I’m a planner by nature and love to know everything in advance but I’m in the mindset of NiceParticularMan - fine with any option.
Maybe it’s because we have a shorter list to start with but I’m happy with 4/5 of the options and my kid would thrive at any. They are all 2-5 hours drive so I don’t need to plan or worry too much about distance. One would be highly dependent on costs, but kiddo isn’t sold on that one so if it doesn’t work that’s fine too.
If kiddo gets into the top choice I don’t think the others will even be considered so I’m not worrying about it too much until those decisions are out.
I’m a type A planner type too who managed multinational marketing launches in my earlier years. I like order, deadlines, and to do lists…. I even plan our vacations 18 months in advance. The combination of Covid plus this whole college process has been a real challenge!
I would just let him continue to process it. As an adult, we would all just be deciding as our acceptances came in and always have a number one. My son would never rank his schools or give me any indication as to which way he was leaning, because he just didn’t know. In the end, he participated in online events as his acceptances came in and he was a lot more informed about how each school felt. He ended up getting into all but one of his schools, but that last school was April 1. As I was planning visits for him over spring break, he kept dropping schools off his list and I had to reroute everything. In the end, he was really only interested in visiting two schools, that was the tough choice, but he would have done well at both schools.
First we need some acceptances, then he can worry about where he’ll go. Almost all his schools (he was rejected from ED) won’t be out until March so we’re in the long wait. He has 3 top schools and if he got into one of those he’d be ecstatic and that would be it. Otherwise, the schools are tightly bunched in terms of preference.
All the best! It’s an interesting but stressful process. I use the word “interesting” because I learnt a LOT from this process with D23… Now I’ll approach this with a little more confidence when it’s time for our S25. Fun!
Same here! I almost felt like the odd one out, all this talk of deciding where to go and all I can think is well let’s first get acceptances to decide between!
I love the very organized ranking/rating by importance way. But I also think there is something to be said for doing a gut-check ranking of overall vibe and instinct. For that, I love using a ranking engine. It pits each school against every other school in your list and makes you pick one over the other. Then it creates a final ranking. This might be a way to at least cut a few of those that fall at the bottom of the list. You can each do one, and he can do it a few times between now and May to see if things change.
I don’t miss the uncertainty and got off easy with my current senior. However, I would say that for the kids, the uncertainty of what is to come is part of the adventure of life.
One of my older kids struggled between a school that had previously been one of his top choices, but for which he had lost some enthusiasm, admitted RD following EA deferral, and that extra safety that was thrown on the list last minute. He chose the safety without having visited, at 11:45 pm on May 1 lol. I remember being unhappy about staying up late to pay the deposit and thinking none of it made sense. He was deciding based on vibe and to keep options open for major. He didn’t really need the major (comp eng though now he wishes he had done CS) but overall it has worked out so far.
We made a chart when deciding where to apply, but it might work here too. Along the left were all the colleges and along the top were the qualities that were being considered. We made a grid. We colored the boxes using a scale - dark green was very good for that quality, light green was decent, yellow was okay, pink was kind of not good, and red was non-existent. We did it in Excel so we could rearrange and move things around based on which she determined were more important.
At one point, we changed to numbers so we could sort easier, but the colors made it easier to eliminate certain colleges based on too much pink/red or not enough green in the top categories, etc.
All this talk of charts and color coding would make my D24 happy! She has kept a spreadsheet of every school she’s applied to (red for rejected, green for accepted) with all the vital info on it like scholarship offer, majors, passwords, honors colleges. It’s pretty funny to see her get into a college and say, “Hold on, I gotta update the spread sheet”
Watching so many people (including my D24) get deferred from Northeastern makes me think that they could probably fill 50 LAC campuses with the number of people deferred. Weird times!
It’s going to be a while before any decision is made in our household. C24 is still waiting for decisions from many colleges. We are gently starting conversations on the decision-making process. However, C24 has potential plans to pursue grad school (plan may likely change too) and this complicates the decision-making a bit.
For those of you whose kids are thinking of grad school, how are you taking this factor into consideration when making a decision about undergrad school, while recognizing that the kids could change their minds?
We were shocked. No merit so it doesn’t seem like it will be affordable. She was super excited (how did she get in???), then crushed when she realized the $$$.
It would have been easier to be rejected. This is feeling like we are letting her down by being unable/unwilling to pay >80K per year for undergrad, when grad school will also be necessary.
Our mantra on grad school is if you want to have your best shot at a good grad program, you have to do very well. And usually, happy people do better. So the first priority is to find a place you think you will be happy.
After that, I think there is a complicated game involving getting to know professors in your department who can then successfully recommend their top students for grad programs. This often leads to SLACs potentially being a good choice for a variety of fields. But research universities with good departments will have those opportunities too, you just need to know you will have to make it happen for you.
Last, but not at all least, you might be surprised by what you most enjoy and do best at in college. Like, maybe very surprised. So, I do think there is something to be said for colleges which have a pretty high standard for their departments across the board, since that one department you thought you would be in might not actually be where you end up.
All of which is . . . not very restrictive, actually. But I think it is helpful to know that one way or another, you need to be aiming to be one of the top students in some department, whatever that means in practice.
Super important to make connections with your professors. As D20 investigated grad school options, it helped immensely that she had several professors willing to use their rolodexes (I’m dating myself) to help her build connections as she tried to figure out which programs, fellowships, etc would be best for her to pursue.
Also, making several connections helps with those oh so important Letters of Recommendation. While 1-2 professors will be the ‘spine’ in your LoRs, having a larger group to be able to tap for those letters is crucial. Some of the applications required 2-5 LoRs.
She has kept a spreadsheet of every school she’s applied to (red for rejected, green for accepted) with all the vital info on it like scholarship offer, majors, passwords, honors colleges. It’s pretty funny to see her get into a college and say, “Hold on, I gotta update the spread sheet” 