Welcome @monkey99
Your son has some great choices! Good luck with your visit to RISD. It is in a very nice area of Providence, with plenty to do within walking distance. I love the east side of Providence, even considered moving there a few years ago. I imagine rents are pretty high, though, if he lives off campus at any point. (Don’t know the housing options at RISD.) Providence also has a nice airport. I often prefer to fly in & out of Providence vs. Boston. Just easier. Doing that tomorrow, actually, to go visit Clemson.
I think there’s another Parson’s parent in this thread, too. @Vineyarder ?
Same thing happening in MD with College Park. The North Carolinians are so fortunate to have huge in-state preference at Chapel Hill! For sure not the way it works in VA and MD.
@monkey99, great options there. Glad your son took the time to figure out the path he wants. @momzilla2D, good memory! My D19 is indeed going to Parsons, her first and ultimately only choice. Got in EA and decided not to apply anywhere else. I totally understand that it’s prohibitively expensive for many. She got great merit, but it’s still steep. @monkey99, good luck with the RISD visit, and if there’s any chance Parsons remains in the mix, let me know!
Back from Austin, very short trip but doable and very reasonable direct plane tickets from our area - big advantage! Great city, great school and Honors double major in Business and CS is a very attractive program. OOS tuition hurts but that would be the same everywhere except for UMD. UT Austin is such a great school! My son’s conclusion was “it would have been no brainier if I could be in-state”. I am glad he is more positive now, although still very upset. And he is not talking about NOT going to college any more. Admitted students visits definitely help!
Didn’t do any planning for other visits in advance (since he really hoped for the IVY/UCB where he would have accepted without visits) and now seems UCLA is out of reach for a visit in April, too far and expensive. So we will probably just drive to GT. I personally really like that option and read all the great advice about in-state tuition when study abroad, and other OOS-mitigation methods. My son is a very responsible one in that sense (already has 4 paid summer CS internship offers) so in GT I see how it can work. But will let him decide.
He also wants to write to one of his waitlist IVYs, and apparently UMD is not totally out of the question so we are all over the map.
We finally have a decision here - S19 will be a Wolverine at U. Michigan for chemical engineering! I haven’t been a frequent commenter on this thread, but I have enjoyed hearing about all of the journeys and wonderful acceptances for this talented group of kids. For my S19, the process involved applying to a variety of tech schools (WPI, RIT), out-of-state private (Northeastern, only deferral), in-state (MSU, UM), and out-of-state/generous to NMF (ASU, UA). In the end, he was torn between the awesome RRSP program at UA and Michigan. But when he dug into the curricula (and visited Campus Day), he found many more classes in his area of interest at Michigan. We are all excited with his decision, so now on to figuring out the rest of senior year and the big move! Best wishes to all those still waiting to hear and still deciding - it feels pretty great to be on this side of it!
I’ve been reflecting on this process and what made it work for us. I’ve done it twice now and I would have said we were lucky to have great safety schools and acceptances prior to Christmas for both kids. Thats true and it was a huge stress relief. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that we got so lucky because both kids had very specific career goals. Its much easier to ignore things like “prestige” when you can tell your daughter --" look how many people are working in your industry from SafetyU! Look at the facilities and equipment!" Or, “Look how many kids SafetyU sends to medical school! Its right near a hospital and offers amazing clinical and research opportunities!”
When you have a specific goal, you can target your search. I honestly don’t know how this would have worked with a truly undecided kid. I assume we would have looked more closely at things like size, geography and “fit” but it definitively would have been more difficult. We’ll see what happens with D3 in 10 years!
@gallentjill - I couldn’t agree more! My son was and basically remains undecided about what he wants to do. Luckily, I think we may have happened upon a school where he can be exposed to all the areas he might be interested in, and will have opportunities in all directions. But it has been a very stressful year. Next kid, despite the fact that I think she could be the next Tina Fey or Kate McKinnon, wants to be a veterinarian. So, we will have a much more defined path for her. Thank goodness, because I would not be able to do this again with another high-stats, liberal arts kid. It has just been brutal.
@ThinkOn - For others with undecided kids, I would stress starting early. Very, very early. Get a sense of what size school the kid is looking for, what geographic area, vibe, size of classes, academic offerings, etc. Further, budget is incredibly important. Figure out a budget and stick to it.
I’d say we’re in the sticky mess we are in largely because we were sort of working without a budget, and my ex husband, whose finances make us full pay at most schools that consider the CSS profile, kept moving the ball on the kid. But I won’t get into all that - just have a budget in mind, and tour schools that potentially work within that budget.
If you start early, perhaps you can pinpoint an ED school, which is where you usually have the highest chance of admission.
Unless you have some kind of hook or are valedictorian of a competitive high school, forget the ivies. Just don’t waste your time.
@ThinkOn, I had a mostly undecided DS19. I think there is a flip side to @gallentjill’s strategy…with an undecided student, the search would be less about rankings and statistics for a specific major/career plan, and more about fit for the type of student. Not that one way is better or worse, just two different ways of looking at it, both of which should lead to the student being at a school that they will thrive in. So, like @Trixy34 says, we looked at things like size, location, budget of course, culture, class size, etc, considering LAC, stuff like that.
My son did start to think about majors in the fall of junior year, and had a couple of broad interests (poli sci, psychology) by the spring. Since both of these are offered everywhere, they honestly didn’t REALLY affect our search. Yes, we looked at some DC schools for Poli Sci. And the top 10s for Psych are the top 10s in general (ivies), so that didn’t matter. And since DS thinks he likes Psych, but isn’t sure…it could definitely change, so again (I think I read once that 40% of college students change their major) we didn’t really concentrate on program strength higher than fit (for example, we found Clark, a small school with great psych reputation, but it wasn’t a good fit for my son culture wise).
Again not that this way is better than another way, but it is a way to approach the search for an undecided student without feeling like you are “behind.”
Thanks guys! Keep those reflections coming. When helping the twins put their list together last year, I found the reflections posted in previous class threads to be incredibly helpful.
@Trixy34 “Unless you have some kind of hook or are valedictorian of a competitive high school, forget the ivies. Just don’t waste your time.”
I understand and am sympathetic to your personal disappointment based on your son’s outcomes, but it shouldn’t serve as a universal lesson to be followed by all. Many kids do and have gotten into Ivies (typically about a 3rd of the class) that don’t fall into the narrow criteria you describe above. It is a matter of being academically qualified and then standing out amongst a crowded and talented pool. If kids believe they can check both of these competitive boxes and aspire to Ivies (or any elite school) they should seek GC and parental agreement and then take their best shot (frequently ED). To do other wise is to fail or concede without even trying.
In retrospect you call it a waste of time, but right after your own son was deferred from Brown you expressed disappointment that it was to late for him to get test scores sent so he could apply to Dartmouth and Cornell. I assume this is because you wanted your son to have every opportunity possible to fulfill his dream, and not surrender!
I don’t think it fair to the casual reader that you suggest other kids give up on their dreams before even trying.
I think there is a middle ground. D applied to some programs with low single digit admit rates (not Ivys but similar admission statistics). Although she had the stats, we assumed that she had almost no chance of admittance and proceeded as if she was going to be rejected. I almost told her not to bother trying. But we settled on a path where we focused the search on schools that she had a great shot at not only being accepted but getting the merit aid we wanted. Then, she put the time and effort into what I considered lottery tickets.
I think its fine to reach for a dream if the rest of the search is grounded and reasonable and hopes are kept realistic.
@gallentjill we did basically the same. We felt all in to our in state public, admitted EA. So much so that at first when our unhooked d19 got into that lottery school ED, it was unexpectedly hard to be sure it was the best choice.
We aren’t positive what it was that might have pushed her over the top, but my d23 is already aware that it’s not something she can expect either and she needs to build up her likelies before getting to hung up on a reach.
@Nocreativity1 - I don’t think it’s fair to string kids along with the false hope of admission to schools where they have a very slim chance of acceptance. It’s expensive, time consuming, and exhausting.
I don’t have a clear recollection of that particular expression of disappointment that it was too late to get test scores in to Cornell and Dartmouth, but I’ll take your word for it, as it was a highly stressful time. If I expressed that feeling, it was probably because my kid is somewhat of a legacy at Cornell (great grandmother was a grad and great grandfather was a graduate and high profile political figure within the state, and we also have a family member who is on an advising board). We also have connections to Dartmouth. Further, my son’s stats were a bit more in line with those schools than with Brown. Ultimately, he really didn’t want to go to those schools, but at that point, I was trying to keep options open for him because he really was going about the process haphazardly. In retrospect, it would have been too exhausting for him to also apply to those schools, probably with very slim chances of admission in the RD round. I think he made a wise choice not applying.
I am offering advice in retrospect after having gone through the process and seeing our results as well as the results of other families. Am I not allowed to have learned anything here? We live in a very competitive public school district in the mid-atlantic. Only 3 kids out of the 300+ in my son’s class were accepted to ivies this year. NONE of the students at the top of the class were admitted ED to an ivy. There were only deferrals and rejections. The only person admitted ED to an ivy was a recruited athlete. Two additional students were admitted RD. The valedictorian was admitted to Penn (our school historically has a better than average acceptance rate at Penn - but apparently not this year), and the other student was a URM who applied to Harvard as a joke and was admitted with almost a full ride.
I think if @homerdog were here, she might express similar results for her highly accomplished son.
I’m just trying to inject a little reality into the equation. Senior year is a crazy time, and the remaining time with our kids is precious. I just want to encourage families not to spend it chasing illusions.
I am not suggesting students get their hearts set on a reach, or apply to schools they aren’t qualified for. Instead I am suggesting they take a methodical approach with parental and GC supppet to ensure they aren’t wasting their ED or EA options. If in fact they have the grades, stats and ECs to be legitimate contenders then I would recommend going for it.
The only thing worse then disappointment in my opinion would be forever wondering what could have been if you had only tried.
Kids are remarkably resilient and they know how stacked the odds are against them at elites. None the less for those students that have worked tirelessly and achieved so much they want to take their best shot. In my experience its great parents (Trixy34) who want to spare their kids and others the pain of rejection based on compassion. Unfortunately they can’t reach their goals, thrive, and experience the world without risk, and with risk comes disappointment and adulthood.
Trixy34 your story is hardly unique and you are absolutely entitled to it. I entirely respect your experience. You sound like a great mom. If however my family had listened to your suggestion my son wouldn’t have achieved his college goals. Point being applying to schools isn’t one size fits all. Your one school district is hardly representative of every reader.
Further, I’m not suggesting kids give up on their dreams before even trying. I’m just saying there are many ways to skin a cat. If a kid has a “dream” of getting into a particular school, well, that’s an issue for another day.