<p>When I first read the question, I thought choosing a school for myself would be hard (the whole search process was so centered on what was right for D) but I knew what my new major would be! Once D had chosen a school, I really enjoyed looking through the course listings and picking what I would most like to take, and I discovered I should have been a sociology major! In college, it never occurred to me even to take a sociology class. I’m now considering a master’s degree in sociology - I know I’ll enjoy the lectures and reading, not so sure I want to gear up for the actual work of papers and exams!</p>
<p>But as I read through the thread, I was thinking over our college research and visits, and I remembered how much I liked Bryn Mawr. (D knew immediately it wasn’t for her.) Also, I’ve come to love New York, and was very impressed with NYU when we visited, so I might choose that now, but back in the 70s, perhaps it wasn’t as stellar? So maybe Columbia or Barnard? One concern about these choices - I’ve spent most of my life in Texas, and I’m not sure I could take the weather. More southerly choices might be William & Mary (we didn’t visit, but everything I read about it seemed so fun and quirky!) or UT’s Plan II. I’m a Texas girl and I never even heard of Plan II when I was in high school, and I’m pretty sure it existed back then. That’s actually the only one of these choices I would have been “allowed” to make - Dad was clear that any in-state public school was fine, otherwise we were on our own. (I went to A&M, for some pretty lame reasons; they offered me a scholarship that I barely even had to apply for - they were early adopters of the buy-a-NMF model - and, sigh, my boyfriend was going there.)</p>
<p>I’d go to the University of Chicago if I could get in. I attended the University of Florida- never really considered anywhere else. While I had a good time, I was never challenged academically. I spent far more time playing bridge than studying and still did pretty well. When I attended UF it already had over 20,000 students on campus and it was far too easy to get lost in the crowd, which was my goal at that time. Tried to get my D to apply to U of C, but she refused to do so because of the quirky application. She ended up at an eastern LAC.</p>
<p>Despite those terrifying gorges (the whole “Ithaca is Gorges” theme is lost on me) I would head to Cornell in beautiful upstate NY and major in zoology, minor in music, and either do an an iternship at the Lab or Ornithology or head off to the northwest to study wolves, wolverines, fishers, pikas or all of the above…</p>
<p>I might try an all-women’s college today (but only today). </p>
<p>Here’s why: I attended an all-girls’ public high school in Baltimore (America’s first public academic education ever offered to girls post-8th grade; began mid-19th century I think). It was in the middle of the city then, 50% black not by bussing but by choice from throughout the city. So it had the joy of single-gender classroom study without the exclusion of race or income groups.</p>
<p>I HATED single-gender schooling then. Went to college at Oberlin, the first coeducational college in the USA. There, a great joy to me was studying with men, along with the usual social enjoyments.</p>
<p>But I appreciate, only now, the leadership opportunities and confidence-building from that all-girls’ high school. That’s why I say I’d like to try an all-women’s LAC like Smith or Mt. Holyoke today, just to see what’s there for me now.</p>
<p>I would still go to Princeton again, just for the teaching. But, if you told me I couldn’t go to Princeton, then I would realize that despite the academics the social situation of a school that had only been co-ed for four years when I arrived was not ideal for a liberal-leaning feminist from the core Californian, and I would have chosen either Berkeley (?) or a woman’s college. Just to have graduated without the four years of handsome immature young men providing me my main social activity and source of heartbreak.</p>
<p>I’m not a parent, but I must say this thread is very informative yet very tragic at the same time. </p>
<p>I’m in some troubled waters since I attend a school which was my last resort but want to transfer to a school which I think is “too” smart for me. Also, I have no clue what to major in and I’m in the process of following the mainstream and majoring in something practical. I want to change my future but it seems I don’t have the courage too.</p>
<p>I would have taken a gap year since I skipped kindergarten and graduated from high school at 17 1/4 years old. Unfortunately there wasn’t much to do/afford during a gap year back in 1972. I went to St. Olaf College, which is great for some, and definitely has some outstanding departments, but for me it was cold and impersonal, just a big blah part of my otherwise happy, interesting life. I went down there for a one week seminar last summer thinking I could exorcise some of my negative feelings, but it wasn’t possible.</p>
<p>Wow, 3 Lafayette alums in one thread! Hi Rachacha and donleyc!</p>
<p>I loved my 4 years at Lafayette, and S is waiting to see if he will be admitted (it’s one of his top 3 choices). </p>
<p>But looking back, I wish I had applied to Princeton. I was afraid it would be full of rich kids that were scarily smart and I wouldn’t fit in. Not sure why I thought Lafayette was terribly different from that, lol.</p>
<p>Also, I got into William & Mary. I loved US History, and like 2 other posters in this thread thought about going there and working at Colonial Williamsburg. But like many others in this thread decided to major in something that would get me a job. Ironically, I quit my “career” in banking when my son was born and now work part-time for our public high school. Big career, huh? There are days when I fantacize about my life if I had gone to W&M, majored in US History, and gone to work for a museum. Or if I had gone to Princeton, what doors would that college on my resume have opened?</p>
<p>But I loved Lafayette, and met my hubby there.</p>
<p>I had 4 years at Lehigh followed by 4 at Penn. I liked both.</p>
<p>This time around I’d do it like this, assuming some <em>VERY</em> lax transfer policies:</p>
<p>-First semester Penn State, to take in a great football experience in beautiful fall PA weather</p>
<p>-Second semester transfer to warm weather basketball school…before this year it would have been Duke, not I’ll try UCLA</p>
<p>-Third semester transfer to Michigan, same as above PSU</p>
<p>-4th semester transfer again this time UHawaii</p>
<p>-Third year I’d buckle down and study something I know I’d enjoy…computer science at Carnegie Mellon, where I’d stay till graduation (oh yeah, but with junior year second semester in Australia).</p>
<p>I transferred from Scripps to UCSD (financial issues and wanted to be closer to the beach).
If I had it to do over, I would have gone to Pomona and I wouldn’t have had money issues, so I would have had a car to drive to the beach whenever I wanted to. Fin aid was not as generous back then, and my parents were already putting my older brother thru Dartmouth. And it wouldn’t have been smoggy in Claremont!
Transferring into a large school like UCSD was tough, especially doing it in Spring qtr of Jr. year! Not only did I not know anyone, but everyone else already had their friends and groups established by then.
After Pomona I would have gone to law school somewhere closer to the coast in SoCal. Haven’t researched this at all, but USD might be nice…</p>
<p>I freaked out my senior year and didn’t apply to any schools, because my dad told me I wouldn’t get in anywhere. (I had failed an honors course because of family stress.) I was a National Merit finalist and everything. I ended up going to a small women’s college because they dispatched an admissions rep to get me to sign the app so they could offer me admission – they had been actively courting me for two years. I was at the women’s college for a year, then at a big state school, then I left to start a family and never finished. </p>
<p>On my NM Finalist form, I had put Oberlin as my top choice, but like I said, I never applied. I wish I’d gone there, or Carleton, or any one of the sort of quirky LAC’s – Reed, Bard, things like that. Basically, any of the places my son is applying to. He and I are a lot alike, though he’s got a better GPA than I had.</p>
<p>I graduated HS a year early in 1976 with a 92 average, a Regents Scholarship, and my HS’s art scholarship award. My mom and stepdad had not gone to college, so I received no encouragement or direction from them or from my terrible HS guidance counselor. I was so bored and hated the place - it was a public HS in a blue collar suburban NY town. My interests were music and photography. </p>
<p>I took 3 years after high school to work and play music in bars. I really hadn’t a clue as to how to pursue a career in music. After 2-1/2 years of bad jobs - ranging from loading trucks at 4am for UPS to waitressing to selling cameras (that one wasn’t so bad) - I applied to two choices: Berklee College of Music in Boston and SUNY New Paltz, where my b/f at the time had gone. I was accepted at both, but could not afford Berklee - they offered zero financial aid and I was on my own and pretty poor. New Paltz gave me a great financial aid package, so I went there, majoring in music composition. It was a good school, but my best education there came from meeting lifelong friends, playing in bar bands and some of my music courses and ensembles.</p>
<p>Looking back at my HS record, my independent student status, and my life experience, I’m sure I would have received great offers from many other schools, had I known about them. I was really a kid in desperate need of a mentor or some guidance, but I hadn’t a clue.</p>
<p>Looking back, I probably would have done well by either going to a small quirky LAC where I could have indulged my love of photography,music and writing or studying photojournalism in a bigger school in a happening music town - like UT Austin.</p>
<p>After 3 kids and a chequered job history (record company lackey, investment bank researcher, HS librarian - I went back to school for my MLS) I am back doing what makes me happiest: writing freelance and raising my kids. We’re moving out near Austin this year, and I hope to pursue a grad degree in photojournalism at UT Austin in a couple years. So you see, no reason to give up on your dreams - sometimes you just take a 30 year detour, lol!</p>