<p>I made it a point to research schools that my S would be interested in (in a million different ways) and also ones that had strong Hillel influences.</p>
<p>When we toured the schools, he wanted to just go in to the hillel office, get a flyer/brochure and walk out…no contact with anyone about Hillel at that point.</p>
<p>When he got his acceptance, there is another young girl from our h.s. that also got in ED. My S and she are accquiantences. She told him that she’s dragging him to the first event on campus and at least they’ll be together as they start to meet new kids. :)</p>
<p>Boys definitly step back and take it all in.</p>
<p>I can deal with the stepping back and taking it all in. It’s the lack of stepping up and expressing some thoughts/observations that is making me crazy. Perhaps I should act like a publisher and pay by the word? (kidding). I would love to get a complete sentence from him on what his thoughts are so far - his likes/dislikes - his questions/concerns. Then again, it wouldn’t even have to be a complete sentence - I’d jump for joy at a few sentence fragments. Anything beyond a grunt would be progress. (Is administering truth serum an option?)</p>
<p>RVM, I can assure you that my sons were not men of many words! I asked them to just jot down a few quick sentences to jog their memories about what they liked or did not like about a school (they had to do this while we were still parked on campus. Yes, I insisted on this). I asked them if they felt that they could make the school “work” for them and if they felt that they could be happy if they attended. They knew that the financial part was going to be a big factor, and I asked them not to apply to any school that they did not want to attend. We all took pics of the campuses to jog our memories about each campus. When decision time came, I asked my kids to refer to their notes (more like a word or two, but they wrote what they wrote) and the pictures. I reminded them in the spring that they did not apply to any school that they would not want to attend (this helped lower the anxiety, when they expressed that they lost some memories about a school 2 weeks before decison time).</p>
<p>Oh but there is sophisticated observation going on under the surface, rvm. It’s just not of a form or calibrated on a scale that you or we can observe. Kids can tell by the minutist detail of clothing or hair or shoes whether others are in their social group or worthy of their friendship. Music they listen to which sounds exactly the same to you is intricately and fractally different to them. While we are evaluating and deciding and hoping or trying to point out important things they should take into consideration, they are way ahead of us and have already decided. If they don’t explain it to us it’s because they know we won’t really get it or are trying to make them take into account things they just don’t care about.</p>
<p>Don’t you remember when we were all like that too?</p>
<p>In short, I think if your son will not employ NEmom’s wonderful fact-based approach, you can take comfort that MHC’s vibe-based approach is being silently employed. Whether baseball caps are worn facing front or back conveys volumes.</p>
<p>Of course, we parents are not as logic-driven as we think we are, either: how many of us have only realized after the fact how stupid we were to not to postpone a tour when the weather forecast was bad; or to schedule one before 1 PM on Saturday; or to think our child could visit 3 schools in one trip without at least the last one becoming a blur?</p>
<p>Rodney, she’s more like an attack nuclear frigate on war manoeuvers. We had to hurry home from Delaware last Saturday because she was tutoring several kids in her class in math, then had a camp reunion the next day and summer job interviews. Then she dove back into last minute preparations for the charity fashion show she’s been organizing the past few months which will be held tonight at our JCC. Tomorrow morning she jets off to the Bahamas with friends for a few days of sailing and snorkeling (free btw), and will return just before the first seder. We haven’t even spoken since Saturday and won’t til seder. For all I know she has decided in her own mind but is dutifully waiting to hear what her aunt, a college counsellor says when she comes up from Maryland the second night. </p>
<p>I think she’s slotted in making college decisions during the week of Pesach because soon after that come studying for AP exams and after the last one she leaves for her month long school senior trip to Israel. </p>
<p>She hasn’t seen a dock since sometime in her sophmore year.</p>
<p>rvm, to kids who upload videos from their cellphone directly to Youtube and download apps from the App Store to their gps equipped phone, your even mentioning and my understanding references to something as passive and unidirectional as a secret decoder ring would mark us both as hopelessly archaic, and rooted in a radio age world that no longer exists. With "“mastermind” villans who would look quaint today and worldly challenges that we thought modern science could solve. But it turned out that many of those advances made today’s problems. Although it doesn’t stop me from offering advice to my kids, I sometimes wonder - from their perspective - why they should listen to me at all about decisions regarding their future. I was better equipped for my age than my parents and my kids are probably better attuned to theirs too. </p>
<p>Take that from a former Captain Midnight Junior Ranger who drank gallons of Ovaltine because half the messages I decoded on my ring told me I would catch the bad guy and save the girl if I did.</p>
<p>rvm- I sympathize with your frustration! My D is also uncommunicative. On our recent college tour, however, she was upset with some of the schools I had chosen to visit- why did I EVER think she would like a school like that? I answered that since she had not given me any input, I chose a variety of schools to look at. I said that she never wants to talk about college. She said, you have to MAKE me talk about it!</p>
<p>One thing that seemed to work was I asked her to rank the colleges we had visited so far as YES, NO or MAYBE. This way, I can get a sense of her preferences, even if she is not telling me a lot about WHY she likes or does not like a college.</p>
<p>This has been a most excellent conversation - I’ve been taking it all in but haven’t had time to post. The timing couldn’t be better as many of us are visiting schools next week. I appreciate the reminder to NOT share my opinion with my DS, particularly BEFORE he speaks up. Since he’s just a soph (but kind of into this), these are “level one” visits. Want him to get the feel and find out what he likes and doesn’t like. I think that towards the end of next year we will be doing a few re-visits to his dept of interest (engineering, at the moment) with the goal of finalizing list by the end of junior year.</p>
<p>We are only going to schools with a significant Jewish population, so I’m also not seeking out Hillel at this point.</p>
<p>I will remember to pack my decoder ring - thanks for the reminder. I’m sure my parents wish they had one when I was applying to schools. I can remember sitting around the dining room table and my dad talking about me applying to Ivy League schools (might have been possible, who knows) but I was adamant on NOT doing that. I specifically remember telling him: Not applying to Dartmouth, it’s in the boonies; not applying to Yale, Columbia or Penn, they are in the city; can’t remember the rest, but I had “reasons.” I probably didn’t want to go to Brown because of the color. Made total sense in my 17 year old brain. Now I see that so many of my classmates went to Ivies! I could have done that! </p>
<p>Anyway, will try not to judge DS when giving his viewpoint. He will have to live with his decision. So far, he has two schools that will definitely be on his list and either would be great. Now to expand the list, and we have time.</p>
<p>It worked out here with DD – she called me yesterday to chat about her classes and her plan for Fall semester and I can’t tell you how happy she is. I was the one who initiated all the college visits and tried to figure out what I thought she would like. When she started seeing colleges she liked, it was apparent. </p>
<p>We all have to deal with the individual personalities of DS/DD, but what we are learning from each other here is invaluable!!</p>
<p>Great idea. I think I will bring a notebook next week to keep track of what he liked at schools he will consider. And add the ranking too. He will have plenty of car time to do this.</p>
<p>And when he’s not doing this, he is going to teach me all the words to “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”</p>
<p>Here’s a novel idea - I am going to ask S2 what system he would like to use! I will explain to him my need for feedback and the fact that he might want some record of his impressions. I will give him options of whether he is willing to discuss his college visits verbally or would rather complete a very brief written review. Let’s see where this approach gets me.</p>
<p>RVM- offer him use of a digital camera. He can take pictures, make quick captions when he uploads the pix (things like “dorky guys playing frisbee at college A” or “smelly dorm lounge at college B”.) No need to be evaluative, no need for commentary, no need for discussion. I think you are shooting yourself in the foot if you make the visiting any more stressful than it already is. And most written reviews? “College A had the biggest assortment of desserts I have ever seen.” “College B had Bob Dylan perform last year and I wish I’d been there before he croaks”.</p>
<p>Your son is either much more communicative than you’ve let on- or you need to chill!</p>
<p>This makes me think of the Google April Fool’s Day YouTube video called Being a Google Autocompleter. The part from 1:08 and on where he talks about the neural scanner.</p>
<p>My guess is that most boys will not want to tour with a digital camera for fear of seeming dorky. Perhaps, a cellphone with a camera–or more likely, a quick list taken down by you or tape recorded of the 3-5 highlights; 3-5 lowlights; and any questions left open.</p>
<p>Oh I agree that I need to chill (to an extent)! It’s just that we are spending the time and money on these visits and I want to have some level of feedback from him so that when August rolls around - we have all agreed on where he is applying. I also think it is helpful to have some idea of what he likes and dislikes so we can plan accordingly. If he dislikes a campus because he would rather have a traditional grassy campus with a quad than a more urban campus - fine - but I need to know that so that we don’t pick another urban campus to visit. After next week - we will have visited urban (CofC), suburban (Elon) and rural (VT) campuses. We will have visited large (VT) medium (CofC) and small (Susquehanna) schools. We will have visited schools that offer sports mgmt and schools that don’t. We will have visited schools with a 10% Jewish population and schools with maybe 100 Jewish students. </p>
<p>Some of this variety was intentional - to expose him to different types of colleges and see what he prefers. But the exercise will have been for naught if he won’t tell me the results!</p>
<p>And if he wants to keep his options open and apply to all of the schools on the current list - I’m ok with that too. I just don’t think that a little feedback from him is too much to ask for. But - I’ll let you know how it goes.</p>
<p>rockvillemom, have you ever considered sending him to visit without you? I am just curious as to what might happen - would he talk to you about it afterward since you were not there and did not get the same tour and the same info? You could even send him to the University of Maryland - I know that you are not interested, or Towson, where I think you are interested, because they would be easy to get to by himself (I am presuming that there is some sort of public transportation). This could just be an experiment to see if it would open up the conversation - maybe you could then get him to compare it with the other schools you have seen with him. Those schools are so close that if you wanted to go again, you could. Or, you could come up with something in Charlestown that you must do while he visits, and then he could show you the highlights later that day or evening. Just an idea!
What does he talk to you about? Sports? Does he offer his opinion about anything? I think that it would be very valuable to give him positive reinforcement every time he offers his opinion about anything. If he starts with sports, and you give him lots of strokes (“That’s a really interesting point.” “I never thought of it that way.” “Yeah, I can see why you are saying that.” “I don’t know much about that. Can you give me some background?” etc etc) then you can move him to current affairs (I know you think he is not interested, but he is going to go to college and he needs to develop awareness of issues that affect him and everyone to participate meaningfully in our democracy!) Once he realizes that he gets major approval for this, he may realize that he will get approval for offering his opinion about the colleges too. Again, just a thought!</p>