One of my D2’s classmates with some OCD issues went to Smith. It didn’t go well, she didn’t finish there.
Re: Beloit
I would call Beloit a relative peer of Earlham and St. O (and Knox). (Only) if St. O doesn’t work out, or if they defer her to RD, it might be worth a visit if the money is right.
Knox and Beloit are about 2.5 hrs apart – you could see both easily in a weekend or, if time was short, in a long day (or an overnight and then a long day…).
Earlham is about 5-5.5 hours from Knox and Beloit and quite a hike from St. O, obviously.
Agree about Smith. I know some graduates and they are an intellectual and confident group of women. They are some of the most brilliant people I know. I’m guessing the school chooses pretty independent kids.
I have no doubt the OP’s daughter is smart enough for Smith.
I’m not discounting OP’s daughter. I’m just saying that I think it’s a pretty independent, worldly-type group at Smith.If Earlham or StO are matches for fit, Smith is not.
From what the OP has said, her daughter has traveled abroad and is highly independent in many ways. I don’t think Smith is the best choice, but I think her D would be ok there. Oh , and I just looked it up and there are more kids receiving Pell at Smith than at St. O.
@citymama9 Ok. I missed the “traveled abroad” part.
Chiming in with another vote to keep Beloit. Also agree that Smith likely to be more of a pressure cooker.
The OP/daughter have7-8 schools on the ‘keep’ list, with one absolute ‘safety’ for affordability (Earlham) and another safety for fit (public school). I’d take a step back now.
I’m not surprised her daughter is feeling overwhelmed. Ten or more schools are a lot to organize and handle. My daughter didn’t like Smith, I didn’t like Smith, but it was still difficult to drop from her list because of the prestige, the money, the history.
She’s very independent. One of the most independent people I know, all of us are. And yes she did travel to three country halfway across the world with 7 kids she didn’t know. And she is responsible for running this house most of the time. I’ll be really happy for her to get away and be normal. She just needs things a certain way that’s all, she’s quite capable and actually very confident.
@Momof2girlsandafrenchie Yet she seems to be having a meltdown over her list of schools. Is she usually good at handling pressure? (No judgement-- one of my kids is pretty good under pressure, the other is not. Both are pretty independent.)
She went to Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji. And she had been in New York the week before that. She was literally home like 16 hours and boarded a plane for New Zealand. If she can do that, she can do anything. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t want her in the best, ideal and most nurturing surroundings possible, for the next 4 years. Sure she could be successful anywhere, but why do it under extremely stressful, less than ideal circumstances where she won’t have me around to bounce things off of always and offer unconditional acceptance and love? She’ll be more successful with ease in the right set of circumstances. She needs quiet…one of the residence halls at Grinnell was designated as a quiet hall, that was very appealing to her. She needs other people who are warm and accepting. Serious and studious. Again, this is why IB was her save haven and She didn’t do as well in the AP class she took. The class was big, the kids weren’t as serious…you get the drift. She still did fine in that AP class but THRIVED in IB.
I don’t know that’s the best analogy I can come up with right now. Hopefully that makes some sense. But she needs some order some structure and some quiet or she’ll never rest. And actually if the financial packages right she might be able to get a single. I’m quite sure she’d be willing to pay for it. She and I were just talking about that so we need to look at the schools on the list which ones offer singles and what the charge is. But that helps narrow the list, she needs the right price if she’s gonna borrow an extra thousand dollars a year for single but in her mind it would be worth it. Please don’t take that to mean that she wouldn’t engage with other students because she will but she just really needs things a certain way in her own personal space.
@Momof2girlsandafrenchie I didn’t know she applied to Drury. That is where my D17 is. It is small, and easy drive from your home, and I think the town and people of Springfield will feel comfortable to her. Sports and athletics are pretty promenant on campus, however my D tells me the science dept is no joke. They take science seriously there. You could probably visit by car in a day.
I know you are not wanting more options, but I agree with others here that there is no reason to limit things yet.
BTW my D became completely overwhelmed and paralyzed from the process and I literally had to make the decision for her on the very last day in April. It was just too big, too important of a decision for her to commit to on her own.
I still think it’s crazy that your school has AP and IB and the guidance counselor never saw a Common App! Why would all of those kids go to in-state public schools?
You need to talk to the disability office at the college she selects…when the time comes. If she NEEDS a single and has documentation that this is the case…they might be willing to work with you on the cost. But they definitely will work with you to make sure that single happens.
At this point…here is my free advice. Put any discussion of college right on the back burner. This includes dropping schools, making decisions, anything.
At this point, the only discussion might be whether or not to change SO to RD.
But if that isn’t happening…no college discussion until the St. O decision with aid comes to her.
Then if yes St O…she is done. No more discussion anyway.
If NO St O, then you can discuss what colleges to continue to pursue,…and which t9 ditch.
@rienrah I think that’s a fair question, so I’ll answer it. She’s still 17 years old…And for her personality type who is all about making the right decision and doing the right thing all the time, she’s got too many choices and she doesn’t know what the right thing is now. Not to mention it’s probably becoming real, as not only we have acceptance letters but we have a viable financial package, this is the first big transition they really make in their life. I don’t care how well-adjusted person, a transition period in life is a transition. I’ll have my own transition going on.
She suddenly was looking at two schools that are viable and she will be the kid the graduates and not transfer. She wants to make the right decision and do the honorable, ethical thing.
I don’t know how long you’ve been following but at the beginning of December she only had one school she had applied to and her state school. That was it. So the fact that she has gotten to this place, warrants a little bit of a meltdown for lack of a better word and that’s probably an exaggeration but she was very tearful.
And I’m pretty sensitive to her discomfort because she’s not a complainer, she’s the power through kind of girl. I honestly don’t think her being upset today is abnormal, I think it’s just part of being 17 and the reality is hitting her. It’s a big decision and we don’t have the resources to go visit every school. And honestly if she dismisses the school for whatever reason, that’s OK we kind of talked about that in this thread yesterday. It’s great to have choices but there becomes a point where there are too many and that’s not always the best approach for everyone.
Six weeks ago we didn’t have any choices and we were worried even up until yesterday that we didn’t have a viable financial solution and now we might have two that are amazing and I think we can make it work. We’re still waiting to hear from one. And since she is very much about commitment and follow through she’s making a really big decision about where she’s going to spend the next four years, and she knows that she has to have things a certain way to be the best version of herself she can be.
Honestly she would probably be fine at any of them. We pretty carefully put together a list. We didn’t expect she would get accepted to all of them and really thought there might only be one school that would be financially viable.
If she didn’t have a moment of doubt I might actually be more concerned.
I guess what I’m trying to say is I think this is just normal 17-year-old making a huge decision about a huge transition in their life. I would venture to guess that every kid has a moment like this, maybe many moments like this. I don’t think this is exclusive to her.
Maybe I’m wrong…
I would think everyone here would agree that her anxiety, fear, hesitation, is exactly normal and expected. I would think most of us are concerned about her committing anywhere without visiting. And if she ends up having the opportunity to visit schools before deciding then it would be adventagious to have lots of options. Every time you visit a school is helps narrow down the list, for both the school’s visited and others on the list. Because the visits trigger things to ask/consider about all schools on the list.
@Momof2girlsandafrenchie I’ve been reading since the beginning-- I’m really rooting for your daughter! (I have two kids in college now with separate psych issues, so I know how important fit can be.)
@stlarenas It’s about a 3 hour drive, easy peasy, super affordable, she auto qualified for the top merit based on ACT and GPA the AO says she the institutional aid is pretty significant.
This is the baffling thing to me, schools like Drake and Drury which are very close to home are not schools she wants.
It’s hard for me to get away on the weekends I tend to be the busiest but we were just talking about over spring break maybe going to a few of those because we don’t even have to get a hotel room. But again, not really what she wants.
Back when all of this started and since she was young Grinnell was what she wanted so we’ve been focusing in on schools that have that kind of feel.
Who knows what will happen between now and then.
@homerdog actually my school district at one time was one of the top ten in the country. I don’t think it’s unusual to have an AP program in every high school or most of them unless it’s a private school that’s very rigorous anyway.
IB is a little less common, there are two other schools in our district that have IB, ours is kind of limping along.
There has been some change of staffing at the high school, I cannot speak for the guidance counselor that had the role before this one but her guidance counselor has never seen a common app and none of her peers are going to anything other than state school. And her peers because she has a very small pure group are literally the top 10 kids in the whole graduating class.
We have a great high school, we have great educators, but the path the kids are guided towards is state school and CC. I can’t speak to every single kid that graduated from our high school which is actually the first and oldest in our district. Of her peers, one is going straight into a six-year meant program at a state school, another close friend since kindergarten is going straight into an engineering program at Wichita State. Absolutely nothing wrong with state school and we have a lot of really good state schools to choose from here. By the way I don’t live in the Wichita area that friend of my daughter’s is going into their aerospace engineering program.
I have known these kids since pre-K, they started in a small neighborhood elementary school which was outstanding they all went to the same middle school and then into the same high school. I don’t know any of them that are doing anything other than state school or community college. Granted my D’s peer group is small. My other D’s peer group is large and she’s the only one talking about college at this point. But my D20 is watching closely and so is her very large peer group. The places where I’m not anonymous I have posted publicly our journey and I’ve had parents reach out to me and kids reach out to me and maybe they’ll start to do something different or maybe they’ll stick with state school because there’s nothing wrong with it. But now our guidance counselor knows how to navigate the common app and he sees every result that my daughter gets and he will put that on the radar for other kids.
As mentioned several times my school district was hit very hard by block grants, it was eventually ruled unconstitutional by the Kansas Supreme Court, but there was a question last school year if school would even start.
I really try to stay away from politics but we have a governor who hasn’t gutted our education system.
But my kids still got an amazing education, my son had a gifted IEP and we ran into some trouble with it starting in middle school so he transferred to a private international catholic boarding school after his freshman year at the same high school, that actually cost me more than our flagship school. As I said this has not always been our situation. We’ve had some unfortunate life circumstances and we have made the best of it and I hope that things continue to get better. My son definitely had a better time of it than the girls did because there is a seven year difference between my son and my middle daughter.
We were solidly middle class, even upper middle class, and then one day in an instant our whole world changed. So your constant remarks about her inability to visit a school, or knowing how a school fits, are becoming redundant, or questioning if in fact her GC had ever seen a common app are becoming unhelpful. We are using other resources to make our decisions about schools. It’s called making do. Lots of people figure out ways to work with what they have.
And it’s not just school websites, it’s other kid’s Instagram’s accounts, Snapchat, blogs, and vlogs.
Hardly anyone on here thinks you can just hop in the car and go. But most of these schools WILL pay for a visit if she gets in. If she ends up in the RD pool, she should try to get visits from the schools she got into early that gave her good packages (whatever they turn out to be). That leaves April to visit those meets need schools like BMC or Kenyon if she gets into them. Also, if a school has given you a timeframe for the visit, once you are past the St. O date and know she has to look at more schools, you should ask them if you can move up the visit sooner (like get Earlham and/or Beloit out of the way so your decks are clear in April for Kenyon and/or BMC if accept her, give her a good package, and give her a visit).
Something to be aware of is that the schools that paid for my kid’s visit had her visit, then provide receipts to get reimbursed. You might be able to get them to do something different given your cash flow situation, though. The small schools didn’t take long to reimburse (FYI for the future, PhD programs were a whole different story – it took months for some of the bigger universities D2 got visits from to pay back, and they were all over the country). But the undergrad LACs were faster to pay back once they got the receipts.
The thing about “making do” on this is that if your kid has to transfer, the odds of getting this type of package again are very, very low. Need based aid usually isn’t as good for transfer students. So it is pretty important that she try to check out a school in person before accepting their offer. I understand your position with St. O and not being able to visit. But other schools (Earlham, Beloit, Kenyon, BMC) – she should try to visit if she gets in and gets a good aid package (if they will pay) before making a final decision.
Edited to add after reading some of the Smith comments above - Smith has a kind of aggressive, “edgy” feel to it. It isn’t the academics I’d think the OP’s kid would be uncomfortable with. A lot of Midwestern kids (even liberal ones) find Smith to be a bit too much for them. So my thoughts on Smith have little to do with the classroom, and more to do with the social vibe there, and social pressures.