I will echo what others say… for engineering “prestige” matters less when you have ABET accreditation and then fit. ABET ensures that what they are studying is appropriate with a good level of rigor. After that, ensuring your student is in an environment where they can thrive is more important that the prestige – this is of course hard to quantify, but if your kid really likes Oregon State, that’s a pretty good indicator.
Prestige and alumni network are helpful, so I won’t say they don’t matter at all, but they are less important than the first two.
That Formula SAE team sounds amazing, and is probably a good indicator of the quality of engineers they produce. Everything about what you described sounds like exactly what you’d want for your kid to have access to…
I wouldn’t be concerned with my kid turning down UCD/Cal Poly SLO/etc for Oregon State.
That’s awesome! Congratulations! We are also in Los Angeles area. We visited Davis last spring break and my daughter wasn’t really feeling it (I loved it but I’m from Sacramento area so am more fond of the area). She fell in love with Berkeley when we visited on the same trip. So once she was accepted, I knew it was all over . Are you going to Cal Days?
We are going to Cal day! My son didn’t want to visit any more schools until he was accepted. His sister went to CP slo, which he loves, and then we visited the Claremont colleges to see if he would like small, and he hated them, lol. He knew he wanted a big research university in California if possible. He’s made the decision it will be Berkeley, but still wants to see Davis just to compare urban and rural.
Congrats to everyone who’s at the end of this process and finally has a decision!
We are finally in the homestretch and trying to narrow down the choices:
Accepted:
Auburn
U of Alabama
UCONN
JMU
U of Tennessee
U of South Carolina
Virginia Tech
Waitlisted:
Clemson
Syracuse
FSU
Rejected:
UGA
Interested in Communications, so Syracuse’s Newhouse waitlist was D’s biggest disappointment. She put so much effort into that application and demonstrated interest (two campus and department visits, interview, two online classes, various info sessions). But, she’s moving on and is now trying to decide between Virginia Tech, Tennessee and South Carolina. She likes them all and thinks she could be happy at any of the three. Does anyone have any thoughts/opinions/experiences on these schools and their communications programs?
We are finishing up accepted student visits and I didn’t bring my laptop so can’t post much info yet - to hard to do on my phone.
But daughter was down to 2 schools - visited both in the past couple of days.
One is popular here on CC and somewhat nationally known. The other is NOT and barely known anywhere. The first one looks perfect for her on paper and would have been my pick in her shoes. But her heart is at the second one and we are going back tomorrow to buy sweatshirts!
It’s telling that I’m not ready to name the schools because - like my daughter - I’m sensitive that her choice has less prestige and makes less sense to anyone who is not her…
So interesting! I have been walking on air for about - 12 hours now! More later! I will def do a detailed final post. Can’t thank the folks here at CC enough!
Remember, the prestige-chasing of College Confidential is not Real Life.
And the only way the idiocy of prestige-chasing will end is if enough people explicitly reject it that it gets exposed as the jenga pile it is.
(My D23’s going to the University of North Texas, as mentioned previously. Her older siblings are at Mississippi State and Muhlenberg. The younger sibling is intrigued by some of the programs at the University of Maine. Ignore the haters.)
I know several parents have posted about Loyola New Orleans and how it was too small for their kids, etc. Is there anyone here whose kid loved it and might attend?
I’ve been keeping up with your journey, and (though I haven’t said anything, because…what do I know?) I thought the”less prestigious” of your final 2 seemed like it might be the place where your daughter would be happier, and have been secretly rooting for it.
I’m glad she has made a decision and you are all feeling good about it!
Your daughter was accepted to a school that she loves, how great is that?!
I actually think CC is pretty good on not being too obsessive on presitge chasing - the demographics certainly skew towards high achieving kids here, and type A parents, and so certainly a lot are going for the most well known schools, which is also great, however I’ve seen lots of posters advise on going with fit and costs over just prestige.
My more thorough thoughts on LoyNo, which I didn’t post earlier:
The school has several things going for it, and one of the most visible is diversity. This was a pleasure to see - maybe a suitable comparison would be the study body we saw at Temple.
All the kids we spoke to mentioned the sense of community. (That, to be clear, is a major benefit of New Orleans in general. The city is incredibly warm and welcoming; it cannot be further from a place like NYC in this respect.)
The Jesuit education is not to be overlooked. My husband values this beyond everything else - it’s how he has taught our kids values and critical thinking as we’ve raised them - and he is a bit bummed that my kid is going to end up elsewhere.
The honors dorm is suite-style - four kids share a bathroom. There’s a lovely quad with the requisite Adirondack chairs, but also gorgeous old live oaks and picnic tables and the students indeed congregated here during the ebb and flow of classes. I’ve watched on some campuses as these areas sit unused; this was not the case here.
It has a Starbucks in its dining hall; Tulane does not, and apparently the Tulane kids flock there for this. There’s a tiny outside courtyard with seating, with a small pool/water feature, very calming. The campus is open; I think only the dorm doors have student-only locks.
Speaking of Tulane, one parent we met said they’d gone on a tour of Tulane the day before - their kid was waitlisted there. The Tulane guide was very dismissive of LoyNo and told them: “If you don’t get off the WL and you go to LoyNO, you’ll never be happy,” which I thought was incredibly rude and pretty elitist, tbh. She relayed this to a LoyNo student at our session, who seemed shocked and said, “OMG, that is so mean.”
The area - across St. Charles (with streetcar!) from Audubon Park - is gorgeous. There’s no separation from the city in that sense and the streetcar gets you down to the French Quarter in 20 minutes or so. The college kids hang out mostly around the Freret Street area, though. Downtown is heavily touristy. The park has a zoo at the river end. Space for jogging or walking, but you can do that anywhere around the neighborhood, which is simply beautiful.
We did not see the rec center, so I can’t speak to that, but there is one - above a parking garage, I believe…probably not the kind with a lazy river
My kid sat in on an honors philosophy course and described it as seminar style, very similar to his more rigorous AP class, AP Seminar. He did not speak in the class, but shared what would’ve been his input with the professor afterward, who seemed appreciative and said he wished he’d spoken up.
The downsides - small, as mentioned. And dated/poorly maintained facilities. The gathering room where the honors admitted students met in the morning had floor-to-ceiling windows facing east, and they were pretty filthy. Most windows were. There was a water fountain nearby that had either grime or mold on it. Lots of linoleum floors. It reminded me of my kid’s Catholic elementary school in some areas.
The student-run news site is refreshingly direct. There’s an editorial about the Residential Life department (which, I’ve seen from the parent Facebook group, is rather bureaucratic and unhelpful). Here’s two paragraphs from the editorial:
"This semester, residents of Biever Hall were each fined $10 due to the graffiti “F*** ResLife” that was written in permanent marker in the stairwell. Rather than taking punitive action across over 300 students, perhaps Residential Life should have first asked ‘why, oh why, would somebody think to write in permanent marker such a message in the stairwell? And why is it so terribly hard to pinpoint only a single person who would think of such a sentiment?’
There is a massive amount of graffiti covering the halls and bathrooms of Biever Hall, yet Residential Life only takes action when a minimal amount of graffiti, only two words written in permanent marker, is directed toward them. This implies that vandalism is acceptable unless it is commentary against Residential Life."
There’s also an editorial on the honors program - apparently when LoyNo phased out the full-ride Ignatius scholarship, they left existing honors kids (not full-ride ones) in the lurch and those kids did not get their honors scholarships in ensuing years. Pretty crappy of the school.
At any rate, as at all schools with a functioning - and separate - journalism program, the school newspaper is a font of information. Highly recommend a read.
All that said, @AmyIzzy has a kid there and can provide much more details than my superficial impression. Hopefully she will chime in; I know her kid had a great time and the school worked with her on finances.
My son loves it! He applied to a variety of sized colleges with his applications, but remains drawn to smaller campuses-more academic driven than sports. He’s CompSci major which is even smaller at Loyno. He met all his professors last week! He will be in the Honors Program if he decides to go there and feels like he’ll be very supported. He did apply to Tulane but was waitlisted. It was his only WL that didn’t hurt his ego because Tulane’s CS dept is almost nonexistent (which is surprising considering their size). We have another acceptance to visit this weekend and then have to sit down with his pro/con list.
Thank you so much for taking the time to write this. Everything about the school sounds ideal for my kid, who would thrive in a warm and caring community. Friendship is meaningful to him above almost all else and it’s integral to his collaborative music style. Diversity is definitely not present where we live, and he’s happy he can live somewhere more diverse wherever he goes.
@AmyIzzy has been an amazing help to me, going above and beyond!
My questions that remain are about the size of the music program. I can’t find that stat, and he needs to dig deeper into that. His other options are big music schools, and that has its pros and cons he needs to think through. Loyola’s undergrad enrollment is not significantly bigger than his high school of 2000 kids, which has about 150 musicians in its music program.
The loyola campus sounds idyllic, and it’s sad it’s not well maintained. His public HS campus was just renovated and is more beautiful than the expensive LAC I went to. We’ve told the kids how unusual and lucky this is for a neighborhood school, but they know no other experience.
We visited NOLA for an especially meaningful family trip, and I adored Audubon Park.
Thank you for this. It’s really great to hear from families and students who liked it. I think my kid felt at home on the smaller campus and felt a more easygoing vibe than other schools he visited, not in terms of there being easier classes, but in terms of the energy. He felt it was a beautiful place. He did not apply to honors, which we think is fine, even though the program sounds wonderful.
. Are you going to Cal Days?
