Parents of the HS Class of 2022- 3.0-3.4

Parents Forum Class of 20xx Community
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I agree @murray93 it’s a great approach. I use it as best I can with my D, though we meet weekly on Sundays. This week was a little odd because we were travelling on Sunday, so there have been some break through reminders. But I will not zip my lip until next Sunday. :speak_no_evil:

We were heading up to Iowa to visit Cornell College. I wrote about our visit (at length lol) over in the Cornell College forum for anyone interested, but the short version is, she loved it. Which was very surprising on a number of levels. I am thinking there’s a bit of recency bias happening, but she swears that can’t be true because we also visited UNT recently and she didn’t like it. So maybe compared to UNT, Cornell is magical? :woman_shrugging:

The visit was honestly kinda funny because she almost gave me whiplash with her changing opinions. First, it’s “I don’t know if I really want to have to fly to school”, then after flying “Actually that was better than driving”, then it’s “Wow, look at all the corn! It’s so pretty!”, then “I think this town is too remote, I could never go here”, then “Actually I love it and this is my fav!” :flushed:

I can’t keep up, but I’m glad we’re visiting Agnes Scott in a few weeks, and I gotta get on planning a visit to Knox as well, probably in October.

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I’m so glad she liked Cornell! I went to Grinnell and yes, Iowa is beautiful. I love the wide open spaces.

My son is adamantly against Knox for some reason he cannot verbalize. We visited Lawrence over the summer and I wanted to do Knox as well, but I ultimately took it off because he was so angry about it. He was pretty angry about Lawrence as well, but ended up giving it the thumbs up. Kids!!

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@1822mom I wonder if our D22s will end up in the same place. Cornell College is on our list, too, along with Knox and Agnes Scott. I do want to read your write up so I’m off to check it out. Right now we are tentatively planning to check out Knox and Cornell College and maybe U of Iowa in October. Going to do the Great Scott event at Agnes Scott in November and doing Hollins’ open house event in October, too. This weekend we’re going to visit Warren Wilson and UNC-Asheville.

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Which nursing programs fill seats on a first come, first served basis? Most that I have seen are very stats driven.

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I agree with you, nursing is very stats driven with prereqs for admission. Some colleges with rolling admissions will admit those who meet prereqs.
https://valenciacollege.edu/academics/programs/health-sciences/nursing/traditional-program-guide.php

“ The Nursing, Traditional Track Program at Valencia is a limited access program based upon available seats. Students will be admitted into the Nursing, Traditional Track Program on a first-come, first-served basis once all admission requirements have been satisfied (please see admission checklist below)”

Or Baldwin Wallace’s BSN 4 Year BSN Admission Considerations and Prerequisites | Baldwin Wallace University

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A majority of the direct entry nursing programs at Pennsylvania colleges and universities, of which there are many, both public and private, admit students by rolling admissions, so in that sense they fill seats on a first come, first serve basis. Of course, requirements for admission vary widely, with some programs much more competitive than others.

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Oh man, just reread that… should say I will NOW zip my lip :woman_facepalming: completely different meaning… sigh

@Sweetgum I have noticed our lists are very similar :wink: my guess is our girls will find the differences in the details, but the good news is no bad choices here!

I’ll be interested to hear your Ds perspective on Cornell. The town may be too small for her, it was very small, and very quiet. Even my D was like, woah too small, only her becoming enamored of the school saved it.

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My D seems to be opening up to more possibilities, but she waffles. One minute she’s all I can’t go to Hollins I know too many people there and the next minute she’s all it would be great if my friends I really like were there. Same way with the proximity to town/stuff. She said that Hollins was fine for camp because there were a lot of places you could go on campus and even though they didn’t go into Roanoke because of COVID protocols she didn’t mind at all. So who knows!?

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Thank you for those. I appreciate the info.

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Hi, I’ve been lurking here since fortunately finding this thread this summer. We’re somewhat late to the game, although we started thinking about colleges last spring. DS has a 3.3 GPA, no APs or Honors (he attends an independent study public charter and Honors and AP are not readily available), no tests but is signed up to take the SAT next month–but he generally doesn’t test well. He has earned dual-enrollment credit for drama from local arts magnet high school and local CC and is taking an animation class at the local career/technical school. He has lots of ECs–7 years vocal and theater training and lots of shows, 3 years dance, and he’s an Eagle Scout. He has an LD and has written a pretty powerful essay about that. He’d like to combine theater, digital arts, and creative writing into a storytelling-type major. He said he’d like to stay closer to home (we are west coast) but I think he should consider some in the midwest (part of consideration is how good their disability services are):

Schools we’ve looked at are:
Southern Oregon U
U of Nevada-Reno
U of Northern AZ
Cal State East Bay
Humboldt State
Cal Lutheran
St. Mary’s (CA)
Willamette
St. Olaf
Valparaiso U.

In this list, the ones that might be reaches for him are St. Olaf, Willamette, and maybe St. Mary’s. Anybody, based on their interactions with these schools, have any feedback about his chances with these schools? Are there other schools maybe he should think about?

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It may be worth adding Chico to your list. Not sure if they offer the combination of majors he is looking for or the support services but worth a look. We visited this summer just to see the town and campus and were pleasantly surprised - neat college town and campus but secluded. My D will likely have it as a safety on her list. Good luck!

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Thank you! Will check it out.

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Welcome @AuMom16! My first thought when I saw what his interests were was Chapman, which is probably a reach, but given how neatly it fits his interests, perhaps worth a try. Another option in the LA area is Whittier if he’s up for a small liberal arts college, they do offer all the areas he’s interested in and the ability to create your own major if that appeals. It’s also a match for this gpa group.

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East Bay looks like an outlier on your list. Unlike most of the others on your list, It is a real commuter campus. Sonoma and Chico both offer a residential experience and a good education and are likely to admit her. They are certainly worth an ap and tour.

Good luck.

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Hey everyone! We did two official college tours this weekend and spent some time in a third college town.

We went to Warren Wilson College and UNC-Asheville on Friday and spent the weekend in Boone, home of Appalachian State, at Grandma’s mountain house.

D22 really really liked Warren Wilson. She didn’t talk much on the tour (two student tour guides, us, and two other girls and their families), but afterwards said she was definitely going to apply and it has moved up to the top of her list. She did meet with the admissions counselor for our area briefly. She said that WWC was close enough to Asheville and she now feels like she doesn’t need to be right in a town with a main drag college street. She said after walking around campus she just felt like she could fit right in and find her people. At the beginning of the tour there weren’t that many kids out (maybe in class?) but by the time we circled back around to the admissions office they had emerged. There were lots of free-spirited funky kids. It’s a beautiful woodsy setting in the mountains. Very chill and relaxed atmosphere. D22 was open to the work and service requirement. Great school for quirky kids that like the mountains and outdoors. I got a definite hippie vibe, but H said he didn’t think it was as hippie as it was back in the day. D22 is not a hippie, but definitely a creative spirit.

Asheville is a fun and funky city in a beautiful location. After our tour at WWC and before our tour at UNC-A we stopped at White Duck Tacos and the French Broad Chocolate Factory. Both very delicious!

UNC-Asheville, 15 minutes away from WWC, was our second stop. I liked it more than I thought I might. We walked around the campus last summer in the middle of COVID when no one was around and it was much livelier this time :grin:. The facilities were very nice. They have a mix of old and new buildings. Where WWC has a very rustic personal feel and we were only allowed to be outside, the Admissions Officers at UNC-A had a new touch screen and a fair amount of your standard tech bells-n-whistles and we were allowed in the buildings, but had to have masks on which we were happy to comply with. The student union/hub was nice and updated looking when we walked through. I asked our tour guide (who was from Southern California!) if it was a new building and she said part of it was and part had been refurbished. UNC-A is not right in downtown Asheville but there are buses that come through campus and students get a free bus pass so can get downtown easily. UNC-A seemed very LGBTQ friendly. Great view of Mt Pisgah from the library steps. D22 liked it okay, said she’d give it a B+, but said Warren Wilson is the only school she’s felt really excited about so far.

Then we went on to Boone to Grandma’s mountain house. Boone is a real college town and downtown was hopping this weekend even w/o a home football game. D22 is very familiar with Boone and App State and has been adamantly opposed to App State due to knowing too many kids from school and our area that go there. I think it is a good school, though. She did enjoy her time in downtown Boone and I thought I might’ve detected a slight cracking in the icy cold shoulder towards App State, but I would be surprised if she ends up there.

I think she really liked that at Warren Wilson everyone seemed “cool and funky” whereas at App State there’s more of a mix of funky and not so funky. I could see WWC working out well for her. My husband/her dad really liked it too. I liked UNC-A and WWC both and I like App, too, but they are all pretty different except for being in the mountains and all pretty outdoorsy.

Happy to attempt to answer any questions about any of the three.

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Thanks! I was wondering about Whittier, but just hadn’t taken the time to check them out. This gives me the impetus to do so.

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Thanks! We live very close to East Bay–that’s why it’s on the list.

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@AuMom16 I have a friend who is looking seriously at Gonzaga because of how friendly it is for kids with learning differences, though I don’t know how strong it is in the programs your son is looking for.

One of the things that I loved from our visit to Willamette was their philosophy of trying to say “no” as little as possible - to students, to professors, etc. Its seems like a great culture for someone who wants to build their own major or blaze their own path. And if you’re considering Willamette, have you looked at U of Puget Sound or Lewis and Clark?

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Thanks! Good to know about Gonzaga. Hadn’t considered that one, but will look. As for the others, when we went visiting in the PNW a couple months ago, we briefly thought about checking those 2 out, but I can’t remember now why we cut them off the list (ugh…middle-aged memory issues, sigh…). I’ll have to ask DS, who keeps telling me how great his memory is…:grin:

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A “What If” scenario: Full Pay (no maximum $ amount), 3.2 weighted/1030 SAT student @ highly rated & rigorous NE Public HS…where would you have them apply? Location: Maine to Florida, East of the Mississippi River.