Is this the place a parent asks for fellow parents’ opinions on their kid’s college options?
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Parents of rising seniors are posting here about their kids college choices, but if you would like a wider audience with more responses, start your own thread.
What kind of school is your kid looking for?
I don’t think he has clear choices and I’m unable to make solid suggestions. That’s why I ask. Where to start a new thread?
Have you visited or done virtual information sessions?
He thinks he’ll major in engineering but is not interested in schools like MIT. It seems he doesn’t know what he really wants or any schools in details.
He did a few virtual information sessions and said they are similar in format or something. I didn’t do any with him.
Your state flagship may be fine for engineering. So long as ABET accredited.
Here is ABET website
https://amspub.abet.org/aps/name-search?searchType=program&keyword=Engineering&historical=true
Some colleges have info for parents, especially explaining admissions requirements & financial aid and bills. There are social media, for parents, too.
PS does high school use Naviance? Guidance Counselor can have suggestions, many colleges visit high schools and guidance counselor knows where students like yours have gone.
Your son is a rising senior I take it. The good news is there have been some good insights about different engineering schools in this thread.
For your S22, does a big campus full of different people sound appealing? Or would a smaller environment be better? Is the energy of a big city something he’d like? Or a more rural setting might be of interest? Does he have an SAT/ACT score? How are his grades? What interests does he have?
Many local students go to our state flagship but S22 isn’t interested. Yet he likes UNC for no good reason to me. Yes, we have Naviance though without complete data, and I just learnt how to use its scatterplot. Guidance counselor does email parents some college information and I’m about to pay attention to them.
Could check out Purdue, Worcester Polytechnic Institute,and Park scholarship at NC State.
Edit added - you could put a new thread under “College Search” category.
It seems he doesn’t like small colleges. When he mentioned majoring in engineering, I said how about Caltech, not that I think he can/cannot get in, he said it’s too small and too many Asians and he’s fine with Asians and he is Asian.
He plays team sports at school and participates in clubs but not an elected officer on any, sounds like he just enjoys the activities and he does enjoy the high school years. Number-wise he’s 4.0/4.0, SAT/ACT 1560/35, and will have 16 APs without arts or music. He appears to be among the top students by numbers but colleges don’t use numbers as much.
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A new thread is a good idea. Will check out how that work.
A friend’s son liked CalPoly. About 20,000 undergrads, so many more than CalTech.
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Check out Iowa State, already accepting applications, very easy, quick, and it’d be nice to have acceptance in hand.
Have the boys keep decent records of customers, amount charged, size of lawn, what they do for customer. Way back in the 1980’s a friend sold his high school lawn mowing business for $18,000 when he left for college. The business consisted of the customer list, and lawn mower. The price was one or two years gross.
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Does he have any geographical preferences? Niche has a good list Best Colleges for Engineering. He definitely has great academic numbers!
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UNC doesn’t have a straight engineering school. There is some biomedical engineering in conjunction with Duke I think. NC State has a pretty good engineering program.
Maybe he’s really interested in sports rather than engineering. I need to start a new thread for him.
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All of the schools on D22’s list are test optional so he only took the ACT once when it was offered for free at his high school. He didn’t study at all because we didn’t think it was important since the schools are test optional. But I’m noticing a lot of people here mentioning studying for and taking the tests multiple times and mentioning test scores. Is D22 going to be at a disadvantage by not submitting his test scores? Are most of you planning to submit them regardless of the schools being test optional?