@BeeDAre wishing your DD all the healing she needs.
@Waiting2exhale many moons ago I had a terrible visit at a college admissions weekend. My host was an awful match. Meanwhile, I had a great time at another comparable college. Because of it, it took me until May 1st to decide which postcard to send in. But I went with the school where I had the awful visit because even though that interaction was not positive, even at 17 I could see beyond it.
Your daughter will weigh all her options and sheâll make the best decision for her. Youâve raised her to this point; sheâll figure it out. It may even be a gut thing that she canât articulate the why. I remember driving around my home town trying to make up my mind and just letting my stream of consciousness brain take me through it. Hopefully at this point, all her options are good ones and she can only attend one.
That said, I wouldnât love it either if the current students were telling her to go elsewhere. Have you checked the retention rate at that school? If itâs fine, it could be she just landed in a nest of negative dramatic types.
@Waiting2exhale, I also had the experience of visiting a school and having all the students tell me to attend a different choice. When I returned home, I thought about what they said, and realized they were right. I attended the other school and felt like this was the right choice immediately after making the decision all the way to today. When she gets ready to listen and process after returning home, have her consider what the students said, maybe with a grain of salt, especially if they are in the middle of midterms or the like, but they might have insight.
@Waiting2exhale - you have gotten some good advice. I would just like to add that while on the SS Indecision there is no mandatory departure date until 5/1- so, your family & DD do have some time to process this visit and what she learned from other students. Today may be totally different :-/
This might just be part of the entire discussion (listed in the âconâ column) when making a final decision.
@Waiting2exhale There is a difference between encouraging a student to go to one of her other college options, and telling the student not to attend the school she is visiting (with specific reasons, or even general reasons).
If the other students think she has terrific âotherâ choices, they may be struggling with why she would pick the school she is visiting. Many students who have had fewer choices (either because they didnât get accepted, or because they were accepted but could not afford) may just be wondering (in general) why she would not pick one of her other great choices, especially if those choices include some more selective/prestigious options.
I would worry more if students were giving specific reasons not to attend their school, or were relating some personal negative experiences that they wish they had known before they picked their school.
Re: kids telling visitors to go elsewhere. Sounds like my coworkers, who can be astonishingly negative about our workplace when talking to new employees, and unhelpful (hazing)! And many of us have worked there for 10-15 years! Not the most glamorous job, but it pays the bills!
Who knows whatâs going on with those sour grapes!
@Midwest67 Those negative coworkers can be draining! I feel your pain.
Iâm just wondering why students would volunteer to host prospective students if they didnât feel that they could portray the most positive view of the school. Shouldnât they be more supportive and encouraging? A visit like that would have turned my kids off.
At Which school is your child having this begative experience?
@EastGrad: Your post really made me smile, as it resonated so deeply with me. I appreciate your honesty at letting me know you went ahead and took the kidsâ advice, enrolling elsewhere. I had not considered that this might be crunch time for the enrolled students, and, yes, their stress levels may be high. I love the immediacy of the certainty that you had chosen correctly. Wouldnât it be nice to think she could find that?
@piesquared: I think what I would like her to get past is,âIt may even be a gut thing that she canât articulate the why.â Even though that âgut thingâ is something which could help her to say Yes or No, I would like for her to KNOW why . (Because thatâs how Iâve made all of my decisions. Ha!) I think youâre right, time and decompression will have to do it.
And, yes, I have been digging deeper into the school all morning, trying to get a sense of just such things. Are the students here generally happy? Do the students wish they were somewhere else? What is the graduation rate in 4 years/in her anticipated major? Thank you for that.
@Cheeringsection: âOnce he understood that not all of those students would matriculate there (and hopefully not the ones he found most annoying) he was okay with moving forward. Those sour apples could very well end up elsewhere.â
This is a gem. Seems I would realize this, in order to talk with her when she is ready, but youâve shared it with me, so I didnât need to come up with it on my own. Thank you so much.
@texaspg: The students at Caltech really mean that about the work, donât they? I didnât feel that advice as being discouraging at the time I heard it, but then it was immediately followed up with advice on how to get through it. (Mostly stringent warnings against trying to compete P-sets by oneâs self.
I have a question, though, as Iâm not sure I understood. Were parents also relating an incredulousness to you after learning of your childâs acceptance to the combined UCSD med program? Did you dig further into that, if it was the parents?
@bookmom7: âThis might just be part of the entire discussion (listed in the âconâ column) when making a final decision.â Yes, bookmom, this will definitely be on the list. Iâd thought the list could be one that whittled itself down based on some rather objective factors, such as how the dorms are set up, or the partying factor, or locale, but the inchoates are going to play a role as well, and that rather complicates things (see piesquared).
@4kids2graduate: âI would worry more if students were giving specific reasons not to attend their school, or were relating some personal negative experiences that they wish they had known before they picked their school.â
I will really listen for this when she is speaking with me, and I will wait a few days to ask her about this in a way that does not make her shut down, or defensive. This is a particular piece of information she needs to come to clarity about, for sure. Thank you so much.
I awoke thinking about some of the reasons this is the tone of what is coming her way, and I know that students at this university traditionally have many, many options of other top schools. It took me two seconds to realize that the financial component could play a part in why they might have chosen the here instead of the elsewhere , as it will certainly play a part in what we tell her we can do.
@Midwest67: " ⊠unhelpful (hazing)!" Youâve given it a term! You are so right. So now that becomes a column on the list of things she may encounter along the way. Thank you.
Thank you all so much.
Iâll be interested to hear what more the students said to your D, @Waiting2exhale and what she ends up deciding.
D sent a polite but generic email to the schools she turned down. She actually found a template for it when she googled and something from CC popped up. There are two colleges where it seems that the departments are not speaking to each other, as she has continued getting mail from them, including a surprise scholarship from one. She also still occasionally gets recruitment postcards or mailings from random colleges. I imagine all of it will stop after May 1.
Another thing to remember is to encourage your daughter to look at her entire experience at the school, not just last night @Waiting2exhale . Potential students have limited experiences to base their opinions on. Iâm sure the school is larger than several hundred people . To expect everyone to have a stellar experience is unrealistic . Would the students having such a negative experience be considered peers to your daughter? Do they have similar interests? Are they in the same major ? Similar socioeconomic status? Similar personalities? All of these things should be looked at. If these are students who are very studious and the college is more social than academic of course theyâre not going to like it, and vice versa. Make sure that in investigating you and your daughter are truly comparing and contrasting apples to apples. That said, if after looking at all of these variables your daughterâs gut is telling her that this is not the best school for her, listen. Humans are given the gift of intuition for a reason. Good luck.
We after a lot of playing with the FedEx delivery app we seem to have an incoming package from Reed admissions, sent out yesterday. So I am pretty sure Reed is an acceptance. I will wait to post it on the list until we have package in hand.
Yahoo, @LKnomad, congrats. Your son has a lot of terrific choices. He will have to use a sorting hat! 
We are basically down to three schools, all we have not visited and will not be able to before May 1st. I had hoped a west coast school would be on the final list, but no such luck. I gave up advocating for University of Hawaii long ago. So, it will end up being around 5,000 miles between me and my baby girl. Should I take this personally?!
Of course we would prefer in-person visits, but I feel pretty comfortable with our extensive internet research going into the final decision. Plus, a place where young people are living in close proximity, learning stuff, and hopefully launching into the next phase of their life more mature and knowledgeable than when they started is somewhat homogeneous in my opinion. As I keep attempting to convey to my DD, her attitude will shape the experience more than any other factor.
@LKnomad - hopefully a congrats! It is amazing to me that kids/parents have figured out the FedEx/ UPS tracking system to determine if a package is on the way. I say kudos to the ingenuity! =D>
I believe we have established that some of us are spreadsheet decision makers and some of us are not. I have a good friend whose son is trying to make a decision and I believe sheâs looked at every conceivable statistic including some that I had no idea anyone tracked.
We looked at things generally before application season and I knew I was comfortable with him attending any school on his list even though it was a wide range. Thatâs not really changed for me. In general, Iâm not het up about relative major rankings when the choices are all good because I think most 17 year olds do not realistically know what they want to do (look around â peopleâs career paths are so crooked!).
But I was thinking about it (whiling away time until May 1st) and I started wondering if the same person would reach the same conclusion using both methods â spreadsheet and gut? And then I realized that probably everyone has to go through the decision-making process their way, and trying to go through it the wrong way would make them second guess their decision. Our differences as people are partially what spices life all up and makes for an interesting mix of souls.
@4kids2graduate Thanks for your Evergreen story! D already has a pair of Geoduck sweatpants. 
Weâre about 3.5 hours away, so she wonât be too far away if sheâs up there.
@LKnomad that is great news about Whitman and Reed! Still no package on FedEx tracker for us. D was considering Whitman, too, but ended up not applying there because she didnât want to go to a school with Greek life. We live in a town with a large state college, so sheâs kind of seen the uglier parts of that growing up, although itâs possible that thereâs a totally different âfeelâ to Whitman instead of here. It does sound like we have kids with similar interests, though! What is your son interested in studying?
My D is interested in linguistics, I think. Mostly sheâd like to study a bunch of languages- sheâs been in a Spanish-English immersion program since Kinder and wants to branch out to other languages now. I worry a bit that the way that Evergreen structures its classes there wonât be as many language opportunities for her (you donât take different classes, you take one âprogramâ per quarter that combines different disciplines). But, it might get her to pursue the sciences since many of the Spanish programs also have a science component (looking at biodiversity in Central/South America, for example). She might not do any science (beyond whatâs required) at Reed because she does struggle with math. At Evergreen, where sheâs on the strong side in all subjects, I donât think sheâd be intimidated by the science, and I do think she has the analytical mind for it.
@piesquared: ^^like that
@palm715 if you are comfortable sharing which 3 schools some of us may have touted and/or live close by. Maybe we could be helpful with accounts of being there.