Penn State (State College): This one was the shocker. S is walking avoidant and was pretty sure he only wanted schools with between 2000 and 5000 students. Then Penn State happened. The campus is huge physically. We could not get an official tour because we were there on a Sunday. We went to the bookstore and wandered around campus on our own. The theater buildings are all kind of in the same area along with a set of dorms. Their program has a ton of amazing features that only a giant university can provide including a âpitchâ lab, a student wellness center just for the theater department and a new musical program that is a perfect fit for Sâs interests. He didnât expect to, but totally fell in love with this school. Although he is an âall MT, all the timeâ kid, S has an extremely high IQ and goes at training from a much more academic/technical angel than your average âartsyâ kid. Penn State very much satisfies that. Itâs also expensive as heck with limited scholarships for OOS students and I canât figure out how hard it is to get into for MT in terms of whether MT students have to meet the normal standards for an out of state student.
Shenandoah: Last, but certainly not least. Shenandoah. We walk in to the information session and it is being led by a black guy. Already a good sign. He was a football player. Not a good sign after the very disappointing day at JMU. He went around and asked each kid what their interests were. There were maybe 5 families. He tailored the info sessions to the kids interests. I suspect it will be the best general info session we attend on any college visit. Turns out (and he was completely surprised by this himself), despite being a sports marketing major who started out doing that just so he could play football, many of his friends were musical theater majors. He knew the program inside and out. He knew that premed program equally well and he kept throwing out major ideas for the undecided kids. Its a small school in a small town. He said he rarely left campus while he was there. We did a general tour after the info sessions with another tour guide who was a theater production major but she was equally knowlegible in other areas (did not see dorms if I remember correctly) and it was informative and gave a good feel for what it would be like to be a student there. The facilities were not top notch or particularly updated. The buildings kind of felt like Sâs high school. After the tour the guy from the info session was hanging around and we got to ask privately ask him some black people questions and his answers were reassuring. Then they did a separate tour for theater people. That was just us and the same guide we had for the general tour. This is a really good way to do it. At one point, the guide showed us the SU âstatueâ and told us the tradition is that you take a photo on your first day of school there and your last to see how much you have grown. S liked the school enough that he refused to take a photo in front of it on the visit because he did not want to jinx himself. This school moves to the top of the list (not above his one dream school). His comment was that the facilities (which were not bad just not super pretty) didnât do much for him and he didnât love the location, but it seems like no matter what the major, they are doing top notch cutting edge stuff in those ho-hum buildings.
Our last day was in Philly. We really needed a break so we did not plan any college tours but there were two that are on the preliminary list. Temple and University of the Arts. Since he had spent 2 weeks at camp at Point Park in downtown Pittsburgh, he kind of knew the feel of a downtown campus. We had heard that Temple was a self contained school but the area around it was kind of sketchy. Um, no. Its not at all self contained from what we could tell from our drive-by. There were buildings on both sides of the busy street with non college buildings interspersed and there was no noticeable entrance or wall around the college and it was in a bad neighborhood. âSketchyâ is too kind of a word. And we are city people. I have been mugged multiple times in NYC, this was far worse than that. UArts was barely on our list because we had heard it was a not well defined city campus and it appears to be out of our price range but we drove by anyway. Oddly, we kind of loved the school and it wasnât as undefined as Point Park or even Temple. At the end of the road was some gorgeous building (maybe City Hall). Great neighborhood and you could tell you would be immersed in the arts community in Philly. But S decided that Philly was not for him. The heat and humidity and really aggressive, in your face homeless people kind of ruined it for him.
And thatâs it. It was a fun trip. Generally way too hot for us, but it really helped S firm up his college desires. Those seem to be individualized attention from the school itself (not just the MT program) and a college town is preferred over a city. A pretty campus is important to him and he now understands that while you can probably find âyourâ people anywhere, certain schools just feel like they are populated by âyourâ people and others you can tell in a moment that âyour peopleâ are not the cultural norm there.
@AnonMomof2 Yes, TE is not easy to get. Trying to get him to target schools with higher percentage of acceptance which are typically less popular and not as well known colleges. We shall see but itâs worth trying.
@Theaterforme Thanks so much for the updates! These were helpful. I already took Temple off my sonâs list from other peopleâs tour reports. Shenandoah stays on (it has an ever so slight higher TE acceptance rate as well). (My sonâs list is NOT in order of preference!)
My son is a music kid who loves football and is very much not going to likely love a school where itâs too divided. He doesnât want to be at a place where the music kids all make fun of the sports kids and vice versa.
Serious question: Why retake the SAT? She did fine (great, really) on the ACT, and thereâs zero benefit to submitting both tests to a school, so why not just go with the 34 ACT and have no more stress on that front?
I just asked her, and she actually wants to retake both tests. I asked why and she said because she likes taking them and wants to see what she can get.
Yes, she is weird - and she is planning to just take them with no prep again. They donât stress her out.
When you asked this question I had to do some googling- I am not informed at all about how college searches go and am just starting to look into how this works. Back in the olden days when I applied the ACT was not accepted at all schools and I assumed some still had a preference for the SAT but I guess that is no longer true.
And Iâm the parent who wouldnât let my kid retake a 34. I refuse to encourage perfectionism. Thereâs a fine line between challenging yourself and moving towards mentally unhealthy behavior. Thereâs many things in life that donât allow do overs. Ive seen too many young adults mentally crash because they are never happy or content with a score unless itâs perfect.
2plustrio- good for you.
She is happy with her scores. She is not going to crash and burn and is not trying to be perfect, nor does she have mentally unhealthy behavior. She actually loves taking standardized tests. As in- for fun. Seriously. Always has. I didnât get anywhere near those scores. If she was even studying for them at all and worried about scores and grades and being perfect then maybe there would be a problem. Good thing you know your kid as well as I know mine
What about the parents who spend a fortune on test prep classes and make their kids study and retake them when the kids donât want to? I am not that parent.
My kid literally is doing it for fun. Would it be ok and her not at risk for mentally unhealthy behavior and crashing and burning if she had gotten a 24 and wanted to take them again to see how she does?
My comment stands as is. Thereâs a huge difference between 24 and 34.
And no, I wouldnât push my kid to retake a 24 if they were totally resistant to trying again.
As long as your child is fine if she does worse and as long as she can enter into college and not ask to redo every test then let her have her fun and games with testing I guess. I just work with lots of young adults who were high performers in high school and I see their struggles. Sure they start out all okay but I see them start to break and it saddens me.
When thereâs nothing to be gained and only something to lose, I just donât see the point.
A new update from the Spiders from Mars College Megatour!
Today, iâll talk about the âunofficialâ tours weâve done: in chronological order, the University of Southern Mississippi, Muhlenberg College, Drexel University, and the University of Pennsylvania.
The University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi: This one is on D23âs list of colleges with her intended major, but we hadnât planned to tour it. (Hey, we may be in the lower 48 for a crazy long time, but it doesnât mean we have time for everything we might could have done!) However, we realized that on one leg of the trip we were driving through Hattiesburg, so we turned off the interstate to do a drive-through of the campus. The campus was bigâmuch bigger than i would have expected for its student headcount (about 15k students, both undergrad and graduate). Itâs a very Colonial Revival campus (lots of red brick, like so many others, but now with white pillared porticoes!), and a fair amount of green spaceâwe saw a couple families (of faculty or grad students, maybe?) doing what appeared to be picnicking on the campus grounds. It was also a more car-unfriendly campus than i would have expected for a place with as high a commuter population as it has, which is a plus in my book. Of course, from a drive-through we couldnât get a solid feel for it, but i will say that itâs kind of amazing what a place can do with the right political connections. (And itâs pretty clear that it has political connectionsâone of the biggest buildings on campus, which faces the main road that runs next to the campus, has emblazoned across the front that it is the âTrent Lott National Center for Excellence in Economic Development and Entrepreneurshipâ. Yep, that entire mouthful is carved in stone in huge capitals across the front. Political connections indeed.) The girls both thought it was pretty, though thatâs essentially all they got from it, no real impressions plus or minus.
Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania: We toured this one precisely and only because our oldest goes there. They werenât doing in-person tours for anyone except rising seniors at the time, so we did their official driving tourâthey have a website that directs you to various places around campus and for each stop thereâs a video that plays for a couple minutes to give you the tour guide spiel. Itâs a pretty small campus (but then again, it only has about 2k students), largely low-key Neogothic with a few Postmodernist buildings that are (mostly) designed to fit in with the Neogothic theme. (My favorite example of this is the science building, which is Postmodernist but is built with facing the same color as the Neogothic chapel itâs next to, and which has exterior motifs subtly echoing the chapelâs buttresses.) Itâs a very nice campus, and certainly very comfortable, but it really isnât the sort of thing either of my younger kids are looking for. (And it doesnât have the fields either of them are interested in anyway.) So yeah, they understand why their older sister is happy there, but it isnât for them.
Drexel University in Philadelphia: We wanted to tour this one because it has a strong program in my D23âs intended field, and they are doing tours but only on certain days, and it turned out that when they finally announced their tour dates we couldnât arrange our schedule to get one. However, we actually got to go into some of the buildings at Drexel courtesy of a netfriend of mine who works there, and in a way it was probably a better tour (especially for D23) than the girls would have gotten otherwise, because we spent a pretty decent amount of time simply wandering around the (incredibly confusing but kind of fascinating) URBN Center building, which is where D23 would likely be spending much of her time on campus. Drexel has a reputation as a singularly ugly campus, which i honestly think isnât entirely deserved though it is true that there isnât really a unifying architectural theme other than âmidrise city buildingsâ, but one thing we discovered is that its buildings are generally quite a bit prettier on the inside. It is an urban campus, with a number of streets cutting through campus, but it didnât feel quite as hardcore urban to the girls as Temple did (which, as you may recall, they werenât impressed by). D23 reasoned that the difference was that at Temple, the campus is built within the street grid, but Drexel has built out along one direction (mainly, along Market Street), so the streets feel more like rivers through campus. (And if you donât get that, just trust me, the simile actually works.) So it was a positive visit all around.
The University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia: This was mainly just a courtesy walkthrough because we were in the neighborhood, and itâs where i went to grad schoolâbut neither of the girls has any plans to apply there. They both did like the campus, though, and felt like it was more of the âtraditionalâ campus feel, even with a couple of significant streets cutting through. D25 found it interesting the way that some of the preexisting West Philly houses had clearly been kept and repurposed as the campus had expanded over the years, but honestly they didnât have all that much of a major reaction, because by the time we got to the end of walking through campus we were all utterly drained by the heat (which was brutal that day). But they did understand why someone would call it a âprettyâ campus, even if it wasnât spectacularly showy in the way some are.
@ 2plustrio
Thanks for your concern. And my comments stand as well. On what planet do college kids ask to retake tests? Thatâs just ridiculous. Quit projecting and playing armchair psychologist on my kid.
This is getting silly. I get it. You would not let your kid retake the SAT even if the score was not really high enough to solidly apply to some of their reach schools. And because the ACT score was high and within range she should just use that even though she likes tests and wants to retake it. And I am a bad parent whose child is going to crash and burn and ask to retake all of her tests in college because you know some kids who do. Ok. I know those kids- the ones who take every AP class, who calculate their gpa every day, who check their class rank daily, who join every club, etc. etc. etc. That is not my kid, my kid thinks those kids are way too intense. My kid is the one who studies the morning of a test and gets low Aâs, but doesnât care that if she maybe studied a bit earlier could get a higher A. Who procrastinates, and who actually needs a bit more motivation and drive, not less.
Good night.
Youâre definitely not alone! Iâm still burned out from college stuff with D19. She was trying to get recruited so there was a ton of research and visits to colleges that matched academically and athletically. Ultimately, it was all for naught as she opted to forego playing her sport and instead chose school she loved.
Iâm also just more relaxed about college stuff this (third!) time around. S has excellent grades, a 1500+ SAT, and a financial and academic safety in our state flagship, CU-Boulder. The only college weâll tour this year is Penn, where D19 attends, because we have already planned visits and itâs on the shortlist.
@Mom24boys We toured Wesleyan and Williams with D19. I am interested to hear your impressions of them.
I said I would not allow them to retake a 34 ACT. Not even just âfor funâ because there is no positive that would likely come from it and I can think of many other things that would be a better use of their time. I donât think its emotionally healthy to use standardized tests scores as some sort of game. And yes, I would be cueing in to ensuring my kid wasnât getting stuck on some sort of number that somehow they feel defines them or puts value on them as a person and there is a very slippery slope for many kids who are that way. And yes, every semester I have students frantically begging almost weekly for more points, for higher scores. Even students who have As are angry or near tears because they cant understand how they got a few points off. Not even an âAâ is good enough.
If she puts in some studying and wants to do a bit of a boost to her SAT, then that I understand. But you said she wanted to retake both.
I understand our kids are at very different ends of the spectrum. Your kid is repeating their junior year, has well over a 4.0 and will now be attending boarding school the last 2 years. My kid is a bit of an underachiever with a 3.4 GPA at a public school who will be following the traditional 4 year high school sequence, not 5 year.
I simply explained that repeating a 34 ACT only âfor funâ makes me question the true rational behind it and as a parent I would not allow it for my kid.
She actually does want to improve her scores on both. She likes the tests and finds them fun. Most kids do not. And actually there is a positive that could come from it, people do score 35 or 36, but there is no pressure from us on her and from what I can tell, she will be just fine if she doesnât score higher. Until March of this year she was planning to be a Senior and graduate in 2022, with a much higher GPA than she will end up with after 2 years at a boarding school with zero weighting of grades and a history of grade deflation. She likes learning and is going there to actually have a HS experience (which she did not really have in her 2 years prior to Covid and this year of cyber), where she can have friends and take classes she is interested in, where she most certainly will not be at the top of her class. So, actually, now that I think about it, it is to her benefit to improve her scores. I am proud of her maturity in realizing she needed some more time and experiences before going to college and for seeking it out herself and making it happen. And for the financial aid. And I am so glad that I am her parent and support her.
To be clear, my initial post said I wouldnât let MY kid retake a 34.
So for your kid, then they need to study and stop doing this âfor funâ and put in more effort if they are aiming for a perfect score. Are they saying âitâs for funâ to cover up the disappointment they didnât score perfect? You said sheâs going to take both again with no prep just to âsee how she can do?â It seems a poor test taking strategy if her goal truly is to increase her chances to get closer to perfection.
I understand sheâs going to be working hard to maintain her 4.0 so she can potentially get money for college. I wish my kid had higher grades so he had more college options but as you said, your underachieving husband did just fine in life too. I have faith.
She hates to study for these things so I donât think that will happen, and maybe that will be her lesson in why she should study LOL. Maybe she will have an advisor who tells her not to bother taking the ACT again. And she told me her missed questions were âdumb mistakesâ so there could be improvements with careful checking of work rather than studying. (Carefully checking work is not her strong suit). I have faith in anyone who works hard and is focused and motivated, a 4.0 and ivy league isnât necessary for success. A 3.4 and community college or state school or small liberal arts school is excellent as well.
@AnonMomof2, @2plustrio, yâall, stand down a bit. Itâs gotten to where youâre talking past each other. I mean, different kids have different skills and desires, and different parents have different styles and desires, and as long as no harm is being done itâs all good.
Hi 2023 parents! My S23 is taking his first practice SAT through a library program this weekend⊠looking forward to seeing how that goes!
I havenât been here in a while, but also have a D17 and D20. I was poked back into commenting because Iâm friends with @dfbdfb in other online groups and it came up that Temple was a topic of discussion. My D17 just graduated from Temple College of Engineering, and also was an athlete and in their honors program. Sheâs now gainfully employed in engineering (which is part of the goal , right?). My D20 also decided to go there for CS, because she visited big sis a lot and also loved the school. Weâre OOS.
I understand the Temple urban environment is not for everyone, so Iâm not going to try to convince/convert anyone that didnât feel it would be a good fit. I will say that my Ds love it there. Neither would have been happy at a small LAC in a tiny rural town though, so personality is a big part of âfit!â I donât think S23 will go there, or even apply, as his personality and âfitâ are different than his big sisters, but he loves visiting the school.
Iâm happy to answer any questions about the school, neighborhood, honors, athletics, dorms, or safety for Temple.
One thing to know about Temple is that they are (or at least recently have been) very generous with aid for top students. Typically, an ACT of 34 or 35 will be a full tuition presidential scholarship, assuming high school grades are reflective of those high scores too.
Yeah, iâm rather sad that D23 wasnât into Temple, because sheâdâve gotten some quite nice merit aid. Oh wellâsheâs still competitive for merit aid at a couple good places for her major, so it doesnât kill us.
For the folks saying that Templeâs in a âsketchyâ neighborhood, iâll just say that yeah, it was bad thirty years ago, but itâs better now. (In fact, itâs better now than West Philly was when I was a grad student at Penn back in the late 90s.)
- and she is planning to just take them with no prep again. They donât stress her out.
, right?). My D20 also decided to go there for CS, because she visited big sis a lot and also loved the school. Weâre OOS.