I see a RED FLAG here…parents are focusing on Awards and Uncle’s insider recommendations. What about your Child? His personality? Who is he, how does he learn, and in what type of environment can he best develop into whatever field he chooses to engage in?
If your student can’t find his community at a college, then he will end up miserable, sitting alone in his dorm room, falling into depression and possibly losing interest in academics. Fit of student/school matters just as much as the factors you are fixated on. Browse this forum for many stories of freshmen who are miserable.
The narrowing down of colleges to apply to was the time to rely on Awards and Uncle’s insider recommendations. Now is the time to push those factors to the side and let your child’s personality and desires rise to the top of the decision-making process.
My daughter was offered several large merit scholarships, one of which was from my alma mater. I was thrilled when she got the news, but because I didn’t want to put any pressure on her, I was pretty restrained in my reaction. Sure enough, she declined because she really didn’t want to deal with the pressure of going in as a “top” student (only 30 of this type of award were given) and feeling like she had to shine from day one.
Some kids would leap at this opportunity, but for others, it is a tremendous burden. If you can afford one of his other schools without the merit money, please let him consider one of them. If not, make it clear that the merit aid will make the difference in whether he gets to attend college at all.
The foundation is The Jim Murray Memorial Foundation. The competition is open only to students from schools selected by the foundation as being top journalism schools.I believe there are 30 eligible schools.
@Youdon’tsay Aparently the school has been churnning out award winners for decades. Six Pulitzer winners in total in Journalism as well as Peabody, Murrow and Russert awards.
I’m gonna chime in. This is going the way threads typically go, bias against small schools and religious schools.
Thanks, Turner! I had done a little Googling and hadn’t gotten anywhere that felt satisfactory.
Just to be clear, I’m not calling St. B’s a bad school. I don’t know enough about it to weigh in on its merit. But when I think about a top journalism school that’s just not one that springs to mind. I was reacting mainly to the idea of what felt like a bait-and-switch by the OP. A Is St. B’s the hill you want to die on? kind of thing.
Just make jure kid has his say, interfering only enough to ensure the plan is realistic (viable and affordable) and gets done. I’ve stopped the big reactions. I question him on why he adds schools to the list. I’m not sure he had decided on a major for sure, so I’m subtly trying to figure that out, but otherwise, butting out until the returns are in.
Agree with powercropper, that the initial narrowing is where Uncle’s advice could be handy. Now it’s about the rest of what makes a good choice. Once we did this initial vetting, we could breathe that any she was applying to would be good for D1 and we let her drive the talks as admits came in.
We did tell her, from the start, that any college we all ultimately felt was a solid choice needed to be affordable, that the "right’ school would also offer the “right” aid. She got that.
D1 wanted to major in DH’s field- and did have the goods for it. This scared the wits out of him because he knew how hard it would be to actually find work as a professor. Obviously, he also knew what the top programs are, where the profs were best in the field and the quality of grad students he had met from different universities. That’s not at all how we steered her.
Parents need to realize that going to what you think is a top program is just a tiny part of it. We looked at what the actual academic and social experience would foster, for this particular kid, not the superficials. It worked.
Frankly, if either of mine had wanted journalism, we would have asked, “For what?” Eg, to comment on current politics and policy, to delve into environmental issues or social concerns, etc? And then we would have asked where she could get that depth and breadth in academics. And, where the nature and talents of other students there would afford her the right extra opportunities. Not simply go with, “I want to write.”
And, I’m not opposed at all to small schools or religious. That’s generalizing. Once you really look at the boots on the ground, the programs/courses/profs and opps themselves, it’s more than that.
I’m not biased against small or religious schools. My kid went to a small, religious school.
I don’t see that bias here…at all.
What I see is folks saying…wait and see what else happens with acceptances. Listen to what the KID wants to do. Maybe he wants a larger campus even though his parent would prefer a smaller one. And listen to,what the kid says about college location. The KID needs to live there for four years, not the parent.
Wait and see what happens with the funding at other schools he’s applied to. Our son’s admissions season was a roller coaster of changing preferences. In his case, each merit award or scholarship that arrived flattered him so much that he declared he was going to that school. Then something else would arrive and he would change allegiance (he applied mostly to schools likely to give him merit aid or other fellowship funding). It wasn’t until the overnight campus visits that he made his decision (and picked not the least expensive, but also not the most).
I just saw the bit about bias against small and religious schools. Ds1 went to a LAC that had fewer than 2,000 kids, and ds2 is at a Jesuit school. Not an issue here.
@TurnerT, really? You think CC is biased against small schools? I see no bias against Swarthmore, Amherst, Williams, Harvey Mudd, Carleton, Pomona, etc. I think you are making that up.
@intparent Yes I do, especially lower ranked schools. Even the top small schools will always get a crack about science, math and other course selections like the people running the schools were idiots. And since many are rural that criticism is always forefront.
Catholic schools suffer the most on this forum. That you can’t argue with.
My S has been in small religious schools his entire life, and may well head off to another one in the fall. (Or may not. Ask me on May 1.) My degree is from a small, nominally-religious (then, not now) LAC. All of S’ applications are to SLACs save one, and that one is an RD app that may fall off the list now that he has a full ride offer somewhere (religious liberal arts school).
Haven’t seen a bias here at all.
(We are, btw, facing the same “full ride at school A vs. pay a lot at school B if B is preferred” decision. S and I had that discussion before he applied anywhere. As much as my wallet will twinge if he doesn’t take the full ride, it’s his choice.)
No more than big schools get comments about large, impersonal lectures, and adjuncts & TAs dominating the classroom teaching positions. People have their individual preferences, but I don’t see the large vs small preference as unevenly pushing against the small schools.
You think? Schools like Fordham, Santa Clara, BC, Georgetown, Notre Dame, Villanova, Holy Cross, Siena, Loyola, U of San Diego, Loyola Marymount, and numerous other smaller Catholic colleges get very positive regular recognition on these forums.
@TurnerT - S has applied to 6 schools, 3 of which are Catholic. He’s finishing his 12th year of Catholic school; I went to Catholic school, too. We’re the Catholics who went to daily Mass on Saturdays through elementary school, and chose schools in part based on regular engagement between the school and parish. We notice the presence - or absence - of Catholic institutions.
I’m not seeing Catholic schools get short shrift here at all. A lot of the tiny ones aren’t represented (University of Mary, Saint Xavier U (IL), etc.) - but neither are some of the smaller secular colleges that I’d expect to see. I wish CC had more schools listed - it’s not a huge tech burden or anything - but I don’t see a pattern of bias against Catholic schools.
(Note: Zaytuna College in Berkeley, the first liberal arts college from the Islamic tradition in the US, is also absent here. Just sayin’.)
I have been here a long time. If anything, there is a lot of bias against larger universities. “I don’t want (or don’t want my kid to be) just a number” and “I want (or want my kid to have) the personalized attention of a small college” are extremely common statements on here.
Often on CC we read 'Cast a wide net, see what the offers are’and here when a parent gets excited about a good offer everyone says ‘oh, if money was a factor you should have said so.’ I set a pretty low budget for my kids but of couse I wanted them to get scholarships or work or find an affordable school.
Both of my kids are happy at their schools but both have said, after a year, that they probably would have been just as happy at a number of different schools, at bigger or smaller schools, at schools close or far away. Most parents are as uninformed as their kids about the cost and financial picture when they start the search. Many of us said, 'sure, apply to U of X or Y or Z’without knowing about all the programs at that school or other great schools. Things change between sophomore year when any start looking at schools and even between application and acceptace. Jobs change, life happrns, parents realize they don’t have $40k per year and all those scholarships promised don’t appear. Of course I wanted to get the best deal, I wanted my kids to win the lottery for financial aid, I wanted them to take no loans. Who wants to pay more when there is a counter offer on the table?
It wouldn’t surprise me if when the next offer comes in and it is for less money this 17 year old says 'hey, this other school is a much better deal ’ like it just occurred to him that $100,000 is a lot of money.
One, talents like writing or composing or visual arts can’t be taught, in a really basic sense. You have to have the ability. And a person can develop that ability in many places at the undergrad level. Believe me, top grad programs have students from all kinds of backgrounds. Excessive reliance on the idea that an award-winning program (and were the awards undergrad level?) can make a good writer can be problematic: I would say it is more possible that for some reason that program drew good writers in the first place.
Second, many of us here on the forum have kids well beyond college or even grad school and one thing we can contribute is a longer term perspective.
Please listen to those who try to help by saying that many kids change major s and the narrow focus on journalism at the undergrad level may be premature.
Please listen to those who say that deciding an area of interest for his writing, whether medicine or science or world events or the arts, might mean an undergrad focus on that area, rather than the writing itself. Many classes in college are “writing intensive.” Go for a college that will provide excellent faculty, yes, but it is possible that that should be more general excellence and not just in journalism.
Please listen to those who try to tell you, from their own experience or their kids’, that certain fields like journalism and law are changing all the time. Please, I have two friends who are journalists: both are now unpaid by their previous employers (big city papers) but can post articles or reviews online- for no pay. I have another friend who worked at a city station on a weeknight news/human interest tv show who quit with the technological changes: she felt she no longer had creative control.
And be careful about how you respond to these attempts by veteran posters to help you because the help will be more limited if you are not courteous.
Personally, I do not understand the reliance on the uncle or the predetermined path for journalism. Your son has plenty of time ahead. Chances are he will need grad school so he can be more flexible in undergrad. He can major in anything that interests him. Leave the uncle for later when internships are needed: by all means don’t alienate him but your son is old enough to decide without any more pressure from anyone, aside from the financial practicalities (which you say are flexible)
At one point, my son was considering journalism because he enjoyed writing. We researched various journalists across all media. And the one thing we found was each had studied an area of interest outside of journalism, whether it was Latin American history, economics, or a science. In fact, the advice we had received at the time (and this is 6 year old advice) was to pursue the area of interest more than the actual journalism. At a good school with good students, the writing and critical thinking will be there. The actual journalism degree should be pursued at the masters level. I guess there are many paths to get there. I certainly would not dismiss the advice of a relative. I’m just passing along what we learned. For us, it opened up the search, since he didn’t have to commit to a “journalism” school. That is not to devalue the opportunities presented by a place like Missouri, Syracuse, Columbia, or whatever other top schools are designated as “tops”. FWIW, my son ended up switching gears.
Also, I echo the comments about fit. This is not a knock against St. Bonaventure specifically (and my daughter is at a small school.) But, I think someone who goes to St. Bonaventure should like the environment. I would give the same advice to someone considering Penn State. Students go through difficult times here and there through their college years. If you like where you are and the people you are with, it makes getting over the bumps a little easier.