<p>idad, as the parent of a rising junior at WVU, that’s a nice story to hear. My two cents on the school is that it is a very happy place. The students love it. The engineering classes are plenty rigorous and our son has never had a problem getting classes. He expects to graduate within four years, but it has required summer school because he changed majors. With 131 CR required for his major, there isn’t room to do that and stay on schedule. There are course requirements in nine different subject areas in order to graduate, including things like “artistic expressions” and “non-western culture” so the school requires a broad education. The courses our S took in biology and computer science for his old major therefore didn’t count as electives for his new major since they satisfied the same core area where virtually all of his engineering courses fit anyway. While some of the kids are coasting, a significant number are very serious about their studies and are “crazy smart” according to our S, including the pre-med folks in his biology class. If I remember correctly, there was zero tuition increase in this past year. Not many colleges pulled that off. If this is where your S ends up, I think you may be pleasantly surprised.</p>
<p>** 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>He is with her for a reason. You may not know what those reasons are…but he has them. It could be that he thinks she is “better” than him and he will never have someone as …pretty, smart, (whatever she is) or it could be simply does not mind doing whatever the heck she wants to do as long as he is with her. You are simply going to have to step back from this one. It’s a damned if you do, if damned if you don’t. Remember these words…</p>
<p>** * Prepare your child for the path, not the path for the child ** *</p>
<p>These are his choices now. Bite your tongue (call the ER if you have to) and let this ride out. In the end what is meant to be will be.</p>
<p>Fodder, you know that now you have us all interested, we will be hoping for a Thanksgiving time update. Sorry!</p>
<p>WVU:
Test Scores – 25th / 75th Percentile
SAT Critical Reading: 470 / 560
SAT Math: 480 / 580 </p>
<p>SUNY Binghamton:
Test Scores – 25th / 75th Percentile
SAT Critical Reading: 580 / 660
SAT Math: 610 / 690</p>
<p>What does your son want to major in?</p>
<p>Ask him: If his girlfriend was not at this school, would he want to go?
If they break up, would he want to be there?
If his friend was attending a more expensive, less competitive school for a girl, would he thing that was a good idea?</p>
<p>Then I would also tell him that you don’t think it is a good choice <em>for him</em> but that you are willing to pay the amount that you would have to pay for SUNYBing toward WVU and he is responsible for the rest.</p>
<p>My son’s rommate also followed a girl to WVU. He had sky high stats for WVU, was accepted into several highly selective universities, but alas, he was “in love”. Of course, he and the girl broke up a few weeks into spring semester. The upside? My son has a really smart study partner!</p>
<p>Those score spreads are a little misleading – not completely misleading, but a little. WVU is almost exactly twice as big as Binghamton at the undergraduate level – 21,7000 students vs. 11,700. So the top quartile at WVU represents students who would constitute the top half of the Bing class. WVU almost certainly doesn’t have as many students (in absolute numbers) who scored at least 1200/1600 on the SAT Is compared with Bing, but it doesn’t necessarily have a lot fewer, either.</p>
<p>On the other hand, at WVU, 75% of the students have less than a 560 where as at Bing only 25% of the students have less than a 580 in reading.</p>
<p>Yes, there’s no question that WVU, like most state flagships (NY doesn’t really have a single flagship), is large, and has a wide range of students. In general, it reflects a different philosophy of education than the elite private colleges have, and that to some extent Binghamton has: Instead of saying “We only take the best of the best”, they say, “We offer opportunity to everyone from the best of the best to the middle of the middle.” There was nothing wrong with that until USNWR came along and effectively decided that the “middle” kids would give the “best” kids dumbness cooties if they went to the same college, so any college that let “middle” kids in the door had to be downgraded.</p>
<p>“dumbness cooties”</p>
<p>You are my new hero JHS for coining such a wonderful expression! Where is that “like” button when I need it?</p>
<p>JHS, I lol’d. I’ll warn my son not to catch the dumbness cooties while at WVU. :)</p>
<p>Our son scored above a 1200 on the SAT, with a 700 on the math portion. His high school GPA was in the top 25%, so well above the average stats listed for WVU. He by no means feels that he has any greater intelligence than the other students in his classes. There may have been some of that fall of his freshman year, but those students were gone after that. I think that likely holds true for biology as well because that major attracts a lot of pre-med kids, who are motivated to make top grades. I’m confident a serious student could find plenty of like-minded people with whom to study and hang out. At the same time, a student who just wants a piece of paper could probably arrange his course schedule to make that happen with little effort as well. </p>
<p>There is definitely a wider variation in the quality of students on the campus compared to a school like UVA where our older son attended, but a high quality of education as well as good career prospects are available from both. Last spring our older son was competing head to head with a WVU engineering student for a job. It was one of those things were a group of seven students from all over the country were flown out to California for a three day interview process with a big firm. The WVU engineering student and the UVA engineering student were obviously both considered to be equally attractive candidates for this very high prestige job, despite the differences in the average stats of students at the two schools. Our son did not come away with an offer (although he did land a fabulous consulting job overseas that fits him better anyway), but he was fairly confident the WVU student would get an offer because he felt he was the most impressive student in the entire group.</p>
<p>fodder, what does your son want to study? My son also has met many many very smart kids at WVU. He’s in engineering, which has higher admission requirements, but even in his “Gen Pop” classes (“eek, don’t put me in the general population!”) he has done a lot of group work and the other students are more than capable. My son let me take a peek at an online discussion forum for one of his classes, and I was very impressed with the writing and reasoning displayed.</p>
<p>Umm…I don’t usually advise it, but…</p>
<p>Is this a case where you could get away with double depositing? If the relationship doesn’t last the summer, you might want to be able to say…</p>
<p>“Well, as you know, we your parents preferred Bing. So, we made a deposit, just in case you changed your mind. It’s not too late if you want to do so.” </p>
<p>I’d be REALLY tempted to do this if it were my kid.</p>
<p>I like the idea of double depositing - if you can do it without your son thinking you are doing it to separate him from the GF. I think the less said about the GF the better - in fact, you might want to try including her more on family outings and get togethers. If she is really a bad choice your son will begin to see it for himself if he isn’t so busy defending her from what he sees as unreasonable parental objections. “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer”, so to speak.</p>
<p>are double deposits legal? does it allow a child longer to make their decision? I’ve never heard of that.</p>
<p>Double deposits are not strictly illegal. However, there are very few instances in which it makes sense to spend that kind of money just to have a few more weeks or months to make a final decision. Ultimately, the student can only enroll at one place, so it is a given that at least part of one deposit will be lost if not all of that deposit.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This was discussed at The Washington Post</p>
<p>
Not to quibble, but what do students and parents sign that gives the NACAC the authority to impose responsibilities on them? I suppose there might be something on the application itself.</p>
<p>I know students happy, miserable, successful, dropouts at both schools. I think that if your kid wants to go to a school, you have a bigger advantage in terms of success. When you force a school on a kid, that is a bad start. Yeah, it can work out, but you have really started off on the wrong foot, and everything and anything that goes wrong at the college, and things will go wrong, I assure you, it will be on your head as far as your kid is concerned.</p>
<p>My oldest went to a school that we knew was not the best choice for him. It was the wrong school for a kid like him. But it was his choice. He wanted to go there. We pointed out the drawbacks. We ended up being right. That he made the choice,made things a bit more bearable and he made much more of an attempt to deal with his problems there since it was his choice. Had we forced it, he would have laid the blame on us and given up at the first problem. It was a powerful weapon,motivator, situation that he picked his own school, not us.</p>
<p>My current senior is picking a school that we don’t think is the best choice out of what he has. Fine school, but big, far, impersonal. We have pointed all of these things out, but he wants to go there over a very nice, nearer, private school with an excellent dept in what he thinks he wants to do. I feel that the smaller schools are better matches for him, but he likes this OOS biggie best. So I am paying the deposit today and will wish him the best. And pray that it works out for him.</p>
<p>
According to a quote on another thread, the Common Application has language prohibiting multiple deposits. Note: you can make a deposit at one school while remaining on the waiting list at another school.</p>