<p>oldfort - have a great trip to CA visiting colleges. It looks like summer may have finally arrived and we are going to have mid 70’s at the beaches (finally!). I was also going to suggest the Claremont Colleges for your D. I don’t recall what she wants to study, but she might be interested in Pepperdine, Loyola Marymount or Occidental.</p>
<p>We’re still about a month away until Junior year starts. Maybe, just maybe, summer reading might get done before the long Labor Day weekend!</p>
<p>My son starts his junior year on Monday. He has not finished his summer reading or AP work yet. He told me not to worry. It will get done. I guess I have no choice but to believe him.</p>
<p>^ take a deep breath and relax or it could be a long year! D has prep books, vocab books, summer reading and text books neatly stacked on her desk. They’ve looked that way all summer. Next week, she has 10 days off from golf and guess what? She’s not going to the mall, that’s for sure…</p>
<p>D2 doesn’t really know what she wants to study yet. She is much more of a humanities person than D1. She keeps on saying that she wants big, but she likes Colgate and Amherst. </p>
<p>Today was first day of orientation at her new school. One girl said to her, “You don’t speak Spanish?” D2 said, “I am getting there, but this is an American Internationation School.” Just FYI - we live in Mexico City now.</p>
<p>We visited Berkeley today. It took us one hour to get there. We were with my nephew (senior) and my brother. H was “attacked” by few people on the street. I asked why there was so much trash on the ground. My nephew said it must be the budget cut. D2 thought the campus was pretty. I told the entourage that it is bad luck to buy a sweat shirt before being admitted to a school. While I was there I bought a sweat shirt and a tshirt. My brother also said to my nephew that we were out of there. This reminds me of the thread of why students cross out a school, except this time it’s the parents.</p>
<p>Careful… Berkeley girl here. I bleed blue and gold.
Yeah. Its a little grimy. Yeah there are homeless people around because the Bay Area in general (this includes S.F.) has a very liberal attitude toward the homeless.<br>
But Berkeley has two basic sides. North Side (safer) and South side (grimier and where the frats are.) If you want to live a secluded, peaceful existence you live on what is called “holy hill” where all the theological institutes are on the North Side. Less bums. Residential. Seminarians. Peaceful. If you don’t mind getting your hands a little dirty, you live on the south side (like I did.) Makes you appreciate your life a little. You get street smart. Definitely not for the kids who have grown up sheltered most of their lives. I was used to taking public buses across town, dealing with interesting folk. I was ready. Others may not be.</p>
<p>Campus itself tends to be clean. You may have been there a day after a protest, or celebration. (Prop 8 celebrations have been going on…) During the school year, there isn’t a problem with neatness. My friend’s D is there, a Junior, on the Rally Committee. Loving her life…</p>
<p>You either love Cal or you hate it. But if you go to UCLA, don’t expect it to be much prettier. My D goes there and I have stepped over my share of homeless guys in Westwood. These two campuses are in the heart of the two biggest metropolitan areas in California. It comes with the territory.</p>
<p>I didn’t mean any disrespect to Berkeley because everyone knows it’s a great school. I guess I really didn’t expect the place to be such a throw back to the 60s. I thought the town would have been prettier, like most of college town. My brother thought UCLA was beautiful when he visited with my nephew earlier.</p>
<p>Friend of my D12 got into Cal, rejected at UCLA and accepted at UCSD. She went to Berkeley for a visit with her family and just could not believe the quantity of homeless. she enrolled at UCSD.</p>
<p>My D10 has many friends (I think 7-8) who will be starting Cal this fall. D visited Berkeley at spring break with a friend and her family as her friend was still trying to make her final decision on what school to attend (friend is going to Cal). I think it really depends on what your kid wants not only from the college, but what kind of experience they also want to have as to whether or not they like Cal. This was a strange year for our higj school as we normally have more kids accepted to UCLA than Cal, but this year was the opposite.</p>
<p>daughter looked at colgate and hamilton, preferred hamilton. I loved their atmosphere.</p>
<p>I have come to think that if you are from SoCal, your chances of being accepted to Cal are better. If you are from NoCal, your chances of being accepted to Cal are better.
I do not expect my D to like Cal because she will think it grimy. My other D is at UCLA and I don’t think she would have liked Cal either. There were times it got a little annoying for me as well when I stepped over a bum as I left my co-op staircase to go to class. But I was ready to live in San Francisco… lol…</p>
<p>dte- I remember my visit to those schools with D1. Our GC said kids would like one and not the other. I expected D1 to prefer Hamilton but she surprised us with preferring Colgate. She decided not to apply to Hamilton although it had a free online app. I enjoyed the drive (also from the Boston area). Don’t think either will be on D2 (my 2012er’s) list however.</p>
<p>Junior year is about to start, and I wish all the '12 kids the very best!</p>
<p>I should have posted on the stupid reasons thread about why she didnt like Colgate. My D2 will not apply to either one either she says she wants somewhere warm although i will encourage her to look locally also.</p>
<p>This is the first year I don’t have to drive a kid to school… weird.</p>
<p>chrissyblu - me too. I (almost) always enjoyed those brief morning moments in the car. just another part of parenting that, while you are slogging through it, you think you are going to be doing it forever, and then one day it’s over.</p>
<p>Me, Not yet. At least another month. My D still has to satisfy the requirement of driving x hours before taking the road test.</p>
<p>well, I should clarify… D is very close to getting her license, and won’t be driving herself to school for a while yet. but she has a friend who has offered to drive her, and she is very excited about the prospect. I am comfortable with the arrangement - the friend has been driving for a while and more importantly, school is just a 10 minute drive away on slow, small-town streets.</p>
<p>PRJ, That’s something I have to think about; someone driving my D around. We are also on slow, smalltown streets. I am trying to say yes.</p>