<p>FWIW, from my experience at UMich engineering. There was lots of overlap between the Engineering School-specific Tech Day for prospective students and the regular tour of the Engineering School and campus run by admissions.</p>
<p>Thanks for the perspectives. I needed that! If DS doesn’t want to miss school now, we can wait to see when/if he is accepted. Great advice.</p>
<p>Excellent suggestion fourkidsmom. I think my son really valued the accepted students visits much more because it seemed much more likely that he really would be attending that school. Also, no wasting time on schools that were off the list because of cost.</p>
<p>Any ideas would be really helpful!
My daughter is a junior and just recently diagnosed with a learning disability. Better late than never!
She is otherwise bright and a hard worker and pulling in mostly B-'s and C’s which we know would be A’s and B’s if it weren’t for those dang test and quizzes. Current GPA 2.5 My question to you all is… What colleges would you recommend for her to start considering? She has already studied abroad in Israel for a semester during high school and Judaism is very important to her. She has started to keep kosher (no eating non-kosher meat) and is active in our Jewish youth group. We are in the Mid-West and would like to explore schools within driving distance.</p>
<p>Welcome, creativemom12! I was going to suggest University of Hartford except for your last line about driving distance from the midwest. I think others here may have suggestions for you. </p>
<p>Glad you joined in!</p>
<p>creativemom: midwest encompasses a TON of territory but here goes:</p>
<p>I am increasingly impressed by what I have read re: University of Kansas; large Jewish population, great programs etc…may want to check that out…</p>
<p>In addition, and Im not sure about academic credentials needed, but University of Nebraska comes to mind as well…</p>
<p>Maybe if you could give us some more info, that might help…radius around which city, perhaps?</p>
<p>creativemom, I was also going to suggest Kansas. What’s your budget?</p>
<p>My D2 is another junior with ADHD, higher GPA but at a grade-inflated high school. I’ve been going through the listings for Colleges That Change Lives looking for schools that have significant Jewish communities and that offer good academic support. D2 is now saying that she wants to stay closer to home here in California, which pretty much rules out most of the CTCLs for her. But you might want to take a look at Earlham. I’ve read numerous posters here on CC talking about how the school is caring and doesn’t let students fall through the cracks. It might be an admissions reach and possibly expensive, but checking it out doesn’t cost anything.</p>
<p>And speaking of D2’s search–it’s been really, really frustrating trying to find time to go visit campuses. When D1 was looking the school year started after Labor Day. That meant there was time at the very end of August to go tour colleges while they were in session. Now the school year starts earlier, so we can’t use that time :mad: </p>
<p>Then there’s the problem that D2 has a lot of commitments on weekends. It’s great that she decided to work as a teacher’s aid at the religious school…but that means she is working several Sunday mornings each month and is staffing a few weekend retreats. It’s wonderful that she is very involved in youth group board at our shul and on a regional level…but there are weekend planning sessions and retreats. I thought there was a free weekend for Veteran’s Day which coincided with a prospie session at Mills College. Perfect–I figured we’d first go up to UC Santa Cruz, then drive to Oakland, and then go take a look at Chapman or Pitzer or even go look at some Arizona schools (Prescott, NAU, U of A). Nope, the calendar lied, she has a retreat that weekend. :mad: </p>
<p>Spring break week isn’t a possibility because she is taking part in a student exchange program and her Israeli counterpart will be here the week of spring break. And so on and so on and so forth. Napoleon had an easier time planning the invasion of Russia.</p>
<p>I want her to look earlier because if she doesn’t like the vibe of the closer places she’ll need to consider looking further afield. That might mean summer trips to look at places like e.g. Earlham or Kansas or Guilford.</p>
<p>Oh, and just to make things even more stressful, there was an article in today’s Los Angeles Times about how many students at California CCs are only able to enroll in a single class. So the fallback live at home for a year or two and go to a CC and then transfer to a 4-year is very unappealing.</p>
<p>SlitheyTrove, I’ll say this about Guilford. If at all possible, go when it’s in session. We visited during Spring break and it was extremely difficult to get the vibe without the students there. It’s a small campus and just a little shabby. We visited it on the same trip as High Point (for fun!) and Elon and while all of us thought it was nice, we would definitely had to go back if it ended up on the short list.</p>
<p>Pittsburgh has a very nice Hillel right between UPittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon. We looked at it when we went to visit Carnegie Mellon. I heard about the big Hillel from one of the Hillel sites re colleges.</p>
<p>My nephew just started at Ursinus and he was B student but taking mostly honors classes and had high SATs. The number of Jews is very small, but there is a Hillel and I think the rabbi was reformed.</p>
<p>If you want to look at schools with major Hillels or Chabads (I might have spelled that wrong) consider Rutgers New Brunswick. One of my students who was precisely a B student did get in and I know they have a vibrant Jewish community–one of the most active.</p>
<p>LOL, the Hillel website says that the Hillel serving CSU Monterey Bay is…the Santa Cruz Hillel! That’s an hour drive. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>kathiep, yes, I’d want to see Guilford in session, but it’s unlikely to be on D2’s list. Opposite coast and nondirect flight is going to be a looong stretch for a kid who wants to stay local, no matter how much it might possibly be a good fit.</p>
<p>SlitheyTove- how about the University of Puget Sound? It was recently added to the colleges that change lives. Still on the west coast. It has a Hillel. I don’t know much about it, but it may be worth looking into.</p>
<p>Creativemom…so happy to see your post because it’s another student very similar to my S2. He’s a junior w/ a 2.6 GPA to date. LDs having a huge impact on his grades…hard but ineffective worker, and would be doing great if grades were based on presentations, etc. but the tests and quizzes where he has to recall lots of information just do him in. We are also in the midwest, and would like to stay w/in driving distance if possible.</p>
<p>We did visit, and liked, McDaniel in Maryland when we took a family trip to DC this summer. We have a visit scheduled at the end of the month at Grand Valley State U in Michigan, but am concerned that the GPA will be a problem. We are also going to an information session being held in our are for DePaul next week. Although it’s a catholic university, they have an active Hillel and jewish fraternity. My sister who lives in the Chicago suburbs asked around and jewish students do go there.</p>
<p>He’s scheduled to take the ACT for the first time in Dec. If he’s able to perform as well when it counts as he has on practice tests, I’m hopeful that it will counterbalance his GPA somewhat.</p>
<p>I look forward to hearing what you discover…</p>
<p>any thoughts on Boston University for undergraduate business programs?</p>
<p>ST I don’t have any school suggestions regarding colleges, but with your daughter assisting at religious school, I am wondering if your temple is different from ours. Many of the kids did this but it was expected that with athletic obligations, searching for colleges etc that there would be weekends that kids would miss. Students were however responsible for calling in. Missing a weekend for that sort of thing was both accepted and expected and was a lesson to the students about their responsiblity to the job when they had to miss work.</p>
<p>Linymom: I’m glad to hear that your S is getting excited about college. I agree with the suggestion of waiting until accepted student days to revisit Lehigh. At that point he’ll know his other options.</p>
<p>Creativemom: I’m not very familiar with the midwest schools, but agree with Rodney that Kansas sounds like a good option.</p>
<p>ST: I can understand your frustration. My D1 had a very busy sports schedule so we had similar issues. We ended up doing some days trips to close colleges on days off from school and I she did miss a few days of school for visits. Good luck.</p>
<p>Umich: I may have mentioned that my nephew is a student at McDaniel. He’s having a great experience. His parents pay for extra academic support that has been outstanding. I don’t think he’s gotten involved with Hillel as they live close enough for him to go home for holidays.</p>
<p>Mint: BU has a very good undergraduate business program. They redesigned the program recently and have moved up in the rankings (for what it’s worth). It’s a pretty rigorous program.</p>
<p>spectrum, the problem is more that there are so many things on weekends that it becomes tough to get away. Part of the issue is that D2 would rather do those things than go look at colleges. If she’s TA-ing, for instance, she’s earning money AND getting to see “her” students who she loves and who love her. Given the chance to do that versus going with her parents to tour a place she might hate on sight–no contest! I’m just going to have to carve out the time in advance and make it non-negotiable.</p>
<p>Slithey, maybe if her friends start talking about their visits that will help. I guess she just does not have any urgency. Nice that she wants to go to work, though.</p>
<p>phillyartmom yes, there was an uptick in interest after one of her besties came back from touring some CA schools. It is certainly much more captivating when a friend comes back talking about the great gym facilities at U San Francisco than when your parents say they think you’d like to look at USF because blahblahblahboringadultstuff. :)</p>
<p>:) Got that!</p>