Reasonable List?

College Search & Selection
41

We are willing to look within an 8 hour drive with covers all of New Enlgand, New York, PA, New Jersey, Maryland if we need to. While she probably is “geeky” enough for Harvey Mudd and I really want her to find her people, I don’t see California in her immediate future.

It sounds like we need to have her SAT scores to really narrow down the list of what is reasonable for her to apply to. We will also be done some college visits this spring which might also narrow down the list.

42

You don’t have to answer this here, but mom to mom… is this you not seeing California in her future or is this her desire for a geographic boundary?

It’s hard when they go away. I know. There’s no best answer, just more things to think about.

43

This table, created by @ucbalumnus, should be helpful for comparing CS course offerings across schools of various types:

http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/math-computer-science-majors/1814245-computer-science-at-some-smaller-schools-including-liberal-arts-colleges-p2.html

You can cross-reference with current course catalogs for changes that may have occurred since the above information was researched.

For a student interested in both CS and biology, courses and course elements in bioinformatics will also be of interest, and can be researched separately.

44

The geographic boundary might easily be pragmatic. I know for my own family, traveling across the country from NY to CA for college would be expensive and inconvenient. Our preference as a family (which does include my d19 who knows she will want the option to come home for all school breaks) is somewhere that will be a reasonable drive.

I understand there are people here on CC who have a lot more disposable cash (reading the thread on house cleaning shows that) or enjoy travel but for many people the costs and headaches of flying back and forth across the country multiple times a year for one person -let alone more on some occasions- isn’t something we want to deal with when there are many college options making it unnecessary.

That may or may not be the OPs reasoning but I see over and over on CC that when someone puts forth their geographic boundary for a search and multiple people push them to go far past it, like it’s no big deal.

45

Sometimes, with the right award packages, it can be cheaper to go farther away than locally.

46

Sure, if it’s a full ride and there are no closer equal cost alternatives that are less hassle, then maybe it would be worth it.

47

My daughter is barely thinking about college. She knows she is going and is thinking about what she wants to do but hasn’t given a lot of thought to where she wants to go. We’ve done tours at Wellesley and Brown. She’s also been to MIT and Smith. We’ve talked about what she’s looking for and came up with a list of schools. Logistically, going to California is just complicated. It’s really far away. I can’t afford to send her back and forth as much as she may want to come home. Also, there are a lot of good schools in the north east. Does she need to look that far? There are a lot of good schools out there. I just want to make sure that come decision time she has a couple choices (that are affordable). If we need to expand the search geographically to guarantee that then we will.

48

Our thinking was similar to yours @hopefairy . We could have looked at west coast schools but it was already hard to narrow down the list of schools within a full day’s drive. I didn’t see any reason to try to look further.

D went to the outer edge of her limit - a 12 hour drive (but 3 from other family) - while S did not want to look at schools more than 4 hours away from here. It’s all fine.

We both live in areas with way too many good U and LAC choices.

49

Again, I don’t believe there’s any one correct answer regarding how far away a college should be and that every family has to choose what works for them and their kid. But I do see several reasons that some might want to look further than their own region.

  • Living in a new. distant area of the country provides a different perspective than living just a few hours from what is familiar. It can be enlightening, infuriating, interesting, amazing, disgusting, mind expanding, none of these things or things that are completely unexpected.
  • Beyond being technical training, some people view college as a time to explore and expand. The college 2 hours from home may have students from an area 2000 miles away, but talking to those students isn't remotely the same thing as experiencing living in an actual different cultural region.
  • For those that view certain aspects of college as key - whether that means getting an internship at Google or going to the best Asian studies program - the college that offers that aspect may indeed be more than a few hours away from colleges that are just pretty good in those areas.
  • For students that are concerned that their stats are competitive but that there are just too many others with the exact same stats, going to a college where they provide some diversity can give them a boost in admissions.
50

Yes, someone who can afford the cost and inconvenience could look at those reasons and weigh them.
But if someone states a geographical preference that is reasonable (ie. There are fit college choices within it) then there is no reason to continue to campaign or pressure them to reconsider.

51

Update: SAT 1520

Probably taking Brown and Williams off the list. Looking a little closer at Carnegie Mellon and adding Brandeis to the list. I appreciate everyone’s feedback earlier. My daughter is thinking more about college these days but doesn’t really have any clear preferences besides not too far away. We will be doing more tours next month.