Son19 is not interested in mid west, the south, mid Atlantic. So that leaves NE and west coast. He likes the ideas of CA, but he’ll never get accepted so there goes that. He’ll probably just end up 20 minutes away after all of this, lol.
Right now WPI is the best “fit” for him, it meets all of his requirements as a student, he could play sports there, and his stats match up. Maybe he’d get some merit $ there, We could almost end our search right now I think and just go with it, but son may wants to keep his options open. And we need some safeties too.
I keep telling myself that kiddo is still in a place where he could change on a dime. Two years ago he was still certain that digital art and painting were going to be a huge part of his future academic life, then a crappy art teacher soured him on taking any art classes ever again. He still loves to create, he just hates to be told what to draw or be criticized on his creations.
There are aspects of his personality that I think are solid and will still be the same in a year, but a whole lot could still change. He’s not ready to cull the list any time soon.
My son has been saying a “half day drive” which I take as 4 to 6 hours. Boston is an easy, cheap direct flight from here, but he doesn’t seem that interested in New England. He’s not drawn to the Western marijuana states like his sister was (lol). The next school he’s looking at (University of Maryland) is 45 minutes from home. I’m thinking of a radius that probably goes up to 8 hours and includes VA, PA, DE, MD, NC, NY and Ohio.
Except yesterday, he randomly asked me if “Texas” has “good music programs.” What the heck? I really doubt that he will be studying music or going to Texas, but sure, why not add more confusion to the mix.
We have not put any distance restrictions on D19 we want her to find her fit. Also we have a D15 who is at a school that is a 14 hour drive (or as my husband says undriveable distance) away. She is at Purdue and the closest airport is Indianapolis which is just over an hour but doesn’t always have a lot of flight choices to our area, there is also O’hare in Chicago which is about 2 1/2 hours away but has lots of flight choices. There are also great shuttle services to both airports which pickup at several locations on campus.
She has had a couple of times where she experienced flight delays even though they were direct flights. Once even ending up with an overnight delay and we couldn’t get her a hotel room because she wasn’t even 18 yet. But she managed and didn’t panic and it was a good learning experience.
Hoping that if my D19 ends up at one of her more rural choices that they have a great shuttle system like Purdue has.
I’ve said it before, but the discussions of distance are interesting for me in a kind of detached, academic way.
The nearest college timewise is ~10 minutes away from here, but the nearest non-open-admissions college is a 3½ hour flight away (plus about ½ hour driving time), and for the nearest one that offers any major D19 is interested in is that flight plus 2 hours driving. (Switch it to the nearest college that offers a major she’s interested in that doesn’t restrict entry to the major in stupidly ridiculous ways, and you’re looking at a 5 hour flight.)
I’m not sure whether to be jealous of those of you living amidst the options of the urban Northeast, or to gloat at my kid not really having to take yet another factor into consideration.
@dfbdfb you should be happy. Your daughter just accepts the fact that it’s either the school 10 minutes away or ones that are hours away.
You should also be thrilled that when your daughter applies to some schools she is likely the only kid from her area applying.
In the Northeast the kids all apply to the same schools. The schools don’t want a bunch of kids from the same schools and regions and so they deny/waitlist tons of kids that would be thrilled to going to these schools. The competition is fierce and it has trickled down to our state flagship. Because so many good students want to attend schools like BU, BC, Tufts, NEU ( and all of the Ivys and MIT) the schools get to be picky about who they let in, and thus many kids end up going to UMass as a back up. It’s not that easy to get into the School of nursing, engineering and CS and now the business school is getting much more selective.
The reality of living in urban NE is that it is harder and harder for local kids without a hook or URM designation to gain access to the top local schools. You need to be exceptional now, not just good. So while we have access to these schools, in reality the chances of admittance are slimmer than ever. I think people are starting to realize this now and are having their kids apply to schools out of our region.
Kiddo had not gotten any physical college mail for a long time, but today he had stuff from 5 different colleges, including 3 we had never heard of and one big reach that he is already excited about. Except the big reach seems to think he is someone named Claire.
I haven’t put any distance restriction on my kid but we have said any college has to be close to the cost of our flagship in state tuition (VA) or at least have a reasonable chance at a scholarship to bring it into that range. I think my kid’s top choices would all be in California if it weren’t for that. So we will be looking at everything from 45 minutes away to 9 hours drive and there will probably be some apps to school we won’t visit unless she gets in. She has some very specific criteria that helps narrow the list down.
True story: At one point, my D17 started getting promotional mail from a specific college for NotHerFirstName+HerLastName. Well, HerLastName isn’t what I’d call precisely rare, but it’s certainly uncommon, so she googed the person whose mail she was getting, and as far as we could tell it was actually intended for someone who may well have been a recruited athlete from another state.
I’ve been lurking along and reading a couple hundred of the most recent pages over the past couple of weeks and finally ready to jump in :). We have one kiddo, DS19, and started college tours in the fall. To tie into the recent discussion - distance doesn’t seem to be a big thing, other than we wanted it to be doable in a day. Since we regularly drive 13+ hours down to FL, to us that’s a day drive ;).
He’s in the high school STEM academy, and is pretty set on majoring in EE, so that narrows down the school choice quite a bit. There are only a few schools in VA that offer ABET accredited engineering, and he knocked two off the list because his focus is on locally available (to the school) internships and coops (his Robotics teacher emphasized to them that engineers need experience to get hired - thank you, Robotics teacher!!).
We’ve toured three schools here in VA -
VCU (husband’s alma mater, but it was too urban for DS19),
ODU (one of my alma maters, but just kind of “meh”… it’s very close to home, probably adds to the "meh"ness)
GMU (he loved it, now his current #1). Right outside DC, about 3ish hours away IF TRAFFIC IS OK lol, great internship opportunities, and a metro ride into the city. He’s familiar with the metro since we head to DC quite a bit and always metro around. We used to have Redskins season tickets but dropped that expense a few years ago (we suck anyway lol).
Spring Break trip: we’re headed to Boston area to tour two major reaches (MIT and Harvard) - DS19 knows they’re both long shots, kinda like a lottery. We want him to tour before he bothers filling out those long applications - that way if he hates the campuses, it’ll save time next fall ;). We’d already planned to head up there to be tourists, so it’s not out of the way (perfect timing with APUSH this year 
).
THEN…since we’re insane, so we’re leaving Boston area to head to… um… UAH in Huntsville, AL. There’s just no other good time to visit with work and school obligations, so we’re going to bite the bullet and drive down (stopping overnight halfway). It’s about 11 hours from home. I hope he likes it - his current stats would get him a scholarship there, and with it being right next to the US Space Flight Ctr, Redstone Arsenal, Cummings Research Park, internships and coops are a-plenty. So, fingers crossed. Avoiding student loan debt would be awesome!
Thanks for the suggestion, @dfbdfb - I googled the name and found a junior in Cleveland who is apparently a soccer/rugby phenom.
Welcome, @parent2one DC traffic is heinous and awful, but you know that. I’m interested in your spring break tour and hearing more about it.
We did not put restrictions on distance. At first, S19 expressed anxiety about leaving home and wanted to attend our local private college as a commuter. Which is totally cool by us. A lot of kids in our area do this because they get the private school education/experience at a reasonable cost.
Then I took him to Creative Writing Day at Susquehanna University. That experience was really positive and as a result, he decided to consider schools 1-2 hours away. Having done a ton of visits at this point (Hey, we’re in central PA. There a bazillion schools and three major cities within 1-2 hours! LOL!), one hour away is definitely the sweet spot when it comes to fit. Small is better than big. And he needs to keep the local commuter option on the table to reduce anxiety.
I’d say that we’re following his lead on distance. But I may have made attempts at getting some other schools (Fordham, looking wistfully at you) into consideration. I have not been successful. 
Welcome @parent2one ! I tried to make a play for GMU. It is actually within the two-hour radius. Without traffic. 
Welcome @parent2one. We are in the northern part of the state and getting a big “meh” from GMU because it’s really close to home (15-20 minutes). We haven’t visited any of the in-state schools so we’re off to VA Tech during spring break. Now I wonder if that was one of the schools bumped off your son’s list?
Thanks for the welcomes, @ninakatarina @InfiniteWaves and @eh1234
I’ll definitely post more about the spring break trip - probably more than anyone would want to know lol! I’ve been setting up the itinerary and hotels the past few months, rearranging things as different schools were added/dropped (he dumped Yale from the super reach tour list after “google-map-walking” the campus area, said he didn’t like so many busy city streets crossing campus… I thought it looked more self-contained than VCU, but not going to argue).
Yep, @eh1234, VT was one of the ones he dropped because of location (UVA was the other). He has close friends who’ve toured it and plan to apply, but he has no interest. I think they’re good at hooking kids up with summer internships in other locations, but there’re not a lot of local internship/coops for engineering. I mentioned to him that we could tour if he wanted, since we’ll be driving right by it on I-81 on the way to UAH from MA, but nope.
It’s funny how what’s familiar becomes “meh” for some kids, like ODU for him and GMU for yours ;).
@parent2one If you are coming all this way to look at schools ( Harvard and MIT), you might want to add a couple of schools with decent engineering programs that he might actually get accepted at… Northeastern and BU. Both have solid engineering programs and access to co-ops/internships. Coming from out of the area also helps with admissions, and his stats are good maybe a chance at some merit $$ and honors college.
Harvard and MIT and nice schools, just such a long shot, espeically without some sort of hook. Also, a lot of people don’t find the Harvard attractive, and MIT even worse! LOL. He could hate them, as there won’t be any leaves on the trees yet, it won’t be warm, and good chance of murky gray sky.
It’s not that easy to get into BU/NU engineering schools either, they’ve both ramped up their efforts to attract excellent students and have built shiny new engineering facilities.
If he really wants hands on learning with a chance for internships, and a good chance for some decent merit $$ if he is a very good applicant you could also check out WPI. It’s about 45-60 minutes west of Harvard. Much smaller school, but really stem focused.
Good luck.
Been lurking myself but thought I would chime in @parent2one - S19 is visiting UAH (from CO) over February break. For engineering, high stats kids, it is hard to not at least check it out. It has a reputation for great internship and post-grad placement. S19 currently meets their full tuition/housing level so 4 years would end up being just north of $10,000 total. We will also be visiting UA since he qualifies for Presidential Elite currently. I have already heard the “Why Alabama schools?” comments from folks but after following their forums on CC, S19 is very interested in what they have to offer.
@parent2one WE visited UAH last fall. its a 4 hour drive for us . Socially its a great fit for my S who is “on the spectrum” and we quality right now for the full tuition (hoping SAT scores will go up for Tuition plus housing). He wants Computer Science. He would also apply to the honors college. My only concerns was when we talked to the department head for CS, we were told that there is not much undergrad research in that department . I asked S though if he would go there, or to our “2nd tier school” in our state, (our number 1 state school is impossible to get into these days , especially for CS), and he said there. Saying all that, we live in the south, and S19 is very interested in upstate NY schools. he says the cold wont bother him. And this winter is really testing that. Also might look at WPI and STevens in NJ. I dont think northeastern, with his personality, would be a good fit. he did not like Drexel when we toured last summer.
So our list looks like:
RPI
RIT
Stevens
WPI
Safety:
UAH
Kennesaw (polytech)
High Reaches
CMU (I went there)
GA tech
we might add a few others. and have to visit WPI , RIT, and Stevens.
@sdl0625 you might want to add Clarkson to his list. They are fairly generous with merit aid. It’s a nice little campus with some solid programs. I liked my visit there. Son17 thought about going there, but it was too isolated and maybe to techy for him. He wanted access to a city. They offered him a lot of $$ to go there.
Why would the northeast be a bad fit for his personality @sdl0625 ?