<p>Haha, Shell. I assume it’s a spot “off the waitlist.” Wow. Congratulations. Someone I have corresponded with just chose Mudd over Bowdoin. Good luck with the decision.</p>
<p>A good friend who has one going to college this fall just spoke to me. After great agony and a second visit at great expense since she has her own business and taking off a day is an issue, they went to revisit the two choices and the $500 check was written and sent to the Final Decision 1. Tuesday, the phone call from a waitlisted school came and the news was that he had cleared the waitlist. This was a reach school that they had visited a while ago and really did not feature big in their choices since they figured it was a lottery ticket. The son immediately wanted to go visit again and felt like this was going to be the real thing. So off they went, and we now have Final Decision 2 with another big fat check. Two sets of hoodies, T shirts and other stuff. My friend is done. So done. '</p>
<p>I’m taking her out for dinner and drinks soon. Want to join us Shelldemeo?</p>
<p>Yes, I would like to go out for drinks immediately. I have already poured myself a LARGE glass of wine this evening!
and oops, mythmom, I did mean a spot off of the waitlist. :)</p>
<p>You’ll never believe this …</p>
<p>But my D got a WL offer tonight, too. She’d also written this off and was really invested in her current choice. But now she’s completely confused!</p>
<p>I’m just so glad we have the whole weekend to think about it - but no longer! She doesn’t even have a chance to go visit now, will just have to go with what she can research further and what her gut tells her.</p>
<p>Oh golly, Shelldemeo! Now here, with Mudd, you get the benefit of the small school, the advantage of the larger consortium, the calm of the suburbs, the accessibility of the city, a great school, but far from home… and what’s the financial aid offer?</p>
<p>I just read a back thread - I know the OP’s son has already turned down Rice, but just wanted to add my info since someone asked about financial aid with two kids in college. Both my kids attended Rice, and my EFC was evenly split between them, so I paid the same with two in college as I would have for one. (Well, actually, it was a very small amount higher once DS matriculated - but it was attributable to DS’s assets and summer earning expectation of $1800.) It made me wish that I had had DD delay college entrance a year, and DS had graduated High school a year early- so I could have had 3 years of overlap!!! ;)</p>
<p>It works a lot better when you have two kids at the same college in terms of financial aid, though sometimes if the college uses stock numbers, you can make out with a low cost school for one. Colleges used to be more generous with multiple kids in school is what I have been told. </p>
<p>GW’s half tuition off for all kids is not such a huge offer when you consider how many family’s are bumped into the financial aid category when they have 2 kids at private colleges.</p>
<p>We are waiting for the packet that is supposed to be coming today…
Here is a word of caution for other parents, don’t say “well, why don’'t you apply there and if you get in, then we will fly you to visit.” He flew to several schools to visit but what we didn’t anticipate was a waitlist offer that would come in after the students have left. The director of admissions at mudd said, “don’t fly out here now or you will only see a couple of people playing frisbee.” So, if he decides on Mudd, it will be without seeing it.</p>
<p>He has been doing his research and his big concern right now is the fact that Mudd seems to be “a grind?” with grade deflation that worries him. Olin was his first love and it did seem like a lot of work too but whenever he reads Mudd reviews it seems like it is a very overwhelming, stressful place. Of course, this is just student review, and other places like that, but he is worried that he will be surrounded by math geniuses, in over his head, stressed, and far from home. He does admit that socially, he would fit at Mudd. He is just worried about the drinking from the fire hose philosophy.</p>
<p>When he spoke with a Williams math prof a week ago the professor was talking about how Williams math students go on to top phd programs in the country. My son is a bit worried that he won’t be able to do that at Mudd if he ends up with a 2.8 or something.</p>
<p>There is no merit left at Mudd for the waitlist crew, and I have a feeling the award package will be significantly less than Williams but we will see.</p>
<p>But we will see…</p>
<p>emmybet: What is your daughter thinking? Where was she planning on attending?</p>
<p>Shell: You know I am a Williams partisan for obviously reasons. I am actually going up today to see a violin concert at 8 pm which will be the last college concert my son will play in. Sniff, sniff. If you are less than an hour away (I think I recall that) perhaps you’d like to come and meet my S. We are staying until tomorrow for a mother’s day breakfast. I <em>do</em> treasure the fact that I can see my son for all these things. He plays in the student orchestra, not the more professional Berkshire Symphony, and the fact that both these options existed took a lot of pressure off of him.</p>
<p>Still, I <em>can</em> see how someone would choose Mudd over Williams, particularly if the social fit is better.</p>
<p>For what it’s worth (not much I know), if the financials turn out fairly comparable (a big if I know) this is what I would say to my son: choose the school that makes you feel more inspired deep inside and don’t worry about questions of GPA, grade deflation, grad school and all that. These are things that can’t be parsed, especially in advance.</p>
<p>My S had a very respectable GPA until he took Ancient Greek. Yuck! But I don’t t think he’d change it. Williams would not let him retake, which many schools would, so he couldn’t improve his grade. However, Grad schools will see he made the attempt. I have to say"whatever" because he had an experience he treasured.</p>
<p>This is a time to go with the heart if the money allows it.</p>
<p>Good luck to him.</p>
<p>So d wrote emails last Saturday to colleges she wasn’t accepting. On Thursday, she got the first letter from a college saying we will keep your file open for a year. That college she won’t look at again. Then she got the same type of letter from a college she was waitlisted at. I mentioned that I thought that was a bit strange since she had never been accepted there but we told her to keep the letter because maybe she will decide she doesn’t like a big school. She wailed she doesn’t like the bigness of the big school but she still thinks it is the right choice because of it having a major she is considering and the honors classes being more her style. I am just dreading orientation which is in early July for her. She’ll be flying alone, staying for two nights (since orientation starts at 7:3o am), and it will be hot. I really, really hope we have her near fainting and actual fainting handled by then. Well our good fallback is that the local branch of the state university is considered quite a good school so she can always decide to live at home and commute.</p>
<p>S had a HS classmate who’d planned to graduate early and was accepted at a number of top schools. She accepted Harvard’s offer, then changed her mind and decided she wanted to stick around for another year of HS. She told Harvard her decision, then changed her mind again. Harvard would not let her attend that year but Stanford, who she had previously turned down, took her.</p>
<p>My son visited Mudd and liked it mostly because of the interaction with geeky, serious students. (I liked the Claremont idea and the academic strengths… I was not at all impressed by the dorms, but son didn’t care about that). If Mudd is still under consideration, perhaps there is a local student to talk with. It is a reallllly intense place, perfect if the right fit. But it could be tough if not.</p>
<p>The dorms at Mudd are not particularly pretty on the outside, but the rooms seem about standard to me (I’ve not seen a lot of dorms) and there are a couple of different configurations, including some kitchen options for those who want to cook. Mudd also spends a lot of effort on matching roommates and allowing the dorms to have their own personalities. West, for example, is also known as “Wild West” and has the funkiest exterior decoration by far.</p>
<p>The thing that makes choices like this really hard to make is that, in the end, there’s so little at stake. Everything about the OP’s son’s three choices is different – size, geography, focus, region, culture. But they are all great schools that, with a tiny number of exceptions, everyone who goes there loves. This isn’t a decision like “Do I become a doctor, or an artist?” It’s more, “Which of my three favorite flavors of ice cream do I have for dessert?” The only problem being that with ice cream, you can have a different flavor tomorrow, but with college you can never really have a different flavor ever.</p>
<p>I faced a similar problem deciding which law school to attend – three different choices, and lots of wonderful things to say about each of them, along with inconsequential negatives (except that the school that would have been my natural first choice also had the most significant negatives). It seemed like everything about my life would be different depending on which I chose – and that was probably true – but there was no clear basis for choosing any of them over the others. I went three days without really sleeping, and during that time each of the schools was my first choice at least twice, but no first choice made it 12 hours without being supplanted.</p>
<p>When I finally made my choice, what really drove it was a desire to change my life entirely, and to put maximum distance between me and a relationship whose failure to ever really start made me feel terrible about myself. Guess what happened, oh, four weeks later? And who has been my partner for 33 years? The premise that determined my choice was completely wrong. And it didn’t make any difference at all, because all the great things about that choice came to pass, and I had a dream experience (as such things go). I know in my heart that things would have been great at either of the other two choices, too. A little greater or a little less great? Who knows? Who cares? It stopped being relevant once my actual life got underway.</p>