@twoinanddone. For sure, EA will help my sanity through this. He has already started his online application thingy, and several of his essays are done. He starts his Fall sport in August 1 and he knows that he must get as much done as possible this summer . And he is taking the SAT again because he hates his verbal score. So he’s prepping for that now, too.
Your phrase ‘play with the house money’ is exactly as he is looking at this. He knows that all he has to lose is $500 or so in app fees and the time (which is non-trivial) for each application. Sometimes I secretly think that he just wants to know if he can get in.
But honestly, the hard part for him is kind of over. He has been wringing his hands over what career he will want since he was five years old. He has been studying bureau of labor stats since middle school. He has interviewed dozens of professionals. The day he found chemical engineering was the happiest I have ever seen him. So THAT was the big play for him. Where he goes to college, m’eh…not that big of a crisis. Picking a major? That drove him insane. If he was still unclear on that he would be a total mess.
@bopper. Not CA residents, but our high school kids do better than they should at both UCLA and CAL. Not meaning gobs of kids, but a handful every year. That being said, UCLA is a high reach but he is IN LOVE with the chemical engineer gang.
Sigh, UCLA. What a great visit day that was! The poor students who were interrogated by my family may never be the same, but we were blown away by the facilities (labs) and the research programs. Had to pry my kid out of there. Well-done, UC system, well-done!
Why, thank you! We kind of like him. Usually. We so want to support him in any way we can. Even his siblings have offered to give him money for school. (That made me cry a little bit). To me, he is thinking about college in exactly the right way. It is a stepping stone to what he wants to do and if it can be all pretty and manicured and have a winning football team, awesome. But not is okay too. Personality, and dorm quality, and weather, and a Chipotle, and climbing walls just do not matter. The quality of the people he is entrusting four years of his full attention to is what matters to him. I think that is what we want kids to care about, right?
@ucbalumnus He isn’t a politically active kid, at all. But he is very strident about certain things related to colleges, and he votes with his feet. Legacy, bad. He refuses to leverage the one legacy advantage he has. His oldest brother also has an unbelievable connection at one of the schools on his list. S20 was adamant that he would refuse acceptance at that school if his brother tried to leverage that connection (and it is a whopper of a connection). He is a big proponent of URM lifts because we live in a racially diverse community and he is quite aware of how lifelong disadvantages create an unlevel playing field. He included racial diversity as one of his criteria when looking at schools initially (but that became an impossible hurdle as he is used to 50/50 split. Not happening in any of the schools anywhere near his radar screen.). But he has looked up Pell grant % for all of his current candidates. He is very concerned about the poor diversity reputation at a couple of the schools on his list. It is a worry and something he will want to understand better. He really isn’t a crusader on these things at all. But, like I said, he will vote with his feet on that one.
And, mostly, he sees it grossly unfair that not all teenagers have a mother as beautiful or a father as genius as his. But, we all have our crosses to carry.
I feel like you’re being a bit cagey about what state you live in but not sure why. Not Michigan clearly but why would he even apply if you say that he’d never ask you to go full pay and that’s the only option? ( I do understand him bring willing to not focus on the diversity issue there as a lot of that is driven by unfortunate state law)
The following schools on his list consider legacy in admissions, according to their common data sets:
Michigan
Virginia
Georgia Tech
Rochester
Cornell
Notre Dame
(cannot tell about the unnamed school, obviously)
50/50 split between what? There are not too many places where two racial/ethnic groups predominate in approximately equal numbers with few from any other.
Such an organized and rational approach! A kid after my own heart.
Rochester gives some merit money, so that may help.
Someone commented that the list is top heavy, but since he’d be delighted to go to his safety, I think that’s just fine.
I think you and your husband should sit down and think carefully about whether you’re willing to have him be full pay if he gets into a school from the list and genuinely likes it better than the safety for a substantive reason. If you are, you might want to sit your son down and tell him that very clearly. I think it would be a shame if he gave up an opportunity he really wants and you’re willing to give him, just because he doesn’t want to be any trouble. Just my $.02
I think it’s great that he has done such a deep dive on the chem eng departments, but I’m going to encourage you to encourage him to look beyond that. Unless he’s really, truly a completely bloom where he’s planted kid (and some people are) fit will really make a difference in his experience. He’s not going to spend the entire 4 years studying. He will, I hope, make friends, have fun and do extracurriculars and schools really do differ in terms of culture and people. My son ended up choosing between Rochester and McGill. He’s planning on majoring in computer science and he felt that, on the whole, the two departments were roughly equal, so the department wasn’t going to be the deciding factor. I was rooting for Rochester for a number of reasons, but he decided on McGill because he just liked the people better and felt he clicked more with them. Hard to argue with. (NB, that’s in no way a slam on the Rochester people. They were great. It’s just that for my son, McGill felt better.)
It looks from post #0 like the student’s definition of “fit” includes (a) quality (as he defines it) and academic focus of the chemical engineering department, (b) some definition of racial/ethnic diversity, (c) prestige.
I’m going to make a guess based on clues that OP lives in PA. Maybe near Pittsburgh area. Which woukd make Penn State safety. LOL sorry but I feel,like it’s a puzzle with a missing piece. Could welll be wildly off base. The diversity isn’t there but can’t really come up with anyplace else a 5 hr drive from south bend in a state where this kid wouldn’t be an auto admit.
Could be Ohio but the drive to South Bend is only 4 hrs from the big cities which is where I assume OP has to be for the diversity. Though to be fair Pittsburgh is closer to 6…so that’s off too.
@cypresspat I know you weren’t asking for more schools but did you look at the University of Cincinnati, which has a very good chemical engineering program and was the first college to ever offer a co-op program? I also think the current university president is a former ChemE professor, for what that’s worth.
I might be a bit biased because my husband has an undergrad ChemE degree from there and my daughter is studying for her BSN there. But it does have a very good program and with those stats you are talking honors program (with a ton of perks) and at least some merit even if you are OOS.
That sounds about right. But #3 isn’t a requirement, per se. it is more that he perceives a prestigious school has having something special that he doesn’t even know about yet. We (parents) believe that once he sees all of these schools, he won’t see a $200k differential in value. Because of one of his sports he has spent a ton of time at one of our smaller state schools and knows a bunch of their students and thinks that schools is awesome (students are very bright and love it there). If that school had the academics he wanted it would zoom to top of list. But, as he says, that could be an outlier. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.
Thanks, and yes. I would put in a plug for U of Cincy, too. Again, doesn’t match his academic interest. I know a few students who go/ have gone and they love it there. For Ohio, I believe reputationally, u of Cincy is ‘the place for engineering.’ An added plus is my older son is getting married in Cincy next summer. We have a soft spot for Midwest, especially Ohio, schools. Safe to say it got a hard lobbying effort from mom and dad. No go. We tried. Actually we have had pretty much zero influence in the list.
And I haven’t mentioned my son’s other quick regarding honors programs. Unless they open up research opportunities, he isn’t interested. Doesn’t care about most of the perks. Grrrrrrr…
(PS, can’t share why but I can say with authority that your daughter is positioned VERY WELL getting a BSN).