S25’s list is mostly big SEC schools: UGA, Auburn, Ole Miss, Bama, and Georgia Southern (academic and financial safety in case things go completely off the rails.)
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No Coast Guard Academy?
FWIW, my sister and brother in law went to East Carolina and loved it. I’ve met a number of their college friends, all of whom also loved it. That was, of course a few decades ago, but it seems to be a place where students are supported (my sister had to take some time off for some mental health stuff) and people come out happy.
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No Clemson? I Know its not SEC but very similar to the others on his list. Albeit a little smaller than some of those.
He doesn’t like Clemson. Not sure why. I think because it’s more isolated/less of a college town. He’s applying to Bama even though he doesn’t like Tuscaloosa . My BFF’s son is starting at Clemson this fall. He wouldn’t even consider Auburn. Kids are weird.
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Auburn Alabama Athens Georgia, and Oxford Ms are not exactly in bustling metropolis’s. But I get it kids consider or reject school for all kinds of crazy reason. School mascot name, school colors etc…
Here is D25’s list. It will be interesting to see if she ends up applying to all of them:
The UCs
SDSU, SJSU
Maryland
Illinois
UDub (second choice)
UBC (first choice)
UConn
U of Toronto
Simon Fraser
Purdue
Colorado
Delaware
Oregon
She wants big schools, PNW preference, and is an 3.7 GPA/1380 SAT (at a hard school). White female, parents with college degrees, will apply as a Linguistics major. We don’t want to pay much more than $60k a year.
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I don’t think he needs, or wants, a booming metropolis. He just likes the idea of a cute college town which Athens and Oxford both are. Auburn is too, to a lesser extent. Athens and Auburn win for proximity to campus.
I’m a 4th generation Dawg, so the other schools are tough for me! Kidding! Sort of.
No. He wants to fly fixed wing jets. No guarantee with the others though.
I did my PhD at Simon Fraser many years ago. If you haven’t visited, it may be a shock. Burnaby Mountain is gorgeous, but the campus architecture is brutalist (designed by Arthur Erickson who designed prisons) and that combined with the dark and rain is hard for a lot of students.
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As far as lists go D25 first and second choice schools are reasonably likely academic admits but she needs significant merit/aid to be affordable. Unfortunately they’re all a reach since it’s audition based for music ed instrumental. Judging by who from her school was admitted to Rowan’s music program in the past couple years I think she has a very strong chance of acceptance to the point of calling it the closest audition based safety she has. She surprised me with liking UDelaware because it’s a larger school than what she had liked before so I’m fairly certain I’ll have her apply to Rutgers NB and Montclair. I don’t think she would like either as much as her first/second choice but if she was accepted they’d be affordable options. So here’s the list so far:
University of Puget Sound (1st choice)
Susquehanna (2nd choice)
Ithaca (haven’t visited yet)
Rowan
University of Delaware
Rutgers Mason Gross
Montclair
It’s a lot of coordination to audition especially since it’s during ensemble season. She’ll apply EA for sure to UPS, Susq and Rowan maybe UD depending on the audition date. I’m not sure what supplementals there are and she hasn’t started the essay yet but does have one of the audition pieces selected just needs to choose the second piece. She’s in Europe for another week and a half then will have to get moving on all of it before marching band gets going.
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FYI, ACT registration opens tomorrow (July 8) for upcoming tests. I know seats can be competitive to get in many areas.
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It’s so busy with marching band! Get as much done over the summer as you possibly can.
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We are visiting in a few weeks! Looking forward to it. I’m not sure D25 can be too picky with architecture when her desirable traits limit her in other ways. What did you like about the school? I know grad school is completely different than undergrad, but still.
A friend’s kid applied to University of Puget Sound and a state flagship university. The student wanted to attend UPS but it was more expensive than the state flagship.
They went to UPS and asked them if they could do anything to make UPS more affordable - closer in cost to the state flagship. UPS asked to see the financial offer from the state flagship and upon verifying the offer, increased their aid to that student. For this case, the state flagship was arguably “better” than UPS.
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I loved the people that I worked with and the collaborative environment. Undergrads had many opportunities to get involved in research and developed meaningful relationships with faculty. The Vancouver area is gorgeous and there are endless options for outdoor activities. Public transportation is excellent, lots of fun music and pubs and I miss the Canadian health care system.
I loved living there, but the winters can be a little rough. SFU sits just above the snow line on Burnaby mountain. That means that even though snow is really rare in Vancouver, it’s more common on the mountain and can close roads and shut down bus lines ( I missed the last call for shuttle of the mountain once and ended up sleeping in the grad lab during a snow storm).
Another thing that could be tough is that so many undergrads are from the greater Vancouver area and commute to campus. When I was there it seemed like it was sometimes hard for undergrads to make friends. With that said, they’ve built a lot of new campus housing since I’ve been there so that may be a non-issue.
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To close out the phone saga… Older son got back from his beach trip with friends and had access to his old phone which had no SIM card or phone number, but we could talk on WhatsApp. (The phone he lost he got at Thanksgiving, so the old one wasn’t THAT old, just needed to be replaced because the battery was crap.) So we talked it through and he decided he’d just go buy a new phone - which he did. He went to the Apple Store and picked up a 13, so not too expensive (comparatively) then went to Verizon to get it on our plan and assign it his old number. We had to do some machinations to make him a plan manager so he could do all of that without me there as the plan owner, but he got it done. He’s decided to ask his boss if he can add Saturdays to his work schedule to pick up the extra money he spent on the phone and new case, because he really is worried about money for next year. He’s trying to save to buy our car from us at the end of the summer, and to cover fraternity dues, and to have a little left over, so every little bit matters to him. (Note, this is completely different from my younger child, the one who is the class of 25, who would gladly spend every penny in his bank account. I am moderately worried that he’ll just blow all his money in college - it’s not that there’s that much, but he has shown zero fiscal restraint, and this is an area that can really mess with you for a long time if you screw up your credit and finances.)
So anyway, phone drama resolved.
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AP scores are out. D25 got 5’s on all 3 (APUSH, AP LANG, and Calc AB). D25 is shocked she got a 5 on Calc. That is the class that the teacher was on paternity leave for the last month before the exam.
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Quick check in from us.
Kiddo is at camp and asked to extend his time there by two weeks, which is fine in theory. He’s got to foot half the bill though, which should be interesting when he gets back and has to work at pretty much the only place he doesn’t want to work that will pay him a reasonable wage and afford him a reasonable amount of schedule flexibility to allow for training for his sports. We’ll see how that goes. He’s not looking forward to it. Camp will be great and all, but he will really need to hit the ground running when he gets back, since there won’t be much time between his return and the start of preseason, followed quickly by school.
On the school list front, I think he’s at around 14 on the main list, with 8 or 9 schools to which he plans to apply, with two really strong favorites in that group at the moment, and the remainder still needing further research (they survived the first round of cuts, but haven’t been looked at further since). I suspect things will shift a bit in the fall though. The trick will be to keep him moving forward and remembering that he needs to keep multiple options open. Like other parents, I look at his list and it seems unbalanced and a bit too reach heavy to me. He has, at least, come around to viewing the state flagship as a viable safety. I’d like him to add maybe 2-3 more schools in the safety/match range, but I think I’ll have more sway on that in the fall.
We did squeeze in a visit to Colby and Bowdoin before he left for camp. Colby showed really well and is staying on the list. Bowdoin was never really on there (he said it was too small), but I figured since we were in Maine, we should check it out. It received a solid meh from him. I don’t know if it was the weather, my stress level from being late and needing to speed there after lunch in Augusta, the info session that focused heavily on their application process/review, or if he had an issue with the tour guide talking about yoga with puppies during exam time, but I think he got a vibe that the place was very earnest/takes itself quite seriously and it didn’t sit well with him. Mind you, both Colby and Bowdoin are reaches for him anyway, so eliminating one of them is fine. I kind of wanted to check out Bates too, but that was a no go on this trip. We’ll see if he changes his tune in the fall - when he has next to no time to add in more visits…
AP scores start coming out today, right? Do they release them all at once?
yes, AP scores come out all at once.