<p>^ Nah, I’m mostly kidding. I sure wasn’t expecting a thanks! I really DO write wayyyy too much so mine are the posts everyone skips over. Not your fault!</p>
<p>OP, I’m PMing you.</p>
<p>My son had a couple of friends who ended up not happy at their respective schools. One transferred in January to the other state school. Several transferred at the beginning of sophomore year. It’s not that uncommon.</p>
<p>Having said that, there were also a handful of kids who were not initially happy where they were but by the end of freshman had settled in and decided to stay because, miracle of miracles, they now actually * liked* the place.</p>
<p>Another option - does UI have a Honors College? If he’s not challenged, that would be the place to find more challenging classes if he has the grades to get in. At my son’s school, you can apply to Honors after your first year if you didn’t get in as a freshman. My son’s honors class have a maximum of 15 students and he loves them. An honors college can make a big school feel small. Also, I agree that freshman seminar classes tend to be boring for a lot of bright kids. My son managed to take enough AP courses to opt out of most of them and has been taking things he finds more interesting and challenging…including Russian this semester.</p>
<p>OTOH, it sounds like your son didn’t take the rejection from NU well and didn’t really have a good back-up plan and really just didn’t want to go to UI. It’s never too late to begin again and transfer somewhere that would be a better fit. Any possibility of transferring to NU?</p>
<p>starbright, I was probably skimming through all the posts looking for the magic words “your son will be fine!” 
MomLive, I have encouraged him to add NU to his transfer list. I am not sure yet what schools will be on his list of possibilities (other than BC & BU). I know he is thinking of NYU, but as far as I know, that is about as opposite NU as one can get…maybe I don’t know enough about NYU to form that judgment, but not sure that that one would be a better fit than U of I…</p>
<p>I truly feel for both you and your son. My son was miserable last year for much of his freshman year. My husband had returned in July from being away from home because of Army duty for the last 2 years of our son’s high school experience. At the beginning of August, we moved 500 miles away from our home of the past 5 years. We spent 2 nights in our new home before dropping our son off 1,000 miles away at FSU where he knew absolutely nobody.</p>
<p>When he came home at Christmas, he spent a lot of time filling out transfer applications and counting down the days until he “had” to go back. By February though, everything had shifted. He got progressively happier and couldn’t wait to go back this fall. Now he’s really happy and glad that he didn’t transfer (he was looking at moving to smaller schools).</p>
<p>One thing that was so helpful to us was a book called What to Do When College is Not the Best Time of Your Life by David Leibow. In fact, I ordered 2 copies and had one sent to me and one to my son.</p>
<p>Hang tough! Best wishes to both of you!</p>
<p>Thanks for the suggestion. I will look for the book. I am glad to hear that things worked out for your son! :)</p>