For Ds it was the state’s public tech university.
D is done with her summer language program 
We flew separately to Orlando last night and are currently waiting in the airport hotel (like, the hotel is literally in the airport–our kids’ little kid dreams come true :)) ) for her best friend to arrive from a third state. Our vacation has commenced!
@STEM2017 I don’t think the Common App does. D is doing about 1/2 Common App and 1/2 specific school apps, so we’ve come across that question already. I also dislike the question about where your parents went to school. A better question would be, did your parent attend/graduate from that school? Or, will you be a first generation college student (and provide a definition). I just dislike all the assumptions about the student that will be made at the admissions stage based on these questions about the parent. If necessary for federal funding, why can’t they collect that data upon enrollment.
@WhereIsMyKindle …awesome! Have a fun week together!
@itsgettingreal17 …wait, they are asking about career and incomes on the actual application? What is the motive there? Trying to sniff out kids who could be full pay?? Glad it isn’t Pitt.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek …Well that is good to know! So if you check the box do you actually have to apply or can you just check that you intend to apply?
@carachel2 I’ve never been to Texas, I’ve just romanticized Rice in my head based on the youtube videos and proximity to a beach :D. (I don’t mind heat and humidity at all, though, and that’s what killed Rice and Tulane for D).
@stlarenas wrote
Yes, that’s my class of 2018 kid. Has absolutely no idea what she wants to major in and gets really salty when I talk about college. One of the issues for us with looking at majors on paper is that it’s sterile-you don’t know how it feels to be working in that major just from looking at it on paper. Our solution for her has been to expose her to different classes and camps, and to focus more on her academic strengths-whatever she’s good at, keep getting better at that, and hopefully a major or a focus will flow from that.
This year (her junior year) she’s taking a marketing class, a theater tech class, and a forensics class in addition to her latin 3, lit, us history, and precalc classes. Obviously the theater tech class is going to be the most fun, but she’s also exploring if she’d be interested in business/marketing.
Going this route with unconventional classes means that she won’t be applying to super selective or selective colleges like her sister, but I don’t think she’d be happy doing that anyway. I’d rather she explore her interests at this level and find something she’s good at, and go to a school that’s a match for her, than stick to a high pressure traditional route (which her test scores suggest she’s capable of) and then flounder around in college and take forever to graduate.
She does know that she wants to work for Walt Disney World (and is super familiar with the resort), so we focus on that, and she likes Rollins College and UCF right now simply because of their proximity to WDW. And that’s ok-if that’s her metric, then that’s valid. She can get a great education at either of those colleges, and we’d be thrilled.
Maybe your kid just hasn’t figured out what her value metric is? I don’t know if I’d push her to ask questions on the tour that she doesn’t feel authentic about asking-not every kid is the “ooh me oooh me!” with their hand in the air kind of kid-it doesn’t mean she’s not learning and listening and taking in her surroundings. If she feels pressured by you to ask questions, it may put her on the defensive and not let her enjoy the tour as much. I’d back way off. I backed off so far on the college tours that I didn’t even go on them with D17. Seriously. I know I create pressure and I wanted her to enjoy the experience, so I didn’t go, and let her go with her very calm dad and grandpa instead.
It was kind of funny, Tulane and Vanderbilt made her list last night because of all the pretty flyers, then came back off after she did more research on them. She has nine colleges/universities on her list now (8 mine, 1 hers), and part of me feels like that is plenty, and then part of me that worries about affordability is pacing like a caged tiger. Merit is such a crapshoot.
Thank you @Mom2aphysicsgeek about checking yes for fin aid even if you think you’ll be full pay. I know we have to do a fafsa even though there’s no chance we’ll get need-based aid. I don’t know if we have to do a CSS for those schools that require it for the merit aid, but I"m going to assume yes at this point. H is the one who’ll be doing the lion’s share of the Fafsa and CSS stuff for D17, but he’ll have his tab that I create in the Binder of Destiny for stuff like this.
Maybe they need admission statistics? Not sure. Plus, I haven’t gotten into individual school-parts of the app, but the questions may be somewhat repeated based on the stats that a particular school wishes to collect.
It does sometimes seem invasive, but I guess I have become somewhat immune to it all after what we went through during an international adoption. It’s like, you want what!?
They even asked for our first-born, which didn’t make any sense.
Plus, it’s not like you’re being singled out. Everyone has to do it.
@itsgettingreal17 If you don’t like the question about parents, imagine having to answer that question for your siblings. Dd had to list where her siblings have gone to college and if they graduated. No place for explanation. So bc her autistic brother dropped out of school, she had to include that without qualification. That really bothered me. I have included the information in our school profile bc it is applicable there, but goodness, I would have been extremely mad about that question as a teen. I have some pretty messed up siblings who got involved in drugs. Their lives do not reflect my life at all. We have very different values and lifestyles.
@carachel2 It is school dependent. Checking the box now at least means you will be considered and gives you until their FAFSA deadline to figure out if you have to fill it out.
You don’t need to fill out FAFSA for Bama’s.
@2muchquan I think it is intrusive to ask the name of the schools that siblings attended.
@MotherOfDragons ahh…that explains it. You have never visited. Let me give you a mental picture: The “beach” near Houston (which is Galveston) is disgusting. I never understand why anyone goes there. The sand is dark muddy brown and the water rolls in very muddy brown, they don’t clean the beaches very well and the stinky seaweed problem is SO bad most years. Finally, the Gulf is like a big toilet bowl and everything nasty washes up in Galveston.
As for the port/bay right near Houston…picture a ton of scrap metal looking bare bones buildings. Picture them all on top of one another and looking dirty and scrungy. Now picture them in the ocean, right on the coast and so you can see them from the highway. That is the “ocean access” one has in Houston. Endless oil rigs right off the coast.
Every Texan I know will avoid Galveston beaches as much as possible. There are a few beach areas that are groomed and are relatively clean…but still you have the muddy brown sand and muddy water. ICK. It genuinely puzzles me that anyone chooses to vacation there or live there but I guess some try to make the best of it. It only costs a few hundred extra dollars to drive to Gulf Shores, Al or Destin, FL and the beaches are soooo much prettier.
I can’t even get D interested in Rice because of the location. People in the DFW area have a nickname for Houston: “The armpit of Texas.”
I will stop my rant on Houston on Galveston for now…but I just wanted to paint a clearer picture for you. If H got transferred there I’m sure we could make the best of it. North Texas is definitely not my ideal place to live either but Houston is further down the list.
PS: I’ve seen numerous recent articles about Houston is ripe for a major major weather disaster similar to what hit New Orleans. The article highlighted a huge lack of weather related preparation, lack of clear evacuation plans, etc. It may be all trash talk aimed at Houston but it was an interesting read.
@carachel2 LOL! When we were moving back from Brazil, Victoria was one of our options. When we visited, my impression was that it was way worse than Brazil except they spoke English.
Oh no! HGTV’s “Beachfront Bargain Hunt” lied so bad! They made Galveston look beautiful! Oh, my dreams just went down the toilet. (literally!)
H wants to buy a yacht-sized trawler and go tootling around the entire coastline of north and south america when he retires (with me, although I’m not sure I’m on board with that much adventure). We’ll have to remember to be careful to not go swimming off the back of the boat in Brazil and Galveston, lol.
I keep feeling like I need to add one more LAC to D17’s list. Right now the only one she has is the University of Richmond. Here are the parameters: East Coast, about 5k kids undergrad, good Computer Science dept (either engineering or science side), walkable to a town/city/some kind of culture beyond starbucks. Want one where she’s in the upper edge of the class in hopes of merit (760v, 720m sat, 4.2 weighted gpa). Any suggestions?
UR is not walkable to anywhere except a great opthamologist’s office. (My 14 yr old went to that office when she was little!). Seriously, the main road has a strip mall sort of thing which are really more office type things IIRC and the Drs office. West Richmond has a lot to do, but it requires driving.
@MotherOfDragons Bucknell? Not huge merit there though!
Questions about income &c.: Much of this information gets reported to the US Department of Education, which compiles statistics on things like the relative educational aspiration and attainment of children in families of various income and parental educational levels, whether there’s a cohort effect among siblings in educational aspiration and attainment, and the like. It’s probably also helpful for certain colleges in figuring out their marketing, but the DoE is the main reason such questions exist.
@thinmints, isn’t Bucknell in the middle of nowhere?
@mommdc – I’ve never been there but many good LACs in PA are in small towns so it may not make the mark! I cannot think of too many LACs at around that enrollment (5K). When we visited URichmond a few years ago, the AO was happy to say that it was a “smedium” sized school – small merged with medium!!! At least at Richmond, I think there is a bus that will take you into downtown Richmond.
Related to the subject of checking the yes/ no box for financial aid, during an admissions panel at my son’s school they said a common mistake of many families that are full pay is they don’t fill out the financial aid form. If you don’t fill out the form you aren’t considered for lower rate family loans.
@carachel2 That is exactly my concern regarding the purpose of collecting that information.
The Common Alp doesn’t ask for income but it does ask for schools the parent graduated from, career, and employer. They might as well just ask for income because, at least for me, that information pretty much discloses my income bracket.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek Asking for sibling information is ridiculous to me.
@MotherOfDragons, doing an ABET accredited computer science program search in PA, it came up with Lafayette College and U of Scranton, but not sure what’s all around them.
@thinmints I
Public transportation in Richmond is most definitely not what one would think of in terms of a metropolitan area. UR is not near downtown. It is considered the West End. Most people on the West End are not going to be riding a bus. It is a very wealthy area. Short Pump is Far West End and where most people tend to go. There are some boutiques and restaurants downtown, but I would not want to rely on a bus at night. Richmond downtown area is not the safest place to be at night. (We went to church downtown and ds’s Scout troop was downtown. Parts are ok, but it one of those cities where you need to know where you are bc just a few streets drastically changes where you are.)