Today is senior ditch day so I was the one to drop off D26 at school early this morning instead of D26 getting a ride with D24. Senior counselor was there at the student drop off area so we chatted through my open car window for a couple of minutes. She had some interesting things to say:
a lot of the public universities have now shifted to a big movement of doing a LOT of hybrid and totally online instruction, where there’s hardly any (or very limited) in person interaction with the professors
Senior counselor said, “It’s HORRIBLE and it’s a HUGE problem.”
Senior counselor also said that her dad recently retired as a professor at a public university in Utah because of this and her dad said, “I hate it. This is not why I became a professor. I don’t want to teach all of my students online.”
Senior counselor is THRILLED that we’re doing visits over the next 3 months to the 3 LACs that D24 got accepted to. She thinks that any of the LACs would be MUCH better options for D24 than attending U of A (Arizona). She said, “D24 is going to get lost in huge classes.” I told her that D24 appears to be in agreement with that.
Senior counselor also said she was glad to see & hear that D24 has shifted away from where she was last fall, which was “I only want to go to U of A because I’ll know people from high school there.”
6 seniors are descending upon our house this afternoon so D24 can direct & record them performing a scene from The Winter’s Tale for her Humanities Capstone class (which is all about Shakespeare). D24 said that 1 of the seniors is a “walking stomach,” so we had to stock up on extra snacks for him.
And tomorrow evening is the winter formal dance at school!
Not in our case from an extremely competitive school and county. My junior has very high test scores, but low GPA as it is hard to get an A at school. She won’t get in flagship due to that and school skewing disproportionately high even though she is more than capable of the work. In terms of the ‘game’ I now see we chose horribly wrong, but it is frustrating as I know she has grown substantially as a student by being in the rigorous environment. It’s all so broken.
What I have found from the searches for both my kids is that the more objective the categories are for fit, the easier it is to find a safety.
So if I want to major in x and (1) take pdq classes (2) but not rst classes, (3) study abroad, (4) graduate in 4 years, (5) be on the [sport] team at the NCAA/club/intrumural level, (6) participate in the [specific club], (6) live on campus x years, (7) within y miles of a city/home … we can search for those and find options. And a kid can weigh the plusses and minuses of any one objective measure. I’m willing to go further from home if I can be on the sports team, for example.
When the fit is subjective–will I find my people at this school? Will I be challenged enough in my classes? It is hard to see the answers during the admissions process. And to know if you have chosen correctly once you are there. So we worked to find a way to make the subjective more objective … do the students have time for clubs, and if so what clubs on campus do the activities your child does now with their friends in high school, or does your student dream of finding others to share in the activity. (Anime, knitting, a capella, pokemon go, etc.) What activities and organizations does your child feel so comfortable with that they will be able to join and find community immediately (religion, sports, music, etc.)? Because a sense of belonging and community on campus will have a direct impact on the student’s success.
With objective measures, any time you are feeling stress about choices, you can go back to basics – what were your requirements when you started … is this school meeting those requirements? My D22 fell in love with the campus and culture at one school, but when she found out about the class sizes in her major was able to say, “oh that’s not for me,” because class size was on her list of objective measures. (Note that not everyone cares about class sizes–but that’s the point. It was her objective list.)
Complete agree (and yes, it is what I like to call a feederish private HS).
As I suggested before, I think places like CC can be a viable free substitute, but then you need buy-in from the family and kid. The same need for buy-in applies to school-based counseling, but I think that can be an easier sell sometimes coming from a school with a demonstrable track record of college placement success. With a place like this, you need to find a different way to end up trusting the guidance. And frankly, it was easier for me because at least a lot of the guidance here was consistent with the guidance from our HS–so really, it never stops being an advantage.
This is disturbing and the first I’ve heard of this. Do you know which schools or states (other than Utah) she was referring to? CC parents – anyone else know?
It’s definitely becoming more common. I believe Niche has a stat on their school profile pages that shows the percentage of online classes vs in-person.
A lot of the schools will allow you to search their courses and you can see if they are online or not. I know that when I looked at the University of Delaware I was shocked by how many of the classes were online. At the University of Virginia, I was shocked by the class sizes - even in the later years.
Or just even awareness that these resources exist! You can kind of tell that the kids who take advantage of the CC resources are super resourceful to begin with. But you have to KNOW that these resources are out there. We live in the Northeast in a suburb that has a highly ranked public hs, and I cannot tell you how many “hacks” I learned from super generous friends who went through the process before me. And I’m a professor at a SLAC!
In my case, I am not saying it because I simply disagree.
To me, stellar students actually have so, so many cool options for targets and likelies. All sorts of interesting departments and programs, different formats of schools, different settings, and on and on. Numbers = merit at many schools, so even if cost is a concern, you can usually find all sorts of possibilities that could work.
But to repeat a sentiment I expressed before, there is one critical thing you need to be willing to do to unlock this cornucopia of fantastic options for a high numbers kid: you have to be willing to look outside the small box of popular colleges in popular markets with low acceptance rates.
And I get some kids, and families, just can’t imagine that. They can’t imagine being excited to go to college in, say, Ohio. They can’t imagine being excited to go to a college with an 80% acceptance rate that their school friends have never heard of before. Or so on. They think their high numbers should be able to get them into one of the colleges in a popular coastal market that all their friends have heard about.
So yes, you cannot check ALL the boxes, if one of those boxes is “Famous College in Super Popular Market.” Checking that box these days logically means you cannot treat it as a likely, and possibly not a target either.
But if you simply uncheck that particular box, then many, many targets and likelies including with merit will open up to high numbers kids.
I think it depends. A lot of California kids are convinced they have it terrible because it is so hard to get into Cal or UCLA. Of course California has addressed this by having many more very good public universities.
But again, you have to get out of the mindset that only the most popular colleges are worth being considered even as targets or likelies. That’s just a math equation at root (popular = more applications = lower admit rate), but some people just don’t seem willing to consider anything outside that box as more than a huge disappointment.
In my personal experience it is not just a matter of want. With my 22 it was easier to find excellent outside the box alternatives, mostly involving a compromise in geography which everyone agreed was the easiest one to make. 24 we have struggled, not for the lack of trying (maybe a slightly more uncommon, but not unheard of, combination of factors… and yeah, I will be super bummed out if he has to compromise on all but one of his boxes - that is not his priority). 25 will be the easiest (I hope), not because she is any less of a student but because her priorities are different.
ETA - To make it clear, my bottom line is I HATE EVERY MINUTE OF THIS PROCESS AS IT STANDS NOW. Call it 3 kids in 4 (always shifting) years burn out! Thank you for listening
100%. This has been our experience so far, although at first, D24’s criteria was only “I want to go where my high school friends are going to college.” But then later on as we started going on some college tours, things started to get a little more defined.
When D24 started the application process, the criteria were:
a ‘likely’ or ‘sure thing’ acceptance
somewhere ‘not cold’
somewhere ‘not too far away’. Therefore, nowhere in the NE. Pacific NW was also deemed to be ‘too far away’ (plus got ruled out because of all the gray weather).
somewhere that had her major and, preferably, wouldn’t require a full year of Calculus
somewhere that had good merit scholarship options for somebody w/her GPA
a choir that she could join if she decided that she wanted to sing for fun while at college
a place that “has fun stuff to do around campus” and “isn’t boring.” What the heck does this mean? Turns out this means “not NMSU.”
a place that “isn’t too big.” We learned this means a big fat no to ASU.
a place that has her major (biology, which is available pretty much everywhere)
NOW the criteria has changed a bit:
needs to have good merit scholarships
a place that “isn’t too big.”
a place that “isn’t scary and too dark in the area around campus at night.” Therefore, “not Univ of New Mexico.”
a place that “isn’t boring.” So no UNM or NMSU.
a place where “people are friendly.”
a place that has a choir she can join
#2 on the criteria list → almost all classes need to be entirely in person instruction. Where the professor does the lectures in person. U of A is now a lot farther down the list now because of this.
a place that’s about an hour’s drive from an airport
a place where there’s a community right near or around campus. Shops & restaurants nearby that are easy to get to.
a place where there’s a pretty strong sense of community on campus.
a place where there’s a collaborative campus vibe instead of a culture of competition.
What I’ve been doing is going to the websites of the public U’s that D24 got accepted to and doing a search for “schedule of classes.” There’s usually a link or 2 that will come out in the search results and then you can search in that online schedule of classes to your heart’s content.
For example, your kid is going to major in X. Do a quick search on that major’s required classes for graduation. Make a list of those course numbers. Then go on the schedule of classes page and do a search of all of those classes in the current semester’s schedule of classes. It’ll then list how many ‘sections’ of the class are available, what days of the week the class is held, and whether it’s in person, all online, or hybrid.
I have not heard of this being the case at the public schools here in the Northeast, or at any of the public schools that are popular amongst kids here.
So it could be a regional thing. Utah is definitely not on the radar of most kids I know.
And then you throw in yield protection and high stat kids who applied to true safeties get rejected or WL. They do get in somewhere, but you have to wonder if a safety for a high stat kid becomes a I hope my stats are not “too high” for that school.
Here in CA, not counting the tippy top schools, I do know high stat kids who didn’t get accepted to CSUs. They typically don’t do yield protection but maybe assume the kid will be “fine” and that doesn’t seem right either. If they have the stats that you’re asking for, then why not admit.
ETA: and what if the safety was a school they genuinely wanted to attend. We assume these kids just want the brand name schools.
