Adults' concern about out-of-state colleges

College Life
1

<p>I am currently a senior living in Texas looking into Swarthmore, and other out-of-state colleges. A respected family friend whose daughters graduated U-Penn and UT-Austin told me yesterday that unless I was going to attend the Ivies, I should basically stay in-state. He said that time in college should be a time spent studying, and that the “culture shock” of independent life combined with chores of dorm life (cooking, laundry etc) made it hard for one to find time to study. </p>

<p>The daughter who went to U-Penn was able to visit family only once or twice a year, while the UT grad would visit home every other weekend and have mom do her laundry (?!). He went on to say that there are no real differences in school name recognition and student instruction between non-Ivy League schools, that what matters more is the class rank with which I graduate from college. </p>

<p>How valid are his concerns? Are the new responsibilities of parentless college life that difficult to manage?
And,
Is there really no difference between non-ivy colleges?</p>

2

<p>Of course it isn’t difficult to manage life away and have time to study. All those kids filling up all those colleges are doing it. Laundry just doesn’t take up that much time. College is a great stepping stone to independence; this is an age to learn to manage yourself. You are in a fairly protected environment. You are part of a community. There are all kinds of services, like meal plans, that make life easy. You should know if you are one of the few that can’t survive unless mom does your laundry, so don’t let anyone decide that for you. You don’t go around with culture shock for 4 years. I think you have more time to study if you are NOT traveling home and visiting all the time.</p>

<p>There are benefits to being away, aside from exploring a new part of the country. You don’t have to feel obligated to return home every other weekend. You can immerse yourself in college life. Explore a new city. Does coming home in summer, winter break and spring break if you like seem too little to you? I’m a mom of a kid who went from West Coast to East Coast and she didn’t come home a lot, but she could have come more/longer if she wanted to.</p>

<p>There are ‘elite’ colleges that are Ivy equivalents for education quality. They include research universities and top LAC’s. Grad schools and employers are well aware of these. Class rank is not important. No one will even know your class rank and I doubt your college will calculate it. Your gpa will be an important consideration for grad schools, and maybe your first employer. If you have grad school aspirations, access to research and close relations with professors who write recommendation letters is important.</p>

<p>Now when you have an instate option as good as UT-Austin, you don’t have to go away to get a good education and opportunities. But maybe you want to go away and you want a different college environment, and you can afford it, so those are valid choices.</p>

3

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<p>No. Really, really not.</p>

<p>It depends on the kid, of course, but there are tons of kids who go to college every year and adapt perfectly quickly. And college living really isn’t quite that independent. You’ll likely live in a dorm your first year, with a meal plan and relatively few responsibilities, besides school. I wouldn’t consider that quite a “culture shock,” considering you will likely have most of your meals cooked for you, and if there are any issues with your dorm you can contact your RA or the custodial staff. If laundry is taking up so much of your time that you can’t study, then you’re doing it wrong =D</p>

<p>Everyone’s different, and if you feel that you would be fine going far away for school, then that’s fine. If you’d prefer to stay closer to home, then that’s fine as well. I will say that I had friends who lived close to school and did go home frequently–but they often found that they could never study at home so they avoided it and stayed at school when they had assignments due or exams. For a lot of kids (that I knew at least), going home on weekends was more for their parents or siblings than it really was for them. I went to school in-state, but still only went home over breaks (and frequently spent summer breaks at school as well). Going home is nice, but at some point, you’re going to have to move out and live on your own.</p>

<p>Also, at some point, everyone has to learn to live independently, and if you don’t learn it during college, when will you?</p>

<p>And there are real differences between non-Ivy league schools, both in regards to name recognition (and probably, instruction, as well). For instance, I’d bet that far more people have heard of UC Berkeley than have heard of CSU Stanislaus, and they’re both non-Ivy league schools within just a couple of hours from each other.</p>

<p>This is a decision that you and your family should be making, not family friends. Consider what’s best for you and what’s feasible financially, and the rest will work itself out. Keep in mind that going further away is logistically more difficult and often comes associated with the cost of a plane ticket every time you want to go home. Perhaps, your family friend is coming from that perspective–that he doesn’t really see a benefit in paying more to go far away when you have perfectly respectable schools in-state.</p>

4

<p>First of all, not all colleges offer class rankings for their students. If anything, you would normally just have your GPA on your resume anyway. Second, some schools can vary greatly in teaching style and quality. For example, smaller LACs have smaller classes, and thus may assign more written work and presentations. Large state schools can have auditorium-filled classes where a professor simply cannot grade 300 papers or listen to 100 group presentations. Some departments at some schools are very active in research and place less emphasis on quality of teaching, whereas the same department at another school might be more focused on teaching assessment and publish less frequently - which can be good or bad depending on whether you’re trying to gain research experience yourself. Some schools have a bad reputation in their surrounding areas while others have favorable reputations and may be recruited from more heavily.</p>

<p>Third, if one finds doing laundry once a week and going to the cafeteria to eat 3 times a day difficult to manage, I’d be concerned. Cleaning a small dorm room shouldn’t be much different than keeping your own bedroom clean. I think the problems lie more in homesickness, or not fitting in socially. Or being disorganized and needing parents to offer more structure in daily life than you get at college. But I agree with the above post; you have to learn sometime.</p>