Parents of the HS Class of 2021 (Part 1)

Parents Forum Class of 20xx Community
7967

Agreed.
I just looked up some other schools mentioned. There are two types of rankings on Niche: Party versus Liberal/Conservative. I’ll stick with party. I’ll list UDayton first.
UDayton: R=29%, D=20%, I=16%
Wake Forest: R=41%, D=12%, I=35%
Richmond: R=33%, D=38%, I=19%
BC: R=23%, D=35%, I=29%
Villanova: R=37%, D=26%, I=22%
Saint Joe’s: R=26%, D=23%, I=29%
Lafayette: R=44%, D=19%, I=25%
Colgate: R=35%, D=35%, I=23%
Duquesne: R=23%, D=31%, I=20%
Marquette: R=28%, D=35%, I=15%
Kenyon: R=18%, D=64%, I=9%
Marist: R=18%, D=31%, I=23%

Some of the west coast schools are more heavily liberal, as are some (but not all) of the smaller elite LACs like Hamilton, Franklin & Marshall, Middlebury, Williams (where NO students considered themselves a Republican and only 5% chose conservative,) Ct College (similar to Williams), Amherst and others.

Just from this small sample size, if a student wants a well-rounded less conservative political environment on campus, the schools to avoid would be WF and Lafayette. However, I would recommend doing a lot more research than just going on these numbers.

EDIT: The numbers do not add up to 100% because there are categories for “other” and “not political” that I omitted.

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@NJWrestlingmom – Has your D looked at Butler? One of my D’s good friends from high school attends now and she’s really enjoying it. She lived in a beautiful new dorm her first year. Everyone lives on campus. Tight community. School spirit around basketball, esp. She’s an education major and they have some really innovative programs in that space. It’s secular. I think the Greek scene is at least moderate – maybe even more than that.

I get the impression a lot of students don’t pay the sticker price too.

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@EconPop Wow! Thanks for pulling that together! Huge help for us!

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Wow lots to catch up on!

@TVBingeWatcher2 Congratulations on that driving test and fingers crossed for a successful school opening.

@JanieWalker Your daughter sounds like a marvel - clearly COVID is not slowing her down!

@econpop Good to see you here! I enjoyed following your son’s journey over the past year.

Our county numbers are looking good (positivity less than 3% and fairly low, infection rates). If they stay that way, schools will be allowed to offer F2F/hybrid after Labor Day. State and local mandates support public mask wearing. We are cautiously optimistic. D’s school has adopted a block plan for the year. She’s itching to get back to school (online starts next week).

D is making steady progress on the college front. Her CC strongly recommends a maximum of 10 schools and she has a list that she’s been living with for a couple of months and will probably mostly stick with. It’s a bit reach heavy for my taste but she’s very happy with her match schools so here’s hoping! She’s got a workable draft of the Common App essay. Without prompting from me (!) she made a list of supplemental essays for the schools that she is applying to! Letter writers are confirmed. She’s happy with her pre-2020 test scores. Her main ECs have moved online. She’s done 4-5 online interviews, some with current students and some with admissions officers. The first one set the bar high - I heard laughing and animated conversation through her bedroom door about 5 minutes in. That was good to hear.

7971

The insanely high percentage of students who live on campus was a big draw for us, too. I really wanted him in a place with a sense of community.

Like with you, the diversity of majors, the study abroad, dorms, merit and need-based aid, and all of that also factored in for us. At first, it seemed like marketing mumbo jumbo, but I’ve researched enough to think most of it is real at UD.

The football will probably be adequate but not quite what my son hoped for. He’s grown up with ACC football in larger (but not as large as Big12) stadiums. Watching non-scholarship football probably won’t excite him much. But he’s excited to see the basketball team in action. UD Arena is regularly recognized as one of the most exciting places in the country to watch a game. He wants to see if it matches live ACC games.

I’ll keep you posted on how it goes on campus. I have to stop myself from calling twice a day and asking “so what did you do today? How was it?” But that’s been made easier by the fact that he’s called almost daily to ask me to send him something he forgot, or ask about something related to living on his own for the first time. Brief, to-the-point calls, but they scratch my itch and keep me from bugging him for now.

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Both Dayton and Butler are relatively popular schools from our area in Chicago suburbs. Students we know love Dayton for many of the reasons mentioned above (high school spirit, friendly students, good FA). I haven’t heard any say it’s too religious.

Students are also getting good jobs coming out of Dayton, see the various reports at the following link, which are by school, major and salary. Also shows hiring companies. I wish every school provided data that is this helpful and clear, IMO it’s best demonstrated practice in this type of first destination reporting. https://udayton.edu/careerservices/stats/ffdsreports/index.php

I know less about Butler but DH and S21 visited in Feb and reported that the campus is nice and the new business building a showstopper. My demanding H was even impressed. We have heard some issues with the school cracking down on parties/drinking, but overall reports are positive.

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@mamaedefamilia she’s getting it done! Way to go.

S worked last week on the list of supplementals for EA. I think they need revising but he has a draft of each. Now he needs to get back to his main essay again, which he has not been looking forward to. Our school is starting 2 weeks late - such a gift to the juniors - since they are hoping that the virus #s will allow reopening. I seriously doubt it. He took the day off yesterday and got out of the house with my husband. Now no more procrastination on the biggie! He has his LORs lined up, except an extra one from an arts teacher that a couple of the private schools want. CA is partially done. Summer class transcript is ordered.

We only have one safety school that he really likes, and it’s not really a safety for CS, so we are struggling a bit with that. He does have another major that he is legitimately interested in and is easier to get into. So, hoping that is like a safety option if he is admitted to targets as the second choice major rather than rejected.

Due to his unfortunate lopsided score, I think he will end up submitting TO EA except to one safety and try to add a fall ACT test score if he can get one. We are in California, so testing is looking doubtful. People in a different city in our county are still having gatherings so they have cracked down on that even more. We also have new cases from students returning to the public university area housing. Are others in California seeing specific county rules for having groups of students on campus? I thought I saw posts about that in this thread.

7974

Agreed. My husband who works in public health said that the Harvard Global Health Institute is a very reliable resource, and they have set some guidelines - two different links since one gives guidelines for schools and the other continually updates those metrics by state/county):
https://www.boston.com/news/coronavirus/2020/07/21/harvard-experts-on-reopening-schools (this has the bit about schools)
It goes hand in hand with this:
https://globalepidemics.org/key-metrics-for-covid-suppression/ where you can check each county according to that metric.

So according to that, an area categorized as “red” by this metric should be all-remote. I live in reds-ville. There’s been a lot of pressure here for schools to open for a 100% face-to-face experience for those who want it, so it will be interesting to see what happens when the school board meets later this week. Last time they met, only one school board member pushed for starting the year remote, and another school board member was caught in a hot mic moment saying she could just strangle him. A few days later, they did shift their decision to start the year remotely.

I feel as if my kids’ school has a decent plan if they do reopen - it’s not decent enough that I’m comfortable with it given the level of community spread here right now, but I’m thankful that we don’t live in some of the other areas in GA that have been all over the news in regards to poor handling of school re-openings, at least.

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@EconPop - I appreciate the idea of checking out Niche to compare liberal/conservative campus leanings. Cool.

And now another list of things I can have fun organizing and sharing with S. (He’s like, “let me see where I can get in first and then I can look at that info”. )

S gave me a small crumb of thanks today: his GC sent a text reminder to his class to sign up for the SAT today. (He took ACT in Feb and got a great score so thankfully, hasn’t had to worry about more testing.) Thus, he smiled and said, “Glad I’m done with that.” And I replied that sometimes my nagging to get things done early pays off.

So then I overkilled the moment and reminded him that getting apps in early is a pretty good idea, too.

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@nichols51 ugh. Well we are orange. Really though we’d be yellow. I’m not pushing against those Harvard guidelines exactly but it’s known by now that Harvard’s stance on this pandemic from the start has been pretty conservative. They were the among the first to get kids off campus in the spring and one of the first to announce all remote classes for fall (and maybe for the whole school year?). Bowdoin followed suit. In fact, they announced all remote class even before Harvard but I do think they are swayed by Harvard’s guidelines. Bowdoin’s President taught at HBS and is consulting with Harvard on directions for this school year. Maybe that’s the reason why Bowdoin is the only NESCAC having only remote classes and only freshmen on campus. So, it’s easy to go along with Harvard’s guidelines if you can follow them and keep your students. For k-12 they might be unrealistic. There are so many economic and social-emotional reasons why k-12 need to go back.

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@homerdog I agree that there are other reasons for K-12 to go back…it’s a different situation than college. I still like having SOME kind of metric to relate my community to when thinking about when school should probably be all remote (despite the reasons K-12 needs to go back) vs when school could shift to de-densified models…even if I want to lean more or less conservative than those metrics, I like having some kind of stake in the ground from which to lean.

Interestingly, the Director at Harvard Global Health Institute (Ashish Jha) is transitioning to be the Dean of the School of Public Health at Brown (Brown, until 4 days ago, was planning to have some students back on campus - that plan just recently got pushed back as the situation in RI has been worsening, but as of late July/early Aug, they had a plan to get undergrads back on campus and may still end up doing so in October). It’s reasonable to think that Brown’s president, knowing Jha was coming (because it has been known since February), consulted with him when developing Brown’s plan which was less conservative than Harvard’s…so I’m not sure how completely Harvard’s plan is driven by HGHI? Maybe 100%, what do I know ? Very little. haha

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If it’s helpful from an openminded perspective, one of my dear friends who went to UD is an openly gay man and he loved UD and met many life-long friends there. This was in the 90s for a point of reference.

7979

I apologize for the long preamble to two questions I have:

S21 is 90% done with Common App for his schools (I think - first time through this, so hopefully I’m not missing something). There are three things remaining on his end (more on mine since, as a homeschool parent, I’m the counselor and have to finish a series of documents to upload).

All that’s left on his end:

  1. edits to essays and then paste them in. He’s done them all. Personal statement is in good shape, but he is waiting for his teacher to give feedback in case he wants to edit again. Supplements are all done and in pretty good shape but haven’t been worked as much as the personal statement, and he is also waiting for teacher feedback on those.
  2. test scores. sigh. He indicated on the Common App that he’d be sharing test scores with 7 of his 9 schools (all his EA schools), and he will, even if he doesn’t get a chance to test again (only test was last October). He hasn’t indicated yet on his two RD schools because we’re not sure yet…may depend on whether he gets to test again. He’s still prepping for the SAT.
  3. activities - he’s done it, but I want to look over his hours estimates.

So, first question: is there anything likely we’re forgetting/missing ? He’s not going to submit until October for the earliest of his schools (no reason to submit earlier and he may get to take the SAT Oct 3, so…), but I wonder if anyone here has experience with this process and knows things that are commonly forgotten or that they came close to forgetting before submitting. All of his schools are Common App.

Second question relates to how to think about the hours for activities. It’s tricky with some being all year, others being very short term, etc. I know they sort of allow you to account for that, but even that system isn’t really matched with how his activities work - we’re trying to average things out, of course, but I also want a reality check to be sure it makes sense. He’s done some very time intensive things from time to time. Overall, though, he is not as busy in terms of extracurriculars as some other kids (given the ADHD/processing speed issues, his academics take a lot of time, so he’s not at the top of the range of hours put into activities). Would anyone be willing to comment (or privately message me) on what their kid’s activity hours added up to on the Common App (for 9th, for 10th, for 11th, for 12th) and how you’d categorize your kid in terms of how busy they are (super, less than average, etc.) Pre Covid, I mean. :slight_smile: Also, what the heck are we to put for 12th ? He’ll still have some stuff going on, but likely less than the last 2 years due to Covid, and it’s so unpredictable right now - maybe he’ll end up with more than we think, maybe less. Argh. How are you all thinking about that ?

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@NJWrestlingmom - another yes vote for University of Dayton. Friend at work went there for undergrad and loved it. I think he plans to send his kids there.

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Akron airport is about 45 minutes from the College of Wooster. 1-1/2 from Cleveland Airport.

In some hopefully good news - the Buckeye Boys State conference that was cancelled this summer is now saying that all of those scheduled to attend will be able to attend next year’s conference (being held at Miami of Ohio). I’m hoping S21 will be up for this, bc having it cancelled this past June was a bummer.

I have heard great reviews from another work friend about Butler. She sent both her sons there - one majored in dance and the other in business. The business school at that time apparently did very well in terms of placing their students.

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Does anyone here have personal experience with Duquesne, Chatham, and D’Youville? These three uni’s are on my D21’s list as they have the program she wants to pursue, but they are a little too far away for us to personally visit until (and if) she gets accepted.

For background, she is deathly afraid of a “boring” campus and would have preferred a larger school but her intended major prevents that. She is ambivalent about Greek presence on campus. Oh, and she doesn’t really want to end up at a school where 70% of the student body are commuters. She’s hoping for lots of vibrant student life and activities, things to do, etc.

If you have any info on these schools and can comment on campus vibe, it would be most appreciated!

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WOW. That Dayton info is fabulous! So helpful! Even if D21 doesn’t apply to Dayton, it shows the kinds of jobs kids get with different majors.

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I’m really surprised at some of the Niche ratings regarding party affiliation. We visited Lafayette and F&M and, if anything, would have guessed F&M to be a little more conservative than Lafayette. Lafayette seemed mainstream/slightly preppy but I assumed it leaned at least a little liberal (as most colleges do). I assumed the mainstream vibe came from the more pre-professional engineering program and athletic student body. But I never would have guessed it to be as Republican-affiliated as shown on Niche. I wonder how accurate that is? Anyone else have any personal opinions or anecdotes re Lafayette and F&M on the political meter (or anything else)?

I’m a bit invested …Lafayette is one of my D’s favorites (though it might prove to be a little reachy for her). My D is not SJW-ish (though current events might have her leaning more in that direction than before) but she’d like an environment that leans a little more progressive than not. She has grown up in a conservative town and would like something different for a change. I once knew someone whose daughter graduated from Lafayette a few years ago and the girl/family was not conservative at all, and I’d think she would have felt uncomfortable in that atmosphere and not stayed if it were. Comments?

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@DOTexe my dear friend’s daughter is headed to Duquesne. They are the most devout Catholic family I have ever known- the daughter has attended Catholic schools k-12 and sending her to a school that is heavily Catholic was a HUGE priority for this family. So while I have no personal familiarity with Duquesne, my friend is very excited about how Catholic the school is. That may or may not matter to your child, but after the recents posts about just how religious U. Dayton is, I though I’d at least share what I have heard.

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Just one more data point for Duquesne…I know a family whose son went there and the family was liberal Quaker…had a strong ethic of community volunteerism that might have fit in well with some Catholic teachings but the family was really quite progressive. I think he was offered a big scholarship, which might have weighed into the decision to go. Have no idea how he felt about the school though!