<p>a few Univ of Rochester tidbits if it helps anyone. purely my opinions.
(Full disclosure items - son just accepted - double legacy, and we still live in Rochester)/</p>
<p>Boston is a straight, easy drive from Rocehster. Carpooling trips going all the time.
I grew up in NYC and found the city of Rochester very refreshing, manageable. EVERYTHING is 15 minutes away. Excellent shuttle bus service from campus if you desire. Big corporate presence has attracted decent cultureart/theater etc The EASTMAN School is amazing and a tremendous bonus for a musically inclined UR student.</p>
<p>Our snowfall is vastly overrated! This is the first year in a long time that you would be able to use cross country skis with any regularity. campus is nicely equipped with tunnels. Grungy things but warm . Campus is a very manageable size, everything is 5 minutes away.</p>
<p>PS - son not likely to attend - has his heart set on “GOING AWAY” to college. It’ll be great for him, but may likely kill me</p>
<p>My D1 initially said that her goal for a college was “someplace warm.” She uses flannel sheets and a down comfortor even in summer (in WI it’s hot and humid). But ultimately she chose the school that touched her heart. regardless of climate. She’s an adventurous type, but the lure of 1) a school she loved; 2) being away from home and, equally, 3) living close to relatives (my family is all in Boston, so grandparents, uncles, etc. have been able to go to her concerts, help her move, etc.) definitely won her over. </p>
<p>There’s snow and there’s snow. I was in Buffalo once, and someone said, “Oh, lots of snow in WI, eh?” and I laughed in his face. Buffalo?? Are you kidding? At least in a “snowy” town they know how to deal with it. Our WI kids laugh at how paralyzed some places get after 1 inch. I bet a lot of kids who wanted warm end up with snow, and vice versa. My D2, though, has horrible allergies and asthma that are aggravated by heat, so my guess is she won’t be switching to the south. D1, who’s studying abroad in South Africa, I think is very much enjoying the barefoot life, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she ends up someplace warm for grad school.</p>
<p>I also think the small cities in NY State are really very nice, have spent time in them all across. My D2 was in Oneonta at camp for 2 weeks this summer, and I will say that it is only barely a town, not a city. She visited Bard right after and found the non-town there not much less than what she’d seen in Oneonta (not putting it down, just trying to give a realistic impression that it’s not comparable to a Rochester or a Syracuse).</p>
<p>Another acceptance for the son last night–he’s in at Wheaton (MA) with a Trustee Scholarship–that’s $12.5K a year plus a $3K stipend for one summer of non-remunerative activity like a research or community service project. I really like that idea–they’re basically saying “we want you to spend at least one summer doing something more meaningful than working at the local Target, and we’re willing to put some money behind that.” </p>
<p>So now he’s 4 for 5–or 4-and-a-half for 5 if you give half credit for the waitlisting at Brandeis. Still to be heard from are Skidmore, Clark, and Tufts. By Monday I think we will have word from at least the first two. So this weekend is kind of like Heartbreak Hill. The marathon is nearly over (well, the first one, anyway).</p>
<p>After a steadily dropping GPA my daughter has solidly landed in the 3.3-3.6 range during her senior year (yay!). She has some merit money dependent on maintaining a 3.5, so I’ve got my fingers crossed on that one. Recently the big envelope arrived from Santa Clara who made a point to say continue working hard as we are watching you (essentially that).</p>
<p>So anyway, she didn’t even look at the SCU package. It was the last of seven, most of which came Oct-Dec. I read the NYT blog The Choice this morning–one student who was accepted at UCLA was musing about her own lack of response to the good news. A commenter suggested she had a number of good choices with more to come, so perhaps her feeling about UCLA was tempered by abundance. Another said it might be a sign that UCLA isn’t the right school for her. I haven’t heard any major squee-ing over any of the acceptances that came to our mailbox. I’d like to believe that is because she really can’t go wrong on any of the schools that accepted her. None is perfect, but each offers various good things from strong programs to good merit money to easy travel options. I predict a white board session in our future. They are rather different places, though, and one wonders if a large state school and a tiny rural LAC should be on the same list. Is this broad range of schools typical?</p>
<p>digdig–I think some kids are very specific about the kind of size and setting they want, but ours certainly wasn’t. On our list we have three LACs, four smallish U’s, and two big U’s, and the settings include small towns, big towns, medium-sized cities and suburbs of big cities.</p>
<p>I also think the lack of “squee-ing” is normal. In my kid’s case, I think it’s partly a function of not wanting to count his chickens till they’re fully hatched, and partly just a function of exhaustion–he doesn’t have much spare energy to use getting worked up about things right now. But most of all, he’s less interested in the acceptances as such than in the question of where he’s actually going to end up. Which I think is sensible of him. So I expect his excitement to go up a notch as we get into the “white board” stage.</p>
<p>We’ve joked about buying the sweatshirt as being the big signal that a decision has been made. She can’t do that just yet, though, because we have yet to visit one last school, Knox College. That doesn’t happen until April 23, sending this down to the wire. Four admitted students days in April shall reveal all. I hope.</p>
<p>We just got another acceptance today, this time from Clark. The bottom lines at the four private colleges that have admitted him so far are eerily similar, within less than $2K of each other. This is both good and bad. Good, because it means that he will be choosing which school to go to on other grounds than cost; bad, because it means the final decision will be more comiplicated and involve more April visits. (Yes, that’s a VERY good problem to have. No, I’m not whining. ;))</p>
<p>The Santa Clara merit aid came today–by far the worst offer (half of the previous lowest offer received) of all the schools D was accepted to. Combined with her lack of interest, I think we can finally cross one off.</p>
<p>Before S1 had any acceptance in hand, I had imagined what a powerful feeling it must be to be in a position to cross a college off! Now with several acceptances in hand, it has become emotionally difficult to cross some of the schools off because we’ve invested so much of ourselves in them. Well, at least we still have a few more weeks before we have to sever our ties to all but one school.</p>
<p>Good luck to those waiting for decisions from JHU and/or Tufts tomorrow.</p>
<p>nightchef, congrats on the admissions - esp UR which DD was WLed to.</p>
<p>I have always thought of Brandeis as harder, but that may show my influence from a time when there were still applicants who feared residual antisemitism at the Ivies, making B more appealing (it was also more Jewish in those days). Also cause my older brother went there ;)</p>
<p>we are done now - 3 accepts, 3 rejects, 3 Waitlists, not bad considering how she turned down my advice to add more safety schools :)</p>
<p>The accepts are Case, Lehigh, RPI. WLs are WUSTL, UR, and Lafayette, of which she is accepting the first two. I am not clear why she wants to stay on the UR WL given her other options. </p>
<p>We visited all three, and its mainly down to Lehigh vs RPI, barring good news from WUSTL.</p>
<p>Funny…the first to be crossed off for us was WUSTL. It was in the top 3 after a visit because of all the great programs and very happy kids there…DS still says it is a school where it would be impossible to be unhappy but it has dropped like a stone to the very bottom of list for the following reasons. Did not get on the short list for an art scholarship (made him feel like perhaps his art is not their “style” and he may struggle to shine there). Thus, no chance at merit aid (major negative from parent point of view). Dorms and food plans are outrageously expensive–they may be worth the extra cost, but will DS have trouble adjusting to life as poor artist after WUSTL (spa-college)? Most of all, I absolutely HATE that after accepting him they invited him and hundreds of others to visit for free (pay air fare and 2 days costs)…WUSTL already paid for one visit, he doesn’t qualify for FA…why is this school throwing money at economically comfortable kids who have already had a free visit but not offering more financial or merit aid…I hate that they are not need blind when they pull kids from the wait list but they splurge on lots of expensive perks to attract kids, particularly full freight kids. It left a bad taste in our mouths about the WUSTL administration. Meanwhile, tuition-free merit aid at tier 3 state school but with good art program is battling for top spot with Carnegie Mellon and MICA. Still waiting on merit award (or not) from MICA to make final decision…</p>
<p>^ I agree that it’s important to feel loved and appreciated by the school. My son made his decision today after visiting all the schools that have accepted him.
He chose Willamette University in Oregon over the following:</p>
<p>Trinity College, CT
U.C. San Diego
U.C. Santa Barbara
Oxford College of Emory University
Boston University
He’s waitlisted at Grinnell and Emory and will remove himself from the waitlists.</p>
<p>Willamette offered him a generous merit package, but money did not factor into this decision. We had told him we’ve saved up enough for he to go wherever he chooses. Despite this, he did confess to having enjoyed being courted by Willamette’s Financial Aid Office. It’s nice to be loved.</p>
<p>More importantly, he discovered by visiting the Japanese departments at various colleges that although a department may look solid in the school catalog, the school may have only one or two adjunct instructors in charge. In the end, Willamette had the best Japanese and Japanese Studies departments of the schools on his list. UC San Diego would have been right up there, but for the fact that over the past year, the classes are so crammed and the waiting lists are so long, that there’s no guarantee he could get the classes he wants there. He hopes to major in English and minor in Japanese, or double major in these two areas. He also really wants a small liberal arts environment.</p>
<p>We’re happy with this choice. Willamette is one of 50 private “Best Value Colleges” identified by Princeton Review, and in Washington Monthly’s rankings of 500 colleges, whether you agree with the methodology or not, Willamette is #30. More importantly, our son now ranks it number 1, as a “best match” for him.
:-)</p>
<p>We’ve definitely noticed where the love has been shown and where it hasn’t. Money, yes, but also little things. I was, however, startled today when a college rep called to ask if my daughter was “making progress toward sending in that deposit by May 1.” Odd phrasing that got odder when she noted that D was offered “a nice chunk of change.” Does that make anyone else’s eyebrows press together?</p>
<p>ouch…chunk of change…weird language but I have noticed that admissions staff are, with the exception of the head of the office, are usually quite young and only one or two years out of college. I presume that there is a premium on youth, energy and “hipness” in terms of dealing with high school students but they do, sometimes, use terms that makes a parent wince.</p>
<p>Yes to both of your points–I told D this woman was the “closer,” and I asked the woman if she was a student as I tried to make sense of where the conversation was going. She said something about her voice sounding young. Indeed.</p>
They are rather different places, though, and one wonders if a large state school and a tiny rural LAC should be on the same list. Is this broad range of schools typical?</p>