If it’s about changing diapers, then I guess an all girls school would be a deal breaker for a straight female going for her MRS degree. 
My only real deal breakers are financial. I might offer my D17 some advice and cautions about things she might want to consider, but ultimately so long as a school is in budget and fully accredited it’s her decision.
As to her deal breakers, that will be interesting to discover as we get deeper into this process. She’s half jokingly asked if it was ok to not like a school if she thought it was ugly. I said, hey you’re the one who’s going to have to live there for 4 years, you tell me!
Wrt to 4 years of guaranteed on campus housing, I was actually glad our D and S lived off campus as upperclassman. They ended up learning numerous life skills from managing a household with a group of friends.
I was not happy that both s’s schools did not have guaranteed housing all 4 years, but it worked out well, and their off campus experiences were good life lessons.
And the typo above should say wear an extra pair of woolies.
Do miss the days when the parents four and parents cafe was for… Parents.
Lack of Value for the Dollar: 50K for Brown makes sense. 50K for Boulder not so much
Religious school
Greek culture dominant
Campus surrounded by sketchy neighborhoods
Located in a state where the Gov wants to slash funding for higher education 30%
Forums for the school demonstrate pervasive ignorance or intolerance
School $$ focused on sports rather than academics.
@Lindagaf thanks a lot. I never knew that.
Forgot one:
Located in a state that has attacked women’s rights
There are several states (eg Colorado, Wisconsin, Kansas, Utah and others) that allow, legislatively, guns on campus. But I think this applies to public schools. I think private schools can prohibit them. Worth double checking that one. Per this article, it looks like the option for private schools to opt out is a state by state ruling. Texas private schools can opt out http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/03/us/texas-lawmakers-approve-bill-allowing-guns-on-campus.html?_r=0
And ugh- iPad autocorrects. Above should say miss the days when the parents forum and cafe were for parents.
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Please all try to remember that College Confidential is a welcoming community. The post did not ask for opinions from parents only (which would not have been allowed anyway.) Non-parents are able to add their opinions here, as parents are welcome to add their opinions on student forums. And the earth will continue to rotate on its axis.
Having said that, the students should be cognizant of the fact that this forum exists primarily (although not exclusively) for parents to discuss topics amongst themselves, and would be well served by remembering the target audience when writing comments.
There’s almost nothing that would be a true deal-breaker for me – after all, I’m not the one going.
When my son started to consider schools, I was SO relieved to realize that his initial go/no go criteria looked a lot like what mine would have. No religious schools. No military schools. Liberal, diverse. When we started to visit schools, we had similar reactions; liked and disliked the same schools. In our case, it really helped that he knew he wanted to major in music.
I realize that I’m lucky, and I’m grateful. But if it hadn’t worked so easily, and he’d wanted to go to a school that I had serious objections to (like @mathmom’s Colleges that don’t believe in evolution., for instance), I hope I would have found a way to trust him enough to support his decision. I admit that it would be really tough and I probably wouldn’t be able to resist trying to talk him out of it. But it wouldn’t be over bathroom configurations, that’s for sure.
I think the only issue might be finances. I can pay for any of the schools on his list but that doesn’t mean that his lifestyle will be the same at all of them. I don’t think he understands the impact that can have, and won’t take that into consideration when making a decision. I’m sure he’ll learn a lesson or two.
Oh, and to @LBad96, I have this suspicion that you already have a LOT of rules established for your future children… good luck with that!
If you followed @lbad96’s excellent ongoing college journey thread in Lessons Learned, I’m not sure finding that his world view differs from the norm is surprising. (I thoroughly enjoyed the college playoffs)
The post that comes to mind was a reference to dad’s opinion
There is/was a thread about the silliest reasons to eliminate a school. This seems to be an iteration of that one.
** I think this is that thread http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/705291-stupidest-reason-child-wont-look-at-a-college-p89.html
I advise my kids, but ultimately it is their life and their decision. DW sternly opposed BYU, but other than that the only real prohibitive factor was if they could afford it and get accepted.
I think most of the school-specific or region-specific dislike is from a fundamental misunderstanding of those schools or areas. Strange to me how people who claim to be the most open and progressive are the quickest to nix something about which they do not understand. Only a small handful of ‘religious schools’ would even appear to be so to someone who was blind. Often they have religious trappings, but no overt attempts to convert anyone. Sure, there are some examples of others, but not so that one would exclude them completely.
I imagine it will be a shock to some when their future children decide not only to go to school in a northern state, but live there and have the future grandchildren. Some people actually like the cold…it keeps out the rifraff. LOL.
Imagine a scenario where your near-young-adult child comes to you and says that religion X with church X really resonates with them and they feel a positive spirituality there and want to join. And also to attend one of their associated universities or colleges. Would you undergo the struggle to accept them and go forward? Or is your hatred not something that can be overcome?
Being non-religious, and sometimes anti-religion, I was somewhat taken aback when my oldest decided on BC. However, she had a good time there, and the religion was definitely not emphasized. My kids have gone to BC, UMD, Brandeis, Rutgers, Yale, and (next year) Skidmore. I guess we have a NE bias.
We are liberal Episcopalian. One of my kids looked at BC and another one applied to Fordham. I didn’t have an issue with either school. I would have had an issue with a religious school such as Liberty or Bob Jones.
@SlackerMomMD why, thank you!! That tournament was one for the ages. So many shocks, gasps, thrills, and spills, but the right team, the best team, won in the end!! I don’t think that they mentioned that I had to sign a no-transfer clause before the start of that final (which was the most watched sporting event of all time).
But man, some schools really messed up in that tournament. Penn State, Michigan State, Miami Ohio, Loyola Maryland, Florida State, Central Florida, Arizona State. All of those teams were expected to get past the first round, but they didn’t (some might not have been helped by the fact that they were in the same group). And then the three schools who went perfect in the group stage (UMass, Pitt, Northeastern) all choked as soon as they reached the Sweet Sixteen. My school pulled off two consecutive upsets before smashing another upstart in the Final Four. I think they were helped in that the eventual losing finalists really only played one serious opponent the whole tournament, and that was when they beat a D2 school from Massachusetts (Bentley, who had also surprised virtually everyone) on penalties in the Elite Eight. If there was one Floridian school to get the bronze, absolutely NOBODY thought that it would have been Stetson, who finished second in a tough group, beat Pitt on penalties in the S16 and put Binghamton to the sword 3-0 in the E8 in DC. And if an NY team was going to get fourth place, most would have picked Fordham over Hofstra, who upset Northeastern 2-1 in Boston before eliminating tournament darlings Rider 1-0 in extra time. Perhaps the biggest shock of all was that none of the highly-touted Massachusetts teams graced the Final Four; in fact, only one of them made the Elite Eight, and that was because they faced another MA school in the Sweet Sixteen.
But that final was crazy. Absolutely crazy. My heart almost stopped. Lol.
(If this differs from how the actual tournament on the thread panned out, it’s because I had to strip Syracuse and Binghamton of 3rd and 4th place, respectively).
But, I went off-topic. Slackermom is right. I unfortunately really never had much of a chance to travel till now. Financial heartbreak at home and all that. So that’s the reason I may have seemed “close-minded”. And thanks @skieurope for the save.
My deal breaker is universities surrounded by dangerous neighborhoods. Although there are many excellent universities in troubled cities, I really don’t want to worry every day about my kid’s safety.
I also expect private universities to provide on-campus housing for all four years, although this wouldn’t be an actual deal breaker, if my kid really thought that it was the best fit.
I don’t get the regional, weather, and distance biases of some people posting here. I’ve encouraged my kid to search far and wide, and to be open-minded about weather. Airplanes exist, as does warm clothing.
My kids did not have very strong view of college, no dream schools, no great desires to live in the wilderness or in NYC. I was able to easily steer them away from any school or type of school I didn’t care for. There were no pesky GCs trying to help, no grandparents offering to pay if they would only go to State U or Private U. There was a little pressure from two relatives for one daughter to go to Smith, but since they weren’t paying and daughter hated it, that ended quickly. It wasn’t the right school for her, but I would have been fine with my other daughter going there.
One daughter might have liked BYU, but since I didn’t bring it up, it was never an issue. Also didn’t bring up schools that were too far out of our comfort zone for finances or any other reason including my dislike of the football team. A friend’s son is looking at Penn State for aeronautical engineering. I don’t think they have any idea how far PSU is from civilization, how hard it is to get to, how much it costs. I think at the end of the trip the boy will be disappointed when his parents say no because they can’t afford it.
Just wanted to pop back in and say that I welcome the opinions of the students who are posting…and think that others do too, it just really helped to understand the context of the comments. (Just like when parents post in Chance Me threads…it helps to know when it is a parent posting!)
Also I agree with other posts that make a distinction between religious schools that are more theology based instead of academically based. We are Catholic so of course no problem with the Catholic U’s…but kids looked at other schools that were affiliated rather closely with other religious doctrines. As long as the school was good academically, that was fine by us. But I wouldn’t pay for a school that wasn’t academically based, unless, perhaps my child could convince me that their career/calling was to go into some sort of ministry and the particular school made sense for that type of calling.