It would be great to hear what colleges or universities your kids have chosen, and why? Also, it would be helpful to know how their college is working out for them. Thank you.
Anyone?
D19 skipped college and is doing great. She doesn’t regret her choice one bit and knows that she can always go to college at a later time if she chooses.
Oldest had to drop out of UT-Austin due to mental illness. We feel that the University did everything in their power to help him, so we have no regrets about sending him there.
Middle kid is attending the American University of Beirut, which is currently closed indefinitely due to widespread rioting. It’s been a good 3 1/2 years for him. He’s supposed to graduate in December, so our fingers are crossed! He is taking only four classes, all electives, so we are hoping the school will award him a diploma, whatever happens.
Youngest attends Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania. She is getting an excellent education with lots of opportunities. She studied in Florence, Italy one semester. She works in the campus art gallery and is getting great experience putting on exhibits and working with artists. Her main complaint has been the food! As a senior, she is living in a townhouse. It’s campus housing but she can cook for herself.
D is a sophomore at Purdue, studying chemical engineering, and in honors college. Been nothing but positive for her so far. She got to go abroad with HC for “Maymester”, had an internship through engineering honors, had her co-op lined up January of freshman year, is nearly done with her collaborative leadership certification, and mentored/TA’d a freshman honors seminar. She’s also working on securing her undergraduate research now. She is an active member of SWE on the outreach committee and is part of a theater group (she’s been in two shows and assisted stage managing another).
She chose Purdue because she wanted a program that was career readiness focused and jumped right in to engineering courses from day 1. (She LOVED her first year design class). She wanted a school where STEM was the focus, with great labs, lots of undergraduate research opportunities, and where she could use her APs to cover some of the gen eds. Mostly though, it was about the vibe of the students - Purdue was the sweet spot for her in terms of the right combination of laid back, friendly, but hard working/smart. She easily found her people.
Honestly, I had a lot of reservations about her going to such a large school but it’s never felt that way. She’s on a first name basis with a number of professors, including the honors eng. dean, eats meals with them, hangs in their offices, and has much stronger connections than I ever had a school 1/2 the size. She even got a hand written letter over the summer from a prof.
Purdue has far exceeded all of our expectations.
DD’19 is at a directional public. The ONE school she was determined not to go to when we started our search, mainly because it is somewhat local and not new and different to our community. As time went by and her list of wants got very specific, lo and behold it was the only one to match the list. It was a long and difficult process for her to change her mindset but she did.
It’s working out very well for her so far, now she feels like it was the perfect choice. She got to be a part of the theatre showcase her very first month, will be travelling with a theatre production the week after finals, travelling again in January to a theatre festival, going to CO in May for a recreation class. Kind of balances her desire to go places with her desire to be able to come home when she wants. Great roommate, good assortment of friends, ability to fit in her two majors.
There have been the usual ups and downs as she would have anywhere, but overall I would say she’s thriving.
S19 is at Bowdoin. So far it’s a 10/10. We both worked very hard to find the right fit for him. He wanted to be surrounded by academic peers at a rural LAC where he could enjoy the outdoors. He wanted that LAC to have a town he could walk to for things like ice cream and toiletries. Some were just too rural with no walkable town. We also wanted a school that wasn’t any farther than 30 minutes to the airport.
He’s really thriving there. Classes are small and interesting. He knows all of his professors inside and outside of class. He’s made friends on his XC team as well as in his dorm and in his classes. The dorms are gorgeous and big. The food is incredible. He has yet to meet a student with an attitude - all seem both smart and kind. I wish we weren’t paying so much but, if we were going to be full pay, Bowdoin is making it very clear that this choice is worth it.
D10 went to William and Mary; D12 went to Penn State, University Park; D16 is a senior at the Tisch School at NYU; D20 hit submit last night on her ED and EAs. While it hasn’t always been perfect, the schools turned out to be just right for them.
@4gsmom Was your D10 out of state for W&M? And good luck to D20!
Yes.
My daughter is now a sophomore at UNC Chapel Hill. She is doing very well in her neuroscience major but has learned to be satisfied with , and maybe even proud of, a hard-worked-for “C.” She was a kid with no interest in sports but is now a basketball fanatic who can give stats about any college or NBA player.
One kid did 2 years at CC then 2 years at our state flagship. Happily working on The Hill in DC — even with the low salary & high COL.
Other kid is finishing her last year at an OOS public flagship she hated for the first year. Busy filling out grad school applications.
Both made the most of where they ended up for school.
What did your daughter dislike/hate at the out-of-state flagship university during her first year ?
D18 is at McGill and is doing very well. We are in Oklahoma, so D is a long way from home, geographically and culturally. It’s tough—very tough at times—but she’s glad she took the risk. McGill is truly a global university, and the learning that happens outside the classroom is invaluable.
S18 is not D18’s twin. He was adopted internationally at age 16, knowing no English. He quickly learned the language and got his GED around his 21st birthday. He’s a sophomore at nearby Oklahoma State and is killing it. His GPA isn’t as high as his sister’s, but the fact that he has a 3.something floors me. After one of his finals yesterday, the prof approached him and said she’d be happy to write a rec letter for him for whatever he needs. The faculty and staff at Ok State have been phenomenal.
Long story short:
She had her heart set on going to a prestigious school. We told her she needed to take the full ride (yes, full tuition AND full room & board) at the OOS public. She was embarrassed to be heading off to that school and not to one of the sexy bragging-rights schools many of her peers at her private HS were going to attend.
By sophomore year though, she had adjusted to her new life & the school had grown on her. It helped a LOT that we let her take the extra car and she didn’t come home for summer breaks. She is probably still bitter and I’m not convinced she really understands the $$$ to this day.
@Midwest67- we will likely be in a similar situation - we are in the too much money for need-based aid but not enough money to afford $70K per year conundrum. D20 has already received one great merit offer from Loyola, and has a couple of full tuition scholarship opportunities. If she gets one of them, that’s where she is going, even if she gets into her dream school (Brown). But she does understand that this is the only decision that makes sense.
S18 at Bates. He is having a very similar experience as homerdog posted about S19 at Bowdoin. His college searches were divided between D3 schools where he could run XC and get a strong Liberal Arts education (Bates, Haverford, and Wesleyan) and D1 schools where he would apply to a business school (Boston College, Villanova, Northeastern). NYU was the crossover school that was D3 and Stern School of Business. However, he decided he did not want to run at NYU. In the end, he chose Bates and it is exceeding his and our expectations. He loves the friendly environment and social life and rarely leaves campus, even though he has a car. He is super excited about his academic and athletic performance and values the small class sizes and close knit community. However, as homerdog wrote, I wish we weren’t paying so much for the experience. Having one child and saving for his education since his birth made it possible. Feeling very fortunate that we could provide him with the opportunity.
@micdan , my D is a senior at Bates. It was the BEST decision she has ever made, and we feel it’s worth every penny. She’s had so many great opportunities and has been able to shine. I can’t say enough about how much I love Bates, mainly because the environment is such that she’s been able to maximize her potential.
My son is a freshman at Binghamton U. (Ahem, please note, it’s no longer SUNY Binghamton, haha!) I can confess that I really wasn’t sure it was the right place for him, as he had other choices that we felt were better suited to his personality, but he made his own choice. So far, it’s been great for him and I proudly call myself a Bearcat Parent. He’s doing exceptionally well with a straight A average, and being instate, what’s not to love about spending a LOT less than our D’s school?
I’m proud of both of my kids because they both thought long and hard about where they chose to go to college.
@micdan Sometimes I think you get what you pay for…as long as the college is right match for the student. S19 has friends at elite universities and state schools and. listening to their experience, we think his LAC is giving us more bang for the buck. Those elite unis would have cost us the same and, at least from the info we are getting from his friends, the schools aren’t touching the individual attention he’s getting in class or making it easy for the freshmen to find their people so they can settle in with their new group of friends.
I’ll admit I’m just biased towards LACs. I wouldn’t make our kids go to one if they also were not on board with that type of education but both S19 and D21 like the small school experience. Our high school is big - 3000 kids - but that didn’t stop them from liking the idea of a college smaller than their high school. In high school, everyone is from the same town. In college, the kids are from all over the world!
Our D is a junior in CAS (non-stem) at Cornell U. We looked for a fit during her application time. She is into languages (the more obscured ones). It has what she was looking for, in both major and minor. We weren’t sure how well she would do in such a competitive, huge and diverse environment. She has the time of her life.
She has done well academically. Her dept is small (around 50 students total). She never has an issue with registration because courses she is interested in is not in high demand. Except for some general ed. courses, all her other classes have been small. The largest may be 15 students. She has been the only one or one of the two in some classes. She knows all her profs well. She interacts with PhD and Master degrees students regularly, too.
In HS, she had 3 close friends and a handful of friends. To our surprise, she has thrived socially there. Cornell mixes students from all colleges in each dorm. My D has made friends from all colleges and has met students from all over the country and the world. She knows every profs and on a friendly term with them. She knows a lot of PhD and grad students.
So far, Cornell gave her a stipend to do a project overseas for 3 weeks last winter. This past summer, she won a scholarship to attend a summer language institute for two months. She would have the same opportunity again this summer but plans to do something else on our dimes 
instead.
The only negative we see is a lack of internship opportunities for non-stem students. Career Fair is pretty much for STEM students. With her education, experience and connection she has, we hope she will find a way to be employed.
Like @micdan, she is the only child. We have saved for her college since she was born to make this possible. She knows she is very fortunate and often thanks us for the opportunity.