Ah, the “traditional” semester calendar!
I’m not a fan, but there are pluses and minuses. Up here (with a tinge of irony, given our far-north location) we use the “Southern” semester calendar, in which the fall semester is August to winter break, and the spring semester is January to May (or, for the local college, occasionally even the end of April). There are other options, of course, even leaving aside the quarter and trimester systems.
Sure! I can’t help with ballet but we liked Creighton. D23 graduated from a Catholic high school in the PNW that pretty consistently sends a kid or two to Creighton every year. The school reminds me of Gonzaga, U of Dayton, probably also Saint Louis U, those mid-size Catholic schools with decent academics, good merit scholarships, and seemingly nice, happy, kids. My D23 had a 3.6-3.7 UW GPA and was given 23K in merit a year making the price less than 40K all in without any FA.
Omaha seems to have opportunities in business and there is a walkable little neighborhood right near campus, but we were a little underwhelmed with the city in general. Creighton’s business and nursing schools were both very impressive and the campus is pretty and contained. Beautiful church. Residences and the arts building needed updating, but there was construction on campus. Creighton is not a suitcase school, and there seems to be a lot going on on the weekends. Greek life is substantial but there aren’t houses so not the same kind of influence as other schools.
Hope that helps a little!
My guess at Creighton is that most kids have cars, Omaha has a lot to offer, but not a lot right by campus. Although maybe I’m wrong, it’s not tough to get an Uber there either. My info on that is a bit outdated. It’s also probably a place where there is a good chance your roommate or someone in your friend group has a car, so having your own may not be necessary.
The city in general and alums in particular are big Creighton fans and loyal. I have friends that are alums that live 3 hours from campus, but they still have season Basketball tickets and make it to as many games as they can. If you want to kill 30 minutes, ask them anything about Creighton. They LOVE to talk about it.
More importantly, there is a lot of representation in the local business community, and the alums love hiring from Creighton. Not sure how that works when you get outside the Nebraska/Iowa area, but it’s a helpful network regionally.
I know nothing about dance.
I don’t live there, and didn’t attend. I lived in Omaha at one point, and still have friends there. People in both of the unrelated places I worked loved Creighton grads. So that’s my basis for the information.
30% of freshman have cars which seems low, but I’m not sure what’s typical. We checked because coming from Washington our daughter wouldn’t have brought one so she put it as a column in her college spreadsheet 
I imagine once the kids move off campus most of them have cars.
There is an area a walk from campus where the kids seem to hang out, Old Market I think? On the other side of the highway.
In any case, my daughter decided to go to Texas instead but she did like Omaha.
Izzy74 and dadof4kids,
Those insights are helpful! Thank you for sharing! It’ll go on the “at least look into more deeply” list. 
D25 has finals starting tomorrow through Friday. She has AP Lang tomorrow, APUSH and AP Calc on Wed, biomedical interventions (dual enrollment) and Thurs and Honors Physics on Friday. Wednesday will be tough.
She then goes back to school on Jan 8th which is the last week of 1st semester (yes it’s weird).
I think she has her college list down to 5-7 but really has her eye on 2. We’re making 2nd visits to those 2 during spring break.
Well, I’ll give an update on S25 I guess.
He had finals last week, ending the semester with his first A- ever in AP Physics, also his favorite class. APUSH was a close save there at the end too, which makes me wonder what next semester will bring grade-wise. His focus is mostly on his girlfriend and his sport, which I guess makes him a typical teen. He’s interested in Business or Economics for college.
We’re taking a quick midwest tour in February, visiting family too. Seeing Notre Dame, Miami (Ohio), U of Dayton, and Denison.
Then spring break we’ll spend the whole week in the SE, seeing Furman, Wake, Elon, Clemson, W&L, W&M, and U of Richmond.
Add Trinity U and SMU and that’s his preliminary list, I expect him to axe several along the way.
I feel like I just did this with D23, so it’s a little difficult to build up the enthusiasm for sitting through a million information sessions and tours again, but I’m sure I’ll get there.
This is our high schooler’s schedule as well. Break does not start until end of the day this Friday. And my poor college kiddo has a final this Friday afternoon, and then she’s done with the fall semester.
Wait, A- is bad?
Not for me! He’s my smartypants kid though and has always done well.
My kid’s list is NOT shaped up. She’s having a bit of an existential crisis over the future. 
May I ask when & how everyone is visiting colleges without missing high school instruction?
Unfortunately, spring break visits won’t work for us because my kid will be traveling internationally with a group she’s been part of for a long time and the trip is essentially mandatory.
AP Physics is extremely hard so A- is really good.
If you are really interested in SMU, you should visit during Mustang Day. The SMU tour was probably one of our favorites for D24 and I.
I’m just pulling S25 out for a week in February when they have a Friday off. Sucks and he’ll have to work every evening but we live in the PNW and it takes a day to get most places. We also discovered with D23 that visiting in the summer isn’t great.
I wish we could actually find time to visit more colleges. Every weekend has something going on plus I work every weekend and my husband wouldn’t mind taking her but he’d rather wait in the car so the only opinion I get is from my D who said “Rowan is ok I’ll apply” even prodding for more was unsuccessful. There’s a teacher in service on a Monday in January that’s not MLK day so I had to think long and hard about which school to visit because it’s one of the only days my D can go. Hopefully it’s good road conditions. March has another teacher in service day but it’s spring break for the colleges I’ve checked but I’ll keep looking. My D spring break in April is a visit to UofPuget Sound but mostly family visit. And that’s it, no more time or visits likely until auditions. YouTube videos and college websites are it.
Thanks! I think SMU Cox is one of his top choices.
Cox is very impressive and punches way above their weight. They are famous for their Alts program but it’s competitive within their school. When we visited, they had a model of their new business building and it was very impressive.
I think Goldman recruits there and Dallas is a strong job market.
The main thing we didn’t like about SMU is they don’t have an honors dorm. We just didn’t like the housing options so D24 didn’t apply.
D25 has finals week this week and also returns Jan 8. The good news is she will only be getting two B+s, one in AP Calc AB and one in AP Lang. Hopefully she can pull her Calc grade up next semester. Lang is what it is. She is also getting an A- in Physics and is over the moon that she got there.
She has a list of 16 colleges on her list because the UCs are a crap shoot. In order of most selective to least selective for her school district’s 2022 admit rates, her list for right now is:
UCLA
UC Berkeley
UCSD
UC Irvine
UC Santa Barbara
UC Santa Cruz
UC Davis
Univ of Washington
San Diego State
Univ of Maryland
U Conn
Univ of Toronto
San Jose State
Purdue University
Univ of British Columbia
Univ of Colorado, Boulder
Univ of Oregon
She’s going to take a community college class this summer to learn a second foreign language. She is so excited.
We’re going to UW and UO over spring break. Have UW already scheduled, just have to wait for UO to release dates. Going to Vancouver over the summer to check out Vancouver and UBC.
My son’s last day is Thursday. We had a rough month with my father in law going into the hospital with a really bad infection (he is on the mend), and losing our sweet 10.5 year old doodle to a sudden health decline. And several sicknesses- his grades have taken a bit of a dip but I refuse to worry too much. His list so far looks like this:
USNA
Coast Guard Academy
Air Force Academy (Maybe) he really wants to fly for Navy.
ROTC scholarship (you have to apply to 5 ROTC schools)
University of Rochester (visited)
Not yet visited-
VA Tech
U of MD
Pitt
Norwich University (has full room and board in addition to tuition if selected for ROTC scholarship, also a military college)
Since she is applying to SDSU, you might consider sending her application to a couple other CSUs as well.
ACT scores are out but D25 is in finals right now.