Opinions on Texas A&M?

AggieMomAgain
Mon, 30 Apr 2018 16:21:41 +0000

It sounds like you are currently a HS Junior and are in the planning stages for applying to be a Freshman in 2019. Kudos to you for planning ahead.

If at all possible, plan visits with a parent along to your target schools when you can visit on a regular college class day. Schedule an official tour and speak with an advisor in your target majors. When you are emailing them to get an advisor session, ask if you can sit in on a class in each major. Schedule a dorm tour and also visit nearby apartment complexes. Walk around the campus and see what it feels like to you. Eat lunch on campus. Shop for t-shirts, etc at a campus store. Take in the vibe of the school. Talk to actual students, asks questions like “what is your major, what are classes like, where are you from, what do you know now that you wished you knew while you were applying?” Or ask any question. You will get a feel for the type of people at each school. Talk with your parent about the pros and cons of this experience.

Afterward, drive around the town, go the grocery store or any place that interests you. Eat dinner at a place near campus. Go to the location of the Greek houses that you are interested. Not sure if they allow visitors, but at least you can get an idea of what sort of houses they are, how close they are to campus and see the students in the area and the type of cars that they drive.

All day long during your official visits, ask yourself, “Do I feel comfortable here? Can I see myself thriving here? Is this where I belong?” Make a list of what you like and what you don’t like at each school, actually write down your thoughts during the visit so you don’t forget anything.

Then compare the schools. Keep the list and add to it as you go through the application process, including all tuition and scholarships offered as well as Travel costs for Out Of State schools. This way you can see what place really fits you. Visiting on an official class day is a LOT different from visiting on the weekend or a football game day, but make it a long visit so you can go to a game too if you can! Your parents will have their perspective on each school too, and costs will probably be one of their main selection criteria.

We visited several schools with our older daughter, even though she was dating a guy who was already an Aggie. But even she didn’t want to blindly follow him. TX Tech was fine, just too far away. SMU had a beautiful campus and a great feel, she like the Dallas area, but she wasn’t offered enough scholarship money to make it the same cost as TAMU. Baylor offered her a lot of money but the town was too small and their Greek life was too small also, we did not actually visit Baylor, but she talked to people from there and looked online and decided that she would wait and see if she was accepted to TAMU or not. She was accepted to TAMU after holistic review and was graduated in 2016 after really enjoying her time as an AGGIE in AGGIELAND!

We didn’t want our younger daughter to “want to be an Aggie just because her sister was an Aggie” and there were concerns that her HS class rank was going to be a lot lower than her sister’s due to recovering from a concussion in the 8th grade. She had been with us for some of her sister’s college visits and knew that she did not want to apply to TX Tech as it was too far away, and she did not want to apply to private or Out of State schools. We have the TX Tomorrow fund guaranteed tuition so our girls will have no college debt if they go to a public TX school.

We visited TAMU in early September of her HS Senior year. She had a great advisor session, sat in on a class, ate lunch on campus and talked with students. She had already visited for football games, a couple of her sister’s sorority events, Aggie Ring Day and spent a few days staying with her sister over one Thanksgiving & football game when she got out earlier her sister, so she had an idea what TAMU would be like. But during lunch during our official visit on campus, she looked around and said " Thanks for bringing me on this visit, Mom, this does feel different than a game day! And I feel like I fit in here!" Knowing that her class rank was going to be probably in the 3rd quarter, I insisted that we drive to the Blinn Bryan campus just to see where it was located and how long it took to get there from TAMU campus, (about 15 minutes)!

We also visited UT Dallas on a class day in November, but the school was just too small for her and it is a long drive from home. They really wanted her, a Dean came to her advisor meeting and really tried hard to recruit her! After that visit, she cancelled a visit scheduled for UNT as she didn’t want to drive even further. She decided to wait on a couple of other visits until after all acceptance or denials arrived.

She was accepted at all of the smaller schools including U of H and was CAPped for UT Austin and offered Blinn-TEAM at TAMU. She accepted TX A&M Blinn-TEAM and is currently a VERY HAPPY AGGIE IN AGGIELAND!! I have a thread on CC about her Blinn-TEAM experiences as a Freshman for 2017-2018.