Not planning a spring break college tour but hoping to take the train to Providence and Boston for a long weekend at the end of March to look at schools! We could drive it…but I think the train could be fun?
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Yeah, there seems to be some overlap in our kids’ college choices and ECs too. 
If your kiddo is into comics, be sure to check out Time Warp Comics and Games when you visit Boulder.
S23 has reached out to a couple of professors, but also hasn’t received much in the way of a response. D19 thought take him into some buildings on our recent visit to Penn to see if he could chat with some professors during office hours but, because of CV19, buildings were closed to the public. We’ll try again when we visit in a few months. D19’s friends studying in his area of interest have already offered to take him to some of their classes so it’s nice to have that option. Is there anyone from your high school that your D could connect with for a classroom visit?
He’s really trying to tap into the intellectual vibe/energy of a college. Ideally, we’d like him to sit in on classes at all of his choices, but it’s just not feasible since we’re only going to spend an hour or two at most places.
What are your child’s safeties? I’ve already told S23 that he has to apply to CU Boulder. I know he doesn’t love it, but it’s in-state and strong in his area of interest. I think we’re going to check out Washington State too.
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D20 did have good results from reaching out to connect, but she was looking at schools in Top 50-100, so that might not fit your definition of selective colleges.
She did a ton of research online and sent very specific questions to her AOs that could not be answered by the website when she had further questions. Some of those questions were able to be answered by the admission officers, and sometimes the AOs were the ones to suggest she contact a specific person in the department of interest (it always seemed like the AO had already made contact with the departmental faculty member because these were never ‘cold calls’ - usually the AO offered a direct email address to the faculty member or a zoom call which D20 took advantage of).
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Thanks so much for Boulder comic book store rec! Not sure what is a safety any more. We are hoping CU Boulder is safety for my kid but we are OOS. Also UWashington in Seattle but that also isn’t a safety oos. We may do Uof Toronto which is very strong in Astro and Canadian schools are numbers based admissions only so we will know - none of this - but can they ride a unicycle nonsense.
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@Dolemite Thank you so much for the offer of answering questions related to Penn and Princeton (I was already thinking of DM’ing if/when Princeton became a top choice 
). We’ve visited both for another kid and enjoyed each campus. I was just able to book a tour at Penn (yay!) and had already booked Princeton. Rutgers’ website said they’ll be opening up the calendar for visits soon too. Looking better and better for this tour. We were thinking of doing multiple visits in one day (been there, done that) but decided to stretch it out and enjoy the campuses and cities. We’ve done virtual info sessions and researched the curriculum; I think the purpose of the trip is to decide whether the schools stay or leave the current list and which will be EA or RD. This kid is a planner and I fully expect their Common App to be started and some apps completed by the start of Senior year.
Before I post our visit plans I think I need to add the disclaimer that my DS 23 is in a different league than many of your kids…as in, currently <3.0, remote learning struggles, super difficult junior year so far with physical and mental health! That said…we are taking a trip over President’s Day weekend to ski and look at: St. Anselm’s, Castleton, UNH, and Plymouth State. Not officially touring all of them, some will just be drive throughs. Hoping to make it more inspirational and less stress/pressure inducing.
@2plustrio , I know our counselors have said so many times “colleges like to see the 4 core classes each year (math, language arts, science, social studies)”. Maybe your son’s counselor will say the same? (Assuming he has to meet with one for scheduling?) Glad to hear that he is allowed to do some of his school ECs and is getting out and about a bit. You know, my son lightened his class schedule a lot this year given his mono and anxiety. Since your DS is in great position to graduate, it could be an idea for him to drop a semester class this semester (if he has any), if you can use that as a bargaining chip to add another core class next year. Given that he has a lot on his mind right now. I know this might seem counterintuitive, but when I was all gung ho to fill up my son’s additional study hall this semester, the GC was like hey, maybe you shouldn’t do that, given what he is going through right now, and he’s in fine standing to graduate without a super heavy load next year. It was good advice for us.
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UNH is a beautiful campus that is on our/my radar too. S23 really loves the lush greenery of the east coast and UNH doesn’t disappoint. One of D19’s hs classmates is a recruited athlete there and absolutely loves it! Looking forward to reading your tour recaps.
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Hello there, wanted to say hi and reintroduce myself! I see a few familiar names. My last time on here was with my 2017 daughter who just graduated from cal poly slo. We have two graduated from college, one high school junior and one 8th grader. Jumping back into the college process. My 2023 son in interested in biomedical engineering, biophysics, bio robotics, etc… He wants to stay in California, but we’ll see where he can get in. We were also hoping for some spring break tours, but I’m not sure what will be available.
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Would he be open to doing a college course online?
We’re hoping to do a spring break tour with D23 running through Rochester (RIT & URochester), Ithaca (Cornell), Pittsburgh (CMU & Pitt) and Cleveland (Case Western.) I hope that will give her a good sampling of types of schools and levels of admission difficulty ranging from pretty likely to wishing-on-a-star.
With the exception of the super name brand schools, she’s pretty ignorant of things like rankings and I hope it stays that way. My hope is she’ll just take in the facilities and programs for what they potentially offer her and decide for herself which are appealing.
Now I just hope these schools wind up having visit schedules in April, otherwise D23 is going to be applying to just about her whole list on virtual tours alone. Yikes!
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I live in Seattle and this seems to over state the sun in Seattle 
!
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He isn’t a fan of online classes.
@TS0104 My kid used to shockingly be good at math. He took a high school math class in 8th grade which does show up on his transcript so he technically has the 4 years/credits of math thru pre Calc and tech college math.
He will do the 4 English credits but the extra science and history is a harder sell. He has the 3 credits each of those. He likes to try to say Autos is a bit like real life science but I know most colleges don’t see it that way.
We shall see.
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I can assure you that having spent a lot of time in both, Seattle is way sunnier than the UK.
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Not so different than my kid @TS0104 ! She’s a 3.2, probably test optional kid - deals with some learning disabilities. Has compensated with great exec functioning skills. UNH is her number 1 college of interest right now. We go up to VT to ski every weekend in the winter and I am trying to convince her to look at Castleton because I think their ski mountain management program would be interesting to her - she’s a very practical kid who wants to do alot of marketing internships. She thinks Castleton looks too small but I’m hoping we will check it out at least. If you go, please do a trip report!
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I will post! If I recall correctly, when looking at the Castleton visit pages, they might have a VISIT day at Killington for the resort management program? Worth a look. It might be too small for my son too. He wants small to medium, which I agree is good for him. Medium is so much harder to find, even though my older kids went to mediums (LMU and Elon, not fits for DS23). We visited Alfred U in NY and he was turned off by the small size and remoteness. But a drive through of St. Bonaventure, which isn’t that much bigger than Alfred in enrollment, looked a lot better so I think we have to look at campus size and not just enrollment size. PS Just wanted to post that I know that UNH is neither small nor medium, but I do want him to see a range. Also this is our first time skiing in NE (besides Holiday Valley, and we live in Ohio), and I think ever even being IN VT or NH, we are excited to check it out!
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I have only spent a little time in London. I will take your word for it. I had heard they were comparable but maybe our late may/Early July to late September/Mid October incredibly nice weather makes Seattle sunnier .
Yes, it’s much more common to get a week or more of consistently nice weather in Seattle in the summer,and sometimes in the spring or fall. A week without rain is enough to have British people talking about a drought. Also even in winter, sunny days are more common between the storms: we spent two weeks in the UK over Christmas and only had one day where we saw the sun at all (for a couple of hours total).
We always said that it would have been fine weather-wise to move from the UK to Seattle, but instead we moved to CA and now anywhere else would be a disappointment as far as weather is concerned.
do you think seasonal depression is a thing in england? I do know when my relative lived in seattle, they used special lights in the winter for that all. Seattle is the bomb in the summer!! can’t imagine all the people who would be there if it were like that year round!
We are fortunate to have a two-week spring break where I work and my D23 goes to school. This is allowing us to visit in-state schools while they are still in session. We are going to tour the University of Texas and Texas A&M. The next week, we will be in SoCal on vacation and also plan to visit Chapman University.
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Hard to tell because British people are all depressed and cynical 
But more seriously, it has started to become more recognized in recent years, but there’s still a tendency to downplay or dismiss depression, seasonal or otherwise. Chin up, keep calm and carry on, and all that. I certainly remember everyone laughing at the Sex and the City characters for having shrinks.
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