@twogirls thank you. I feel the same way for so many people. My cousin just graduated college and her job offer has been “temporarily” rescinded. She interned there for two summers, and has had this offer for almost a year. Seeing her try not to tear up on a zoom a few weeks back was hard for all of us.
My dad owns a small business and some of his staff are furloughed. We’ll make it through, and hopefully he can hire them all back, but it’s not fair. My mom is a HS physics teacher and she’s in our home office every day for hours teaching, then spends half the night prepping or grading.
I say this because I think, like you and me and most everyone, this is amongst the hardest times in any of our lives. I’m no doubt privileged. My life has been easy in terms of the obstacles facing me, or lack thereof. I feel a little guilty about mourning an “experience”, but then I remember I’m 18 and revert to thinking only about myself for a few days.
Perspective is important. Even those of us who are not 18 have things we are mourning right now. It’s ok to do that, but then we have to remind ourselves where we are and go forward as best we can.
I feel for the young people going through this, because many of them have no experience with hardship and this is a sudden, brutal, reality harder than anything they have ever faced. And it’s going to get worse. A lot worse. What we think is hard now could seem like a cakewalk. No one is ready for this, even us “old-timers”.
@ny2020ny You sound like you have a great head on your shoulders. You 150% have the right to be sad, and I imagine that my DS would have a harder time processing fall 2020 had he already been away to school. You’re mourning the loss of something you’ve already experienced, which is very different than what the 2020s are facing as they and their families weigh their options for the fall.
My s’s greater challenge emotionally has been accepting the loss of HS graduation, prom, senior skip day, his final track season, etc. That has been a tougher road, and will take longer for him to move on from emotionally. We get that, and we are giving him all the time and space he needs. So I hear you.
I just wish we knew the plan before my D has to pick her freshman classes. She would pick different classes based on whether they are on-line or in person. She is undecided on her major. If they are in person, she wants to do some exploratory classes to try out different majors. If they are online she will just pick her Gen-Ed requirements and get those over with. So hard to decide when she doesn’t know the format.
@Knowsstuff gen eds aren’t a thing everywhere. And @MAmom111 maybe your D will know what’s up before she chooses classes? Have freshman registered yet? It’s pretty early.
Bowdoin pushed off registration for all students until after they have a plan. Sounds like they want to make sure the classes they offer will be as good as possible if they have to be remote which means certain classes may not be offered or have to be adjusted. I heard one school (not Bowdoin) was planning on some lab classes to have no lab for the semester and kids will do the lab sections when they return to campus. Stuff like that. Maybe your D can call her advisor and ask how each of the classes she’s interested in are going to be run.
It’s not uncommon for schools to allow chemistry or biology class one semester, with the lab a different semester. My D did that all the time on campus.
I agree with this. Not sure where the “all courses at LACs are generalist” trope came from. My experience 50 years ago was that even junior faculty were expected to have published something in a reputable academic press by the time they came up for tenure. And, you can bet the subject found its way into the course catalogue. It’s bound to be even more true today because its a buyer’s market as far as teaching is concerned.
PC has a freshman class of about 1100. So, 50/1100 or 4%, 6-10 times as many as in a typical year, would be a problem for them, but 2-3 times would be ok.
Here’s some anecdotal evidence on my end. I am about to graduate from a private school in NY. Graduating class under 200. I would say maybe 10% of the class is on some level of scholarship, with the remaining 90% almost certainly full pay incoming college freshmen.
We were on a zoom call about a week ago with the head college advisor. He told us that over 40% of the class had inquired with his office about the process of taking a gap year. Now, that’s an inquiry and not a request. BUT…logically, I would imagine families that can afford to take a gap year- those without scholarships they’d be in danger of losing, those who might be in a position to craft a reasonably fruitful year off, etc.- are more likely to request a gap year. Add international students to the fold, and my strong sense is that WHO requests the gap years is as or more important than how many. And I would guess that the majority of those requesting gap years are the exact students the colleges don’t want to…their cash cows.
My rising college senior is scheduled to choose fall classes this week. He had several options of course schedules in mind and late last week, some classes fell off the list and are no longer being offered in the fall. Other classes had a change in professors or now say TBD.
The classes that are no longer being offered were upper division science classes with labs. I’m hoping that the change in professors will mean that those who are teaching in the fall will feel more comfortable teaching virtual or hybrid courses.
Presumably they have been moved to the winter semester? I’ve been wondering how DS19’s school is going to handle this. I took a look at his required courses for the fall and of the 8 four are lab courses with 2 being in each semester. One course is a computer course and I imagine on-line labs would be easy to accomodate. The other however is part of a 2 course sequence with both halves having a lab component. I’m not sure how that one will be handled. He’s also considering a lab course as an elective and as it currently stands it’s only available first semester. They’ve pushed off course enrolment to July so it will be a bit before the new course schedule gets released. It will be interesting to see what they do but I think he should consider taking courses that would be easy to do online as electives. He could always defer the lab elective to the next year if he still wants to take it.
S20 received his room assignment for South Carolina this morning. He doesn’t really like crowds of people, so he will be happy to attend large lectures online from his room.
@Mwfan1921 "Do you have a source for this claim specifically to Bowdoin?
Sure, schools can and do infer family income level of a given applicant in many ways, but many need blind schools have no idea whether the applicant applied for FA, let alone their level of need if they did apply."
“Level of need” for applicants can be roughly approximated through where a person lives, the school they attend, specific home address, parental occupation and where they went to college, and many, many other sophisticated data-based computer models employed by colleges. Does anyone else ever wonder why the Common App asks for parental information including occupation and where parents attended college? It’s not the FAFSA or Profile. It’s right on the Common App.
Please see this research regarding the NESCAC that is written Bowdoin '17 grad Walter Chacon. Elite colleges aren’t admitting such a great proportion of very wealthy students year are year by chance. The entire “holistic” process was originally designed to allow this (see Daniel Golden’s book, “The Price of Admission”). Test optional schools with holistic admissions, no matter their public rhetoric, aren’t giving Rural Randy the same look-over as Affluent Allen.
“My research suggests that colleges construct a race-neutral and class-neutral discourse about themselves which appeals to everyone, regardless of background. It is through this discourse that elite schools present themselves in a way that masks the intense social reproduction and the power of wealth in determining access to elite colleges.”
“…some students are much more predisposed than others to gain the credentials that NESCACs value, giving further evidence of the myth of meritocracy. By leaving race and class out of the mix, elite colleges present a colorblind and class-neutral discourse that diminishes the importance of
social background in determining enrollment in highly selective colleges.”
“The NESCAC webpages focus on how they can help poorer students attend. They are silent, however, about how they admit so many affluent students. The discourse focusing on less advantaged populations masks the ways NESCAC colleges enroll a wildly disproportionate share of highly wealthy students.”
He is in a suite that has 4 single rooms, 2 shared baths, and a common area. It was a request of ours, but South Carolina has stated that they hope to have 80% of students in singles.
Unlikely “all” colleges, since many residential colleges have “just enough” dorm space and do not have enough empty nearby hotels or other housing to rent.