For some reason I have this image of touring a physics department along the lines of “and here is where we keep the black holes” and everyone squiggles down into a singularity and the professors get yelled at for letting people in that room. And it’s run by Sheldon Cooper.
D17 just knocked UGA out of the BOD. Ay caramba. There goes her financial safety.
LOL @MotherOfDragons
@MotherOfDragons Bummer, indeed. I kicked UGA out before D even knew it was on the WBOD. Although, she may pull it back in, but I doubt it. It will probably never cross her radar. I liked the Genetics major they offer. I didn’t like the 92% in-state number (or whatever it is). I hear Athens is a great college town! Why’d she drop it??
She was dismissive of it, which is not really very rational-she said they’re too party oriented and too football crazy for her, and she doesn’t care that there is an honors college because she doesn’t want to be tagged with the jock association by going there. I’m not going to force the issue because it’s not one of my favorites either, as compared to some others.
The instate number is a little misleading because only 3% of metro Atlantans are actually natives. We’re from Boston and Wisconsin, and our kids are a weird cultural mix of Atlanta, Wisconsin, and Boston, even though they were born in GA. Very, very few of the kids around here look or sound southern.
I suspect at UGA they’ll be a lot more in evidence, which is one of her issues. She’s like, if I see a confederate flag I will lose my ****.
@WhereIsMyKindle: George Mason was too dark (even in mid-summer), with too much concrete, and too industrial-feeling for her. Since dropping it from the list she’s noticed the amounts of funding the school’s getting from arch-conservative groups, too (and she’s somewhere to the left of Elizabeth Warren), but I don’t think that bothers her so much as it amuses her.
This article highlights all of the simultaneous changes taking place for 2017 applicants. New tests, prior-prior year, no access to college list order on FAFSA, simple needs test (hadn’t heard of this one before), and how all of those impact timetables.
If I remember correctly I took George Mason off the list because of the percentage of commuters. Watching the twitter feed now, I think Temple is coming off of the list too-so.much.crime.
I’m so aggravated that the goal posts are being moved around all over the place for the class of 2017…
On another forum I read, a current coversation is about college students not finding summer jobs/paid internships/paid research opportunities and how this pattern has happened repeatedly during their college yrs. (It is depressing to read, bc some of these kids are 21 and have never held jobs related to their career objectives. Or kids are paying quite a bit of $$ in order to work an unpaid internship.)
I know this a conversation 2+ yrs away for our kids, but I am wondering how much of it is a product of the choices being made over the next yr and if they can anticipate which programs will prepare them for UG research/job experiences.
This is not an issue my older kids have faced. They have had no problems getting research jobs on campus, etc. How much of this is a product of their majors themselves? How they fit within the dept? Is it more about personality and work ethic? Making the effort to get know their professors beyond attending class?
With dd going into a non-STEM field, I am wondering what kinds of jobs she should be able to find that will build her resume. Are there specific questions we should be asking depts beyond what their grads are doing? Do UG in non-stem fields work with professors on research? (Clueless here. For example, I know that one of the Russian depts dd has spoken with told her their fields are literature and cultural history and not language acquisition. No idea if that impacts on-campus type opportunities.)
I do know that I don’t want my dd to be 21 and have 0 work experience In her field.
The art department in my small, un-elite, regional directional college out in the boonies regularly posts paid internships and jobs for art students, which surprised me! I get an email from the department about 1x a month about what is going on in the dept and job opportunities. I don’t know if you could get on an intra-campus thing like that for colleges your kid is interested in, but it might be illuminating if you could.
I also suspect that the utter lack of competition where I live makes those jobs harder to fill-it’s a former military college and the art department is teeny. That might figure into how easy it is to find internships.
Thanks @dfbdfb We haven’t visited George Mason yet. It’s on the list only because of Arabic (large number and nuce variety of classes offered each semester) and some IR/Global offerings. I’m trying to track down specifics about scholarships but have yet to be successful.
@MotherOfDragons the percentage of commuting students is concerning.
Thanks!
@Mom2aphysicsgeek Older d was offered UG research in the English department at UDel. She turned it down because the area did not interest her at all. She knows many non-STEM majors doing research in their departments.
I added another school to D’s list and took off all the schools with no Arabic. She spent a lot of time yesterday on OU’s website, reflected back on our tour, and determined that it would be a great fit if she makes NMSF. So that’s a few schools down…only about 20 more to go and maybe a month working down the list at her snail’s pace.
This merit money chase is starting to stress me out. I keep going over and over D’s current list, must-haves, and schools I eliminated wondering if she’s casting a wide enough net. sigh
@Mom2aphysicsgeek One of the side-effects of monitoring fake-kid’s Twitter feed is I’ve been seeing how involved college placement offices are. I also called the placement office at D’s top choice to see If I could get more detailed info on the outcomes for their Bio grads, because the school is not prestigious, and their published data does provide major-level detail. ANYWAY, the point is they were super-helpful and put together some helpful info. Those offices also help with internships, of course. They may be more helpful than those in the actual departments. Tho, I’m sure I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. I was pleasantly surprised. I mean, they tweet when recent grads get out of grad school! So-and-so, 2012 grad, finished dental school at UNC-CH!
From the kids I have seen getting internships usually comes down to either persistence or networking, or both. My kids have gotten theirs either by sending out tons of applications (20+) and following up, or by knowing someone. My oldest daughter is currently on an internship which she totally arranged herself, with a group that had never had an intern before. Someone she had volunteered with before introduced her to the person who runs the group, and she proposed an internship and got the board of directors to agree. It is unpaid, but includes housing and food stipend, so she isn’t losing money. Making connections with professors and others in the field is so important, because they have contacts in the field that can really make a difference in finding work.
@itsgettingreal17, if you have some schools with guaranteed merit that D would be happy to attend then the rest can be “icing on the cake”
Is there a shorthand notation to use when you are responding on your phone, so expect typos? I propose: “TOP”, for Typing On Phone.
@2muchquan I like TOP. I have to edit every post because of phone typing. I have a line on business emails sent from my phone that says “sent from my iPhone, please forgive the typos”
Like you guys I respond from phone/tablet frequently and I sometimes come off as a complete doofus on here. I spell words wrong, bad grammar, ramble incoherently.
I blame it all on technology.
Good call on messages from phone @itsgettingreal17 , I like that.
Surrprise. Son17 actually said he was interested in looking at University of Denver. He said it looks like the kind of place he would like. Add it to the list! He’ll never go there, but it’s good for him to at least think about it. The reason why he won’t go there, will be it’s too far from home. But you never know. That school has some qualities he likes, biz school in/near a city, near mountains, no super preppy peeps, no southern climate, not too big, not too small, he could get accepted. It’s a school I could see him enjoying.
@caroldanvers, my D 15 did the same thing the summer between her senior HS year and start of college. She wanted to intern at a radio station and, through us, knew a DJ at a station. She was their first intern in many years. Now she has a weekly radio show on her college station. And no, she is not a music or communications major. She just is a musician who likes music. I am working on S now to find some sort of internship or research opportunity related to his potential field of computer science or robotics. He is not as much of a self starter as D, but he actually got a resume out there! (Go team.)
@Mom2aphysicsgeek Not completely non-STEM, but D14 has not had any issues finding paying part- to full-time summer jobs related to her field at a public university. She’s a horticulture major and was able to work on a nearby farm after her freshman year and has in applications/scheduled interviews for one community and one campus job (neither one is lab/research based) for this summer. Her department requires a pre-req to earn credit for an internship, so she won’t officially have an “internship” until after her junior year, but there are a lot of opportunities available for experience she can include on a resume for jobs in her field. She’s also looking into work-abroad programs or combination work/study abroad programs through the study abroad office. I’m not sure how robust that program is yet or what kind of documentation is required to work abroad as she’s planning that for senior year, but that may be another possibility.