Touching upon a couple of things that some of you brought up:
- ultimately, it is definitely her decision. I do think that making the decision solely based on where your friends are attending might not be the wisest choice.
- At the same time, D24 is probably not being very reasonable because 2 of her friends’ parents will not allow their daughters to live on campus wherever they attend…the parents plan on moving to wherever the kid attends college and will have the kid live at home. So even if the gang of 4 all end up at U of A, they’re not going to be roommates.
- doing a week away at a college-based camp of some sort will probably not be in the cards this summer. But D24 is going on a HS-sponsored trip to France w/some classmates & 2 teachers at the end of this school year. So there will be some growing there at the end of May.
- I like the suggestion to investigate housing options at different schools. We’ve already been looking into this. D24 is interested in pre-health, so if a college has a pre-health LLC, I think that would be great, but ultimately it’ll be her choice.
- Also re: housing - DH & I decided previously that we are not willing to pay for a single room. D24 needs to live in a double.
- For freshman year, I would prefer D24 to live in a dorm that has the traditional bathroom down the hall. When I was in college, there was a lot of socializing that happened in the bathroom. 1 of the colleges we’re considering is small and the college mentioned in a Youtube video that their research has shown that students who live their freshman year in non-suite dorm rooms (i.e., communal bathroom down the hall) tend to develop a friend network & a sense of community faster than students in suite-style rooms (2 rooms sharing 1 bathroom). But ultimately, she’ll be the one to decide.
- we have 2 tours coming up next month at LACs (happy meal sized schools w/each around 1500 undergrads). So far, our other tours have been at big public universities…ASU (~63k students, which is like the super-sized meal), U of A (normal extra value meal at ~33-34k undergrads), UNM (~16k undergrads…Big Mac & small fries), and NMSU (~11k undergrads…quarter pounder & small fries).
- re: sorority - D24 is, right now, really not interested in joining a sorority. That decision is up to her. DH & I are not willing to fund joining Greek life, so if she decides to do that, she’ll have to figure out a way to pay for it. Because of D24’s current disdain for Greek life, a college like Ole Miss has been ruled out since such a high % of the student body joins a sorority/fraternity. She’s very much into marching to the beat of your own drum, accepting people for who they are, regardless of what they look like, etc. and the pressure to dress and look a certain way in a sorority is a total turn off for her. At the same time, she’s seen groups of sorority girls walking around U of A together and has scoffed, “Psh, I think they look stupid all dressed the same. What the heck.” D24 has some friends who identify as bisexual, homosexual, pansexual, transgender, etc. and has said that she doesn’t want to join an organization that isn’t openly accepting of people in those categories (i.e., and by ‘openly accepting,’ she means more than lip service like the org. has a statement about it but in practice, org. members joke about and mock people who are not heterosexual).
- D24 does participate in an extracurricular that’s outside of school. She’s in a choir with kids from all different HSs. Has talked about maybe joining a choir at college, too, just for the fun of it. I’ve encouraged her to consider this. She thinks it would be a good way to let off steam each week. I mentioned it would also be an easy way to meet people quickly.
UNM and NMSU both got thumbs up because she likes the food in New Mexico. At UNM, the tour guide mentioned a light saber club that practices on campus at night (my kid is a Star Wars nerd) and the Frontier Restaurant has green chile stew that she likes (it’s totally random sometimes the sorts of things that sway kids to like/not like 1 college over another). We used to live in Tucson, so she likes U of A because it’s familiar…U of A is a great school.
I really really appreciate everybody’s replies so far. It’s been very helpful! My gut says to stay quiet and let it ride for now because a lot can and will happen over the next year and you guys so far have collectively said to do that.