I don’t have a lot of info about all of the schools on your D24’s list, but they’ve mentioned Elon before on the “Your College Bound Kid” podcast and usually have great things to say about it.
I live in the Phoenix area and we’ve visited ASU a couple of times. My daughter ended up not liking it very much, but that’s because it’s super close to home and she didn’t like how big it felt.
I saw in your other post that your D24, if she attends, would be at the main campus in Tempe. I think that campus is far preferable to the other 3 ASU campuses.
ASU is a really enormous school. And it’s going to be hot until mid-October. When move-in happens in mid-August, don’t be surprised if it’s 105+ degrees. But after a couple of months, you do pretty much get used to it. The dry heat IS different than humid heat elsewhere in the US. That being said, once it’s above 105, it doesn’t matter if it’s a dry heat or not…it’s just plain old hot.
One thing they mentioned at an ASU prospective student event we went to a year ago was that for non-honors students, which dorm they put you in will be based on what your major is. That’s done with the intent to make it easier to make connections with other students who are probably taking a lot of the same classes that you are. I thought that was a positive thing.
The main Tempe campus is super close to the Phoenix airport. Phoenix is a major hub for a lot of airlines, so depending on what your home airport is, the odds might be high that your D24 would be able to get direct flights home without any problem.
Your daughter would probably not need a car definitely for the 1st 2 years because there will be enough local students who DO have cars and she can just bum rides off of them…plus there’s Uber and Lyft which is available everywhere around campus.
A coworker’s daughter is a sophomore right now at ASU. She rushed a sorority during freshman year and her grades suffered a little bit because, as my coworker put it, “she bit off a little more than she could chew” and all of the extracurricular stuff took up a bunch of time (and focus) away from school work.
If your D24 has something like an IEP or 504 plan at school due to her ADD and anxiety, then wherever she ends up attending, I’d recommend to contact the disabled students office wherever she’s considering attending and ask a bunch of questions, do some research to find out what your D24 would need to do in order to get set up with whatever accommodations she needs. For example, what sort of documentation will the disabled students office need from your D24 and by what date? A few months ago, there was a “Your College Bound Kid” episode or 2 in which they talked extensively about this topic and had great advice on how to figure out which colleges you’re looking at would be the best fit from a disabled student perspective (because not every college handles it the same way).
The weather here in the Phoenix area in the winter, though, is pretty darn fabulous. Yesterday morning, the low temp at my house was higher than the high temp in Danville, Kentucky from the day before! Spring is great here, too. And in terms of summer heat, to me, it doesn’t really start to feel HOT hot until right around the 1st week of June. Even in mid-May, it’s warm, but it’s downright balmy in the evenings once the sun starts to go down (AND in the mornings in May, it’s very pleasant). When the high temps are in the mid-90s here, it actually feels like it’s about 5 degrees cooler than that because the humidity is so low.