<p>momonthehill - I have a 12 year old too - a boy - and we did a college trip with him last summer, and it definitely wasn’t fun for him. Girls might handle it a little better.</p>
<p>scualum - I imagine I’ll be doing most of the financial aid stuff, but I think D will handle the app stuff herself (other than paying the fees, of course). If she wants my help with the clerical stuff/keeping track of deadlines, that will be fine, but she has to do the applications and essays herself.</p>
<p>momonthehill: I’ve heard good things about Pitt’s English department, too, although it appears to be large/popular so I’m worried about class sizes (lecture classes more noticeably depreciate the quality of humanities education than for science). My mother knows a current freshman at Pitt who is apparently an English major; I’ll be sure to report back if I learn anything from her.</p>
<p>Maryland is relatively affordable OOS, I believe; 5 students from my school attended last year and the brother of a classmate is really enjoying his experience there (upperclassman, on the Banneker-Key full ride, doing a 4-year BS/MA in CS). I’m not sure how good Maryland is for English; I do know that they have had major funding issues and I remember psychology was badly impacted.</p>
<p>My spring break trip will also include my FIVE-year-old sister! :O</p>
<p>Yes, I am dragging my 10 yo around college campuses too and she is NOT enjoying it.</p>
<p>The Exploring Educational Excellence consortium of colleges (Brown, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, and Rice) has scheduled its spring 2009 visits </p>
<p>[Exploring</a> Educational Excellence-Information Sessions](<a href=“http://www.exploringeducationalexcellence.org/student.html]Exploring”>http://www.exploringeducationalexcellence.org/student.html) </p>
<p>and you can sign up on the website. I’d love to hear your impressions of the meetings. I will attend my local meeting at the end of April, about a month before the Duke-Georgetown-Harvard Penn-Stanford meetings come to my town. Let’s compare notes.</p>
<p>I just realized I could be really dumb. The Indiana University y’all are talking about IS in Indiana, right? I just looked at yesterday’s mail, and ds got something from the Robert E. Cook Honors College at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. What’s that?</p>
<p>Also, my crush on Carleton continues with the latest mailing.</p>
<p>Actually, lots of good college mail the past couple of days.</p>
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<p>My son got that mailing too. Years ago I was compiling a college list for a website, and I discovered that there is a college with the confusing name of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, in a town called Indiana in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The “Indiana” just means “Indian country,” and that is why there is both a town and a state of that name. Puzzling as all get out when you first see it, isn’t it?</p>
<p>Okay, so I can see that I’m in good company when it comes bringing a younger sibling along for the college tour. Back when I was looking at colleges for D1, D2(when she came along) was a pretty good sport about it, but she was already in 8th grade by then, so I think that she was at the point where she could at least begin visualizing each school that we visit as a potential destination for herself. Hopefully D3 can hang in there. As for myself, one good thing is that, with the exception of a couple of schools, D2 is looking at different places than D1 did.</p>
<p>Youdon’tsay–Lol regarding IU: Even D got momentarily mistaken when we received some mail from “Indiana U. of Pennsylvania”. (BTW, there’s also a “California University of Pennsylvania” 
) Carleton sounds like a really good school. D was really interested in it–from what we’ve read about it, Carleton sounds like it has a really creative, fun and quirky culture. Has your son checked out Grinnell? Grinnell and Carleton seem to have a lot of overlap in applications.</p>
<p>Keilexandra, thanks for your insights on UMD. A friend of D’s is currently there as a freshman and majoring in English. I think that he might be in one of UMD’s honors programs and is quite happy there. That having been said, I’m not really certain how strong their English program is, and the budget issue, of course, is a concern(as it is for many state schools). My understanding is that they have a terrific journalism program, although I don’t know that journalism is a strong interest of hers. The other state school that she’s mentioned, on occasion is Rutgers, but from what I’ve heard, NJ has made huge budget cuts for higher education, even before the current economic downturn.</p>
<p>I couldn’t get him to bite on Grinnell, though I didn’t really push it as I’ve read it’s a bear to get in/out of.</p>
<p>It took forever for these old eyes to even see the gold script IUofP on the cover. I was flipping that thing all around trying to figure out where the Cook Honors College is. Gosh, such a pretty viewbook. Anyone know anything about the place?</p>
<p>^I don’t know too much about it other than it’s in the PA state school system, state owned, as opposed to “state-related” like Penn State and Pitt. From what I understand, IUP is in a rather rural location.</p>
<p>Back from the freezer zone. We were at Mammoth Mt over the weekend to get our snow and ski fix and it snowed over a foot Saturday night, so new, soft snow. Yessss!</p>
<p>Now I’m tired after the 6 hour drive back, and reading about a WUSTL application NOW has just about put me over the edge into bed. This is pressing things too far. They should at least complete one process to the end (well, except for their well known wait list) before starting another. Anyone else wonder how many people they employ in admissions, and don’t these people deserve a break in between as well, to refresh their brain cells?</p>
<p>This past summer I actually attended a summer program at IUP, so I know a fair deal about it. Indiana is rural, typical small-town PA (the main street is cute and quaint). The summer program (SHP, Summer Honors Program) is basically a 2-week mini-version of Cook Honor College. Counselors are current honors college students, housing is in the honors college dorm, we have Core classes, etc. I thought the viewbook was a pretty accurate description. Core isn’t crazy-intense intellectual, but it does teach you critical thinking. The (good) professors are funny and great teachers. The dorm just got air-conditioning last summer right before SHP started, which was nice. Robert E. Cook, who’s still alive, maintains an enrichment fund for which you can write letters to him explaining why you need X amount of money. There’s a Steinway baby grand (albeit out of tune), a full kitchen, a neat mini-auditorium, and a real sense of community. However, keep in mind that you WILL have to take regular IUP classes, and they may be disappointing. Many students come from rural western PA, it seems, but not all. I know people who love it there. PM me if you want contact information for current students.</p>
<p>And I’m sure that was more than anyone wanted to know about the RECHC at IUP, but there ya go.</p>
<p>So we are back from our very informative trip of east coast reaches and here are my D’s preferences:</p>
<p>Harvard- Love it.
Georgetown- Love it.
Swarthmore- Like it a lot.</p>
<p>Princeton- Not sure (was not in session).</p>
<p>Brown- Did not like.
Penn- Did not like.</p>
<p>vp - my D loved Harvard and Georgetown too. We’ll be visiting Swarthmore and Princeton next month, and my D isn’t interested in either Brown or Penn. We’ll actually have to re-visit Georgetown at some point - last time we went, she loved it, but she was too young to do the info session or tour, so we just strolled around a bit, and walked around the neighborhood - what’s not to like?</p>
<p>YDS - my D has also received the mailing from the Robert E. Cook Honors College - and you’re right - it looks very impressive. I haven’t really read through it yet, but I may. Will have to look into the FA they offer. If it they offer good FA packages to the honors students, then it may be worthwhile.</p>
<p>Keilexandra - thanks for the info about the school.</p>
<p>Keix, what a wealth of info. Thanks. I haven’t actually read the book either, LImom, but it LOOKED pretty. :)</p>
<p>DS got home from his European vacation. Fun seemed in direct proportion to the kinds of food available. Are all 16yo boys such chow hounds?</p>
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<p>Aaahhh, YES. And they don’t stop. My S is 18. Came in and wolfed down 1/4 pan of baked ziti and 8 cookies yesterday and was still staring in the refrigerator for more! Then D came down looking for the ziti, which was gone. “I hate him, he always eats all the food”. BTW, he is 6’ tall and as skinny as can be.</p>
<p>We have our spring break next week. I wish we were able to go on tour. We have it saved for the summer, though. I want to suggest a road trip to Atlanta to see Emory and Georgia Tech, but she is sooooooo burned out right now, she doesn’t want to do anything on break. We didn’t originally book anything because she was supposed to be writing her extended essay for IB, but she has decided to drop out and only take AP classes for senior year. I will have to find a day when she isn’t tired and snarky to propose a road trip. She is going with her BF’s family to UF on the last weekend of break. I guess I could drop her there with them after GA and drive home by myself. I am anxious to do something more in this process than make lists and read CC!</p>
<p>My DS is almost 17 and yes, chow hound is an apt description.</p>
<p>After the SAT, his choice of where to go to dinner was Korean BBQ so we went with friends down the block, whose S is on swim team with DS. Not a molecule of food left. No doggie bags for the waiting canines at home lately.</p>
<p>For my 16 year old, basically we make four servings with mom and dad getting one each while S gets two, plus has what I would consider light meals as desired throughout the day and evening. The kid is 6’ tall and barely 145lbs. He moved off the kiddie menu when he was three as we were tired of him eating his meal plus half of ours. Ah, youth.</p>
<p>Today has not been a great day. It’s barely 9AM and I have discovered a scheduling conflict this afternoon that there is no good solution to plus my car’s temp light when on and smoke starting pouring out from under the hood. Thank goodness I had just pulled into my driveway but still, a smoking car is never good. I bravely hid behind our back gate, which is 6ft tall (like S!) and peeked out at it. What good I thought a wooden fence was going to do in the event of an explosion, I have no idea but it seemed rational at the time.</p>
<p>H is on his way home to access the damage. Please let it be something minor…</p>
<p>Lol, pugmadkate. I love the picture I get of you hiding behind the fence. 
Seriously though, good luck with the car. Hopefully it will be something minor that just takes a Y chomosome to figure out.</p>
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YDS – in what respect? Admissions/graduation, or travel-wise?</p>