Parents of the HS Class of 2008

Alumother · 05-27-2011, 05:11 PM

I don't suppose I'm the only parent with a child starting their senior year of college next year, right? I was hoping to eavesdrop on the conversation

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jrpar · 05-27-2011, 05:13 PM

Some of us are still lurking around here

Consolation · 05-27-2011, 05:24 PM

No, there isn't such a thread. But we could start one!

MidwestMom2Kids_ · 05-27-2011, 05:42 PM

I suppose we could use the "Where is your 2008 kid going?" thread if we could find it...

gladmom · 05-27-2011, 06:46 PM

My youngest will be a college senior next year. Things are generally going really well for him. I do wonder what kind of job he might be able to get with a degree in economics, though. I'm not sure if he wants to go to grad school or not.

There are some very lively discussions on those other threads for kids a year or two behind ours.

Alumother · 05-27-2011, 08:21 PM

Well, if no one objects, we can use this thread. Anyone else looking out into the future and wondering what's in store for our 2012 kids? And wondering how much to (not to) get involved?

MidwestMom2Kids_ · 05-27-2011, 09:09 PM

I confess to occasionally looking at on-line job postings and forwarding them to my D.

shyparentalunit · 05-27-2011, 11:20 PM

Count me in! My DD (my youngest) is still trying to figure out what comes next. Grad school? A gap year and then med school? Who knows? She is planning to take the GRE in July. I'm not sure how to help at this point...

mamabear1234 · 05-27-2011, 11:56 PM

My D will be a senior majoring in int'l affairs and economics. She is planning to work a few years before grad school. Has already started interviews; had one with a large consulting firm and was invited to a 2 day "externship" in September. I had not heard the term before, but apparently they have more interviews and put the students in group problem solving activities? She has had several internships, which I hope will help her land a job.

DonnaL · 05-28-2011, 01:36 AM

I've kind of wondered myself why there seem to be threads devoted to almost every college class other than 2012. Although it really doesn't seem very long ago at all to me that my son was a high school senior and I first came here to post on the high school class of 2008 threads!

My son is finishing his third year at the University of Chicago, and has enough credits accumulated that he can save his parents quite a bit of money next year either by taking three courses per term for two terms and graduating one term early, or staying all three terms but taking only two courses per term, to give him more time to work on his B.A. thesis.

His plan right now is to go to graduate school to get a Ph.D. in Art History, after taking a year off to work. (Doing what, he isn't exactly sure yet, but it would be in a related field.) Several of his professors with whom he's friendly -- he's always been good at making friends with teachers, especially women for whatever reason -- have been strongly encouraging him to go for a Ph.D. given the extent of his academic enthusiasm, and telling him that he has an excellent chance (especially with his grades) of getting into one of the top programs in the country, and that he should settle for nothing less than full funding for the duration. But they all seem to agree that taking a year off first to make sure that this is really what he wants to do is advisable; the dropout rate from Ph.D. programs in the humanities is supposedly much higher among people who go straight from college to grad school.

I think another reason he wants to take a year off before grad school is that he seems to have a lot of trepidation about taking the GRE, and says he doesn't have time to study for it or worry about it either this summer or next year, while he's busy researching and writing his senior thesis. I doubt he'd need to study for the non-math parts, since I don't think his facility with words has deteriorated significantly since he did as well as he did on those parts of the SAT's, but doing reasonably well on the math part of the SAT's required a lot of studying. Of course, I know he wouldn't want to be embarrassed, but would an art history program care that much about how he did in math on his GRE's?

But if he wants to take a year in between, and thinks he can get some sort of worthwhile job for that year, more power to him. He's promised me that he won't spend that year sitting on my sofa or browsing the Internet!

In a way, I'm starting to feel a little bit like I did when he was a high school junior. The biggest difference this time, obviously, is that he'll be doing pretty much 100% of the research and everything else that's involved. I'm just around to give whatever advice and support I can. The degree to which he's grown up and become independent in the last three years -- including his term in Vienna last fall and planning on spending a good part of this summer on his own in Germany doing research, without any apparent trepidation -- still astonishes me sometimes. He's also way more self-disciplined than I ever was at his age (or a considerably older age). As one example, there wasn't a German course that fit for him to take this term, but he's apparently been studying German on his own, every single day for the entire term, to keep his skills up. I could never have done anything like that!

PackMom · 05-28-2011, 08:57 AM

Thanks for starting this thread Alumother. My S2, our youngest, is a rising senior... in summer school for both sessions this summer to make the May 2012 graduation possible. He is at a state u. majoring in Criminal Justice. He recently declared that he did not want to "be a cop" but is not sure what he does want to do. To graduate, he is required to do a semester long internship next Spring. I'm hoping that that will shine some light on which direction he might want to go. When he chose CJ we thought there would be a variety of jobs to which CJ would be applicable. Now, we don't know. State budget cuts and hiring freezes have wiped out some possibilities.

Our S1 went straight to work after grad. and has been totally self-supporting since.
DH and I are terribly worried that S2 will end up being the kid who graduates, comes home and flounders. He was not a standout h.s. student but after a rocky start has done much better in college than we expected. Grad. school, however, is not in his future. He's tired of school and the college fund will be empty after four years. I'm so proud of him for making it through in four years (lots of his friends are on the five year undergrad plan) and never thought we'd be headed toward graduation with such trepidation.

Consolation · 05-28-2011, 10:29 AM

I'm glad to know that I am not the only one who is beginning to obsess a bit about what comes next for their rising senior.

My kid is majoring in French, but developed a sufficient interest in linguistics that earlier this year he mentioned the possibility of going to grad school in it. Of course, at that point he had not actually taken a single ling course.

Now that he has, he seems to be enthusiastic. It is too late for him to major or double major in it, but he can construct a solid minor if he wants, or modify his French major. He is planning to stay in school this summer--having discovered that you can do a 13th term if it is a summer term--and will have the opportunity to take another linguistics course, although not one of the required ones. I think that spending the summer in Hanover is really the major draw, especially since he can get a part-time job as a language drill instructor there and finding summer work here is almost impossible.

When I have the chance to have a conversation with him about "stuff" I'm always impressed with his insight, intelligence, and growing maturity, but he is an introvert and not the type of kid who makes an effort to get professors to like or mentor him. For example, another kid with a potential interest in a new field might have gone to the department and made himself known to them, asked advice, etc. Mine has apparently yet to even go to the office hours of the prof whose course he is taking, although he says he is going to. Argh! I occasionally prod him in that direction, and he does seem to finally be getting with the program, so to speak. I think he sometimes fails to realize that there is a lot of ground between brown-nosing and favoritism, which he abhors, and simply getting to know professors!

DeniseC · 05-28-2011, 10:54 AM

GRE note:

The GRE test is changing Aug 1. If your student would like to take the 'old' test, sign up NOW for June and July dates.

Also the GRE prep books available in book stores - some are geared for the 'old' test, some are geared for the 'new' test.

Some grad schools also request GRE subject tests, given only in once in Oct and once in Nov.

Consolation · 05-28-2011, 11:33 AM

Thanks, Denise--that's one of the things I've prodded my S about. Do you know what the difference between the old and new GRE is going to be?

shellfell · 05-28-2011, 11:40 AM

S2 is in the class of 2012, although he'll be graduating in Dec. In exchange for doing that, we've agreed to pay his living expenses for 6 months (less expensive than payng for a semester of school) in the same city his school is in. He's been interning at the same place for a year and a half; they like him & he's done a good job on some projects, but getting him to talk to them about a full-time job for after graduation hasn't happened. We encourage him to do as much as possible about finding a job this summer, since in the fall he'll also have classes & need to find a place to live for after graduation.
It's hard to find the balance of "making suggestions" & just leaving him to handle everything on his own. He tries to show how independent he is, but he's also very introverted & doesn't like talking to other people, even those (profs, employers) who may be able to help him.