My daughter (18) just moved into her dorm. Here’s how it went.
She was at a competitive urban high school with grades at the 50th percentile in the graduating class, GPA 3.6, and a set of courses that was academic (4 years of math, science, English, language, and 3 years of history) but not rigorous (only honors was in math and it was her worst grade, so she probably shouldn’t have taken honors math). The school does not offer APs. SAT 1500. She did zero extracurriculars at school, apart from playing viola for the school orchestra which is a class. She loves horse riding and spends all of her free time on that, but she’s not very good at it, so there were no riding “honors.” And no internships, unless you count spending all summer at the barn mucking out stalls, teaching pony camp, and hanging around to see if there were any barn ponies that needed schooling.
This profile might seem like she didn’t take advantage of all the wonderful opportunities offered to her at a great high school with strong extracurriculars. I could see that point of view. BUT - she is adamant about getting enough sleep at night and taking good care of herself. That is good! She wanted to focus on doing as well as she could in classes that were hard for her - that is good! She spent a lot of time studying and the classes themselves were very well taught. She came out of that school with an excellent well rounded liberal arts education. As far as not taking advantage of extracurriculars - none of the extracurriculars were interesting to her, and she wasn’t willing to do them just to make herself look good for college without a genuine interest, and for this I admire her. It was a bit scary for me, because my husband and I were both overachievers in high school and our hard work got us out of a small town and into a good college (we went to the same one). So I had to deal with my own feelings of "why don’t you just . . . " while she protected herself from the grind and stayed focused on working hard in her classes and having down time.
She went into the process with some additional headwinds. Her high school is full of kids who are doing really well and applying to selective colleges/Ivies, and that was hard for her pride. Her older sister got into multiple Ivies and is at Harvard, which led to more wrestling with her pride. The pandemic seemed to affect her and she went through a period of apathy in 10th grade which thankfully she came out of, but there was a dip in her grades then. She had some health issues in 12th grade that were not life threatening but draining, and lots of doctor appointments. Her friend group went sideways in senior year (probably because of the competitive high school environment) and it’s hard to make friends in senior year, so she didn’t really have people to hang out with at school (thank God for the barn friends, they were steady). She had literally no idea what kind of college she wanted to go to and no idea what she wanted to study, other than Not History. And - I didn’t beat her over the head with this but mentioned from time to time - she needs to come out of college with a job, or at least the beginning of a potential career.
So, the beginning of the college search process was daunting on both practical and emotional levels for both of us.
I eventually landed on a good mindset, which is that I would have many chances to remind her that I love and value her separate from her accomplishments, and that I wanted to help her as she figures out a life worth living. I reminded myself that the process is an adventure and that she would be discovering new things about herself, and it was a good excuse to spend a lot of time with her.
We started in the summer of junior year with visits to Amherst and Wesleyan. She said “not that.” What part of “that” I asked. She didn’t want to see any cows anywhere near the school, and she didn’t want to “walk into the coffee shop and know everyone.” OK, nothing small or rural. I suspect that she wanted the opposite of her high school, where everyone knows everyone and where they stand. She wanted large and anonymous.
We went to Villanova. “Not that.” Too religious. We went to Boston College. “Not that.” Although the Harry Potteresque architecture was cool, it seemed like everyone was following the rules and there were a lot of rules.
At some point - “Not the south.” Why? She doesn’t like Greek life and humidity. I bit my tongue about humidity on the east cost and crossed off the south.
Penn State - we were touring during a break in classes and she stood and watched everyone go by and said “they look like NPCs.” You know- she was not wrong! Floods of people, not talking to each other, looking straight ahead, wearing the Penn State merch. It was odd. I’m sure people have great experiences there (the tour guide was very enthusiastic and happy) but that one impression really got to her.
We went to California - USC, UCLA, Occidental, Claremont McKenna. She thought they were OK, but we live on the east coast, so if she wasn’t eager, I didn’t want to deal with airplanes and all the carbon pollution that would bring. And, she might stay in California, which would mean I would not see her much. Not California, that was my decision but she didn’t mind.
Along the way there were some definite hits. Drexel! She loved the urban Philadelphia setting and the wide range of internships so she could figure out what she wants to do. She liked the “vibe” of George Washington and especially the freshman year in Paris. So we started looking at other schools that have coops, freshman year abroad, urban, east coast. She was very interested in the new Columbia-Trinity program through the college of general studies, which although it was a very reachy reach, it’s also new and small and expanding, so perhaps she would squeak by? (spoiler - she didn’t)
At the end of the process, she had settled on schools that were: large, urban, northeast with a strong preference for good co-op programs (so she could try jobs in different fields) and freshman overseas programs.
Here is where her final list landed. She was thoroughly familiar with all of the likely/target schools, and happy to go to any of them. I think that was crucial to peace of mind.
Likely: Drexel, Purdue
Target: American, George Washington, NYU, BU, SUNY Stonybrook,
Reach: Barnard, Columbia-Trinity, Northeastern, Vassar, Tufts
Results:
ED1 Barnard: reject. I don’t think she was strongly attached to Barnard, if I’m honest I think the primary appeal was that it is kind of Ivyish (though she didn’t say that and had some argument about liking the small school within a larger school). So it stung but the reject was good, it was not a good fit for her.
EA Drexel: admit! Yeah!
EA Purdue: admit, to the honors college. Yeah!
ED2 Northeastern: She was offered a spot on the new Oakland campus which she didn’t apply for. That was an unhappy surprise! It is the opposite of large, urban, northeast: it is small (tiny!), suburban, California. But since it wasn’t what she applied to, so she was not committed to the ED2. She waited to see what else happened.
Columbia-Trinity: reject and didn’t get an interview.
Vassar: reject
Tufts: reject
American: reject
George Washington: accept, starting freshman year in Paris
NYU: reject
BU: offered guaranteed transfer in sophomore year
SUNY Stonybrook: accept with small scholarship
A few days after the Oakland offer, Northeastern clarified that there would be a guaranteed transfer to the Boston campus after one year in Oakland if they didn’t have her major (which was likely, because she was undecided but the five majors offered in Oakland were ones she’s not that interested in). So she decided to accept the Northeastern/Oakland offer, planning to transfer after a year. And she also accepted the BU guaranteed transfer to have as an option.
She spent the spring and summer focusing on the bright side of going to Oakland even though that is very far from what she had wanted. She was doing a good job making the best of it. And then . . .
Three weeks ago Northeastern offered her a chance to change from Oakland to Boston and she was THRILLED. She moved in a couple of days ago. It was quite a process with many ups and downs, and ended well, with both a good result and a lot of personal growth for her, and me.
