<p>Yes, absolutely. Is there a decal you can put on your car?</p>
<p>One of my son’s classmates auditioned for Cirque du Soleil in their senior year - she was almost in the postion of having to decide between a top college and the circus! Sadly (or perhaps not) she didn’t make the final cut for the Cirque du Soleil but she did make it into one of the top colleges and is very happy there!</p>
<p>On April Fools Day, S sent out a blast email to everyone saying he was leaving school early this year to join a traveling Bulgarian circus. It is telling that NO ONE thought he was kidding.</p>
<p>Seriously though, one of the disputes we are having with him now around all the college searching is that he has a number of contacts in the music and circus worlds that he has cultivated which he is afraid he will lose if he goes somewhere outside of our immediate area (NYC).</p>
<p>“He has discounted several places we have suggested for no good reason (i.e, didn’t like the rep he met at the college fair.) AARRGH”</p>
<p>Welcome momoschki! You have learned the first lesson of the college search mararthon: Never suggest a college that you really want your S to think about. Find a way for someone else to make the suggestion, leave some interesting literature or story around about the college, express disdain for the college. Then, your S will (possibly) show interest. Our D ended up at a college that she absolutely loves. We mentioned it, and the brochure went into the trash can. She only applied because her favorite uncle and a GC suggested she look at it. Mostly, she applied because it was located in Boston.</p>
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<p>Or you could do what I did for one school. Since it didn’t require a new essay, I just applied to it for him. When they had an open house/research demo day I handed him a bunch of literature with pictures of major nerd toys and told him I’d already bought airplane tickets. After the visit, he was pumped, but it still wasn’t his favorite. When all the dust settled, it’s where he starts this August. If only we could figure out in advance what they would like, it would save a ton of time, energy, stress, and money.</p>
<p>Let me be the first boymom to invite you to Sinner’s Alley to commiserate about the whole ‘boy’ approach to higher academia. We have some acronyms you might want to borrow; ie TSFS (The Son From Space), TJFH (The Junior From Hell) and so on. Most of the Sinner’s boys found their way onto mainstream tracks after a few bounces off the tracks. One or two are following the rock star dream.</p>
<p>There are hundreds and hundreds of happy solutions at the end of the vortex. Chances are your son will be accepted to a wonderful school.</p>
<p>There’s a sinner’s alley for boymoms? I need that a lot!!!</p>
<p>WashDad - After all the trials and tribulations on here, I don’t recall hearing that story before. Really funny. :)</p>
<p>Sinner’s Alley isn’t JUST for boymoms, but we tend to hang around in the back corner commiserating quite a lot. Sometimes we even raise a glass in toast to one of the rascals.</p>
<p>thank you! thank you! i also am new here and am trying to dive in! sigh… i feel so much better knowing i am not the only new mom to this!!!</p>
<p>momoschki - how about Florida State or Ithica College. They (among others) have school circuses. Maybe you could ease him into the whole thing by mentioning quirky things on campus that might appeal to him, be it unicycles at Harvey Mudd or a circus or the accordian or whatever.</p>
<p>Last year, we were doing the same thing you are, son was avoiding putting together a ‘long list’, and had no thought of planning for the future. The turning point was when he talked to an unbiased outsider (NOT parents or counselor) and he realized he could use ANYTHING as a criteria for choosing a college. His original list included items like, college should be small, have liberal arts; be within 2 hours of snow in the winter; have cool college pranks (think MIT and CalTech); be in the same state as some relatives or friends (we live overseas). </p>
<p>The point is, the choices were overwhelming to start, so he avoided the whole issue. He had no academic criteria that he cared about, but when he started using living conditions criteria, the other things started to sort out.</p>
<p>His final deciding factor was if the school had a great books program (which aren’t so common, so that really narrowed it down in the end.) </p>
<p>If I was starting with a ninth grader, and we lived in the states, I would stop to have lunch at any college we passed on any of our family vacation trips. Or take them to any events (gymnastics, plays, music performances), just so the kids could get a feel for what big colleges vs. small colleges look like, etc.</p>
<p>Good luck. If it worked out for us, it’ll work out for your family!</p>
<p>I actually think my son does have some criteria for what he is looking for lurking deep beneath the surface-- but an additional (unpleasant) dynamic in this whole process is that he greatly enjoys torturing me with his apparent indifference/obliviousness and gets a lot of enjoyment from watching me suffer. For instance, my hunch is that he is looking for quirky, arty LACs that will afford him a pretty wide margin of freedom in his course selections and major choice, in addition to a place that is strong in music (although he is not classically inclined at all.) We worked with his college counselors at school and came up with a decent preliminary list, but he discounted several of these schools for no good reason (i.e., “there’s NO culture in Minnesota!” when we suggested he look into Macalester.) </p>
<p>Tellingly, however, when he attended the local college fair, I found he had taken brocures and requested literature from Macalester, along with other schools he louded protested he would NEVER consider.</p>
<p>He really likes to jerk my chain…</p>
<p>Have your son use one of those search tools (Princeton Review?) where you fill out a survey and the site gives you a list of all possible schools. questions include size, urban/suburban/rural, big sports, greek system, possible majors, EC’s, weather, housing, etc. etc. It also will help him think about what he would like, even if he does not know (like weather, big city access, etc.) It’s a good place to start the process rolling, but don’t use it as the “source”. </p>
<p>Our D was surprised at some of the schools that came up on the list and others that were dropped off. For example, her interest was International Relations/Middle East studies and she found out the Amherst did not have a major for her. She was also surprised to find that USC, which has a good IR program, is weak on Israel/Middle East courses. On the other hand, she wanted lots of opportunity to do music and musical theater, but not as a major and found several schools that had strong IR and music EC’s.</p>
<p>Bluecroo–</p>
<p>just for the fun of it, I just did the Princeton Review survey, as despite my son’s reticence, I think I have a pretty good idea of what he is after. The #1 match school came up Oberlin, which is really funny, because so far that is his first choice. I suppose there must be something to those surveys!</p>
<p>momo - I have been reading your thread in the main Parent’s Forum. Getting kind of heated. Don’t worry.</p>
<p>Boys are weird. This is my highly intelligent synthesis of 20 years of data. 20 years with a daughter and 17 with a son. However, boys are best dealt with by pretending that they are still 8 years old. Always. Pat their heads. Feed them a lot of food. </p>
<p>Just try to keep a sense of humor. Boys like humor. The other night I in a fit of some kind of psychosis told my son that I would have to kill myself if he got a grade less than an A-. He looked me and said, Mom, can you give me one reason why I would possibly want to be here with you at this moment?</p>
<p>I started laughing. I apologized. I told him I had temporary insanity. That I only said that because I had suddenly realized that I was watching basketball with him when he had a test the next day and I was not being a responsible mother. Now we laugh about it. And I am sure in some small way he will never forgive me but hey I have a LOT of marks in the good mom column so it will even out.</p>
<p>And plus I make him really good food.</p>