<p>Ok. I guess I will add to this. D will graduate hs 2012</p>
<p>Akron: EVERYONE goes there. Never.</p>
<p>Mt. Union: omg, ****** goes there. It can’t be good. Me: he is an athlete who got a scholarship. her: no!</p>
<p>Any college in west Virginia or Kentucky: eww, never. It is west Virginia. I explain that WV is a pretty state etc… she rolls her eyes and walks away.</p>
<p>Any school in " the bible belt."</p>
<p>Any school in Pittsburgh or Ann arbor Michigan…she hates the steelers and loves Ohio state buckeyes.</p>
<p>She doesn’t really want to go to any college with navy blue and gold/yellow colors because those are Michigan colors…although I don’t think this would exclude a school if it met other requirements and was “hilly” Lol</p>
<p>Something she seems really adamant about: I don’t want to go anywhere where there is flat land. it is ugly and I am scared of tornadoes. there has to be hills or mountains. The campus has to have a lot of trees and be pretty. </p>
<p>I am sure there are others, I will add as this search continues…</p>
<p>^ @ mspearl - Did you tell her there are plenty of hills and mountains in WV? I’m teasing. If a student gets a certain impression it’s hard to shake that and rarely, rarely worth it. They have to narrow the field somehow.</p>
<p>Well that’s just great mspearl. Your daughter WANTS hills? Now I have to amend my post to add in hills. (with assistance from Cottonwood, who started the idea):</p>
<p>“Don’t put your college in a square state, or NJ. Don’t put it out in the sticks. Or in an urban area. Don’t make all the buildings look alike. Don’t make all the buildings look different - there should be a theme. But it shouldn’t be Georgian or modern or gothic or Mission Style (aka Taco Bell). Don’t have too much parking in the middle of campus. Don’t make it so there’s no where to park. Be sure your tour guides aren’t too preppy or goth or sloppy or fashionable or dumb or snotty or boring or overly-enthusiastic. Make sure they share their own experiences and feelings but don’t let them talk about themselves. Be sure your football team is great - but be sure NOT to have a football team. Don’t put your campus on a hill, but make sure it is hilly. Make sure there are no Southern accents, but the weather is warm and sunny year round, except for the lovely fall and change of seasons and a little bit of pretty snow - but it can’t be cold when it snows. It can’t have tornadoes or hurricanes or earthquakes. Make sure your info session and tour guides talk about classes and majors, as long as its the major the tour-ee is interested in. Don’t be TOO welcoming or too organized - you’ll look like you’re trying too hard. Don’t be disorganized. If you have Greek life, make sure no one sees it - unless they’re looking for it, in which case make sure there are plenty of kids with Greek letters walking around. And for heavens’ sake, make sure you have a normal mascot but not a boring one, and make sure your school colors look good on everyone and match everyone’s outfits!”</p>
<p>Actually, that was a fairly good description of my D’s requirements - not too far from our home in New England, but somewhere she could walk to class without a coat. (OK, right there she had eliminated every college in existence). Not huge, not tiny. Not in the sticks, not in the city. She actually found a school that met all her requirements, except that it is a plane ride away - she’s at Elon, in NC, with 5000 kids, in a mid-size town with lots of shopping and restaurants, and lovely warm weather - except that it DID snow in December and January, but melted in a day or two. Just finished freshman year and loved it.</p>
<p>montegut: she is very serious about the Michigan issue. she has no interest in any school in the state of Michigan! One thing she wants to do is drive through Ann Arbor with Ohio state gear on. The Michigan/Ohio rivalry is very strong in our community. people decorate their basements/bedrooms/you name it in scarlet and gray. I wouldn’t even call my D a huge sports fan but like she said, walking into Ann arbor would be like entering enemy territory. I asked her what if she got a scholarship to Michigan and she shook her head and said I could never be a wolverine. </p>
<p>so yeah, any college in Michigan is out. Lol</p>
<p>mspearl, I was just going to email you that I found an LAC with linguisitcs…but it is Hope College in Michigan. Guess I am back to the drawing board!</p>
<p>Mizzbee! Thank you! That is so funny! I actually have heard about that school…maybe I will have to twist her arm to get her to look at it online. Lol.</p>
<p>^^^ our tour guide at Reed College in Portland, OR was a linguistics major - plus there are lots of hills there. Although my D was accepted there, she opted not to go because she thought she might not fit in (probably because of the Venn diagram in the info session where the speaker was comparing geeks and nerds - the Reedies were the ones in the overlap area who “care what the difference is between the two”).</p>
<p>The cross between a geek and a nerd is a gerd. My kids friends actually call themselves this. Perhaps we should let Reed know?</p>
<p>Note: I appreciate what you’re saying Himom. It’s one thing to refer to yourself as something…perhaps my sons friends wouldn’t appreciate the discussion with anyone else.</p>
<p>I can see how such a discussion & diagram might be QUITE off-putting, even to geeks & nerds & everyone else. I guess it takes a certain mindset to appreciate such a discussion & diagram. My kids would not be amused/interested either & I think they both have nerd/geek tendencies.</p>
<p>What the heck is the difference between Geek, Nerd & Gerd? My kids just want to be “regular” and “fit in.” Thanks for any clarification for my fuddled mind.</p>
<p>Himom - I’m not really sure what the difference is, since I use the terms interchangeably - although never in a condescending or “I’m better than you way” :)</p>
<p>I would say the difference for the kids I referenced is the level to which they embraced their own status with no desire to change, just as a preppy or a jock. Often a geek or nerd is viewed negatively, even as someone who would like to change their social ‘status’ for lack of a better phrase. The gerds are perfectly happy being gerds, rather proud to be gerds, with no desire to migrate to any other social circle. This may be totally unique to their school since it’s an IT high school. Lots of these kids are taking dual-enrolled IT classes in web-tech, database, etc. They find a great deal of social acceptance from their peers.</p>
<p>I have no idea the context of Reeds definition, but when you mentioned the two that’s what came to mind. Our kids took two negative stereotypes and created something cool in their eyes.</p>
<p>But Tufts’ Jumbo was a REAL elephant and the real stuff version was on campus when I visited many moons ago. (Unfortunately a fire took care of that.) :)</p>
<p>Whenever my son hears the name Colgate he shakes his head and says “I could never go to a college named after a toothpaste.”</p>
<p>I feel like geek is more of a universal term - i.e. there are orchestra and band geeks, while nerd is more about schoolwork (especial math and science though not exclusively). My kids tend to use the word interchangeably though. I don’t think either of them would have been put off by the Reed presentation.</p>
<p>My S2 hated the Tufts presentation (which was all about finding yourself and figuring out who you were when applying to colleges), but that’s where he ended up.</p>
Never heard of gerd until just now. I consider the terms interchangeable but decades apart, but my son has told me the difference (something about specificity, I think). Basically, just smart, interested in whatever academic or intellectual topic, often to the exclusion of athletic skills or ability to choose flattering clothes. One might call you, HIMom, a grammar geek because you use the US-correct but odd placement of quotation marks around “fit in.” Or call me one because I noticed and wonder if that is in fact correct.</p>
<p>Most people I know strongly identify in that general category and don’t want to change, but just see it as a facet of themselves (tall or teenager or geek or American), and like any facet of themselves, are happy with it and want to be true to themselves. My kid will be regular and fit in at his geek school. But he never wanted to fit in enough to change his basic nature.</p>
<p>Asked mine. Here’s what they came up with for what it’s worth:</p>
<p>Nerd is about what someone is interested in. Geek is about someone whose fashion sense and self presentation is extreme – like pocket protectors and other a bit unfortunate (to my kids) affectations.</p>
<p>They said they’d each been called nerds for their extreme studiousness of intellectuality at times (not at their colleges where they claimed everyone would have to be a nerd to get through) but never a Geek.</p>
<p>We were watching the British IT Crowd (about the IT department at a British Corp.) and they said the cuter guy (Chris O’Dowd) is a nerd and the other guy (bad hair cut, shirt buttoned way to the chin and other things like that ) is a Geek.</p>
<p>Am I imagining it? Or do the colleges have color mailings targeted separately to male and female prospies? Just one son here, but those of you with offspring of both genders, what do you think?</p>
<p>Cottonwood - my b/g twins, who had generally similar scores on standardized tests, often received mailings from the same colleges; they all appeared identical through and through. No evidence here of any differentiated-gender mailings.</p>
I’m teasing. If a student gets a certain impression it’s hard to shake that and rarely, rarely worth it. They have to narrow the field somehow.</p>
But he never wanted to fit in enough to change his basic nature.</p>