students were home last summer after the shutdown, there was a lot of turmoil regarding abolishing Greek life at Vanderbilt and there were instagram accounts set up, lots of zoom meetings and articles written in the student paper about the topic. My S decided to back away a bit and is less involved in the fraternity this year, although he remains close with many of the member and his pledge brothers. Instead he has focused more on his business fraternity and has been able to make a lot of new close friends (men and women).
Anyway, heās doing well, having fun, getting great grades and recently landed an internship with a global consulting firm. Yay! Even though it is mostly remote, he thought he would be placed in the Atlanta office, but it looks like they will have him in the Nashville office instead and I guess heāll go in at times. He assures me he has plenty of places to stay. Hmm 
I told him heās supposed to be making money not spending it!
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Iām so sorry that your D (and so many kids) didnāt get to have the full experience senior year 
. There are some silver linings to everything, but it is also a real loss. I think our ā19ās are lucky to be in the middle, rather than freshman or seniors this year.
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D19 is having a great time as she wraps up her school year. Sheās doing well in all of her classes. Sheās enjoying her design-firm internship, and theyāre keeping her on full-time for the summer (aside from the time she needs for her summer classes). Sheās been working on an outside curatorial project led by a veteran gallery manager, and the virtual show will be mounted soon. And she gets her second vaccine dose in a few days. (We did finally get S22 an appointment this past week, so the whole family is set.)
D19 and one of her roommates are going to join us for part of our family vacation in August ā guess thatāll be the next time we see her in person.
Hope the end of school and the start of summer go well for everyone elseās kids!
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Nice to see what the 2019 kids are up to lately. D19 has exams this week then packs up next week. My friend and I are flying to New Orleans (her D19 is also at Tulane, one of my Dās suite mates) Monday to help them move their stuff from the dorm to a storage unit. They will be living in an off campus house for the last two years but the lease does not start until June 15th. Friends are teasing me that we should let them pack and move on their own, which they are totally capable of doing, but I donāt pass up a chance to visit NO when I can!
D still has no plans for the summer and is very stressed about it. She has no clue what she wants to do, does not really want to be home but has nowhere else to go. She could stay in the NO house and get a job/internship there but none of her roommates are staying and we arenāt loving the idea of her living there alone.
On top of that stress she still doesnāt know if she will be going abroad next semester. She was accepted to the Rome program but we donāt know what it will look like in Italy come Fall as far as covid restrictions. She is allowed to make her decision at the last minute (Tulane let them sign up for classes just in case they donāt go) but I know the uncertainty is weighing on her.
Hope everyone has a great last few days of sophomore year - canāt believe they are halfway done! 
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I hope she gets to go.
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My D is excited to be near done with the semester, though she only gets a week off before rolling into her language intensive for the summer. She was notified yesterday that her art will be featured in a second showing on campus (different art than the first one), so sheās excited about that, and two of her professors have expressed to her that they got tickets to watch her dance performance this weekend. I thought that was really sweet of them!
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Question- when do they start thinking seriously toward grad school? My daughter has always casually discussed and researched, but she asked me yesterday when I thought she should start thinking/looking/planning more seriously. Sheās double majoring and isnāt decided which she wants to pursue further. It does seem most schools sheās looked at donāt require the GREā¦ she wonders if she needs to take it anyway.
She also wants to apply to the Watson fellowship, and if sheās lucky enough (unlikely) to get that, does one apply to grad school on the normal schedule and defer (is that a thing in grad school?) or apply while sheās on that year? Whew! Feels like she just applied to college yesterday! Ha!
Oh, good question! Iāve been wondering the same thing and sort of assuming that S19 needs to start thinking about this seriously next fall. Heās also a double major, knows he wants to go to grad school but not yet sure exactly which way he wants to go. I also did just enough research recently to realize that many schools no longer require the GRE - that came as a huge relief! It is really hard to believe they are already almost half way through. These past two years are certainly not what we all expected as they were wrapping up their high school years, but all in all, itās been a good experience so far. Of course, it will be great to have things back to a better approximation of normal next year. We are living in a country where almost nobody has been vaccinated yet, so our fully-vaccinated son is going to have something of a shock when he gets back home in a couple of weeks.
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I donāt know the answer to your grad school question but isnāt that a question for her advisor and/or the career center? Just have her ask.
I guess the answer to almost every question ever asked on here can be found at their schools/on Googleā¦ but we ask anyway. Ha. Her advisors have not been useful for anything, tbh. Theyāve often had no idea about her questions and for awhile she actually didnāt even have one. She does plan to talk to her informal mentors soon though. At this point I am gonna be honest and say sheās more likely to rely on me and her own research than hit up the career centerā¦ she doesnāt love all the zooming and she canāt just pop into anyoneās office or into the career center (where sheās never been)- and sheāll be at Oxford all of next year when things are hopefully more normalā¦ and then itās probably too late.
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Sheās at Haverford, right? Her advisors arenāt helpful? Wow. Thatās surprising. Iām sorry about that!
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She is, yes. Her pre major advisor ended up going on sabbatical and no one told her and for awhile she just thought she was being ignored. In general sheād been given poor advice by her anyway- we always had to double check and make corrections- so I guess it didnāt matter overly much. Now she has been assigned three advisors due to the double major situation and it almost feels like too many cooks in the kitchen.
In our case, S18 found his summer (think tank) internship after sophomore year extremely clarifying for career/grad school ambitions. That was cemented by doing the Truman application last winter break (though many other schools have earlier deadlines to apply for the school nomination), which forces you to think through your plans in detail, though it also takes a lot of time (probably 80-100 hours to do a good job, which took most of winter break, I canāt imagine fitting it in during term time).
Since then heās planned his classes, internship this summer, ECs and honors thesis for next year very carefully to create a coherent narrative and cultivated relationships with the professors who will write his recommendations (including taking their classes, doing research projects and ECs with them, etc.). Heāll likely apply for Marshall, Gates, etc next fall (a kid without those ambitions likely wouldnāt need to be quite so obsessively prepared).
But heās also thinking that a year or so of work before doing a masters/PhD makes sense (especially for US applications to places like MIT where most successful applicants in his field have some work experience), so is looking for a job offer from this summerās internship if it goes well. Heāll then have both tracks in play (and knows that often people apply for Marshall, Rhodes etc twice, once in senior year for experience and then again in the fall after graduation). Heās still undecided about the GRE this summer, he may defer that to next year if heās confident about working for a year after graduation.
It has been much easier to plan all of that because he didnāt do a year abroad. With a whole year out, it may be more difficult to bring things together in junior year so the senior year plan is set and the resume and recommendations are all coherent. What will be really important is thinking about what to do in the summer after junior year (and how to get that job while out of the country) as that internship should ideally link in to your post-graduation plans.
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@milgymfam What is her major and intended field of study in grad school? Sorry I donāt follow this thread closely enough to remember but I just had my older D go through the grad school application process for an Econ PhD. So I know a fair amount about that process but it may not be applicable to other fields. One general comment I can make is that a grad school program may look for additional preparation above and beyond what was the minimum necessary for a bachelorās degree. For example, in economics PhD programs you need to have had more math than would be the minimum needed for the BA degree. So itās useful to at least look at some programs and see what their expectations are in terms of preparation.
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I think that sheāll be well behind the power curve. Sheās used last summer and this summer to do language intensives rather than internships (though multiple language proficiency seems to be a common requirement for the programs she is interested in, so it does tie directly in), and next summer an internship could be dubious. I know Oxfordās calendar runs the school year much later than American schools, meaning sheāll in England until almost July. I canāt imagine a job with a bachelors only that would tie into her fields, but thatās something to explore should grad school not work out as she hopes.
Her majors are Italian and linguistics. I know a number of the Italian programs require at least near fluency in Italian but also proficiency in another language as well. Sheās a language person and should be proficient in at least three and probably four by graduation, with Italian the closest to fluency (she says in her opinion only native speakers are ever truly fluent). Sheāll be studying both at Oxford next year.
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@milgymfam I would think that thereās a dean or faculty member whoās also a fellowships advisor. There was one back in the 80s who helped me. I would have her reach out to current or recent HC and BMC Watson winners for advice. IIRC there have been a few recently. Iām disappointed to hear about her experience. Good luck!
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