DS21 and I are going to visit U.Miami, UCF and UF the week of April 6th. We are flying from So Cal to Miami then driving up the coast. We’ll probably depart from Jacksonville to Sky Harbor for ASU and UA visits. We have official campus tours booked at the Florida schools as well as a meeting with Luke at UCF. I was hoping to hear some suggestions from the cc community regarding what we should try to squeeze in on this trip. Suggested places or people to connect with? Things to avoid? Other considerations? Thanks!
Jacksonville airport is not the best to use to get across country. You’ll have many more options from Orlando.
But that being said, there are a lot of really nice state parks and walking parks along the A1A. Look down by the San Sebastien inlet. St Augustine has a lot to do, with the old town but also has a winery tour that is nice.
@twoinanddone thank you for that advice about Jacksonville. I haven’t booked the air travel yet so this advice is golden! We will retrace our steps back to Orlando instead, from Gainesville.
So I forgot to mention that side excursions involving any walking are not an option. The campus tours are going to be difficult enough for me! I am suffering greatly, more and more each day, from what apparently is a horrific case of plantar fasciitis picked up last July during DS21’s first football camp. I had no idea it would include a tour of campus - I naively thought I’d be dropping him off at the field for a day of skills and conditioning - and I’d be lounging by the hotel pool all day. So I wore Birkenstocks which were way too hard for the several hours of walking we ended up doing. The next day I felt a stabbing pain in my right heel and thought I’d fractured something since it came on so suddenly. Finally got an X-ray about two months ago and nothing showed up and since then the pain has gotten progressively worse. It hurts most toward the end of the day and least first thing in the morning which is apparently not the norm for pf but that’s how it’s manifesting for me. I’m in pain all day long and it’s spread to most of my foot now, not just the heel. So no walking tours other than gritting my teeth and dealing with the campus ones, sigh.
So first you need some shoes and/or inserts designed to let the PF heal. I have had great success with Vionics. Expensive but the relief is worth every penny. Avoid buying on QVC as their made for QVC versions are less expensive for a reason. A good department store (Dillard’s) or Amazon are better sources. A good running shoe store will have suggestions as well for other brands.
Spring break sales for flights are already going on. Enjoy your tours!
Just a heads up on visiting ASU during spring break, plan early! We tried to do that several years ago and had to cancel because we could not find a hotel in the Phoenix area because of spring baseball.
They will provide a cart at UCF, its a big campus and they really zipped us around !
@sherimba03 Was searching for NMF and UM posts and your name seems to keep popping up. My oldest is in Barrett at ASU on a presidential scholarship. Great school, we are really pleased with that program.
My D20 just got her NMF notification. She’s already been accepted to UM with 20K presidential, we are going to go to admitted students day on April 5. The scholarship plus Benacquisto Which I believe stacks (?) makes UM a top choice. Her number 1 is USC, where her dad went. We changed her NMF to “undecided” until after we hear from USC and tour UM. She had USC listed as 1 and suddenly with finding out benecquisto is available To OOS UM has shot to the top! She also applied to CAL and Cornell, not really thinking she’ll get in to those.
@Trolleydolly lol, my name keeps popping up…yeah that makes sense given my focus! I’m sure you’ll also find me on searches for “MIT football” or similar 
Congrats on your DD’s NMF and UM Presidential award! With the Benacquisto stacked, I would expect that the COA for her at UM would be substantially below that of USC unless she receives additional awards beyond the NMF half-tuition. Personally I’d be so excited if my DS chose UM, especially now that they are in the midst of tearing down the Towers and replacing them with the new student village - it looks like it will be an amazing residential experience! Of course they are charging more for the new residence halls vs M/P or ERC so it will be very helpful to have the scholarships stacking together to help defray the costs. Keep us posted on how things go!
My head is spinning. We got very little guidance on schools that are generous supporters of NMSF and I only recently found this site. We are now looking at options like UTD and UCF, but we are so late in the game. Should we even bother at this point? UCF looks like a good fit but the school is ginormous and reviews talk a lot about just being a number. Obviously the honors program would alleviate some of those concerns… @Trolleydolly Tell me about ASU: I see there are 4 different campuses - how does that really work in practice? D20 is hoping to do an interdisciplinary major - maybe CS with Poly Sci/Human communication. Are private messages allowed? I see I have an inbox but am not sure how to send messages. Some thread said I need 15 posts…
@MamaFx3 UCF has rolling admissions so you are definitely not too late. The honors college is amazing and a great little nook in a very large university. The NM students are very well taken care of and the package is very generous. Luke Van Blaricom is the contact person there. Great guy and has been just a text away all the while my daughter has been there.
@MamaFx3 Although UCF has rolling admissions, your D should get on the ball to apply because the Honors College application has a deadline of March 31, I believe.
@amsunshine: She is applying now!
@Phlipper: Has your daughter had any trouble with classes? I read that most honors classes are waitlisted. How does that affect 4 year grad plan? My other concern is being too late to get into the Burnett housing. We’re in high gear now and are planning a visit.
My daughter hasn’t had difficulty getting into classes but she is a music major so maybe that affects it? You should have no trouble getting into Towers which is where the honors students live. As an NM they guarantee you a spot and it is amazing.
@MamaFx3 My JD lives on the Tempe campus but is a journalism major so her classes are downtown. She wanted to be on the “big” campus freshman year and has stayed ever since. She was direct admit for Journalism but wanted to live on the Tempe campus so she switched to communications. After her first semester she switched back. She is in Barrett so her first two years she had to live on campus. Year two they live in asu apartments. There is a bus that runs 24 hours a day to all 4 campuses. It’s easy to get around to each campus
@MamaFx3 - I am another Barrett parent. My first DS graduated from Barrett in '18. He was a Chemistry Major. My second DS is a sophomore and a CS major. Both boys liked the big/small aspect. ASU is big, but Barrett has a small campus feel. The current student is also doing Marching band and Concert band. The deal at ASU for NMF is full tuition, guaranteed for 4 years. Housing, meals and books are on you/your student. We are asking him to take some federal student loans. Our part is about $10k. Depending on how many AP or IB credits you bring with you, a graduate degree may be an option. My DS will have a MS at the end of the 4 years.
We are supposed to be in Florida right now. I am really sad, and worried, about DS21’s future in general, and college plans specifically. Personally, I have a lot of doubt now about the Benacquisto and its short-term viability over the next few years. I just don’t trust that it will be there for us. So, we are looking closer to home, and also hoping that MIT, Harvard, U Chicago, and the other schools interested in DS21 for football which have enormous endowments might actually ratchet up their grants and scholarships given the state of the world. My job is secure for the moment, and given that I work in medical devices I’d say that I’m a lot safer than so many people, and for that enormously grateful, but I feel zero sense of stability or security. Certainly, the idea of paying more than $10-15k per year for college just seems extraordinarily high risk to me. I’m thinking long and hard about what my income needs to be over the next decade or two so that I can retire before I drop from exhaustion!
Right there with you @sherimba03 . Worries about OOS Benaquisto and looking closer to home. We are down to one income but would still be full pay and D21 is not an athlete. So we will have to cast a wide net.
I hear you, but hopefully things will become clearer by next admission cycle. DD20 needs to commit by 5/1 and we probably will take a leap of faith that Benaquisto will survive the next few years.