Hi @Eeyore123. Do you mean to give more time for COVID to settle down? Yes that has occurred to me though it’s not appealing for my daughter as she is already on a 6 month gap as we are from the Southern Hemisphere and she finished her senior year of high school in Dec 20. Seeking to defer her US options would mean an 18 month break between school and University.
If she’s interested in STEM and choir music, then St Olaf is a superior choice. She could combine the study and practice of choral music at a very high level along with a topnotch math/physics program.
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We currently live in New Zealand also - I’m from the US and my husband is a Kiwi. My husband has always found that he easily connects with people from the midwest. It sounds like you’ve got good options for your daughter. We’ve got one child in the US already for university (engineering), one doing commerce at Otago, and one on her way to study in the US in August at a small liberal arts college (also finished high school in Dec 2020).
One thing that I really like about the US system, esp for competitive degrees in NZ like engineering, medicine and law, is that students have time to explore a variety of interests in the first couple of years rather than delving straight into their major. Our son is having a great experience academically and socially at Otago, but it is vastly different than the experience our D21 hopes to gain at a small liberal arts school in the US. It sounds like your daughter will really appreciate the range of subjects she can study at a place like St Olaf before dedicating everything to engineering. It’s great that she’s a full IB student since so she be very well prepared (ours did NCEA). Good luck to your daughter with her decision.
Hey @lvgnzl lovely to come across someone that understands my world!
Our daughter’s friends have just headed off to Otago so we are seeing pics of toga parties and things.
I wish I had come across you earlier on as we could have provided peer support as we assisted our kids with the US applications process. I feel I could volunteer at local schools now I have learned so much!
The liberal arts college option in the US intrigues me as it seems such a nice learning environment with lots of TLC. In the end I think we will be weighing up somewhere like St Olaf with the option of 2 years at WashU for the engineering component with Queens in Canada which would be more if a “mass production option” with 650 students in the engineering cohort but still sounds like a very positive environment. The US options will always be more expensive but we may be willing to go that route for a better overall educational experience. The Queens option is pretty tempting, though, and she is quite keen on it. If I was doing it again I would get her to apply for some more engineering schools in the US but she was not so focussed on engineering when the applications were due and we are not doing that process again!
Curious what you mean by “mass production” at Queens?
Schools that are engineering powerhouses do graduate high numbers of engineers. If anything that is a positive. Amazing facilities, depth and breadth of class offerings, works class faculty.
I can’t speak for Queens but in the US, large school having living learning communities that can give students a small school feel at a big university. My D’s school has nearly 40k students. In her community she had dinner with a prof once week, had game nights with profs, went hiking with them etc… She knows a number of professors spouses and children, has coffee regularly with one of the deans, etc… Tons of team building activities with classmates.
There is often a misconception that big schools are impersonal and that hasn’t been my D’s experience at all.
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That is good to hear. I don’t know what Queens is like. I am imagining that this would be one of the differences between a larger public university and a small liberal arts college. To some extent I am drawing on my own experience.
Especially in Canada, classes will be large and impersonal. The content delivered will be very high-quality but it’ll be closer to the experience in NZ, and at least very different from the college experience in the US. Young people are considered adults (for instance, they can legally buy and consume alcohol and cannabis at age 19; there are far fewer “support” systems or organized activities) and there are fewer general education requirements allowing students to explore outside their major.
That being said, Queen’s is a residential university and its residence halls do offer some Living-Learning communities for 1st years, as well as access to cafeterias and eateries for all students.
I was at an Ivy, which had I think about 8000 undergrads, and a lot of grad students, too. One’s department became the smaller environment, with the benefit of having lots of people from other departments whom one met through various social activities. Don’t think of your child being one of thousands. Think of her being one of the hundreds in her year in engineering - and even fewer in her major within engineering, yet having access to all the other educational and cultural opportunities that a large university can offer.
Be careful of letting your quite understandable parental hesitations about your birdie fledging affect your choice of a school. In your situation, it seems to me that the obvious choice is Queens, for both cost and simplicity. Great school, lovely and safe location, and you won’t have student visa issues for Queens.
Don’t worry about different regulations in different countries. The thing about engineers that I’ve noticed is that the good ones seem to have learned in school how to teach themselves anything they need to know for engineering.
Here’s another way to look at it. Assuming similar career opportunities after graduation, how much money would you save by sending her to Queens? Probably enough to buy her an apartment, or even a house, depending upon where. If my child in the US were applying for engineering, I’d be very envious of the low cost excellent options available for CA students.
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An issue is that Queens is quite suboptimal for a student passionate about choral music 
Engineering&Arts at Queens would be a good, low cost option. So the big difference is how important qualify of life in general and music in particular is to this student.
Some students sing/practice music/think music/live music morning to night. Choir is one of the best moment in their day, they love their orchestra friends, they cherish the memory of All-State Choral Festival. Their life is immersed in music, even if they don’t want to major in music and never would make it their job, because it gives them joy daily. They may not be singing but in their head there’s a melody when they walk or jog or wait in line.
Queens wouldn’t be the right environment for such a young person, St Olaf would (where singers have the kind of aura football players have at Notre Dame 
and where 1/3 of the student body are accomplished musicians. You can be surrounded by music 24/7 if you wish, or just at times if you prefer, but music is there.) The energy is very different from the School of Engineering :).
If choral singing is a once-a-week fun activity, then Queens Engineerings&Arts would be the best value and St Olaf not worth the financial sacrifice.
Interesting point. Here is a reddit thread, only a year old, that details the many choral singing opportunities that a student would have at Queens.
https://www.reddit.com/r/queensuniversity/comments/cchfe2/queens_choirs/
It is clear that there are a multitude of singing ensemble opportunities at Queens, including vocal lessons for non-majors.
That’s a good example actually - the difference between “must have” and “nice/fun to have”.
Queens will offer opportunities for kids who like to sing for fun once a week, some with not much and some with decent experience. In other words, nobody goes to Queens because of their choirs, but they’re there if you’re interested.
(My guess is that your kids aren’t choir kids. There are more choirs at St Olaf for 3,200 students than at Queens with 24,000; the level of musicianship runs from all-state to world class, with fun informal ensembles and opportunities open to all, from once a week to three times a week to five times a week rehearsals, etc.)
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Thanks very much @parentologist and @MYOS1634 for these thoughtful replies. I think between you have put your finger on the issue. Queens makes a lot of sense fir all the reasons you list @parentologist unless there is a real reason to go the St Olaf/WashU (for engineering) route. That reason probably isn’t the nice learning environment at St Olaf and the smaller classes (as I have every reason to think she she would cope well at Queens) but the reason might be the choirs. Choir is the thing that has most excited her so far in life and I never seen her so happy as when she was in the national age group choir here.
She sent an email to the choir teacher at Queens to find out more about the option of the Queens Vocal Ensemble and we will see what sort of response she gets. We will also work out how to engage with the people who lead the choirs at St Olaf’s so she can be well informed to make a decision.
I do so appreciate all the comments!
For Physics and Choir, I would pick Lawrence. Its PhD feeder history is amazing.
Except that engineers don’t usually go for the PhD, as Wolowitz frequently explained when Sheldon repeatedly denigrated him for only having a Masters degree from MIT!
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Whether she goes down the engineering path or not I can’t really envisage her seeking a Phd. I think she is more of a “doer”.
My point was that it shows the strength of the physics program.
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Yes @Eeyore123 thanks very much for posting it. I think it also shows the strength of the maths and science department at St Olaf, if I am reading it correctly.
You could definitely volunteer at local schools - that would be a great service! You’re getting a lot of good advice from parents with different perspectives here. Besides cost, it sounds like a big part of the decision is whether your daughter prefers the environment of a SLAC or a bigger university, the choral opportunities, and how set she is on engineering or if there is any chance that she would want to change direction. As you probably know, WashU is also a great school.
From your experience, do you think Queen’s would be similar to any of the universities in NZ? When my daughter was touring SLACs last January, she thought our son at Otago should consider doing a year abroad in the US because it would be such a different experience. I don’t know anything about Queen’s but looked it up online, and it does look like a great opportunity also.
Feel free to PM me if you’d like. BTW - my dad’s best friend (who is now 83 years old) went to St Olaf and music has always been an important part of the joy in his life … and his son’s and grandson’s lives. It never featured in his career but has always been part of his life.
Thanks @lvgnzl I think I managed to send you a PM but am not sure. Let me know if you get it.
Update:
Thanks for the contributions so far which have been really helpful.
Based on what we know so far it’s looking to us like we will be weighing up the following sets of options:
-
the Queens Canada option of pursuing engineering and arts over 5 years (with domestic fees seeing as D is a dual national Canadian and a Chancellor’s scholarship of $9k CAD x 4 years)
-
the best fit LAC in the US where she would follow the programme necessary to do a 3+2 engineering programme with
WashU (we are aware that there is a risk she may decide not to transfer to turn+2 programme in the end, and we are ok taking that risk).
As for the liberal arts options, so far we have:
- Lawrence University (with 31k)
- St Olaf (with 28k as she was awarded an addition 2k music recognition scholarship
- and now Denison (with 41k)
Denison is a bit of a surprise as we didn’t expect the aid would be so much more that than the other two.
Between now and getting the rest of the results we plan to attend the Queens engineering virtual open house and do some virtual visits with St Olaf. D us reach out to the choir director at Queens to understand what that would be like. We will also try to set a virtual meeting with someone who can tell us about the 3+2 programme and choir at St Olaf. I am thinking that St Olaf may be the best fit but especially for choir but the extra funding at Denison will be tempting.
In the meantime any thoughts or views welcome.
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