<p>I would be a little leery sending my daughter to a school in ND, especially if the school sent me a link to a hair salon that could handle my daughter’s AA hair. I would need to visit and get some perspective from other minority students.</p>
<p>Supermom,
NDSU has about 1.76% black students, according to their website. I wonder how many of these are non athletes. Will being one of the 1.76% make your daughter feel like a social outsider? You say she can’t handle this. I wouldn’t want to send my kid to college for “character building.” I guess I’m not sure what the attraction to NDSU is except maybe cost? Can you elaborate?</p>
<p>lolol! The women I work with give me weather reports in Fargo every day, and threaten to report me to child protective services if I “banish” my child to the Northern Wilds. But here’s the scoop: NDSU has everything she asked for in a school: Study abroad, major, basketball team, speech team, # of students, male/female breakdown, college town (Fargo/Moorhead has 28K kids). </p>
<p>We’re suburbanites, & while B’more City is comfortably multicultural, our area: not-so-much. The academic tracks in our public schools tend to segregate the kids in such a way that those in GT/Honors get used quick to operating in monochrome (like 1.76%). Consequently, my kids learned that attempting to bridge both worlds often meant “having their black card yanked.” They didn’t like that – so they quit trying to bridge. What that means is: D2, used to easy assimilation in a majority group, will either do it again in N.D., or find the group there is qualitatively different.</p>
<p>@ lacrossemom - the grad rates suck. Straight up. But I’m not worried about that. Gimme a Univ. catalog & a degree outline & I can plot her a course to 4-yr grad w/a semester abroad ASSUMING: she makes friends & likes the place.</p>
<p>@ prefect - why? We adopted D2 as an older child w/significant behavioral issues. While she’s made incredible strides and I’m actually VERY proud of her, she doesn’t always make the best decisions, and we have some (well-grounded) concern that she may, errr . . . “falter” in her first few years of college. We don’t want to take a big buck gamble on her quitting going to class, while revoking our authority to see her grades. Thus, I dither. Lowest cost vs. best fit!</p>
<p>No one can really provide an accurate answer for you. All anyone witihout direct experience will have is superficial impressions, most probably based on no direct connection. Life’s a gamble and you get the most information available and determine if the “risks” are worth the investment.</p>
<p>Here’s my anecdote. The older brother of a very good friend spent a year as an exchange student in Green Bay, WI back in the 1970s. At that time the Black population of Green Bay was limited to the athletes on the local NFL team. This brother was no athlete. He was a superior student from the gritty streets of Pittsburgh and certainly stood out in the frigid environment northernmost Wisconsin. Nevertheless, later in life he fondly recalled his days living in Green Bay and the lifelong friends he made among the white folks there.</p>
<p>We are pondering schools in Oregon and Washington with similar concerns, but the Dakota’s sound even more “out there”! The schools we are looking at are 1% black, maybe athletes, and son is an athlete but not recruited …yet…</p>
<p>FWIW, we live in a N. Cal suburb, and our kids have Mexican, but few if any black friends. They don’t seem to notice or care until they see something different (i.e. D in Durham, and son’s visit to Morehouse).</p>
<p>Updates !!!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Some of them are rather generous with need-based non-loan financial aid. For example:</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/financial_aid/index.html]Harvard[/url”>http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/financial_aid/index.html]Harvard[/url</a>]
[url=<a href=“http://www.stanford.edu/dept/finaid/undergrad/how/parent.html]Stanford[/url”>http://www.stanford.edu/dept/finaid/undergrad/how/parent.html]Stanford[/url</a>]</p>
<p>How is everything going with acceptances? This whole process has been stressful, but fun. My son is having a wonderful senior year. We are just waiting for a few more decisions, but he really is choosing from his top two colleges so he is happy.</p>
<p>I need help! Dramatically different results from high priced California privates vs KMA (kiss my …) California publics vs reasonably merited pacific north west privates. Percentage of African Americans are 7 to 5 percent, 3 percent and 1 percent respectively. Once again, we are thinking it’s worth it to pay for diversity, while the kids could care less.</p>
<p>We are visiting Gonzaga today.I think we counted five black students. Son spotted two oft hem and tried to catch their eye…he says he couldn’t, and perhaps they were ashamed …(???)</p>
<p>shrink: what do u think they were ashamed of?? what about UCM? i’ve never been there, but i think they have a larger percentage of black and brown kids on that campus…</p>
<p>idk,he said it,not me! I try not to ask too many questions…</p>
<p>Don’t know about UCM. He did not apply there.</p>
<p>ohhh… i mentioned UCM because they’re a referral campus, and i thought i read on the uc board that your kid was waitlisted at ucr…</p>
<p>He was, but he has a lot of other options that I think offer things that I think outweigh what UCM offers. But do you have some thoughts on that? Theother options at thetop right now are Gonazaga, University of Portland, Santa Clara, LMU, and maybe Whitworth. </p>
<p>I realize that since I posted, LMU and SCU admittances happened, which offer about 3 and 7 percent AA, and even more hispanic. But which higher COA, and lessor no money. I hesitateto say to much aboutit, but SCU offered a little money that they clearly stated was neither need nor merit, but in the interest of improving the mix in the community.</p>
<p>Also, we have not heard from UCM. I think that will probably happen in a few weeks. Are people starting to hear from them?</p>
<p>Gonzaga and the city of Spokane are very different from Seattle and Puget Sound region. There were some very disturbing incidents of anti-Asian crimes in Spokane a few years ago, and of course there was the foiled bombing of the MLK March this year. Clearly you can’t blame or associate Gonzaga University with the actions of malevolent individuals but the eastern region of Washington has its share of jackasses.</p>
<p>We learned about “eastsiders” and “westsiders” this weekend.</p>
<p>sorry, shrink, i have no info on ucm. </p>
<p>santa clara’s campus is gorgeous!</p>
<p>Shrinkrap, Spokane has a fairly decent AA and bi-racial population, but you will find most of the college age AA kiddos are attending Eastern Washington, in Cheney a few miles to the west or WSU in Pullman about 70 miles south. To be honest I think a large number of Gonzaga students (Black and White) commute or pack up for the weekend and go home. The same can be said for Whitworth. Well, Whitworth is less of a commuter school, but the kiddos I know from Coeur d alene, Post Falls, Lewiston-Clarkston Valley, Moscow-Pullman area and the towns in between, all make frequent weekend trips home. But things may be changing … I see Gonzaga is rapidly building new dorm apts.</p>
<p>The problem with Gonzaga, Whitworth, and to some degree Eastern Washington is that a large subset of the student body have pre-established friend-groups or clicks. I ran into a friend of Ds who attends Whitworth. She and another local girl (now at Eastern) drove home for the 21st birthday party celebration for another friend attending WSU. These girls were all on the HS soccer team and hang out with kiddos from our town or old rival HS soccer players from our division. </p>
<p>Having lived in the Inland Northwest for the last 25 years and without knowing your S, I think these 3 schools are more of a gamble than WSU, especially for an AA kid. JMO.</p>
<p>Oh wow. Thanks.</p>
<p>Interesting that you should mention soccer.</p>
<p>Soccer is more important than anything to S</p>
<p>Finally heard from a UCM </p>
<p>Was using the hub’s laptop while traveling, and the spacebar is glitchy…</p>
<p>Hard to believe this may be one of my last posts ‘round these parts (looks around nostalgically), but I do’s believe we’s callin’ it a wrap! :-)</p>
<p>D2’s decision really came down to four schools: U Dayton, Ohio U, James Madison & Salisbury U. Denied at JMU, she narrowed her focus to UDayton & OU. We visited UDayton last weekend and, like the 1st time, I just couldn’t get into it. My husband didn’t like it either: totally different feel from Fordham (of course). Luckily, D2 said the kids she spent the night with were pretty forthcoming about their experiences, making our joint decision a total non-issue; come Fall 2011, D2 will be an OU Bobcat! :-)</p>
<p>We’re off to OU’s “Cultural Connections” weekend tomorrow night, and honestly? I’m excited! She was heavily recruited by the Speech & Debate team - so she’ll have a ready-made social group, The campus has an active minority presence, and her scholarship comes with sufficient “strings” (mandatory minority meet-ups) that I dare hope she’ll be wooed into a sense of community & belonging heretofore missing from her life. So my friends, I am off to purchase my green & white gear. It’ll be a nice complement to the last three years of Brandeis Blue. </p>
<p>Shrink - dying to know where your son ultimately lands. Has everyone else made final decisions too?</p>