Not sure what your daughter’s stats, interests, budget, etc are - but purely from a campus viewpoint: Princeton would check off most of her boxes, I think.
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Help! My DS24 needs to decide asap if he should do dual enrollment for one of his AP classes. The teacher recommends it as he could still get credit even if he flubs the AP test (and it would be worth more credit), but a quick look at the web shows that not all colleges give dual enrollment credit for courses taken as part of your high school curriculum. It is not cheap, though of course significantly cheaper than a similar amount of credits might be at wherever he ends up for college. Of course, the guidance counselor (whom I love) is out today. Anyone have any insight? TIA!
Yes I’m trying to get her to look at CTCL schools. Our current list is really huge
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Very helpful, thanks!
My S24 did a engineering program for a week at Cal Poly. He was having tough time deciding if engineering is what he wanted and after attending he things engineering is what he wants to do and now trying to figure out which major in engineering (not too keen on pure CS).
In general he was very happy with one week camp as they did some cool stuff and also had some team building projects and challenges that he really enjoyed. He said he would recommend to others and would do it again.
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S24 does not have all his criteria finalized but this is on top of his priority
- Prefers urban or place that has lot of stuff to do.
2)Medium or large (nothing less than 5000. prefers around 10,000)
3)prefers the west coast or east coast (not too keen on midwest. Having said that he has not visited school here so this may change) - Some school spirit
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My D24 is looking for a needle in the haystack. Medium sized (3000-8000 UG), traditional campus, access to major city (prefers Boston or NYC), small classes and opportunities to do research as UG, strong anthropology/linguistics/classics programs with track records of strong masters/phd acceptances, artsy/quirky, friendly, collaborative not competitive, academic not pre-professional.
My S24 is less sure. He doesn’t like cold weather. He knows he does better in small, discussion/debate style classes. He wants to join a fraternity. Not sure what he wants to study yet. An honors college at a state flagship probably is going to be his target or some of the smaller southern schools. His search will be easier than hers
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D24 doesn’t really know yet. Right now, her only REAL criteria is “not ASU.” She really didn’t like it there when we toured it this past summer. But, truthfully, the other criteria are:
- affordable, which (for us) means ~$26-28k/yr for room+board+tuition
- not hard to get to, which means not in New England, Wyoming, Montana, North or South Dakota, or Michigan.
- also not Idaho or Utah for other reasons
- a place where there’s stuff to do on the weekends and not everybody goes home every weekend
- some place where you can do pre-med, which is basically everywhere
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Not Boston or NYC but Northwestern would check off your D24’s boxes and Chicago is wonderful!
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D24 has no idea where she wants to go and doesnt want to visit colleges until the spring so she can focus on school and sports. She’ll major in either business or econ.
Where she’s been:
U Mich- loved it (will apply)
U Florida - loved it (will apply)
U Iowa - liked it but thought facilities werent top notch
Where we’ll visit in Spring:
Rice (legacy)
Brown
Dartmouth
Amherst
U Texas (legacy)
May apply without visiting:
Columbia
Vanderbilt
U Washington
Georgetown
NYU Stern
Safeties:
U Indiana Kelley (Direct admit with 3.8 GPA and 1380 SAT criteria. D should meet both)
Uconn
SMU
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Have him check out Oregon and Syracuse for Sports Management
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D24 is pretty open to any type of college so far. She’s said “cold” but has agreed to visit TAMU, UTSA and liked Auburn when we visited with her sibling. Mainly, we’re trying to find majors where she can combine design and math, her two favorite subjects: game design, visualization, architecture and industrial design are all being investigated this year.
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I would put SMU and TCU on your lists. Not a lot of snow in DFW, good sized universities and so many sports franchises nearby.
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I dragged my S24 to a couple of colleges over the summer. Toured Swarthmore, thought it is too small. Liked the size of Villanova and the modern look of dorms. I guess at this point any school with fewer than 2,000 students is not attractive.
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Received D24’s updated transcript today from school. When you get a passing score on an AP exam, it gives you a GPA boost. So, for example, if you had a B going into the AP exam and you get at least a 3, you end up with an A in the class for the year…that sort of thing.
Her unweighted GPA is now 3.33. Weighted GPA is 4.05. School counselor said that getting a B at this school in a non-AP class is equivalent in difficulty to getting an A at other high schools.
What’s given her GPA a huge hit is the 2 C’s and a B- that she got in 9th grade. Thank you (no thank you), online learning due to COVID!
So while she could gain admittance to a great number of schools, many of them are simply unaffordable for us since we can’t afford $40k+/year. We can afford ~ $25-$28/yr tuition + room & board.
The HS counselor asked us what schools we’re thinking of going to tour, so I sent her a list and she’s going to send me some suggestions for some additional schools to consider. In the criteria, I included our financial constraints. I pretty much don’t even want to bother touring a school that is going to be a mega-financial reach…it sort of feels like going to test drive a BMW or a Mercedes when what you can really afford is a Ford, Honda, or a Toyota. LOL.
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I have to wonder how colleges will view the Class of 24’s GPAs. Our kiddos started high school in the middle of chaos and many are finally finding their footing their junior year. My D24 felt like she had two freshman years - one online in '20 and one in person in '21 and now she’s trying to make up some less than stellar grades. Of course, we will never know if she would have done similarly without covid but how could it not affect them?
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The silver lining to the cloud, I suppose, is that D24 learned pretty early on that classes which are entirely and solely online are definitely not for her. She just learns better and absorbs the material better when she’s in a physical classroom with the instructor and other students.
D24 commented that her Honors Bio class was way harder than AP Bio was. Honors Bio had SO much homework in 9th grade. Her HW load in 10th grade was much less than the almost entirely online year in 9th grade.
Wow, that is an interesting grading policy with the AP score. Another reason GPAs are never apples to apples across schools. Our school doesn’t encourage even sending a 3 to colleges where you are applying, although a 3 is certainly decent IMO.
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It’s the same at our High school. Honors bio for freshman is the hardest class in the entire school with the most work, and unfortunately there is no AP bio option for freshman b/c they are not allowed to take any AP freshman year. So CP1 bio it is for both of my kids- they can save their sanity for junior year 
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Yea, totally agree, a 3 at our HS is considered a failure by the teacher and if there are many in the class the teacher is reassigned. My S21 got a 3 in one class and we were shocked it was accepted by his school. But, at our school AP classes must be earned, are never taken in 9th grade, only 1 class is available for 10th graders and the average high performing kid takes 4-5 classes and it is only the exceptional kid who takes 6 or 7. S24 who has only taken honors classes is taking 2 this year and will probably take 3 next year and is in the top 5% of his class.
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