So son is being honored tonight at halftime for a sporting event at school for winning the State Championship.He gets his name and stats put up on a cool sign they have in the gymnasium of past winners. He’s pretty pumped.
This is a great place to let out some of our obsession without our kids knowing. Last night I read DD something from this thread and she said jokingly, “Do you complain about me on there?” I said no, I just tell what we’re looking at and see if others have ideas…she said, “Yeah, you complain about me”.
Now is actually a good time to talk with her because she’s between activities. Cheer is over. State Speech is in two weeks, but it’s individual so she doesn’t have to meet with anyone to practice. Soccer is in 3 weeks. It’s pretty nice to have this lull, especially considering her Jeep went to the body shop last night and I’m her driver again. She can take our old pickup if needed though.
We looked at more places last night. She loved a postcard from Colorado Christian but too pricey! She’d like to visit University of Central Arkansas. Maybe we can sneak down for a weekend using Southwest points to Little Rock, but it might have to be summer and the professors/students won’t be there. And probably a good idea to wait till summer anyway to see if she’s even still interested by then. I’m still deciding how comfortable I am with her being 9 hours drive away.
@liska21 You may want to check out Hobart. They give merit and it has some similarities to St Lawrence. You mention that Colgate may be too techy. I don’t get the sense that it has that reputation.
I’m jealous of these college lists! I feel like my kiddo’s search has pretty much flatlined before it even got of the ground.
Speaking of complaining about kids on here. . . .
My son has confessed that he really doesn’t have any academic interests and feels stressed that he is expected to have one - I think he feels that he’ll end up with a major that he hates. In the process of eliminating possible majors, he has eliminated pretty much everything! I feel like most undecided kids have several interests and can’t pick just one, but that’s not the issue here. We have testing done, a budget, a general geographic location in mind, and a student who doesn’t want to study anything!
I guess a music major would make sense for someone who loves music and has no interest in any academic subject, but I have no idea if he’ll be good enough for a respectable program since he wasn’t serious about playing early enough in his childhood. Very thankful to have this place to vent.
@eh1234 A few pages back I mentioned that S19 told us that he’s not interested in the hard sciences as a major. Last night, he had to pick a class to sit in on for our next college visit. He said, and I kid you not, “how about a chemistry class?” I’m done.
Wherever he goes to school has to have decent programs in almost everything. I know he’s still eliminated comp sci, business, and engineering. I do see those as completely off the table.
I worry that my S is attracted to ‘prestige’ and is keeping mum because he fears I’ll say something snarky about his ‘name-brand’ list. At least he is happy enough to visit my list of safeties and matches.
I can tell you guys that the top 50 or so kids at our school have exactly the same list
Northwestern
Chicago
Wash U
Duke
Vanderbilt
Michigan or UVA
NYU
Some Ivy
UIUC or Wisconsin as a safety
MIT or Stanford for a handful
There is little to no swaying from that list. Makes the counselors insane when there are thousands of schools. Since S19 is looking at liberal arts schools, he is their absolute favorite in the counseling office if only because his list is not the norm. They are bored to tears with kids all vying for acceptance to the same schools.
Yep. I’m pretty sure S19’s list looks exactly like that with UW swapped for UVA and WWA or MSU as his ‘never would I ever attend’ safety.
Top kids at our school:
BC
Harvard
Tufts
Northeastern
BU
UMich
Brown
Dartmouth
Maybe some place in CA like Berkeley or Stanford that want to head west
Maybe Duke,UVA or Johns Hopkins for kids that want warm weather
Most of them end up around here, BC, Northeastern and BU probably each get 10-12 kids from our school and a few of the smarty pants kids get Tufts, Dartmouth, Cornell.
I have a friend whose daughter applied to pretty much the above list without Michigan or UVA or Wisconsin and just used UIUC as her safety. Was waitlisted at Princeton, accepted at UIUC, and turned down everywhere else. She was seriously depressed. Parents couldn’t believe it. Princeton came through for her in June. She had a perfect GPA and a 36. Something like 12 APs, super impressive ECs and she’s a minority. She still almost ended up at her safety.
You can’t have safeties that you don’t like!
This year, I’m hearing it’s a blood bath with the Michigan EAs being deferments and almost all EDs were a big fat no. I can’t wait to hear what happens in March.
So @RightCoaster what is your impression of Dartmouth? Do kids really drink there as much as I hear? More than other places? do you have any opinion on the kinds of kids who go there?
At our school everyone now gets deferred EA, I don’t even see the point in applying that way anymore to the top schools. Like literally every kid who applied to schools with sub 30% acceptance rate schools were deferred EA. Only EA acceptances came from safety type schools. Unless you have the super hook URM/first gen/etc with good grades and stats you are not getting in EA from our school. So there might be 1 or 2 of those kids at our whole school. The rest of the kids are white kids from the burbs, asian kids , and some Indian kids.
I’m not really looking forward to waiting on EA decisions next year.
@RightCoaster well your S may have options through track earlier so that would be nice! We will be biting our nails in March and traveling around like crazy in April.
@liska21, I was thinking that Dartmouth fit your kid’s requirements perfectly though of course it’s a reach for everyone. I do think that ED adds a tip, though it will give you less financial flexibility.
@homerdog, I know a student very well (her mom is a friend of mine and student was a close friend of S13) who graduated from Dartmouth last year. She loved it. S13 visited her several times and was impressed. Yes, there is drinking, but there is drinking everywhere and it didn’t seem that there was more at Dartmouth. There did seem to be more outdoorsy kind of stuff than at S13’s college.
Our public high school had REA/ED admits this year to Brown, Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, and some other places. At least some of them were unhooked. It is hard to know exactly what will happen. I hope our CC community has terrific results.
I’ve been to Dartmouth several times.I liked it. Seems like a nice place, but it’s kind of in the middle of nowhere aside from the cute town. It’s very New England there. The kids drink everywhere, not just Dartmouth. But I think they have an active frat. scene there. I’m sure they party, there’s not a lot of night life, so they make their own. I’m fine with that, you are a kid once, and if you can handle parting and studying and all that kudos to you. But I’m sure there are plenty of other kids who don’t fall into that scene and get involved with other stuff. I know a kid who is very studious and not a jock frat guy type who got in for 2016. He seems to like it. He was a boy scout and they have an active outdoors club there so he loves it. He didn’t want city life.
I don’t know if there is a type of kid there. I’d like to say typical suburban sort of preppy kid who did well in high school, all types. I’m not sure how diverse it is there, I’d say less diverse than Brown or BU as an example, but that may be because of where its located. I don’t think there are that many young urban/semi urban living kids that are dying to go to study in the woods of NH.
My son19 would not be a good fit there. I think he would be bored with the frat guys, wouldn’t find a crew of sport nerds and would want more action. My son would also get bored and then probably want to start partying a lot to blow off steam and get wild. That’s just how he is. My son isn’t really an Ivy kind of kid, unless it was Brown. There are more diverse kids and there is a city. More action.
The town around campus is really cute and it has everything you need within walking distance. The school offers a lot of trips to get away and go explore.
I. took a tour when son19 was playing soccer there and determined that even if he could get in, he would not apply. He also said his dorm sucked and was bummed out about that, and he was not really impressed with his visit.
But I thought it was a nice place, just not the right place for us.
From what you’ve said about your son I don’t think that’s a great fit for him either. I think he’d like Tufts better. I could also see him liking a place like BU or Northeastern, there would be so much for him to explore and there are plenty of smart kids. I know they aren’t LACs but they offer a lot to kids like your son. I understand they aren’t cheap though.
Thanks @EastGrad and @RightCoaster One of my best friend’s husband interviews for Dartmouth. I have yet to talk to them about it for S19. I’ll be curious what they think as well. S19 does not want urban. Likes the woods and outdoor life. Not the kind of kid to go camping necessarily but likes to run and hike and canoe etc. We kid him because the first words he put together in a sentence were “outside now”. I honesty don’t know if he should bother with applying to an Ivy. I don’t know if he would like them. Everyone around here keeps telling me that Brown should be his reach but I don’t really know what they are basing that on.
He didn’t mind that Kenyon, Grinnell, and Carleton were bubbles without a city. As long as there’s a little town with a few things to do and the college brings fun stuff to campus, that would work for him. It’s really hard to be outside the east coast and to get a feel for these schools. I can figure out the differences in the Ivies but the NESCACs all seem the same to me. If I had to choose one of those for him, my gut says Bowdoin.
As for “not being cheap”, that makes me laugh. My husband was looking at the Williams look book and showed me the page where they state the average cost per year after financial aid. It was $16,000. He just can’t believe so many people would be paying so little and we would be paying $70,000. I don’t know what that says about Williams exactly. I guess it means they have a large percentage of Pell Grant kids and really good aid for others. But how could the average be 1/4 of the sticker price? That number seems low. Maybe it does no include loans that students and parents take out. Don’t know.
The lists of the top kids at my D17/D19’s high school look pretty much like:
[ul][]U of Alaska Fairbanks
[]U of Alaska Anchorage
[]Western Washington
[]Oregon or Oregon State
[]U of Washington, maybe
[]Reed and/or Pacific Lutheran and/or Linfield and/or Lewis & Clark, if they’re the rare LAC type[/ul]
And that’s pretty much it, except for the ultra-religious, who target (depending on the religion) something like BYU or Corban or Baylor or whatever. Seriously, prestige isn’t a driving force among them, and I’m incredibly happy about that.
@EastGrad Yes Dartmouth is one we will visit on our East Coast tour. I know a number of Dartmouth grads who are a lot like him (ski racers and environmental ed types). My S would not mind the isolation. He’d probably live (practically) in that Dartmouth Outing Club building and spend all his free time training with the ski team or crew team. And then in summers he’d work at one of the Dartmouth lodges and never have to go near a city. His idea of a fun vacation is working on a trail crew and living in the dirt (which he does whenever he has a week free from training in summer).
We’ll visit during our East Coast tour, but it’s a not easy to get into and H and I would have to sit down and talk finances. However the odds are that S will attend a match/safety school so I need make sure he applies to some good options that he’d like.
P.S. A friend of my S’s got a simple list from his parents: UW, WWA (safety), or UVic (safety). ‘They are all good schools. Apply to all and then you choose’.
Hello everyone! I am going to stop lurking and be another newcomer to this thread.
My DS19 plans to audition for musical theatre programs next year but is also going to apply to several LAC. We have the MT programs narrowed down but the rest is still a complete mystery. He took the SAT in November and is still deciding whether he wants to take it again in May to increase his merit chances. No one really takes the ACT around here so it’s been interesting to read what you’ve posted about that in the last few weeks.
@mindatwork welcome! My D19 will also be auditioning for musical theatre programs next year. Prepping now for the craziness.