My S21 is the same. 10K is probably the smallest he’d go. He wants the big state college in a college town experience. He also wants to be in a reasonable drive from home so that made narrowing down his list pretty easy. 2 should be safeties, one match, one reach. I think D23 will be the opposite so we’ll have a much more complicated search process with her!
I think this is a really interesting comment and just goes to show how much kids change not only from junior year to senior year of HS, but also from HS to college. It’s just a time period of great change and hard to predict where they will land. I think it’s reassuring actually that kids are likely to find their place at a variety of schools.
@3kids2dogs exactly. Kids have to prioritize what they want most but sometimes that leaves a few things they’d like absent from their final choice even if it’s a clear winner. If S19 went to the midsized schools on his list, the dorms weren’t half as nice, the food would have been worse, he would have had larger classes freshman year and maybe found it harder to start narrowing down his interests since he went in pretty undecided. I honestly think he would not have known his professors as well. He was very close to a handful of them and those relationships really added to his experience. And he would not be on the XC and track teams where he’s already found friends who he thinks will be life long.
So no big football games? And a quieter existence? That’s fine. He’s happy where he is. But he does see that there are perks to larger schools that he gave up and he could have been happy at a school with more like 8000 kids instead of 2000. More energy in general on the campus. More social life. Maybe more majors to choose from. Kids can only go to one college so they have to pick a lane at some point and appreciate the positives of their choice!
For a long time, S19 had Nebraska and Brown as his top 2. I don’t think that is a sentence many people in the country can type.
I lived in Greenwich Village right after college, and when I moved there my apartment building had more residents than my hometown. To be honest, there were things I loved and hated about both places. Life is kind of like that I think. There are probably things most of us love/hate about where we live and work. My hometown friends complain about what they are missing, but would never dream of moving to NY. I had NY friends who would complain about some of the difficulties of living in the City, but would never dream of moving across the river, let alone outside the NYC area.
Just like no place is perfect, neither is any school. It’s all about trade-offs. A couple of D’s don’t make sense to me, but most of my hometown friends think I was crazy for living in NY, and my NY friends don’t understand why I ever left. If it works for her, I’m ok with it.
I transferred from 16,000 to 1,600. I liked the big school and made some good friends, but ultimately didn’t want to be in that environment for 4 years. Transferring was one of the best decisions I ever made.
I’m compiling a spreadsheet with pros and cons (through our eyes) of each of D21’s schools.
After the LMU virtual panel last night, I started digging in a bit. Lots of positives but also a few things to think about. A long list of core requirements - 13 classes in all. I don’t think I’ve seen a list that long yet. And majors seem to be more like 15 or 16 classes instead of 10-12 at most of her other schools. 13+16 = 29 so that’s only leaves a few classes of true electives. I think classes towards your major can double count for some core classes but not all. That’s not ideal for an undecided student who might want to double major. I must be missing something because two of the kids on the panel last night were double majors but I wonder if they knew what they wanted going in freshman year. Also, not a huge endowment. Maybe not something to be really worried about but eh. And then there’s the whole moving to LA thing and never coming home to see her parents!
But, wow, the location is amazing nestled between the ocean and the city in suburban LA. She’s always loved the ocean. And I think she could really vibe with the kids on that panel. They were mainstream type kids and focused in a more relaxed way. There is a difference between CA kids and kids from the NE who are just wound tighter. Kids can take class in any of the different undergrad colleges (so she could major or minor in something in the liberal arts and then also in the business school if she chose that). That’s a perk. My brother lives out there so she has family nearby if she needs something. I feel like her high school has been so intense and she’s voiced a number of times that she wants off of the crazy train. She’s also very skeptical when schools say that they are collaborative (looking at you Wake and BC) but then we know kids personally who say it’s really intense and kids don’t necessarily support each other.
So, another example of how a different school could check different boxes.
They have EA and decisions in Dec and likely some merit so those are also in the pro category!
S21 has large state schools, medium sized private and LAC on his list. He says he would be happy at any of the schools on his list.
My D21 wants big also. Her high school is around 2500. She really liked Susquehanna and Bucknell, and added both to the list, but their size concerns her. Hopefully we can get in some visits to big state schools to compare. Really the only big school she toured is Syracuse, and that’s a bit different because it’s private. She’s been to Rowan a bunch to see her brother, but that doesn’t have the school spirit she wants.
@NJWrestlingmom and others -
Could you shed some light on why your D would like big? That could help us out around here. To hear the reasons kids prefer big.
School spirit is great and all but it can’t be the only reason. There are only a handful of home football games and a few more basketball games and college isn’t all about watching sports although I totally get that it’s fun.
@homerdog I haven’t looked at LMU’s requirements specifically, but I think the Jesuit universities tend to have similar cores. A little hard to compare numbers with SCU, because SCU is on quarters. BC’s core is huge at 15, but often 2 overlap with the introductory courses to A&S majors/minors and cultural diversity can overlap with another core.
We visited LMU a few yrs ago. Campus is gorgeous, palm trees, etc. D said it felt like being on vacation. It was a weekend morning, understandably quiet, but obviously California chill compared to the east coast. Might be nice to have a car there, eventually. Intuitively, among BC, SCU, LMU I’d guess relative academic intensity is kinda in line with their rankings, with the added vibe difference of west coast less intense than east coast.
Next, check out USD (Catholic but not Jesuit). Might find helpful thoughts in old threads comparing SCU vs LMU vs USD.
Adding: there are differences in vibe between Northern and Southern CA. Your D might find that she distinctly prefers one over the other.
@evergreen5 Thanks! Yeah. I think D would swoon over the weather. Good to know about the core requirements. I hear you about the car. 50% of kids have cars there. We did ask and it sounds like enough kids have cars that you can always find a friend to get you somewhere and there are zip cars for $7/hour and shuttles into town. Granted, it is a way different experience than a school where all socializing is on campus.
S21 just got his first fee waiver for the College of Wooster. Hmm. It will be a hard sell, I think. He has spent time there at tennis camps and would be too close to home for him.
S21’s August SAT officially cancelled (I expected as much but just got the official word from a counselor at the school today). September, which is the other date he is registered for, isn’t looking much better. It’s in a different county than where he was scheduled for the August one (whether schools are f2f, remote, hybrid, etc. is a county decision here in GA). Counselor for the Sept school said that because the schools are starting remote (2 weeks late on Aug 17), the approval process for College Board and ACT to use facilities is on hold. I checked and found that their next school board meeting (when they could make a decision to move back to f2f or hybrid) is Sept 14th, 12 days before the Sept SAT - so the way I’m reading it, the earliest that the approval process could be taken off “hold” is Sept 14th - I am doubtful that the Sept. test will happen but don’t have a definitive answer.
He’s not scheduled for any others, and I’m getting close to feeling like just skipping the whole thing. All of his schools are TO, but as a homeschooler, the score is more important for him. The one score he has from last Fall is good for 5 of his schools and within the middle 50 percentile at 3 others. It’s below the 25th percentile at one school on his list, so I’m starting to think maybe he’ll just go TO at that school and roll the dice with his current score at the other 8 schools. I just don’t know that he’ll perform well being at the testing center for 6-7 hours in a mask anyway (time and a half accommodation). We haven’t decided to skip it just yet, but I think I’ll have him do a practice test in a mask this weekend, and if he doesn’t bump his score by 50+ points, maybe we’ll just forget about more testing.
@nichols51 good plan!
@Mwfan1921 Yes, I believe those restrictions are for Chicago only. We live very close to the suburbs but still in the city.
Sure - D went to Catholic school from grades 4-8 and is now in a reasonably small HS (1000 kids). She wants to be somewhere where she doesn’t know everyone or is 1 degree separated from knowing someone. She wants the school spirit, diverse social offerings and also the depth of class offerings because she has no idea what she wants to do yet. She wants ethnic and socioeconomic diversity in the student population.
When we initially started on this road, I really thought she’d fit best in a small LAC. My college experience was at a mid-sized U as a biology major, with big seminar classes for the vast majority of my major and core requirements. I figured a big class would swallow her up (it did for me somewhat).
I’m really glad we visited UCLA last spring break. Right now it is a financial pipe-dream, but we visited when school was in session so she saw a full campus, and we sat in an introductory chemistry lecture in an auditorium with 200+ kids and every seat filled. It didn’t scare her off at all and she got a taste of a big lecture class. I think she really liked the energy of the big campus, all the tables out with the student organizations and people passing out flyers, etc. All on a random Tuesday.
@mm5678 thanks! Good reasons! I don’t know that D can get past the big classes. Even with her high school classes, she participates so much and goes in early almost every morning just to check in with teachers and does best in the classes when she’s close to her teacher. Having to learn remotely on her own did not go well and I don’t know that that is much different than having big classes!
My D18 is from CA and attends UMich. Although Covid changed everything this year, there’s really nothing like walking with 111,000 other fans to the Big House. For sports fans, like D and I, it’s really almost a religious experience. Like seeing Touchdown Jesus rising above ND stadium.
There’s plenty of other reasons to pick the school, but school spirit is huge. Wear some UMich paraphernalia and you’ll hear “Go Blue” a lot here in Silicon Valley.
Now D21 is not the same, in terms of being a sports fan. Although, she may be a 4-year Varsity starter in her sport, if Covid allows it in the Spring.
I get that. We live in Big Ten land. But if that’s the main reason it seems like one might be giving up a more personalized experience academically and academics is why we are paying the big bucks! There are smaller schools with big spirit like ND.
D21 doesn’t care at all if her school has a football team… or any other team! Meanwhile D23 has said that the only criteria she has for college are sororities and D1 football!