<p>I hope you will all post your impressions of these schools!</p>
<p>My D has committed to a coding “immersion” class that will take over her entire summer. She will start to think seriously about schools next year and we will plan some visits over her breaks. At this moment in time, H and I both think she’ll be happiest at a small LAC but we are also considering places that will leave room for growth over four years.</p>
<p>Twogirls, I also want to find that magical fit where D doesn’t crack from the pressure but where she’ll have plenty of other nerds to befriend. </p>
<p>Shoboemom, there are other ways to show interest apart from visiting. Corresponding with a professor in a department of interest or even with an admissions officer to ask questions about the school is a way to do it. Some schools offer open houses and interviews in other cities and there are adcoms who visit high schools. If that’s the case, it’s a great idea to have researched the school very thoroughly before that visit and be prepared to make a connection.</p>
<p>FromMD, you asked the question I’ve been trying to avoid. Yes, D is going to try for NMSF which means a summer of studying Math. She’s not going to be happy about it and neither am I She scored 202 which means she’s in striking distance. She has to work on earning at least 17 more points–cutoff in our state, NY, ranges from 215-219. Her scores in W and CR are in the 70s but her Math score is just 52. I’m stressed already just thinking about it and have been looking at reviews of test prep books.</p>
<p>BunHeadMom, thanks for the Cal Newton title; I’ll pick it up from the library tomorrow.</p>
<p>As for summer college tours: our itinerary looks less demanding than many of the ones posted here. We’ll be spending a week in DC, staying at a hotel on Capitol Hill while hubby attends a conference. I’m wondering about tours of DC schools. D likes DC and when I said that we might do a couple of college tours she said that she might enjoy living there for college. I don’t know if Georgetown is worth our time, quite a reach, and I hear they’re not generous when it comes to merit. American U and GWU are possibles, except that I read that GWU has lots of frats and rich kids, and of course there’s the whole ranking scandal. I’m also wondering about U of Maryland–College Park since it’s relatively affordable for OOS. Lots of kids from our area like U of Delaware so we may look in there as well. </p>
<p>Outside the DC area, we really should look at SUNY Binghamton, who knows, D may just love it and we’ll end up paying the really reasonable in-state tuition.</p>
<p>We may also be spending a couple of days in Boston (we have relatives there who are fine with us dropping in any time) and may look at Northeastern and BC.</p>
<p>Last summer we did a tour of Cornell (the only formal tour we’ve done) and spent a weekend at a conference at U of Scranton. And we’ve gone to events at local schools (NYU, Fordham, Hofstra) and have walked around the campuses at Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and McGill. </p>
<p>Bunheadmom, do you have a site where it’s easy to look up which schools track interest? Or do you just look at the Common Data Set for each one?</p>
<p>Crepes did your daughter take the PSAT as a sophomore? Our school gives the plan test in 10th grade but the PSAT is given junior year. She will be taking practice tests all summer in preparation. UDel has been very very generous with merit aid in previous years. My daughter decided not to apply because she dislikes the crop of kids who were accepted this year- a real bunch of party type kids. Not her speed- I told her that they do not represent the entire school. My older daughter’s friend received enough merit from their honors program to bring the cost down to SUNY. My daughter will not budge so I won’t force the issue. We visited Binghamton and Geneseo, and my daughter has already been to Buffalo. Geneseo was nice but too small for her. She liked Binghamton so now our job is to visit it again at some point. SUNY Buffalo gives a lot of merit aid to students who fit my daughter’s profile so she will apply there as well. I told her that she must apply to at least 2 SUNYs. Bing does not give merit anymore, but they do have n honors program. She needs two financial safeties just in case- this mom can’t pay $50,000 or more considering that mine is considering med school (?) or at least graduate school. All of a sudden she like pediatrics and/or genetic counseling. The land grant at Cornell costs $43,000 for NYS residents but the intensity may make her crack. I don’t care where she goes as long as she is happy and feels comfortable with the kids. I usually type in " freshman profile + school name" and am brought to " city data" which gives me all of the info I need.</p>
<p>Where we have been:
Binghamton- likes it, says she should be able to find a crowd to hang with. Early assurance med school if interested
Buffalo- likes it, great research opportunities, early assurance med school if interested. Great school for the sciences and the honors program will be nerdy enough for her. 25,000 kids- approx
Geneseo- very nice but she did not love it.
University of Rochester- great school. First school she saw so she had no comparison. We will set up an interview and re- visit
Cornell- LOVED LOVED LOVED but it’s very intense and that is what I do not love
Boston U- they did a great tour with lots of detail. She wants to apply but also wants to visit again
Northeastern- coop program is nice but not sure how that works if she decides on med school. If she sticks with a masters in genetic counseling it will be amazing. The day we visited it was PACKED like a crowded subway platform and it was very unpleasant. We could not hear anything. We will try and go back but they do not track interest. She will apply.
Lehigh- LOVED IT!!! Sent an email to the admissions counselor. Beautiful school. My friend’s daughter visited and thought it was ugly. Go figure. She will re- visit and interview.
Muhlenberg- very very nice school but too small for my daughter.
Where we are heading:
University of Pittsburgh- early Sept.
Feb break: Emory ( loves our HS), Duke and/ or UNC, Wake Forest, Elon, UVA
April - UMD-CP, some of the DC schools
She will apply to some schools without visiting that do not track interest: maybe Georgia tech, Ohio State, U of Richmond.
Of course as time goes on we may drop some schools and add others. She has a bug in her head for U of Michigan and U of Chicago. Merit at those schools is hard to come by and I am not spending $60,000 per year.
Oh- and we walked the campus of Harvard and I am pleased to announce that my daughter was " not impressed." Lol I am actually very happy about that.</p>
<p>@crepes - Sounds like your D is pretty close to making the cut for NMSF. I think she has plenty of time over the summer to imporve her math score. D and most of her friends scored around the same score as yours (except one friend who scored 234). Hope your D makes the cut.</p>
<p>If you are coming down this way, I suggest your visit UMD-CP. As you said, I think UMD’s OOS tuition is somewhat reasonable. Just like many other large state schools, it has downsides but if your D is focused and self-driven, she can get as much (or as little) as she wants. We always viewed it as “good enough” for undergrad work knowing kids will continue post undergrad somewhere else.</p>
<p>No school visit planned here. I told D if she wants to, I am willing to take her and few of her friends on visits over the summer but she hasn’t said anything yet.</p>
<p>crepes - I think your daughter’s math score on the PSAT will improve a lot just from having another year of math. What math class was she in this year?</p>
<p>twogirls - I have two kids at University of Rochester, so let me know if you or your D have any questions! I don’t know anything directly about the pre med program (other than its reputation as a very good, very vibrant program).</p>
<p>^ thanks!! We will go back for a second tour now that she has a few schools under her belt. We will also set up an interview. The vibe at the school seemed like a nice fit for her.</p>
<p>My D. will be in Europe almost all summer. (4 weeks camp, plus family travel 2 weeks.) She won’t have time to study for the tests for good reason. but she will need to study when she comes back. There are a bunch of tests she needs to take next school year - PSAT, SAT, and SAT II math, maybe even SAT lit. Last year her PSAT was decent. She made three mistakes in math, two out of these three shouldn’t be there if she had been more careful. (like she said 3+3 =9 which is apparently a careless mistake :eek:) Since then she had learned more math. Hope her math will be fine with a month of study. She definitely will try for NMSF. the cutoff for our state is pretty high. That’s really not fair for our kids here, because we are more like our neighbor state, which is about 5 min. drive (instead of down state which is about 3 hours drive.) Our neighbor state had cutoff 22 points lower!! </p>
<p>In my D. school history, NOBODY ever got NMSF. That tells something. In spite of that, she is going to try. Last year she was 11 points short.</p>
<p>Man, you guys are making me nervous with all of the school visits you have made or are planning. We are just beginning to dip our toes in that pool. Hoping to take a trip up to Chicago over the summer to visit a friend and some of the schools in the area. I think we will wait on her test scores to plan visits after that. D scored well enough on the PSAT as a soph that she would have qualified for NMSF so just hoping that holds true next year. She is going to take either the October or November SAT, so she will be doing some studying over the summer for both of those. </p>
<p>D still really has no idea what type of school she might like. She will be casting a wide net, but it’s time to start figuring out size of school, etc. I’m starting to feel like we are way behind on this. I wish someone would just hand us a list of schools that would be good for her and that she’d like. <em>sigh</em></p>
<p>Suzy don’t get nervous. We started this process early because we had time and we have a long list to narrow down. My daughter was not thrilled at first- she felt funny because she is only a sophomore. Once her friends started she perked up and became more involved. It’s still early- we started this process with my older one in October of junior year. Some people only look at schools after acceptances are in. My daughter’s friend visited one school- she came with us. She applied to 7 schools without ever seeing them and ended up sending a deposit to the school she is in now without ever visiting it. That would make me nervous but for them it seemed fine. It’s still early in the process and you have time.</p>
<p>suzy100, we’ve only visited two schools, which we did this spring. And, we only made the visits because they’re both nearby state universities, and I wanted my daughter to have them in her mind as the schools against which all others must compete ;)</p>
<p>It worked! She’d always been somewhat disdainful of our state university system, but after the tour of our flagship campus, she said “I could see myself being really happy here.” At this point, that’s all I wanted to accomplish.</p>
<p>We won’t start college tours in earnest until next year - probably 1-2 in the fall and more in the spring.</p>
<p>We haven’t looked either. D2 has spent a lot of time on state flagship’s campus where d1 is. She spent a week at softball camp at GT, so she is familiar with the campus and feel of the school. We went on a college road trip with d1 in the summer when she was a rising senior. Plan on the same with d2. This was a great trip and we all have fond memories of it.</p>
<p>Not sure who mentioned Georgetown, but they give no merit aid. Sounds like their are a few high stat kids in this group similar to my D1. She only applied out of state to schools who gave generous merit aid. Here was her list:</p>
<p>Duke
UNC
UVA
Washington and Lee
Emory( in state)
oh and 3 lotteries HYP. </p>
<p>These merit scholarships are very competitive. We missed the deadline for the UNC/ Duke Robertson scholarship, my fault. So those 2 were immediately out of the running.</p>
<p>My advice - select 3 or 4 where you are looking for scholarships and go for it. D1 applied to 10, with scholarship apps and a heavy senior course load it was too many! ( hence the Robertson slipped through) Your student can only attend one school!</p>
<p>Suzy: We visited Chicago 2 years ago…we had a blast, staying just a few blocks off the Loop across the street from The House of Blues & Harry Carey’s. I now get the “Upper Wacker/Lower Wacker” line from The Blues Brothers Movie. The Cubs were out-of-town so we took the L to see the Sox play. Considering we ride the NYC subway, the Chicago L was a treat.</p>
<p>I really liked the Navy Pier - the fireworks were really nice & the Sue @ Thre Field Museum is a picture I stiil enjoy seeing; the wife like the Miracle Mile as it was a bit less congested the shopping on 5th avenue and she aslo went over to Hammond, IN for an afetrnoon at the casinos… We did the tourist thing and ate at Gino’s; deep dish is fine, but NY thin crust pizza is a bit more to our liking.</p>
<p>twogirls, all the students at D’s school take the PSAT twice, soph and junior year. I have to ask her if she knows what her friends got and if they’re prepping. </p>
<p>I’ve been to the Collegeboard site which shows exactly which questions she missed. Some were easy (a percentage question that I answered myself without much trouble) while many others were a complete mystery to me. She did the worst on the questions where a calculation needs to be filled in on the grid, got only 5 out of the 10 correct, so we know one area where she needs to put in</p>
<p>Pinotnoir, D’s math class this year was Algebra 2 / Trig which is regularly for 11th graders in her school. In 8th grade she did our state’s 9th grade curriculum, Integrated Algebra, and in 9th grade she did Geometry. She was doing fine in Math from 6th through 9th grade, high 80s/low 90s, which was very gratifying to me because all through the lower grades she would complain about hating math and wasn’t doing too well. This year she’s back to hating it and struggling, with grades in the 70s and low 80s. For the past month she’s been working with a tutor and doing better and I’m going to look into finding another tutor for the summer, or maybe have her work with good math students who are doing SAT review themselves. The tutor we have is good but charges $100 an hour.</p>
<p>Wow, D has NO IDEA where she wants to visit or apply. I took her to Barnard in the fall because we were in town, but that’s it. She has expressed a preference for the northeast, preferably but not necessarily in a large city, though a Midwest or Southern large city might be OK (like Chicago or Atlanta she’d “consider”). But as to LAC vs Big U vs Tech/Institute and size…nada.</p>
<p>This summer she is doing an engineering program in Philly in part to see whether the field appeals to her. If it does, that suggests certain types of schools. If it doesn’t, that eliminates a certain type. </p>
<p>It occurs to me that when I drive her to Philly we should maybe go a couple of days early and visit 3-4 schools in that area, but it’s summer and I never felt we got a good sense of a campus when S and I visited when students weren’t there.</p>
<p>Thanks for the tips Threesdad! I have a good friend in Chicago so we’ve definitely been but it’s been quite awhile since I’ve taken my girls. I think if I can peel them away from the shopping on Michigan Ave. it will be a victory!</p>
<p>OHMomof2, the summer program sounds cool and a great way to find out if her interests lie in a particular area. I wish I could have interested my D in some type of summer program, but unless it was in France, she wasn’t particularly interested. :rolleyes:</p>
She scored 202 which means she’s in striking distance. She has to work on earning at least 17 more points–cutoff in our state, NY, ranges from 215-219. Her scores in W and CR are in the 70s but her Math score is just 52. I’m stressed already just thinking about it and have been looking at reviews of test prep books.</p>