There is hope to turn Ohio blue and safe again. I’ll keep positive thoughts for the future of Ohio. My biggest heartbreak is for the students who live in anti-trans states and don’t have an option to leave, they need to go to their state schools. Luckily, many schools try to fill in the gaps and do the best they can under the restrictive state laws. I feel like if all of the colleges got together and lobbied the state legislatures, and all the out-of-state students refused to go to the states with the restrictive laws, that could make a difference.
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That’s good to hear. I agree, and even allies don’t have a the same personal safety issues but they care about the civil rights of other people. Empathy is key, and it is hard to go to a place where you know their state government is lacking in it completely.
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It is such a tough situation! I agree with you completely that allies are needed everywhere.
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We had similar conversations past few months with our S24. We also talked about upcoming election - our state made a bit harder to do absentee voting.
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Is “portal astrology” a relatively new thing? It seems like every college thread has kids trying to crack the code of their college portal info in the hopes of learning their fate a day or two early. It kind of makes me grateful for the old days when we’d just check the mailbox once a day for a couple weeks.
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I remember some of it from when my older kid was applying, but it seems to have ramped up.
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Such a good reminder for all of us/our kids to proactively make a plan to vote once they’re all on their college campuses.
Some may want to register in the state where they’ll attend school (if permitted by that state); others will want to plan ahead to vote absentee (again, if permitted by their states); others might even plan to come home to vote in person on election day.
This is such an important election year. We will be planning ahead beginning this summer – for both of my kids who will be in college then.
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Once a day? I can’t remember, but I imagine I was in a lawn chair beside the mailbox.
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It seems like UCB threads are going crazy with it at the moment.
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Not just kids! There are definitely some parents mixing it up in there….
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I’ve been noticing it a lot this past week for some of C24’s schools. I’m trying to stay far, far away – that way lies madness (for me. I’m not trying to yuck someone else’s yum). I totally get wanting to know asap, but the idea of seeing disappointing indicators (maybe) but also not actually knowing what the mean just seems to be setting oneself up for repeated pain. I prefer my disappointment in one concentrated hit.
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D24 filled out her housing contract! She surprised us by picking the all-female dorm. Apparently she picked that one because the rooms are bigger than the 2 coed dorms. From what we can tell from videos and pictures, the room is bigger than her & D26’s shared bedroom here at home. She formally notified U of A today that she won’t need housing on campus this fall. Hopefully, that will end their twice a week emails to all of us about housing.
Fingers crossed for anybody who’s still awaiting decisions from schools!
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It’s not just you. Extending this to older candidates. My cousin refused to apply to any location that was restrictive on reproductive rights and LGBTQ treatments for her fellowship. This is a Harvard MD, too. She just said it is not worth it and there is a couple of schools in Texas she would’ve been open to.
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Found out last night that both Colby and Amherst will pay for S24 to come visit (the information was already there in his portal, but he hadn’t noticed it…I hope he’s not missing offers like that from other schools!) I don’t think the Colby dates will work, but the Amherst dates are when I was already thinking of visiting (and fretting over how expensive it was going to be, so this was a very nice surprise!) I had been planning to go with him, but, of course, they won’t pay for me, so I’m thinking I’ll let him go on his own now that they’ll handle getting him from the airport to campus and all that. I really wanted to see the Emily Dickinson museum, though. Oh well. I can see it in the fall if he ends up picking Amherst!
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I’ll have to go take a peak because we do have admission skin in the game for Cal. I can tell you that for the Class of 2021 and the year before that, the portal astrology was right on.
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Exactly. My S24 will attend Macalester in MN and we live in NC. He thinks his vote in NC will be more significant than MN. So proud of him thinking about all this - as a pro-democracy person, it’s great.
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My D19 attended College of Wooster in Ohio and while the college is a bubble, some of the people in town were quite hostile towards the students. Very red country.
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Awesome! D24 had a couple similar offers (I didn’t know colleges did this) and can only do one (Swat). I’m a little worried that it will give Swat an unfair advantage in the decision-making process, which is likely the reason colleges do it! Then again, Swat seems like such a distinct flavor of school that doing an overnight makes sense before committing to it sight unseen.
Incidentally, we briefly visited Emily Dickinson’s gravestone while passing through Amherst (after a Smith visit) this summer. Pretty cool.
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I have been thinking about this issue with D24 as well. She has a few acceptances to consider now and she is still waiting on news from the last place. One of the colleges is treating us both out to our visit (including a hotel stay). However, the she’d really like to attend the admitted students event at another college. However, getting her to college#2 and finding accommodations feels cost-prohibitive. The irony is that the second school is significantly closer to her boarding school geographically, but it is in a rural location where there is no direct route via bus or train. Anyway, I want her to give college#2 a fair shot, but I am worried that if we can’t make the admitted student day work, she’ll be less likely to consider it seriously. It is just easier to go to the place that has made visiting easier.
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It’s funny…we visited Swarthmore and Haverford last summer (too bad we picked those two, in retrospect, instead of, say, Colby and Amherst!) and both my husband and son had strong reactions to Swat in opposite directions. My husband was like, “I love this place!” and my son was in the “Nah–not feeling it” camp. Neither could really put a finger on why, but maybe it’s the kind of place that provokes strong feelings and does indeed need to be seen.
re: unfair advantages…I thought about this with my oldest son, but it didn’t really seem to be a factor. He visited Hamilton in April with my FIL (he’d been summer before senior year and LOVED it, but it was summer with no students around so the gorgeous campus got to take center stage). He had so many cool things lined up–class visits, meetings with math professors, a performance of West Side Story, a side trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame, going out to the campus pub for a get together with math students and professors–I was sure he was going to come back sold on it. He had a great time, but he while he was there he texted, “everyone here is from Massachusetts, and they all play a sport.” And then he came home saying that all the math majors were planning to go into finance…and Hamilton was off the table. So…even when a school puts its best foot forward, I think kids can usually tell when it just doesn’t feel right (or when it does).
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