Rollins people out there....anyone?? Anyone??

<p>I'm surprised to see no current postings about Rollins College. It is a wonderful college. My daughter found out in January that she was accepted to Rollins and was offered the Alonzo Rollins Scholarship, $22,000. This, together with bright futures and FL resident grant is about $28,000 to go to Rollins. She can live at home, we are 20 minutes away. I would LOVE to have her live in the dorm, but it's not something we can afford, so not an option. She was also accepted to FSU, UCF and Simmons College in Boston. She could go to UCF for next to nothing, but feels Rollins is a good fit for her, and I agree. We are thrilled about Rollins. Was just wondering if there was anyone else out there going to Rollins.</p>

<p>Hi howsefrau, there’s not alot of activity on the Rollins boards and I try to comment every so often as a parent of two who attend there. My D is currently a freshman and S is a junior. They both enjoy Rollins and have done very well. Rollins still has a past reputation to rehash but all of my family have been extremely pleased with all Rollins has to offer. Your D can check if a facebook page has been created for 2016. I know my D met alot of people online before attending orientation in the fall.</p>

<p>Thank you for your response! Sometimes I am surprised that more people don’t know about Rollins, because I think it is a great school. Of course, it does have the reputation of being a rich kid/party school, by some, but also known to have great opportunities for a great education. I took my 13 year old in for her yearly physical and our pediatrician asked about my older daughter, I told him she was going to Rollins, got a great scholarship offer, and he told me that both of his kids went to Rollins and he loved it! He also said that his son got nearly a full ride scholarship and they had to live at home and how much he loved the school. His son is now a doctor. He couldn’t have had more praise for the school. My daughter is in love with the school and a wonderful scholarship so it looks like we will be making the deposit any day now. My daughter is on the facebook page already, and we went to the accepted student’s day in late February. She will have to live at home, it’s the only way we can afford it, but I figure if my kids doctor made his kids live at home to attend Rollins, and they survived, my daughter will too! I would love for her to live on campus, but we just can’t afford it. She is ok with that, she knows that we are already going to help with as much as we can, but just can’t swing another $13,000, which is ok since we are only 20 minutes from the campus. She currently commutes 20 minutes to her high school, so she is already accustomed to that drive. Thank you again for your response! I wish more knew about what a beautiful school Rollins really is.</p>

<p>Good to see some activity on Rollins! My D has ben accepted with a 18K scholarship but has also been accepted to Boston U., U. of Miami, UC Riverside and U. of San Diego without any scholarship (she is inyternational). Despite the cost advantage, we are not really considering Rollins because we think that the reputation of the other schools is greater and there will be more opportunities to go to a good grad school later on (especially with BU). Are we wrong? Thanks to help us forging an opinion. It is not that easy for international people to understand the complex US college environment!</p>

<p>My daughter was accepted but is very dissappointed that she will be unable to attend due to the cost. Who wouldn’t be, considering the country club beautiful campus and consistantly high rankings. Even with the aid offered, it is still too expensive for our middle-class budget. We would also have travel expenses to add to the college costs. It would not be wise to put herself and our family in deep debt in order to attend a college that is virtually unknown in our part of the country (northeast). A Rollins diploma or alumni connections may not hold much value in the job market as she does not intend to live in Florida after college. It’s a great school but I just think the “rich kid” tag still has some merit. Best of luck to all!</p>

<p>BTW: She was accepted to similarly ranked and higher profile schools that were a bit more generous in their aid packages.</p>

<p>Wow, things have changed for my daughter, big time, and she has decided to turn down Rollins after all and go to the University of Central Florida. Money was the biggest reason, for the same exact reason that you stated nyny dad, it was simply too much for our middle class family, and I agreed, it is well known here in Central Florida as a wonderful college, but is pretty much unknown outside of this area. It is beautiful! It truly is a country club lifestyle there. My daughter finally realized that she would not be one of those kids with that country club lifestyle, but instead would be the one one working every weekend to pay just to go there, and would not even be able to afford a dorm on campus. She was dead-set against going to UCF until she actually toured the campus and found that she loved it. She was accepted to FSU also, but she felt that UCF had more to offer. Bright Futures made it possible for her to have to take a very small amount of loans that we will most likely be able to pay for most, if not at least half of those loans by the time she is done. Rollins is beautiful! I would have loved to have seen her go there, and she did get a very generous merit scholarship, but even after that, it was still way more than UCF will cost.</p>

<p>My daughter finally decided that she is going to Rollins! We live in Wisconsin where Rollins is not well known, so it is nice to hear others experiences there. We all came to Accepted Student day in April and were very impressed not only with the campus, but with everyone we met-teachers, councellors, students we just stopped on the street to talk to. </p>

<p>does anyone have any advice to give me as a parent living in WI, or my daughter to help transition to the college? or any first hand comments about the college (hopefully to let us know she made the right choice :-)</p>

<p>My daughter did receive a wonderful scholarship which brought the cost down to be comparable to other schools she was accepted to. she just may not be able to come home as often due to the cost of transportation. We are concerned with the image of being a ‘rich-kid’ school where she may not fit in, based on comments on other sites, but did not really get that sense while we were there. does anyone have any first hand info about this? if the majority really are stuck up snobs (as is described on these sites) at least she can try to prepare herself for it. as I mentioned, we found everyone to be extremely friendly.</p>

<p>our other big concern, of course, is just that she will be so far away from home. SHe won’t turn 18 until November. I do hope that she gets a really good roommate and finds someone to befriend whose family lives nearby. But it does seem that the teachers take a personal interest in their students as well as the school really seems to put a lot of effort into making the transition to college as smooth as possible. I do hope that I am right about this!</p>

<p>as you can probably tell from this post, this is our first child going away to college (my son will be a jr in HS next year), and my husband and i both lived at home for our college years so dorm life, etc is not anything we can really relate to to help prepare her. any words of advice will be so appreciated! thanks</p>

<p>I’m not at home now so I will pm later today. I have two kids there and can give some detailed feedback. There is alot of info available that you can look over that will reduce your worries. I’ll post some info when I get the chance later.</p>

<p>Sent from my DROIDX using CC</p>

<p>Regarding the “rich kid’s school” title. Every state has one… it’s usually a private school with a high tuition, so certainly every kid there MUST be rich, right? Often the school has nice grounds and pretty landscaping. Usually it’s liberal arts. My older son attends the school with this title in Memphis TN. We visited the country club school in Virginia, NC, SC, TN, FL, and MS. I really believe every campus had their share of rich kids, but mostly they had regular kids who were working hard, were smart, funny, goofy, normal kids. I don’t put much merit in the title country club school for rich kids anymore.</p>

<p>Agree ^^^with the country club/rich kids atmosphere at alot of colleges. Rollins does have its share of rich kids and some that flaunt their money but for the most part there are alot of kids on scholarships and work study on campus. Both of my kids hang with people that generally have to watch their spending. Many had to consult their family about fees for greek life. Not everyone at Rollins can drop a few hundred on a weekend either. </p>

<p>As far as being 17 when she starts college, the only thing you will need to do is sign paperwork. There will be others only 17 as well. I know My D has a friend that turned 18 in the fall and they had a special birthday celebration for her. Also there are a couple under 21 clubs that she could not go to as a 17 year old. She will adapt quickly but as parents I know there is always that worry, especially with the first one heading to college. I believe Rollins does a great job helping the kids adapt to college but you can stipulate weekly skype sessions/text/calls until she gets settled in.</p>

<p>My kids both had great roommates. My D only knew of one change request which did happen without alot of fuss. Her dorm assignment will be determined by the RCC(this is the first year course for all freshmen) she chooses and ultimately gets. The list is already available to look at. I’ll pm the specifics. My S got his first choice and D got her second choice. Also her advisor will be the instructor for that RCC.</p>

<p>My internet was down for the last couple days and I could not log on so I will pm some detailed info later.</p>

<p>My daughter is just finishing her freshman year at Rollins and has loved every minute of it. We are a low income family but she was given one of the Cornell awards for which we are very thankful - otherwise we would not have been able to afford it. She has not found that campus is full of rich kids at all. A lot of her friends have jobs or work study to help with the cost. She is very low maintenance as far as clothes etc are concerned but she has not felt in the least inadequate in that department.</p>

<p>She applied for and has been given a Residents Assistants post for next year. She will use the money she receives to pay her Sorority dues and for summer travel etc. </p>

<p>She loves the campus and has been very involved. She loves the facilities, the location and has enjoyed Park Ave a lot. She is into the theatre and has taken part in a play and been involved in the department this year. She also takes photographs and because of that is now an honorary member of the Quidditch team :)</p>

<p>Lots of kids on campus have no transport but can always find a ride with someone else for trips to Universal Studios etc. We are lucky that she is only 2 hours away from home and can come home some weekends but has friends from out of state/country and they seem to go home some weekends with kids who live nearer.</p>

<p>She has really enjoyed the small classes at Rollins and feels close to some of her teachers. They certainly take an interest in the kids at Rollins - one of them, who is an alum of her sorority even went over to the sorority house last week to help them with their hair for formal.</p>

<p>I just got back onto the website to see all of these responses (I thought they got forwarded to me). thank you everyone! reading through them really makes me feel comfortable with Rollins. </p>

<p>now that the decision is made, once APs are done this week, we will focus on getting her ready to move. any suggestions are welcome!</p>

<p>also, has anyone experienced the orientation in June? while part of me says it is silly to fly to Forida from WI for 2 or 3 days, the other part of me thinks it is something she really should do to help her prepare herself for August. any thoughts?</p>

<p>My daughter went to summer Orientation last year and had a great time. She met a girl who she got on really well with and they applied to share a room together, which they did and it worked out really well.</p>

<p>If you’ve been to accepted students day and you live out of state I don’t know how your finances are for yet another trip to Florida. If you can maange it, I’m sure she would find it useful and enjoyable but if not, I’m sure there will be lots of others who can’t make it.</p>

<p>As a recent Rollins alumni, I feel like I can shed a little bit of light onto this.</p>

<p>Rollins is a party school, through and through. The administration has been making solid attempts at changing the culture. However, they’ve also been trying to push through detrimental changes with the faculty at the same time. Rollins is a school where you truly can’t have both. Our president has been pushing to make us a legitimately considered liberal arts college… while doubling (or more) the MBA professors’ salaries while making slashes to other departments. </p>

<p>The campus security has become much more militant in recent years. Instead of teaching responsibility, they have been focused on becoming a military-state where the least infraction of any policy (especially regarding alcohol) can seriously jeopardize a student’s academic career. </p>

<p>This would be fine and dandy if it was accompanied by a call for more rigorous academic standards. Instead, social science departments are being refused the funds for new professors when current profs retire. </p>

<p>Greek life is very strong on campus. I waited until my senior year to be involved, and I don’t regret it. After a semester on campus, your children will have an idea as to which organizations are really about personal improvement instead of the ones that are about organizing parties exclusively. </p>

<p>I will always look back fondly on my time at Rollins. It was much more like the schools I really wanted to go to (top LACs). Professors in your department KNOW you by the end of your time at Rollins. If you miss class, they will call you or email you to make sure you’re alright. Classes are very interactive and you won’t succeed if you don’t put in the work before class. My honors thesis (and consequently) my honors status was canceled after my advisor and I had a disagreement on the topic of my thesis. Despite this turbulence in our relationship, he still wrote an awesome letter of recommendation for grad school that I’m sure helped me get into my current program. </p>

<p>Make sure your children know Rollins is only what they can make out of it. It is entirely too easy to coast through and graduate without getting real world experience that can place them into a career after graduation. AS SOON as your children have an inkling of an idea of what they want to do, have them talk to profs and career services. I wish I had taken more advantage of the internships available on and off campus, but by the time I realized this, i was late in my coursework and my schedule wouldn’t allow it. Despite being a great school, students have to network their way into a job after Rollins. Our alumni base is spread across the country, but only having a BA (or AB as all Rollins grads get) simply won’t cut it these days. </p>

<p>I started coming to this site in HS to get an idea of what I had to do in order to secure scholarships and succeed in college. After graduating and remaining underemployed for a year, I realized I had to make myself more marketable than only a college grad–even if it was form a decently respected school. Rollins is capable of offering unprecedented and amazing opportunities, but students have to actively seek them out on their own. I couldn’t imagine a better place to spend my four most formative years, but I know if I could go back I would do things a lot differently. While it’s no Amherst or Williams (by any stretch of the imagination) Rollins is capable of offering a LOT of chances for success. Just know these won’t come knocking at your childrens’ door, they have to actively seek them out on their own.</p>