Parents of the HS Class of 2017 (Part 1)

@nw2this I think it’s at least half tuition merit. Very high stat kids get $30K merit making the COA comparable to or cheaper than some State flagships. It is also an Early Action school so preferable.

Exhausted from watching my younger son play 4 soccer games the last 2 days , and I didn’t even play. My son plays the whole game, every game. Must be great to have the strength and energy to do that. Oh to be young again.

Son19 is working on a big paper today. Also studied for Sat/act and went to lax practice.

I drove and stood around for a few hours and need a nap.

@dfbdfb Not directing this toward you, but your comment, in case anyone is interested. CBH finalists do have their transportation costs reimbursed when they travel for the finalist weekend interview.

Completed list of 10 BS/MD programs to consider for DS. 8 of them are private and other 2 are out of state and fees are like ivy league schools ,ouch!

@srk2017 I. Don’t know if VCU’s is on your list or not, https://www.pubapps.vcu.edu/honors/guaranteed/medicine/index.aspx but the best dr we have ever had (and I mean absolutely ever) earned his MD from MCV. (From a simple conversation weeks earlier, he saved our ds’s life when ds called me on my cell phone while both dr and I were at our neighborhood pool. He heard me talking to ds (who was not even his patient) and asked me for my phone. He talked to ds for a few minutes and sent him back to the ER and told him not to leave until they ran a list of tests, refuse to leave no matter what they said. If ds hadn’t gone back and insisted those tests be run (which they refused to do until he waited for 2 hrs refusing to leave), ds would have died.)

Thanks @Mom2aphysicsgeek - I haven’t looked @ VCU yet. I will check it out.

@2muchquan @itsgettingreal17 @dfbdfb re: Mizzou My son really liked them, even had them at the top of his list after a College Fair but after last years problems he crossed it off his list. He was pretty disappointed with how it was handled from both the student and university sides and he is no longer considering it at all. I think they’re going to have a serious problem for the next few years.

Whew, I’ve been so busy over the last week or so with family visiting and a million things going on. but I did want to jump in and say…

HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY!

To those whose family or friends include military members serving now or in the past, please pass on a THANK YOU from me.

We had a really great time. I just found out that our little city has one of the largest Memorial Day gatherings in the U.S. I actually finished the 10k race that comes before the event despite being soooo out of shape. And when I say “race,” do not assume any running was involved! Or any jogging for that matter. At least I managed to stay in front of the “course clearers” who were making way for the professional race.

Tomorrow I shall surely catch up with the rest of the thread.

@dfbdfb We live in the same area as you and faced the same issue this year. The good news is that there does seem to be a bit of an advantage in the novelty/memorability factor when one has made (what seems to be) an extreme effort to travel for these events. :slight_smile: We tried to add visits to other schools to the trips when possible. There were a good many miles flown this year, but it was manageable and my daughter had good options at the end :slight_smile:

@snoozn Good job finishing the race before the cleaners! Congrats! <:-P <:-P <:-P

Hope everyone had a good weekend!
Hope the wrist heals well and congratulations on the job @eandesmom !

Well, we now have some summer college trips planned and booked :slight_smile: There go all the frequent flyer miles!

D17 will be flying up to Boston with her dad and grandpa (who’s an alumni of one of the schools and was thrilled to tag along) over the summer. She’ll visit two schools a day that are close to each other-she’s very grumpy at us that we added MIT to the mix, but I told her it’s a lottery school so it’s a reach for everyone, it’s silly NOT to go look at it since they are right there, and you might learn something.

They are doing big, small, easy to get into, hard to get into, LAC and engineering schools to get a broad overview of what kind of school she can see herself at. This was a result of H’s spreadsheet where we didn’t necessarily pick my favorites (ok, I managed to get them in anyway) but picked representative types of schools and added the super reach MIT in as one of the types. D says she wants a big urban school, so that’s in there, but there are a few small suburban schools too, just so she can compare head to head.

Sometimes when she’s afraid of stuff she acts like she knows everything there is to know already, which just makes me crazy. Crazier…

She wants to visit Drexel (because their mascot is a dragon, and she thinks she might like co-op), so H will take her over the fall on one of his business trips (he’s in Philly often). That leaves a few locals like Bama and Clemson, and a few florida schools that we can visit over the winter and we need an excuse to escape the cold.

She still refuses to look at the Binder of Destiny, which is fine for now. If she comes back from summer camp still being stinky about it I’ll then engage the “If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice” alternative scenario which involves us washing our hands of the entire thing and letting her do it all. She acts like it doesn’t matter where she goes to school and one place is as good as another, without actually LOOKING at the info and making that decision. Gaaaahhh!!!

I’m tired of the whole “college is just an aggravation and I don’t want to deal with it” behavior since (to me) college is about the best opportunity there is on the planet to do and go and see and be, but I’m being patient. Which for me is like holding your breath all the time, but I get that she is legitimately freaked out by the entire situation of huge change and big choices.

@MotherOfDragons Wait: “…locals like Bama and Clemson…” and then “…we can visit over the winter and we need an excuse to escape the cold.” How can you be local to Bama and Clemson, yet still need to escape ‘the cold’? :))

^^ We are weather wimps :smiley:

@MotherOfDragons My son has really not put any serious effort into looking at schools either, so don’t worry. I actually think it will work to our family’s benefit. Less travel for us the next few months! He seems to think he’d be happy at a few schools no matter what. He has a preference for one, but I don’t think he’s sulk for one minute if he didn’t get it in and had to go elsewhere. So, we might be done with college visits, yay!

So, my wife and I had showed him a few schools he’d probably stand a chance of getting accepted, and pointed out their positive attributes. He was like " cool, I think I’m done with the whole process". So, I really do believe him when he says he could be happy at any of those places. They would all be fine. He’d learn and enjoy his time at any of them, although in different ways. So maybe your D just needs to find a few she really likes, and then don’t stress out too much over the other ones until you gain an acceptance and find out all of the financial stuff.

When I applied to schools in high school I picked places that I thought I would like to spend time in for 4 years. I could’ve been happy at any of them, really.What I did in college really has had very little impact on my professional life.
The biggest impact has been, " You think they can win the NCAA football title again this year?" Or " Sounds like an awesome place, I wish I went there instead of Booniesville LAC". So, that has been a fun aspect of going to a southerm state school with a big football team. People always seem want to talk about it. They never ask what I studied, what my GPA was etc. Ha. I’ve never once felt like the state school education held me back from getting a job, and in at times some of my best interviews were just talking about stupid stuff regarding football, weather, parties, college life etc.

@snoozn congrats on your physical fitness prowess.

You know, she may be more right than you think. At least to a point. As long as she ends up with a place with opportunities, she will be fine. She sounds like she’s quite confident, so she’ll choose one of many excellent paths for her. (Can you tell I started the Frank Bruni book over the weekend? :)) )

Basically, what @RightCoaster said.

The Frank Bruni book is very good on audio. Perfect when you have your kid trapped in the car with you!

@MotherOfDragons I wouldn’t worry much. It will work out. My D is the same way. She’s seriously looked at 5 schools and one fell off the list due to mandatory religion classes. Other than that, she is showing very little interest in really checking out the other 18 schools on the list. She got my hopes up when she picked up the list and looked at a couple of them. But no further movement yet. She’s like, well you already did the research and you know what I like, so it will be fine. I am hoping she looks at more of them soon but really am not holding my breath. I think what will happen is August will come along and its essay writing time and she’ll do it do write the necessary essays asking about interest. Some of my friends with seniors are having the same issue getting their kids to make their college lists. I guess we just don’t have kids like the ones that post regularly on CC (especially the chances threads). Not a bad thing at all.

@2muchquan LOL over the new “chill” attitude! :wink:

Bruni’s view matches ours. Our oldest ds, chemE graduate of PodunkU, works alongside Michigan U, GT, TAM and they were all hired in at the exact same pay.

We are not concerned about youngest ds and grad school. His application will be strong: top grades, grad classes, excellent LOR, research (both on-campus and REUs). The only unknown at this point are GRE scores since he hasn’t taken it. But, he is not overly concerned about the GRE.

Motivation and likability are definite pluses, too. Being internally driven to make the most of your UG opportunity is a transferable skill to life in general. :slight_smile:

(ETA: The low cost/no debt is a significant bonus, too. I recognize we are outliers on CC, but it has worked for us.)

@Mom2aphysicsgeek Ha! I don’t have to be chill, but my kid can be. Maybe I come across as a nutjob about all this college stuff, but overall I think I’ve always agreed with the Bruni-style. Few of the schools on our WBOD are ranked very highly (I actually don’t track any ranking in any of my spreadsheets, although I did in the beginning).

My focus is more about being DONE (or practically) by November 1. I want 85% of apps in by then. I don’t care so much where they’re going, as long as they are submitted early.

Western Washington University visit report

S’s visit to WWU with H (so this info is second hand) went well. H was very impressed by the campus grounds. He said it was one of the most scenic campuses he’d visited. The building were well spaced and walkable and the campus was lush. There is an arboretum adjacent to campus that adds to the open space. Everyone in the family except S (computer boy) was impressed by that luxury. The campus sits on a bluff overlooking the water towards the San Juan Islands. S sat in on a freshman honors seminar. They were talking about baseball and its effect on the nation during the class. He said it was completely discussion that day and everyone was engaged. They met with the honors dean who took them to lunch at a cafeteria. About 600 kids are part of the honors college. To graduate with a honors degree the student must maintain a GPA of 3.5 for the final 90 credits of coursework and they are required to do a capstone project.

After the honors visit, S participated in the “Discovery Days” program. They had a tour of campus, sat through a session with students from different part of campus, including the Fairhaven program, which is a unique program with small classes (up to 20 students/class), and a program that is interdisciplinary and lets the student design their major. There is a strong social justice theme. Also, there are no letter grades. Instead there are narrative evaluations (harkens to my time at UC Santa Cruz!) After the student discussion session, they took tours of the dorms where the same students had open visits to their dorm rooms. S said the dorms were pretty standard, but he is now jaded by the living accommodations at ASU’s Barrett honors college. H learned that most students live on campus freshman year, 50% of those students live on campus sophomore year, 50% of those sophomores live on campus junior year, etc. Finally, S took a tour of the CS department. He was happy with what he saw (I didn’t get specifics). The most important thing H learned was that 100% of their graduates are employed after graduating. Yay! They, like most schools, have the 5th year where the students in CS can get a Masters to go with their Bachelor degree.

A bonus is that there is a very good bus system and the buses w/in the couty are “free” with your student ID. There are also buses to Seattle and maybe even Vancouver, so it seems like a car isn’t really needed. And that suits S who isn’t crazy about driving. All and all S liked WWU. It is not #1 on his list, but it is #3 after ASU and Cal Poly. Univ. of Arizona has fallen to #4. And it is a WWU school (for those who care) which makes it a financial match!