My daughter is attending BU’s summer school – it must be a popular program b/c the BU website for summer school is comprehensive and impressive. She liked the idea of being in Boston for 6 weeks (that has been great), but she is not happy with the program. The class has been “just OK.” The worst part is BU makes you buy a meal plan and the dining options are terrible. The plan was expensive for 6 weeks (even buying just a 10 meal a week plan). The only takeaway is she loves Boston, but does not love BU.
Better to be disappointed as a visiting summer student than as a freshman.
My kid is also in Boston doing summer college in a different impressively-websited program, and she has similar complaints: the classes aren’t what she expected (if there had been more breadth of courses offered in the summer and a longer drop/add period, I think she might have chosen differently); the dining hall food ranges from okay to inedible; walking / biking around Boston with her suitemates is great but everything is expensive. The school she’s at is not one she’d planned to apply to, and she has even less interest in applying now.
Some things I have learned about my kid from this and the previous four years of academic sleepaway summer programs:
- She is really hard to feed. Stress makes her extra picky, and typical picky-kid staples are not things she eats. She needs to do an overnight (not an accepted students overnight when they have extra good food!) before she picks a college. She's requested that the Giant Spreadsheet of Doom include the nature of the cooking facilities easily available. I'll probably add grocery store information, too. She prefers a central dining hall with more options to dorm-based dining halls each with fewer options. Late-night snacks included in the meal plan are a plus. Unlimited swipes (so you can have both early dinner and late dinner) are a plus.
- A block schedule school, or a trimester system with 3 10-week classes per term, is not for her. She's in the 6th of 7 weeks, and last week was really the first one where I didn't hear that she was struggling. It takes her a couple weeks to find her footing and a couple more to dig out of the hole. Two classes is not enough; when she needs a break from Class One, there's not always something productive that needs to be done for Class Two. I think she'd do better at a school with 5 3-credit classes over 16 weeks as the norm; 4 4-credit classes over 15-16 weeks will probably be okay but not as good.
- She has not complained a bit about suitemates (she's in a room of 6), shared bathrooms, lack of air conditioning (week before last was brutal in Boston), or other "shared living" issues. One less thing to worry about. I think she actually likes being in a bigger suite, and schools with a higher proportion of singles might be less desirable. Last summer, she was in a single, and I think she was lonelier and more isolated.
- Extended drop / add, shopping period, late withdrawal with no transcript notation, a large number of classes to choose from, and other ways to reduce the risk of picking a suboptimal class are good. That said, her "ugh this class isn't what I thought it would be" complaints are generally "I feel ignorant and behind" complaints; she performs a lot better when she feels ignorant and behind, but it's still not a great feeling.
- She recognizes that she doesn't yet have enough life experience to make good judgement, and she's willing to call on my good judgement when her own judgement has let her down. (I have gotten early morning phone calls about sleeping through class, early evening phone calls about sleeping through all three meal periods, and late night phone calls about putting off papers until a few hours before they were due, all asking what she should do.) I think she's unlikely to be the kid who stops attending class or doing any work while telling her parents everything is fine. My gray hairs will all be from things I'm aware of, not what might be.
- This experience will be much more positive in retrospect than in the moment.
Holy Moly! 4 years of academic sleep-away camp? Sometimes little bits of info like this from startle me into wondering how my kids survived freshman year. I would think after all that college-transitioning experience yours won’t have any problem acclimating when she’s a freshman!
@luckymama64 - that’s a bummer. I know a bunch of super happy BU students and a number of happy BU graduates so all I can think is that the kids who are happy at BU are probably in more interesting programs and don’t care about food. LOL. I don’t remember college food being very good but these days expectations are higher. I do think a large college campus with only a few people on it has a very different vibe than when it’s packed with students during the school year.
A lot of kids like the personal freedoms more than the academic experiences. A young friend loved the rigor of her summer program at Stanford (humanities,) but not all programs are created equal- or even run by the colleges. Many just fill empty dorm rooms, make a little money for the college. It’s still a learning experience, though.
I love how much @allyphoe learned about her girl, from the summer experience plusses and minuses.
@CaMom13 Mine is an anxious kid who doesn’t transition to new situations well; she agreed that we needed a long-term plan that would make her confident that she’d be able to go away to college for 16 weeks at a time. Even this summer, we had at least one tearful phone call saying she wished she were doing less well in her classes so she could withdraw and come home. And this summer has been a resounding success compared to previous ones. Most kids don’t need so much scaffolding to launch!
Actually, my kid is a rising junior and goes to a pretty academically challenging LAC–that has really great food. LOL, I just paid so much for that meal plan. I think had she not had that, she would have been better served having the money and finding food on her own. Today, she liked the class a lot better. It’s kind of hard being on a different campus, and it is nice to appreciate your real school. She does want to be in Boston for grad school.
Makes sense @allyphoe ! Good for you for building it! I usually feel like we did too much for our kids… then I hear what other people did for their and feel like I was the total slacker mom…
Glad the class is a little more interesting today @luckymama64 ! If she’s already in college you should be happy that going to BU makes her miss her own school… Better that than vice versa! :D.