<p>"In her field, how much is she going to get to choose the school vs. how much the schools want her?"</p>
<p>She'll be a junior next year. If all goes well (fingers and toes crossed), she should be able to choose from all but maybe the top 10 or 15 gymnastics schools (could be better than that - she has been off most of this year with knee surgery, but she looks awfully strong, or so her coach says.) We've identified 18 Div. I schools (only one in the top 10 gymnastics-wise) that have business schools with accounting, most of which admitting business students as first-years. Additional qualifications (which we may or may not be able to meet) is that she would prefer to be in or near a big city, and she wants to continue her language studies (and thinks she wants to learn Arabic - she would have applied for, and likely been accepted for a full AFS scholarship to Egypt this summer for Arabic studies, but she needs this summer in the gym.)</p>
<p>Watch her perform? I usually don't now, except when it is in town. (I'm the music guy; my wife is the gym parent - division of labor.)</p>
<p>I grew up in East Lansing then went to college at Michigan and the football spirit in both schools was fantastic. I don't really follow closely any more so don't know how the teams are doing at the moment. EL is about the same size as MSU so it's a real college town - the downtown shops and restuarants cater to students. The campus is beautiful since it started as an agricultural school and everything is landscaped. There are old ivy covered buildings, the Red Cedar River running through campus, flower gardens, bike paths, a bell tower....you'd need to go to the MSU boards to get more info on current academics and the social scene, but there are so many students that I'm sure it's very lively. I still get a little thrill hearing either "Hail to the Victors" or "Go Right Through for MSU" - and I won't tell you how many years ago that was! Now my son will be going to Carnegie Mellon next year (I think their football team is sort of a hobby!) so he won't get that Big 10 spirit, but he's not really meant for a large school. Instead he'll be cheering on the robot races!</p>
<p>I would vote for Indiana. I think it offers one of the greatest college experiences around. The one problem is football. The coach is really trying and I think the program is on the upswing. If you go to IU, basketball is The Game. The great things about IU- the perfect college town, the great music school so there are fantastic concerts almost every night, the frat scene if you want it, but plenty of kids don't go Greek, great business school.....</p>
<p>Mini, you should watch her perform. She's not going to be doing gymnastics at a high level forever.</p>
<p>You have a pretty large list of schools. A rapport with a coach is pretty important too. Are there special meets where college coaches check out recruits?
Junior year is the deciding year, right?</p>
<p>Yes, there is "a college meet" at the end of the year. And coaches often watch the nationals as well. And, yes, rapport with coaches is critical. Coaches cannot initiate contact prior to July 1 following junior year. However, parents and athletes can contact coaches before then - and videos, etc. get sent in junior year. Junior year athletes are forbidden from working out with Div. I teams; however, visits can start in junior year (we will likely do our first in October, to a place where her coach has contact with the coach, and is one of her current top 3 faves. That could all change, though.)</p>
<p>This is all "Greek" to me, but I'm a quick study.</p>
<p>Marilyn, my son's sister goes to UM so he can't go to MSU. :)</p>
<p>MomofWildChild, Indiana would work if they had a great football team, but if the school had a great football team, maybe Indiana would be harder to get into and my son wouldn't get accepted into the school. :)</p>
<p>I'd say Penn State and Indiana even followed by Illinois, then MSU and OSU tied. Minny is actually very good and has a big city behind it to explore. Just a bit of a commuter school. Even Iowa has everything you mentioned and some very good depts. Purdue is the least appealing to me overall.</p>
<p>Illinois is getting pretty competitive to get into nowadays because the instate tuition is very reasonable for a high quality education and lots of Chicago-area kids come down. Great basketball, so-so football, but the tailgate scene is very big. </p>
<p>Purdue is known around here as a geek school but I went over in the fall for a football game and they have a major party scene at their tailgates plus "Breakfast Club" before tailgating which consists of dressing up in costumes (I saw Barney, Power Rangers and pirates among other things) and going to the bars at 6 a.m. and drinking heavily before tailgating. My brother-in-law went there and he was a big partier (never graduated either).</p>
<p>I think East Lansing is a nice town but have never been to a football game there...it's cold up there though. I was there in the winter.</p>
<p>I've been to Ohio State on an Ohio State-Michigan weekend and have never seen such craziness in my life...drunks, fights, a small riot. Kids from schools all over Ohio come just to hang out for the party scene on that weekend whether the game is at home or away. Everyone in my family except for me went to school there and they are just nutso about their football team. </p>
<p>My son definitely wants to go Big 10, maybe Indiana.</p>
<p>Definitely give MSU a look. Strong school spirit, excellent sports (basketball and football, particularly, and yes they are VERY strongly supported) and many decent programs. East Lansing isn't a cultural mecca, but it's not a bad college town. I know a lot of MSU grads who were extremely happy with their experience there.</p>
<p>
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my son's sister goes to UM so he can't go to MSU.
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Wouldn't OSU also be a problem then? My son lasted all of about five minutes when we attempted to visit the campus on our Ohio colleges tour. All that "Red" made him break out into a cold sweat...;)</p>
<p>I'm partial to Indiana. Beautiful campus, great college town. Easy to get into and strong merit aid possibilities. Big greek presence, (big party school too!). S's school sending quite a few to Indiana, seems to be an up and coming school. </p>
<p>I really liked Ohio State also. It's getting harder to get into, but not that hard (meaning it's improving it's academic standards but not in a Michigan sense). Campus is big but contained in one area. If you look on the OSU board, it looks like they are looking for OOS students and offering $ to come. The campus is a construction site, which is good because it's improving it's facilities. It's a big school which is trying to feel like a smaller school. I was there on the day of the spring football game. 63,000+ came for a spring football game, crazy!</p>
<p>hoedown, how hard was it to praise MSU? LOL! If he qualifies, I hear great things about the James Madison school. dstark, I read that your other S goes to umich. It would be funny. My D wanted my S to go to Ohio State so she could go to Michigan, she thought that it would be a hoot at holiday time.</p>
<p>One of the good things in not having a child interested in sports is that "all that red" wouldn't make a difference to him. He once asked me how his mother and I, a Carolina Couple, would feel if he wanted to go to Duke. I told him that I wouldn't care, but frankly I didn't see how the difference in price was justified given the relative merits of the undergraduate education at each institutution.</p>
<p>Second semester of his sophomore year he came from LA to Madison to visit me over Thanksgiving. I asked him if he would be interested in transferring. He was freezing at the time and he looked at me if that was about the most stupid question he had ever heard. Under the circumstances it probably was.</p>
<p>mootmom
My son started at penn state this year. He is a science kid and was definitely not into sports.
However, when he went to orientation for his program, older students said, "Go home. Turn on your computer and buy your season tickets for football immediately."
He was teased mercilessly for taking a book to the first game but soon got with the program and really enjoyed it. Football is the social activity in the Fall and although I doubt he knows the rules, he enjoyed being outside with 100,000 of his closest friends. (I think the stadium holds 107,000.)
The whole PSU experience has been great and I assume all the Big 10s offer some of the same.</p>
<p>East Lansing (and Lansing, for that matter) are not cultural meccas although they're way above what they were many many years ago. However, MSU itself can provide that culture. I saw Nureyev dance when I was a kid, and saw Jefferson Starship perform at a summer music festival in the old hippie days. I'm sure similar opportunites are there.</p>
<p>EL was a dry town until 1968, which is why it's ringed by bars and the university club is just outside the town limits. In the winter students used to go on sled caravans to buy beer. </p>
<p>I think it would be easier to have MSU/UM in the same family than to have UM/OSU! Or MSU/ND, for that matter. Another old memory - during halftime at the MSU/UM games, Governer Romney (not Mitt!) would cross the field at halftime to sit in the other stands.</p>
<p>The UM-MSU thing won't work because my son is not going to want to hear from his sister, for the rest of his life, how superior UM is to MSU.</p>
<p>I sent my son to the Ohio-State/Michigan football game this year. It was at Michigan and I felt like if I could get him to the Big Game and all that atmosphere he would come back all revved up to do well in school so he could go to Mich like his sister. </p>
<p>He came back all revved up and said , "Ohio State might be a great place to go to school". </p>
<p>We've never been to OSU, Indiana, Penn State and the other Big Ten schools (except Mich), so it's nice to read other people's opinions about the atmospheres of the schools.</p>
<p>
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I think it would be easier to have MSU/UM in the same family than to have UM/OSU! Or MSU/ND, for that matter.
[/quote]
My son would agree with you on this one, Marilyn! Although, he didn't exactly feel all warm and fuzzy when we passed by Spartan Stadium on our MSU visit. Bottom line, our kid grew up in a Wolverine household, is a hard-core fan, and just couldn't get past these sports rivalries when looking at colleges...:p</p>
<p>Iowa isn't talked about much, but they have a big following for most of their sports teams but most especially for their football team. They renovated some of the stadium in the last year. All the fans are passionate at the games, but the most rambunctious area is the student section. Gamedays are an event that can go 20 + hours! They are a team that travels well (meaning the fans will follow them to get the heck out of Iowa come January!), so they usually end up at a bowl game in a warm, sunny destination. Iowa City is also a great college town, it has a pretty campus, big greek presence but also avoidable if that makes sense. There is a lot of diversity and culture, plus Chicago is 3 1/2 hours away, and if you're not familiar with Iowa, or even if you are! It's a nice oasis. I think the football team is overrated (which isn't necessarily a bad thing if you want team spirit!) and the academics are under-rated, from your requirements I think it fits the bill.</p>
<p>Comment about Penn State: Quite a few students from my son's hs applied this year. I heard that all of them were admitted, but not to the main campus! They have satellite campuses, and after a couple of years you can transfer onto the main campus, and depending on major, some students stay at their smaller campus for all 4 years.</p>
<p>I do have a feeling that if you are from California, dstark, your S would have a better chance of getting onto the main campus. I assume that they are looking for students for West Coast representation. This, is just a guess, on my part. We are from NJ, and lots of NJ students apply to Penn State.</p>