<p>Areospace…</p>
<p>There may have been other options for us. We didn’t have a lot of time to research these things and the procedure was scheduled for early on a Monday morning and she wasn’t notified of the day and time until Friday afternoon after most everything was closed. We would have figured out other options if I absolutely couldn’t have been there. She wanted me there, I wanted to be there. She had an invasive and very painful procedure that could have serious complications like permanent brain damage. She was exhausted from having an excruciating headache for more than three weeks, was experiencing some significant vision loss, and had been maneuvering her way through many tests and doctor visits over two weeks. I told myself I would know when I needed to go there, when she called to tell me all the “conditions” required for her procedure, I could hear the panic in her voice. When I said “Do you want me to come?” she said “I don’t want to burden you.” I told her it was no burden and that I was coming. The relief in her voice was evident. She’s a really independent young woman but facing some very scary medical issues alone. Thankfully, everything has turned out ok and things are improving for her. She received excellent care. </p>
<p>I’m not saying these are all reasons to NOT go to school far away. I was simply pointing out that some medical issues could require an emergency trip. Some of the students were posting that they’d hate it if their parents came because they were sick. I was just pointing out that there are different levels of “sick.”</p>
<p>Cobrat You are singing my song, and the new Silicon Beach in Santa Monica / Venice is making it rain $$$… Sorry Old Fort, I mean financial compensation is really like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for so many here in the engineering disciplines. At Caltech, it is almost annoying to many students how persistent the head hunters are right now. I guess they would not be bothered if they did not have those blasted smartphones… UCLA Anderson is forecasting sunny weather for the companies that traffic in smartphone technology applications… I think CNBC even showed how they would hail taxis and track their arrival to you… LoL oops giggle… No wonder VC (venture capitalists) are here with their check books…</p>
<p>Can we all agree, as parents, that there are some medical issues that we would expect any student be able to handle completely on their own, and some for which any loving parent would want to be there?</p>
<p>Where that line lies, and I’m guessing that for most of us it’s somewhere between “common cold” and “rapidly progressing brain tumor, only days left to live”, there’s probably a point where most of us would prefer to be at our child’s side, and another point where we’d do anything to be there. The actual points vary and depend on many things, including of course the nature and severity of the problem, the age and maturity of the child, the availability of others (friends, college staff, local relatives) to help, the difficulty of traveling etc . . . </p>
<p>I don’t understand why people are jumping on Barnard mom, either for flying out to be with a freshman (I’m basing that on the 2016) with a scary invasive medical procedure, or for her larger point which is that they faced one of the problems the OP may be worrying about, and that it didn’t change her belief that Barnard was the right choice for ehr daughter.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Not really. If I were OP’s son, I’d go off to Columbia SEAS for undergrad and do what I need to do to graduate well enough to get a Masters from Berkeley…preferably on my employer’s dime. :)</p>
<p>Thanks to all of you who continued to post your advice and opinions. I had the night to sleep on it and did get a great pm to steer me in the right direction. As was said early on this post, I will go hang wallpaper!</p>
<p>I may finally see Berkeley as the clear choice but everyone is right-it’s my SON’s choice and I am going to back off and stay out of it. When I read this post from 3togo: “It’s his choice please revel in his journey wherever it takes him.” and she talked about how she still remembers her mom’s negative reaction to her choice all these years later, I will NOT do that to my kid. </p>
<p>He is in the air on his way home from NY and when he finally arrives, I will just hug him and love him and support his choice. I am pretty sure he is going to pick Columbia and him telling me he got me a Columbia Mom shirt was his way of easing me into it and now, I’ve had all of yesterday and today to warm up to the idea so I WILL be able to greet him with excitement and support.</p>
<p>Frankly, all of these engineering stories of stress and overload is not what I would pick for my kid to begin with so if he feels like he fits in one place better than the other, then so be it. All of you have said it in one way or another-he’s smart and can make up his own mind. He WILL be fine whatever school he picks. I hope he comes home and decides one way or the other and picks a school that he likes and we can get the paperwork for acceptance there in TIME. </p>
<p>THANK YOU all once again!! I am again so glad that I posted and got such wonderful advice and had time to work things out in my own head so when S comes home, I can just be excited when he makes a decision, whatever it will be. I promise not to tell him he should go look at Berkeley one more time. IF he thinks he needs another look anywhere, well, that will be up to him and I won’t suggest anything that will make him think I have second thoughts about HIS decision. Thank you all so very much!!</p>
<p>I’m sorry if I was snarky above (previous page). Of course if my kid were far far awau and had a terrible medical emergency, I would do my very best to get to her, begging, borrowing and stealing to get there if necessary.</p>
<p>Just pointing out that people wind up with dire medical emergencies all the time and no resources to help. Hospitals in NYC at least have offices that make these arrangements if necessary–they are required to do so by law, and if they can’t make the arrangements, they have to keep the patient in the hospital. They settle the finances later. I am horrified when I read that it isn’t this way in other parts of the country. Of course these hospitals, nominally nonprofit, are often run in an extremely inefficient manner and the guarantee of care is one of the things that make our taxes high. But I can’t imagine it otherwise.</p>
<p>I am shocked I agree with cobrat but I do.</p>
<p>I can’t find aerospace in Columbia but it looks like they have classes.</p>
<p>[Pejman</a> Akbari | Mechanical Engineering](<a href=“http://me.columbia.edu/pejman-akbari]Pejman”>http://me.columbia.edu/pejman-akbari)</p>
<p>They have an eclectic collection of professors and 10:1 teacher to student ratio. Some of them even got degrees from UCB and UCSD. :D</p>
<p>[Faculty</a> | Mechanical Engineering](<a href=“http://me.columbia.edu/people-by-type/faculty]Faculty”>Directory | Mechanical Engineering)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No need to go to college for that. Just a few bucks and you can get a large pack of those creme-filled dark brown cookies from your local supermarket. :D</p>
<p>Granted, if you go that route, you may need to pick up a minor in Cookie Monster studies. :D</p>
<p>Since he will not be in debt, OP’s son will be all set! Sky’s the limit! Cheers! I wish more students had such terrific options without incurring debt that might put a strangle hold on the choices for their future…</p>
<p>If you can afford the cost, going cross country and experiencing NYC is what I would suggest.</p>
<p>Again, I have to THANK all of you once more but I just feel that I should answer the question of WHY this wasn’t all settled before son applied. All of it is really kind of a MIRACLE. </p>
<p>His High School has NEVER sent any kid to an Ivy. His school has 1500 kids and less than 30% go on to a 4 year college and almost 25% are eligible for free or reduced lunch and 30% are ESL. Something happened the year he was born, there must have been something in the water! A tiny handful of kids who all attended preschool together were just super smart and driven. There are about 12 kids who all went their different ways after preschool and then came together again in High School. They were the group of kids in the accelerated and AP classes together. </p>
<p>They had to fight for each A they got and rather than being competitive with each other, they bonded together and created a great support system. They supported each other through the terrible teachers and met almost every day after school to teach each other what the teachers didn’t and do the hours of homework together. Did I say my son had never been to NYC before this weekend? None of these kids have traveled very much and until they got together and created a “travel club” and found a teacher to take them on a trip to Europe the summer after 10th grade that they sold candles to fund, most of them had never even been on an airplane. </p>
<p>Their High School is full of drugs and gangs. It’s a public California High School and this year, they got a little bit of extra funding but they chose to spend it on drug sniffing dogs! They don’t have enough PAPER. This group of friends really stretched themselves and encouraged each other to be brave enough to apply to some of the top schools this year. They had NO support from school and the guidance counselors didn’t know even HOW to do what they needed to do with the kids’ applications. Son’s counselor did everything by snail mail and paper because she didn’t know how to upload her stuff onto the common app. One of the kids wanted to do Questbridge but his counselor lost the paperwork but didn’t tell him that she didn’t send it in until the kid realized that other kids were getting notified of acceptances. There are 3, just 3, counselors for 1500 kids.</p>
<p>Their teachers had never written letters of recommendations because they are not needed for the UCs and those were the top schools that kids before this group had applied to. Last year, the school’s Val was the only one who got into Berkeley and that was the best school anyone in the class was accepted to. </p>
<p>No one told them what the psat was about regarding national merit or what Sat 2s were. In the end, all of them had to play catch up to get the Sat 2s taken because the UCs said they didn’t need them anymore but none of the kids knew that they were needed for the privates. My son took Bio at the last minute and hadn’t had Bio since 9th grade. The tests were held at another school, his school didn’t even offer SAT or ACT tests. The kids shocked each other with their scores. One of the girls scored a 36 on her ACT and one of the boys scored a 2400 on his SAT. These kids had NO prep classes and when the school held ONE practice test, it was on a Saturday and they had to pay for it and ONLY this small group of a dozen kids came so they never had a practice again due to lack of interest. Over 300 kids in his class alone and ONLY 12 came to the practice test. </p>
<p>The kids got together and asked their favorite English teacher if she would help them set up a “writing club” where they could meet after school and get help writing essays for college. It was the blind leading the blind but they all read each others essays and discussed them and rewrote them over and over. It was an uphill struggle from day one for all of these kids.</p>
<p>In the end, one each of the group got into MIT, Chicago, Stanford, Caltech, Harvey Mudd, Cornell and my son, Columbia and Pomona. ALL of the group got into Berkeley and UCLA. All of them got waitlisted for the other schools. There were very few rejections for these kids, mostly just HPY. DS got waitlisted for FIVE schools. Did I even think there was a possibility of any of them getting into these schools? NO! Did I ever dream that DS would end up at an East Coast school? Never. I was so afraid that he wouldn’t get in ANYWHERE probably because I spent too much time on CC. I insisted he apply to UC Irvine just in case he didn’t get into UCSB or UCSD. He applied to 22 schools! Some of his group applied to even more than that and every single one of them need financial aid to go to any school. Not one of them can pay full freight. </p>
<p>So in the big picture of this college application process, I am proud of my son and all of his friends for even daring to apply to these top schools! They broke out of the mold for their school and hopefully, they will pave the way for the kids to follow them who also dare to dream big, including my daughter who will begin 9th grade in the fall at the same school that has drug sniffing dogs and NO paper. Can you imagine what graduation is going to be like this year!? It going to be spectacular!</p>
<p>What an amazing story! You have convinced me even more that he should go to Columbia (assuming he enjoyed his weekend there and feels it would be a good fit). Good luck!</p>
<p>Fidoprincess, what a great story! Congrats to your DS and his friends! I will be eager to hear what he chooses.</p>
<p>Regarding Cost numbers. There are two numbers that I look at are:</p>
<p>1) Cost to Attend less Scholarship and Grants. This number is the true economic cost of attending.</p>
<p>2) #1 above less loans. This is what the parents and students have to come up with to attend.</p>
<p>Some people would further refine #2 between subsidized, unsubsidized, and parent loans. Some of the loans are really expensive.</p>
<p>OP,
Your last post about the amazing dozen is inspiring. Having read that, then I say, let him go to NY. Of course, he may get off other wait lists and be with a friend.</p>
<p>I am sorry that I brought Bernardmom into this. I only mentioned it because her daughter got such good are by her school, to counter parents’ concern about students going to Columbia/Bernard. As a 2016 parent, I read about Bernardmom D’s daughter’s diagnosis to her medical procedure, and Bernardmom was definitely grace under fire.</p>
<p>nice background story fidoprincess.</p>
<p>fidoprincess,
Thanks for providing the “backstory” to your son and his group of friends. A fantastic story about a different kind of “survival.” I have spent the year working as a volunteer in a guidance department with a seemingly similar group of students. However, “your” group was so self-motivated that they have achieved far more than the group I worked with. Congrats to all of them!</p>
<p>Send him to Columbia—maybe that will inspire kids from other grades to do as they did–what a wonderful story!!!</p>