If I could go back in time, I’d probably talk less, about college in general. I’m not sure what I said made much of difference, and I think it was information overload for an already stressed out 17 yo.
The actual college visits made the biggest impression on her. Less so for me because I look at them as a tiny snapshot, not a guaranteed indicator of the quality of the next four years.
There are 3000 colleges in the USA…you have to have some criteria to whittle down the list.
Rural vs Urban is as good as any…there are good rural schools, and there are good urban schools.
Also you think small schools would be better, but sometimes kids just want to blend in the crowd in bigger school or have more options for majors/clubs/activities at a bigger school.
I think if the college has their major, is affordable, is consistent with their academic level, they are not following a boy/girlfriend and you can deal with the travel required then most kids will be fine anywhere.
Agree with another parent that I would not eliminate any criteria my kid choose for college selection. However, there are obviously different weight for different criteria. The top criteria is affordable. It does not matter how well a school that matches up all other criteria. It does not need to be the cheapest, but it got to be affordable.
“Mine did not want to apply to any universities with a D1 football team.”
I gotta say that that is a weird one. A whole host of different types of schools have D1 football.
BTW, I don’t know if SLO has D1 football but they certainly aren’t FBS.
@Lindagaf: “Not to get off track @ucbalumnus , but surely a prof with 100 students will at least be able to have some interaction on a meaningful level.”
They could, but whether they do would depend on the prof.
Granted, in almost all cases where the class size is about a hundred, the prof would still try to keep track of each student on an individual basis.
Once you get to 200, though, that is less likely, so I’d say there isn’t much difference between 200, 500, and 1000.
We let our D17 totally guide her college choice, and were surprised. We thought she’d love Wesleyan, but she thought it was weird/ugly and didn’t even apply. Then she fell in love with and applied/got in ED to Colorado College, a school we hadn’t even heard of before her counselor told her it would be a great fit. Our D17 knows what she wants and is right for her.
Our D19, however? Oy vey. She wants to stay in California and be able to surf on weekends, which limits her school choices to a handful of UCs. A handful for someone who lost a couple of fingers!
There are a lot of schools in California that aren’t UC’s. There are private schools and the CSUs and the entire community college system.
My daughter had already limited the scope of her college choices by adamantly insisting that she would only attend an art school. She further limited it by insisting that this be “preferably” in the East. And even further limited it by saying the school had to be in a “real city.”
We tried to persuade her to apply to our flagship university in Michigan, which has a fine art program. Nope. (She DID, however, many years later attend UMich for an MBA.)
Fortunately, she applied and was admitted to several excellent art schools. Of those she liked RISD the best. But the critical point of decision was: is Providence a “real city”? All I could say to that was “ugh.” She finally decided that it qualified, and besides she was within hailing distance of Boston and NYC. She didn’t want to attend Carnegie Mellon, to which she was accepted, even though Pittsburgh was a real city, because it wasn’t the East.
She now lives in a real city in the East: NYC.
BTW, re: “Where’s the teaching in that?”, If that’s the criteria, a bunch of poorer not-highly-ranked private LACs and directionals with small class sizes may actually offer the best experience with profs (elite LACs do expect their profs to do research).
Of course, as many people have said, a lot of a college education is outside of the classroom and comes from fellow students as well.
Yeah, SLO is in Big Sky for football because their regular conference, Big West doesn’t have football.
She just didn’t want a big D1 sports culture on campus. After visiting SLO she realized it wasn’t that kind of school and it moved to her to top US pick. SDSU was never more than her safety.
@VickiSoCal: Lots of D1 schools don’t have a big D1 sports culture.
And actually, if you’ve never experienced one, you don’t know what you’re missing.
Welp she’ll never know. But maybe she’ll come home a huge Shinty fan. 
She went to one high school football game a year, didn’t understand any of it and spent the game talking to friends.
Note that Ivy League is an NCAA Division 1 conference. It is in the Football Championship Division.
Location. D was adamant that she wanted to be on the East Coast (she did look though at a few PA schools). I encouraged her to look at Colorado College and other similar LACs in the Midwest. I think being a white girl with a 4.0 from New England did her no favors when applying to LACs in the Northeast.
S1’s criteria
S2’s criteria
Many eons ago I had a cousin who chose her college based on a boyfriend and advised me not to do what she did.
While I didn’t spend a huge amount of time in Boston, I did get off campus for the occasional concert or art museum visit and had several architecture classes that used Boston architecture as part of the curriculum.
@ucbalumnus and so she didn’t apply to any Ivy schools.
Actually they were on mom’s list of too expensive and not going to give merit.
We tried very, very hard to discourage our son from applying to the service academies. We are not pro military, and I’m not fond of weapons, war, or the potential for the ultimate sacrifice. We support him now that he’s there, but it definitely was not our choice, and he did not get any encouragement or help from us during his application process.
@ChoatieMom, I appreciate your son’s commitment. I hope you are proud of him. You obviously did a good job raising him to have a commitment to his values and the strength to pursue his own course. I hope his future is a safe and rewarding one.
@TTG: We are proud of him but not for anything having to do with the military. Thank you for your well wishes. We wish him the same.
As an early high schooler, D1’s main criteria was “as far from home as possible.” Yikes. We never tried to convince her otherwise, so this idea morphed.
Next it was, “active Greek life.” (I think that was actually at the top of her junior year criteria list, for the GC. :-t ) Again, we said nothing. I did take her down to a couple of U’s where the frat houses are beautiful, but destroyed, and she rethought. Ended up at a school with no Greek life, very happy, very loyal.
Speaking of Wesleyan, that was her turning point. We went on a Sat and the library was packed. (Don’t think it was midterms.) She was so impressed. After that, it felt more real to her and she wanted to see either each school’s library or how kids hung out to study. Didn’t apply to Wes.
And remember, all along, we said, no school is a dream school unless the right aid comes through.