<p>Most of my son’s friends think this way:</p>
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<p>I am so glad that my son wanted a small school, and that he did not follow along with his peers!!</p>
<p>If your son is a very confident kid, it is very hard to beat the lure of big time sports. If he is not, then you can try to emphasize the friendliness of small schools and turn the small class sizes from liability (“I will get called on all the time and can’t ever cut!”) to asset (“The professors all know you and give you their cell numbers because they are eager to help you whenever you need it”).</p>
<p>I am sad to be the person to tell you all that if your kid is looking at colleges and already trying to calculate when and how he will cut classes, all the micromanaging in the world isn’t going to get him up for his 8 am bio lab or 9 am statistics lecture.</p>
<p>There are kids who go to all kinds of colleges- big, small, prestigious, obscure, and major in Beer Pong. And those are the ones who graduate; the X% who don’t make it back from Freshman summer are another story. I’ve got one living next door to me. His parents don’t understand how someone who graduated with a near perfect GPA from HS can get a 2.0 Freshman year. But the kid is frantic that they won’t let him go back- he loved every minute of his big sports/big social life fun campus.</p>
<p>blossom - I’m not worried about my son cutting class - that has not come up at all. But he is a quiet kid and not the kind who loves participating in class - so I can see from his standpoint that large class size is not a bad thing. It’s all in how you present it though - and I like yabeyabe’s suggestions on how to illustrate the benefits of smaller schools and smaller class sizes in terms of ready access to help when you need it - that will make sense to him, I hope.</p>
<p>No need to be sad to be the person who tells people that a kid intending to cut class cannot be micromanged–I think every parent realizes this. But some parents with short memories of their college years may need reminding that kids who had no trouble focusing in HS AP classes which began at 7 will find themselves staying up much later in college and finding 8 or 9 AM classes difficult.</p>
<p>My H was an excellent student in HS, had almost a full-time job, cleaned house for his parents (I’m not kidding) and cooked dinner many nights, could NOT get up for early classes in college. He even spent hundreds of dollars on a breakfast contact trying to seduce himself into getting up early. NO go. He cut it very close. Of course his parents weren’t involved … but I as his GF went crazy!</p>
<p>Anyway he made it into medical school, and THEN he learned to get up early. He hasn’t been able to sleep late, even on vacation, for 25 years now …</p>
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<p>Rockville Mom: I wanted to suggest that you look at the list of which AP courses will count for credit at JMU and other schools, particularly to try to get those awful core courses done before starting college. For example, you mentioned Psychology. AP Psychology has the reputation of being the easiest AP course at our high school. Colleges also like to see at least one or two AP courses in the application.</p>
<p>It’s funny, having attended one myself, I am a huge fan of smaller LACs. I really thought that a great LAC with small classes would be the best fit for D, but she always preferred the energy, the resources and the facilities of large schools. My concern was that she would not get the kind of individual attention that one would expect at a smaller place. The great irony is that she turned out to be a proactive student who seeks out professors, attends office hours etc. As a result of being in the kind of place that she always envisioned herself, she’s been happy, motivated and successful. </p>
<p>The truth is, you have to make an effort to get individual feedback at an LAC as well - nobody is going to hold your hand there. However, some students may feel more comfortable approaching a teacher they know from a small class. Or perhaps the students who attend LACs are a self-selected population that values that type of interaction in the first place - with some students being in that kind of an environment will rub off. But my point is that sometimes the kid really does know best - if he or she will be most happy at a large school, you might be surprised at the outcome.</p>
<p>Rockville Mom is being very smart and intelligent to search these schools early in the game so that the list of schools to apply closely match her son’s interests.</p>
<p>mdcissp - agree on the AP Pysch - S2 is taking it this coming year as a junior - will be his first AP course. If it goes reasonably well (meaning he manages at least a B) - hoping he will consider taking AP Economics and AP Stats senior year - regardless of what college he goes to - it will be good preparation if he plans to be a business major. And frankly, if he hates those courses and decides he does not want to be a business major - I’d rather determine that in hs than in college.</p>
<p>roshke - I agree with you. We have a bit of a family bias towards smaller schools - I went to Lafayette - DH to American and S1 is at Wake Forest - so clearly our familiarity and comfort zone is the smaller or small/medium school. But, if S2 decides to go in a different direction - I’ll support him. I have kind of approached this issue thinking a quiet kid would do better at a smaller school - but he’s only a rising junior - and if he wants to keep JMU on the list - we’ll keep it on there. If we visit a few more smaller schools in the fall and he doesn’t care for them - I’ll start over from scratch and add more larger schools to the list that we can visit in the spring. It’s his journey - I’m just along for the ride.</p>
<p>rockvillemom - my middle D is also called “quiet” by people who don’t know her and she initially wanted a larger school so she could hide in the large lecture halls. She’s ended up at a small LAC where her smallest class in the spring semester could all fit in the prof’s car for a field trip…and it’s been helpful. She’s not lost in the crowd and she’s really working at speaking up (which she acknowledges is not her strength). Even though she still gets the “we’d like to hear from you more” remarks in her end-of-semester crite sheets, I feel like she’s making progress.</p>
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<p>stradmom - excellent advice. In my opinion, S2 needs to go to a smaller school where he will have to participate in class and will develop more confidence in himself and be able to voice his opinions. I don’t think going to a larger school so he can be in large classes and maintain his anonymity will help him develop into a confident adult. But, I am wary of pushing too hard - so at this point - I’m staying completely open-minded and we’ll see how fall visits go. Next up is Susquehanna in early September.</p>
<p>Yes, small schools are not a cure-all and large schools not a curse. Having gone to a 1000 freshman school, I believe small school professors are often much more interested in teaching undergrads; that professors in small classes are much more likely to spot your kid looking uncertain or lost; and much better able, if your student has come to them with an issue, to keep an eye on your child in a small class.</p>
<p>Frankly, most of us would be upset if a junior year high school class had 40 kids in it–2 years later, do you want your child in a class with hundreds of kids? If your hcild is not a very confident student, will he or she not be more reluctant to raise their hand in front of 60 kids they barely know than in front of 20 who are familiar friendly faces?</p>
<p>Note that, because the US News rankings refer to % of classes with more than 50 kids, many sizable schools have combined classes of over 50 kids into classes with over 100, because 1 class of 120 kids hurts rankings less than 2 classes of 60.</p>
<p>Stradmom, since your D is happy at the school, would you like to recomend it to others?</p>
<p>Wow. This thread is still going strong! Haven’t been on for a while since we finally had D’s HS graduation (Friday) and had to take S to his camp (URJ - he is so happy!).</p>
<p>Just a couple of things…</p>
<p>RE: VA Tech: The S of one of my good friends is going there in the fall (Jewish). He is going into mechanical engineering and it had more “toys” than GWU - which had previously been his top choice. The one down-side is that, to fly from LGA to Roanoke is, apparently, a fortune. I told my friend that since she’s not paying for GWU, she has to look at it as a trade-off! My neighbor’s son loved VA Tech - but she didn’t even realize there were flights and said it was way too far to drive (9-10 hrs from here!). Can’t add any input re: Hillel, but if you are going to consider this school, investigate the transportation.</p>
<p>RE: Intermarriage, conversion, etc. I could write a book, no, a soap opera, with what has gone on in my family. (But I won’t write it here.) My bottom line, after my various experiences, is that, if you’re not thinking about this before college, it’s likely too late. Of course you have a better chance if there is a good % Jewish students at a college, but your kid’s values/priorities have been estabished before going off to freshman year. (This is why I am a HUGE proponent for URJ camps – three ways to ensure that your child continues to practice Judaism are: attend Jewish day school, attend Jewish summer camp, go on a peer trip to Israel.)</p>
<p>RE: Large vs. small school. It’s hard not to exert your own desires onto the wishes of your perspective college student. For my D, even though she’s not a top student (still graduated with honors, but I would consider a B+ student), she has the personality to seek out teachers and did so extensively in HS. I wasn’t worried about a large-ish school for her (not Penn State large). For S, going to be a HS sophomore, he’s a top student, but not as outgoing with his teachers. I think he will really thrive in smaller classes and doesn’t show an interest (right now) in the bells and whistles of the large schools. At this point, I’m thinking smaller LAC or honors program somewhere. I still have time…</p>
<p>I just wanted to say, since LINY mentioned Penn State, that this school does a really good job of creating smaller communities within the larger university, that it is surprisingly easy to get personalized attention, that they pay an enormous amount of attention to student life, that they have tremendous resources (like “tutoring centers” where students can just go and do their work, and approach the tutor if they have questions or problems), that there are lots of ways for even quiet students to become leaders, and that the whole campus participates in “Thon” in smaller groups and this is a fantastic experience for the students. There are advantages to larger universities also!</p>
<p>I recall Penn State having a very good 4 year graduation rate for its size as well</p>
<p>around these parts, however, a “B” student, out of an average public school, is not going to be admitted to Main campus of Penn State unless there is some fluke…</p>
<p>S1 has a good friend (Jewish) at Penn State who seems to be having a good time and doing well. I looked on our large public hs Naviance - in 2009, 105 applied and 93 were accepted - 8 matriculated. (This is all main campus). Pretty much every student with a 3.8 wgpa or better was accepted. Pretty much every student over a 1200/1600 SAT was accepted. For a lower B student - say a 3.5 wgpa and an 1100 SAt - could go either way - there were plenty in that range who were accepted. So, not what we are looking for, but I would put it on a B student’s list if large universities were of interest.</p>
<p>I wanted to share a thought. As we walked out of Freshman Preview Day, another freshman called out to our son, came over, high fived him and said he would stay in touch over the Summer. I looked him up on the 2014 FB page and found he was an athlete from a Catholic HS. Then I saw a posting on the page from a kid whose profile identifed him as a Conservative Jew interested in Literature and he was writing about the " lots of awesome people" he met that day.
I decided that, even in a very small school, our kids can find others they click with, in significant part because I think most of this generation does not treat religious affinity as relevant to friendship.</p>
<p>I think this is why many of our kids disagree with us when we suggest Jewish population at a school is relevant. This is probably also a contributing factor to the high rate of intermarriage.</p>
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