Thank you all for the great suggestions and advice! I’ll try to pin her down on cold but sunny vs less cold but grey and drizzly (CO vs PNW). I suspect that sunny is the key, but we’ll see. We’ve have seen a few local schools to try to get an idea of school size and type, but I truly think she is the type that could be happy in a variety of places. She wants some school spirit (but doesn’t care about big football specifically). I think right now we can focus on CA, CO, DC area, and then MA for sibling (but might give this one some insight). I’ll also look into NM a bit more - I don’t know much about it.
I will also pay attention to variety of majors as well as the ability to switch majors.
Hi there - another blue city TX mom here w/ two Ds. For D24, she has very specific major requirements so we’ve looked at UNM and thought it would be a good fit for her (she’s also interested in blue states, doesn’t care much about sports.) TX students w/ good stats basically can go for less than instate. It might end up as a safety for her since her major doesn’t have that many safety options in TX.
Another option I haven’t seen discussed here is UNLV? We haven’t looked at it because of the D’s specific major, but it would seem to check some boxes for you. (No one come at me for not understanding NV politics please.)
Living in NY/NJ and not too far from the PA and CT borders, the climates in these states are very different than the climate in CA (bay area), where I live now. Almost night and day, to the point where I’m not really sure why people recommend those states if weather is a factor for OP. As others have noted, OP’s daughter has to make the call on how important those factors are and what is considered good weather and blue. That being said, even though CA did have 6M people vote for Donald Trump (11M for Joe Biden), it and NM are probably the two best states given the current criteria, HI too but not sure the OP has interest there.
She might like Pitzer or Scripps. I know they are small but all the Claremont colleges are literally next door to each other so they don’t feel that small.
Thank you for the additional schools to research. Oxy is a smaller school, so I don’t know if she’ll consider it, but when we do a CA trip we will definitely include it. It’s location might give it bonus points.
I don’t know why I don’t find the Claremont schools appealing, but she might, so we should consider them and visit. But at the end of the day, I think she wants a bigger school. (I know the 5 together add up to a bigger, but I think that’s part of why I don’t like them. They seem to be confused as to whether they want to be considered individual schools or one bigger school lol)
I have given some thought to Hawaii, but unless there are some big personality changes in the next year or so, I don’t think she is ready to be that far away. I had not thought about Nevada, but that is a warm state I had completely forgotten about
This thread has given me ideas on how to try and focus dd, so thank you all.
Free advice. If you think you will need to pay $2000 a month (or whatever amount you think you will need to be paying out of pocket), start a separate account and start putting that amount in that account NOW. See if this is sustainable. See if you really can do this.
Please don’t let your kid apply and be accepted to colleges and then tell them the price is too high.
No test scores and no 11th grade GPA make your questions about colleges very hard to answer.
Santa Clara is a Jesuit college…and very ecumenical. We are not Catholic and our kid is a graduate of the school. Very welcoming community of learners and faculty. Strong emphasis on giving back to communities. Gorgeous campus and picture perfect weather almost all the time.
You know your kid, and maybe if she fell in love with a school and you thought it was too expensive she would just roll with it and happily move on and forget all about that perfect college.
But a lot of kids fall in love with a school that isn’t workable for whatever reason - it could be financial, it could be an unrealistic admittance situation, etc. - and then every other school they see gets compared to that ideal and falls short.
It can be unhelpful to visit schools that ultimately are off the board for your family unless the kid knows prior to the visit that that’s the case and you know they can be see it in a pragmatic light.
It most definitely depends on major/department but, if you are looking at the UCs and want to avoid a pressure cooker experience, I would eliminate Berkeley and possibly UCSD.
I have one at USC and am surprised at how collaborative it is. It is a very urban environment. Do you live in a big city now?
True that it is worse in certain programs but it is also more of a culture at some schools compared to others. Using a UC example, I wouldn’t consider UC Davis a pressure cooker school even for pre-professionals or CS.
