Okay, well I guess this is one of those times where my perspective and sense of humor did not come through very well or you skipped over the post where I was acknowledging that I bring a lot of my own ideas to this sometimes when I, instead, need to keep those in check.
I put “real world” in quotes because I think that my daughter’s perspective is that going to school in a college town is not as much of a real-world experience, when - in fact - it certainly can be; real-world experiences can certainly be found in all different types of cities, towns, suburbs, etc., in every corner of this country.
My main point about managing expectations and the reality of Junior year is mainly about reality hitting that going to a school with a 10% acceptance rate when not taking a very rigorous courseload and struggling with AP classes - is not realistic, nor is it plausible for parents to pay $80K per year for college.
My daughter didn’t really want to hear about either finances or grades and rigor needed for top schools - until now, so - now we’re kind of having to reframe things a bit. She’s just someone that likes to daydream a bit before the practical, nuts and bolts conversations, and that is true with a lot of things.
Just re this and NYU in particular (I know you’re looking for other reasons to steer her away!) these are not easy to schools to transfer between - Stern (business school) and Tisch (theater and Film) are hard to get into to start with and hard to transfer into if she starts in CAS.
My kid was definitely an urban school kid - when we did college tours, she loved BU, NYU, Fordham (Lincoln center campus) ,GWU, and hated the traditional campus colleges that everyone else loved. As others have said - there are a lot of these schools out there in the cities.
Some things that my kid loved about going to college in NYC was - well, it’s NYC. They’d get discounted tickets to some broadway shows, free entry at a lot of the museums (I think most if not all NYC colleges have this), hanging out in Central Park and Washington square park and the botanical gardens for green space and in Greenwich village for the cool restaurants etc, lots of concerts (not all of them big and expensive), access to piles of interesting internships, celebrity spotting … a wide range of varied things, in other words.
I made a worksheet for my daughter to complete for each school she was interested in. She had to do a “scavenger hunt” of the school website to find the information. (I did tell her about common data set, etc)
type of campus (urban, suburban, rural)
student body size
expected cost (using NPC). She knew what our budget was
the 25-75% range for admitted student GPA/SAT/ACT, etc
doing this, she was able to begin to identify for herself schools that might be good fit or not
I have no specific advice to add to what you’ve already gotten, but I wanted to share that my S23 was not thinking about any of the specifics of college until roughly this time in his junior year, so I think your daughter is pretty typical. I bought him a college guide and asked him to pick out a few colleges to try to visit when we were traveling during Thanksgiving of his junior year. More of the pieces came together in the winter - he narrowed his potential list from lots and lots to maybe 20, identified a few schools to visit over spring break, took the SAT, etc.
Not that unusual for a kid to be uninterested in looking at or even really thinking about college in the fall of junior year. That may change by the spring as more kids talk about college options.
If she has real issues with executive function/ADHD or other learning issues, that may be something to figure out now. If she is successful in school due to lots of support, that may make the transition to college more difficult.
Just wanted to chime in to add that at this point of junior year my kid also was not terribly interested in thinking about school. But unfortunately, I’m an obsessive over planner. So I tried to talk about what he might be interested in, in terms of major, environment, size sort of generally at dinner. Not in a LETS TALK ABOUT COLLEGE NOW!!! Way, but more - oh, hey, I see you had fun ant the football game last night and are really into going to HS sporting events, is a sporty vibe something you think will be important to you in college? And - you’ve seen what it’s like for your brother 8ish hours away, have you thought about how far away you want to be or if it even matters?
Then I made a list for him of schools that fit the general vibe of the conversations we were having and that were within budget. Then over winter break when he was more relaxed we talked about a few of them specifically, which gave some good insights into things he was interested in (or disliked) that I hadn’t guessed, so I added some and took some off the list. We eventually visited a handful, which showed me some more things that he liked and didn’t like, and led to adding two more and taking two others off. But the key to the visit was that we did other stuff too to try and have some fun. Like we went exploring to find funky food, or to find a local park to hike in, or the most random weird historical marker we could. Point being - he wasn’t all that interested in visiting schools, he would’ve been happy to visit just his top choice and done, so I wanted to make our driving adventure something a little fun mom-and-kid road-trip too.
When he made his final list it has the one he really wanted, but also some safeties and some that he’s really come around on and wouldn’t have thought of if I hadn’t built the list for him. And I’m watching his interest level in his three different prospective majors change as he goes through senior year, which also means his interest in the schools is changing some. So maybe you present it to her like that - you want her to cast a wide enough net so that she has choices at the end of senior year when it comes time to decide. She may decide she wants a program in a less expensive city so her pocket money can go further, or she may decide she wants to focus more on business, which is better at X school or what have you. Just remind her that putting in an application doesn’t mean she has to attend a school, just that she might have more flexibility when decision time comes.
This is all opinion and situational based on family dynamics, etc…
The budget conversation would take priority in our world. If it’s not possible to afford it realistically without a ton of loans, ‘hoping’ that scholarships will be possible and sustainable for all her years, etc…
At her age she probably doesn’t understand finances and long term impacts based on current decisions. I’ve seen plenty of people start their years in ‘choice colleges’ based on certain financial conditions that don’t necessarily pan out for subsequent years and have to bail from the school as a result. At minimum, I’d be sure to run the NPC’s for the schools and consider it for a 4 year endeavor to know how the price tags may work out for you all.
Obviously, only you all know your financial condition and what is possible based on your own risk tolerances. So you do you.
I’d reach out to her counselor now and to see if they are linked in with Naviance, MaiaLearning or similar. It will only help in the long run.
Maybe, but then the OP shouldn’t have made it about ‘the college experience’ and her child wanting “any school in NYC” (hmm, ‘any school’? maybe not so unrealistic about where she could get in that she isn’t willing to compromise on that for their preferred environment) while talking down her daughter and blaming what sounds like a very reasonable take on her being ‘immature about this whole process’ (when it sounds like she is right on level for where most kids are - actually, this one is kind of nasty, I get she is anonymous but still talking about your own kid that way publicly - being ‘thankful’ she didn’t make the cutoff because she isn’t overly obsessed with college applications her junior year? I’m not sure whose immaturity is really shining through).
No, it’s definitely tiktok and youtube filling her heads with silly notions of New York - you know the city was never attractive to ‘mature’ kids before those came around…
We all get tunnel vision at times! My ideal school (idealized, I realize) was Princeton for no good reason except that when I was in HS it started accepting women and there was only one girl in my HS class brave enough to apply. (She was exceptional in every possible way, got rejected, and ended up at Radcliffe so no biggie). I shlepped my kids. Everyone conceded that it was very pretty (pretty? the campus is incredible!) and charming (charming? it’s the epitome of a university!) etc. but nobody was interested in applying. At all. Other than the great sandwiches we ate in a cafe off campus, my kids couldn’t find anything exceptional to say about it.
So yeah, we all bring our “stuff” to the process, and then gradually realize that our kids are living, breathing human beings with their own motivations and needs.
I don’t know your kids HS obviously… but it’s worth reaching out to a parent of a current senior to get a read on what you can and cannot expect from the counseling team. At my kids HS- brutally honest about chances, profiles, who gets in and who does not. The money conversation? Nothing. Nada. “Ask your parents”. Followed by “make sure you have a safety school your family can afford”.
Every HS is different- but I’m going to guess that with budgetary concerns you aren’t going to get much help from the guidance department. You’ll end up being the banker, bookkeeper, tax expert (if there’s a 529 plan), and angel of death (just kidding) so get used to playing that role from the start.
Ha! I think we have the same Alma Mater and I too was enthralled with Princeton – mostly because of its beauty when I visited, and also because I sat in on an advanced language class (for a language I didn’t know!!) and was so impressed by the academics.
But…they did me a favor by saying no. My best friend went there…and I don’t think it would have been a good fit for me once I learned more after visiting them there a few times!
But I didn’t take my kids to visit. Live in California now, so a looong trip and older kid wasn’t interested and younger kid applied during Covid so no college visits for him. He ended up matriculating elsewhere sight (site???) unseen!
She is likely to focus more on the college search when her friends do, which may be this spring or next summer (and it will almost definitely kick in this fall).
I agree with you that Gossip Girl, etc, make college in the city look amazing and unrealistic. Our kids have never been to college, and unless they are going with you to your college homecoming every year, they only really know what they see through the media.
I have a very happy freshman at Pitt. All those majors you list are strong there, with the exception of theater (my opinion). At many schools (not Pitt, but definitely Fordham), theater majors require a very difficult audition process during senior year. She couldn’t just decide to major in theater once she got to Fordham.
If Pitt is not a sure thing, then you need to do a major reset of expectations. Fordham does not meet need, and merit will not get you down to your budget. Fordham admissions are compare to Pitt, and that’s before any merit is awarded. A private college in a big city (where room and board can be much more expensive than other schools) will not get down to your budget unless she moves way down the rankings, where her stats would make her a top student.
Maybe you could sit down with her and show her the CDS for colleges that interest her. It’s not about her worth as a person, but her stats might not fit with her aspirational schools. Pitt has a freshman class profile on their web site, and below average students (below their average) have the best shot at admission if they apply in August.
The OP has a budget, <$38,000, and it sounds like not tippy top stats. NYC is a reach for all and $90,000 a year. I’m practical, my kids are practical, they knew the budget, and by junior year were all in with finding appropriate colleges to apply to. They made their own lists.
If I had tried to help my oldest D make a college list in fall of junior year, it would have contained schools with excellent art programs, because clearly she was going to be an artist. In late spring of junior year she informed us she did not want to work as an artist, and instead wanted to be an engineer. This was a bit of a surprise but fortunately she had the academics if not the EC’s to support such a change. That narrowed to a very specific field of engineering and naturally cut the list to only about 20 schools. We were very clear on budget right from the beginning, and she was practical so it worked out.
Our second D wanted an LAC and had the grades but not the test scores to land the type of scholarship that would make this type of school possible within our budget. In spring of junior year this finally clicked for her and suddenly she was focused on bringing up those test scores so she could take her shot… and she did, and attended an LAC on a giant scholarship.
I think our son also got more practical about his college plans in terms of choosing what direction he wanted to head academically,min the spring of junior year.
This may all begin coming together for your daughter in the next several months. I’d be firm on budget. When our D was planning to be an artist we would say something like, “it’s rare for people to graduate from high school and move into a nice place and begin to sell their art for a living, so make a plan to get from the end of high school to where you want to be.” It keeps the dream alive and introduces a practical side as well. (This kid now works as an engineer and does art on the side. )
She finds all of this depressing as she’s only interested in schools like NYU, Boston University, UCLA. I don’t even know if she’s interested in “the college experience”