<p>Rodney, no offense intended! Bing is a great school, but my D really needs a cheerful atmosphere – she tends on the SAD spectrum and the long winter at Bing would have made for a horrible transition for her. Now, that’s less likely to bother boys, but the dad said earlier in the thread that the son liked the campus better at WVU. That makes total sense and, even if the girl is the major factor, it shouldn’t be discounted. What if the student gets there and becomes depressed or angry? Not good. OP, you say that your son was previously bright and level-headed. Has his behavior changed or just his choice in girls?</p>
<p>^^ totally agree; my SAD came out while I was at Binghamton in the 70’s so “I get it”…my daugther is no dummy; she’s going to NC for school…</p>
<p>Full disclosure–I am a Bing alum, and my D will be a freshman there in the fall. I love Bing.</p>
<p>But the issue isn’t so much the merits of Bing and WVU, it’s whether or not to stop your child from making what you anticipate to be a huge mistake. I think if your S is insistent on WVU, let him go, but make sure he is willing to take full responsibility for that decision, if (when?) it turns out Dad was right. Also make sure he has a stake in it. Use the financials. We told D that if she went to Rutgers (IS) or Bing (OOS but a bargain), we would pay for it and she could graduate debt-free. If she chose a more expensive school, she would have to help pay the difference, and that would mean loans, working during the year and on breaks, etc. She also wants to go to law school, and we reminded her frequently of the cost of 3 more very expensive years of education she would have left after she earned her undergrad degree. We also put together a spreadsheet–a fairly complicated endeavor my husband worked on with various school attributes, the strength of each school in each attribute, weighted by importance of each attribute to our daughter. She didn’t want to look at it but we sent it to her email anyway, and eventually she peeked. I think she realized that some of the other schools she was considering were based more on emotions, the glamour of the school, the prestige/reputation of the school, etc, rather than it being a good fit for what she wanted in the long run. Seeing it in black and white helped her focus on what was important from a rational, rather than emotional, viewpoint.</p>
<p>Finally–we all know that lots of kids transfer every year. Yes, it’s a pain in the neck, and not something we want to think about at this stage, but no college decision is final.</p>
<p>^^great post!!!</p>
<p>Does your son hope to graduate in 4 years?</p>
<p>WVU
Students Graduating Within 4 Years 32.2%</p>
<p>[West</a> Virginia University Overview - CollegeData College Profile](<a href=“http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg01_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1589]West”>http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg01_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1589)</p>
<p>What’s the graduation rate for students who are angry and miserable at colleges they were forced to attend?</p>
<p>I think Fodder’s problem with the girl is blinding him a bit. There’s really no problem with West Virginia. Binghamton is a fine school, but not leaps and bounds beyond WVU. I’ve never seen WVU personally, but being nicer and more inviting than Bing is NOT a high bar to clear. WVU is pretty popular for Pennsylvania kids – much more so than Bing – and they seem to come out fine, employable and everything.</p>
<p>Is it dumb to follow a 17 year-old girl to West Virginia, especially when the relationship isn’t even stable by 17-year-old standards? Of course it is! But people do dumb things for love or lust all the time, even when they are adults, and their lives work out OK notwithstanding. There are a zillion threads on CC with the theme “Oh no! My S/D wants to turn down [Prestige U] to go to [Directional State] with the Evil GF/BF!” And every one of them has some testimony from parents who did the same thing as teens, and had great lives. Including many where (as expected) the relationship didn’t survive the first semester, and some where it lasted until the present, and everything in between. We can all agree that the kid is probably making a horrible mistake in the love life department – unless, of course, it turns out he is right – but he’s not exactly tossing his educational prospects off a cliff. When the relationship crashes and burns, he’ll be fine at WVU.</p>
<p>That isn’t to say that Fodder (and Mudder?) need to pay all the additional cost of WVU. It’s completely appropriate to make the son take responsibility for that. But telling him Bing or nothing seems way over the top. It’s not modeling rational decisionmaking – it smacks of reacting out of hostility to the particular girl, or maybe panic at the son’s sexual activity.</p>
<p>Personally, I would want to know if it were likely it would take me longer to graduate than I was anticipating. I attended a college where many students take 5 years to graduate. Co-ops. I was a little clueless, and this little piece of information didn’t really sink in for me until orientation week. My financial situation was, well… so it’s a good thing it was a state school and tuition and fees were not high there. Nowadays the costs can be so high at most any college!</p>
<p>Deborah T, you’re absolutely correct and the son should know that and consider it, but that shouldn’t be the only factor. Bing is a great, amazing school, but it’s very specific in terms of lifestyle and if that is an important factor to a student, that should be considered just as highly because a student who is miserable will have trouble succeeding. I’m certainly bringing my own bias here, because my D, frankly, loathed Binghamton, but I could see how there would be excellent reasons for a student to not want to spend four years living in that area.</p>
<p>He’ll have to pay the whole load if he chooses WVU</p>
<p>Well, then WVU can’t happen, because a student cannot borrow that much without parent co-signers…and it doesn’t sound like the parents will do so.</p>
<p>That said…maybe I’m reading too much between the lines, but it sounds like the GF has the “upper hand” in this “rocky relationship” which (to me) suggests that the son would want to go to UWV even if they were broken up just to still be around her and try to win her back. That would be just as bad…he’d unlikely spend much time studying…sounds like he’d spend much of his time trying to woo this girl. </p>
<p>Can you clarify more about this relationship? Does this girl leave your son hanging (breaking up with him, on and off relationship, flirting with other guys, ??? …what is the situation)?</p>
<p>I am not a fan of students choosing colleges because of GFs or BFs…I think that is just a bad idea.</p>
<p>I agree with what JHS said–the difference between the schools is not enough to fall on a sword about it. I would note that if the relationship survives, he might mess up at Bing by travelling to West Virginia all the time.</p>
<p>As most of you can likely understand as parents, this is very distressing. Yes, overall I believe he would flourish most at Bing. Were it not for this girl, I don’t believe he would have ever applied to WVU.
Having said that, this has been a very bad relationship. He doesn’t spend time with HIS friends because she doesn’t like them, only hers.
At the end of the day, I guess I have to accept that my son has to learn some things the hard way…</p>
<p>
We all have to learn that and it’s HARD. Best of luck to you.</p>
<p>“If you found it an unacceptable school for the money, then it never should have been on his list to begin with” - I see comments like this a lot, but truly you don’t know the full financial picture until you have FA and merit offers in hand. </p>
<p>Although too late for this situation, I’ll add a comment for Junior parents. When you do apps for tbd-cost schools… it’s good to prep the student that acceptance is only one part of the equation. Finances is a factor too.</p>
<p>I think one of the reasons that WVU has a lower graduation rate (actually it’s about average) is because it’s acceptance standards are lower. I’ve read articles arguing that to increase graduation rates, colleges need to raise acceptance standards. But I say, why not give the students the chance? The low graduation rate indicates to me that WVU may have low acceptance standards but higher standards must be met in order to graduate.</p>
<p>Also, there are a variety of factors at play. Some part of the low graduation rate is due to students dropping out and some part of it is due to students taking longer because they can’t get into a class they need to graduate.</p>
<p>Another consideration is that WVU, like many large state universities, has a high proportion of students who work while they are in college when you compare it to a smaller or more selective school. Sometimes they work a lot while they are in college, which leads to fewer classes per semester (or taking a semester off to work). The University of Texas and Ohio State both have a relatively low four-year graduation rates and I think both of them are great.</p>
<p>The more you focus on the relationship, the more you will be beating your head against a wall. There is probably not enough time to visit WVU, but I would probably find a way (it is probably really pretty in the spring, though). I think if financially this is less of an issue than emotionally for you, you may have to take a deep breathe and realize you may well be paying out of state tuition. If you do not make it too hard for him to change your mind, you may get in-state sooner than you think…</p>
<p>I am so sorry, this is a tough place for you as well as for him, it is hard to be a teenager and to make “adult” decisions when you are still really just a teenager…</p>
<p>I think both you (parent and student) should try to compare both schools without factoring in the girlfriend. If the son could show WVU would be a better school for him (size, location, major, finance…) then having his GF there would just be a bonus. If they should break up, then he would still be happy there, but maybe with a different girlfriend.</p>
<p>Even if OP’s son were to go to a different school, he could meet a worse girlfriend for him.</p>
<p>Friends’ kid left an elite LAC to follow a “true love” to of all places WVU. Relationship didn’t last, but kid liked WVU much more than the LAC and stayed to graduate. Kid is now in grad school at Harvard. This may not be as big problem as it may appear.</p>
<p>You’re stuck between a rock and a hard place, because even if you convince him to go to BU, if it’s not really what he wants he will sabotage himself there-- anything that goes wrong will be a huge deal and all your fault, and the whole time he’ll be asking, “what if I’d gone to WVU?” So your best course of action, I think, is to do whatever you can to help him think logically about the situation-- I’d concentrate less on what a mess the relationship is because he won’t listen to that, and more on the importance of attending the right school for him. Maybe something about how the relationship will still work out if it’s meant to work out, and that this will be a good test to see if they are meant to be. That sort of thing. A relationship that requires him to sacrifice what is right for him just to be near her isn’t one that’s going to last.</p>
<p>Coming from a college senior.</p>