Nonpretentious, Liberal LAC's

overseas
Sun, 15 Mar 2009 11:43:26 +0000

The way I look at this is from a slant of over 4 years. When my son was a junior in HS, he began to look at the states for college. He spent every summer in New Hampshire at a music school and most of his friends there were from the east coast. In his last summer in NH, we visited a few schools in the region that had some music in their curriculum: Williams and Bard. He picked these schools to visit because they were interested in him. He set up appointments with the faculty in the spring and we set out to visit in August. From the visits, he learned that he wasn’t interested in Williams and that he liked Bard. I then sent him to visit one school in the Midwest that he had his eyes on, Lawrence. He came back saying this was the one. We visited USC and UCSB college of creative studies in my “home” state of CA. He ended up applying to them. In the end, the visit he made (I didn’t) to Appleton, Wi was enough to tip the board in favor of Lawrence when all the acceptances came in. He had visited universities, LACs, east coast, west coast and midwest. In the process, he found a place that nurtured him and where he could slip and fall, change majors, change life course and pick himself up without my knowledge and set it all straight. He grew and changed. So when I hear the title of colleges that change lives, I think I understand. There is something to it or maybe he was just lucky.