Thank god D26 doesn’t know about the puppets major because guess what would be happening??? 
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Hope it goes well. Olaf is less experiential than CC, but a very different vibe than either. My kid had it third, and it rose because of how kind and earnest he found his hosts there. That and the study abroad program. My wife kept saying she wished she’d gone to Olaf instead of Chicago for the same reason. She is a spiritual midwesterner, apparently. (Ironically, she almost went to Macalester herself).
We’re at Tulane today. Found the tour interesting. We were almost the only family not from a wealthy NY suburb, and my son was the only future liberal arts major. The professors we met with after were helpful in restoring his enthusiasm, though.
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We know one family whose son went to Tulane and they were from an affluent New England family. He really enjoyed it and is now working for BlackRock in NYC.
Im not sure why they have such a wide gender imbalance. Im surprised it isnt an attractive option for more boys.
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That was the feeling we got at Kenyon’s accepted students’ day!
We head out to Occidental Thursday! Good to hear it was a good admitted students day.
I’m glad you are done with visits! YAY!
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St Olaf was a firm no for my daughter. She hated the location - it reminded her of Laramie - small town surrounded by nothing for about 45 minutes. That being said - her no was a very individual thing - it’s very pretty!
3 out of 4 done! One rest day and then back at it!
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At this stage I’d consider a “firm no” as a good thing (and a worthwhile visit). This is the point where it is helpful to eliminate some schools from further consideration – especially when there are options she does like.
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Wholeheartedly agree with this. Would have loved a hard no or two from D26’s visits. Pitzer tried their best to make a hard no an option, and she persisted in finding ways to chat with students and get the information she wanted.
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One month from today is graduation day! Woo!
Today, D26 uploaded the required immunization info to the campus health portal. And updated her campus health student profile with all of her medical history info, so she won’t have to provide all of that at an appointment. I’m going to print out a list of the pharmacies & urgent cares closest to campus and am going to stash it in the first aid kit I’m putting together.
Work on her senior project is continuing. 2 more weeks and then it’s finished!
Big upside to D26 not being able to get foot surgery #2 this summer is this means we’ll be able to go to Niece’s high school graduation, which we are totally thrilled about.
I bought D26 one of these backpacks for ~$25 on Amazon as 1 of her graduation gifts. It arrived in the mail a couple of days ago. This backpack is great! Holds a lot but isn’t too bulky, has a USB port on the outside of it, which you can connect inside the backpack to a battery to charge your phone. Has a padded laptop holder compartment. Her current school backpack has seen better days and it’ll be time for a new one. Anyways, just sharing the link here in case anybody’s kid is in the market for an affordable backpack!
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My S25 had that backpack in high school! It held up pretty well. The only thing I didn’t like about it was it tended to absorb odors – and he’s a sweaty boy, so the backpack smelled sweaty after being on his back all day. I threw it in the washing machine as often as I could, and it still held up fine.
I did end up getting him a traditional Jansport for college, though. My oldest loves her “Cool Student” model, so I got him the same one. I found it for like $38 on Amazon, but I’ve seen them for twice that – but it’s possible to find deals.
In my girls’ high school, the tradition is to carry a little-kid backpack for senior year. Many of the girls get pink and glittery monogrammed backpacks, or they get Blues Clues or Dora or similarly-themed ones. I searched hard for Backyardigans or Little Einsteins but never found any that would actually carry the stuff my kids needed. D26 ended up getting this one from Pottery Barn Kids – I mean, glow-in-the-dark dino bones. 
They don’t have it anymore, but she got the XL size, so it works great. (We did not get it monogrammed – this is the stock photo, lol.)
Not exactly a budget backpack, but she loves it so much – and it’s holding up well – so I’m pretty sure she’s going to take it to college.
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I’m still hoping for a “heck yea’ response! Perhaps Oxy will be the Goldielocks school. If not, she wants to visit Denison or Trinity (TX).
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Very ready to be done with HS drama and praying that D26 will find her people - ride-or-die friends who know how to be loyal AND good friends, at university. It kinda-sorta happened for me. Fingers crossed for all our children.
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A lot of the posts on UIUC’s class of 2030 insta page are girls and a lot of them are looking to rush, so idk how much of a realistic representation of the class that is. (I know Greek life is big, but it’s not 80% of students as you’d think from the insta page!!) Still, there are some that look more like C26’s kind of people and they have been communicating with a couple of the “looking for roommates or friends” posts, including one specifically they seem to gel with and who is applying to the same LLC. I don’t know if they’ll apply to be roommates but at least it looks like they will have someone they “know” when they arrive on campus, which will be nice. The vast majority of students are instate and I think many of those are from the Chicago area, so I imagine there will be a number of already built-in friend groups arriving.
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That’s probably very typical of large flagship state schools. The Greek kids may be more active on social media and you’ll probably have a lot from affluent suburban neighborhoods.
The good thing about large public schools is there are so many kids, the ones on Instagram are just a tiny fraction.
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Maybe yes. AND…
UIUC has become a really hot school for OOS students. At our high school, there’s a good # of students every year who desperately want to go to UIUC for engineering or computer science. Your kid will be able to find their crew there.
At ANY college, there’s going to be a bunch of students who do NOT post on Instragram’s ‘class of XXXX’ page. So I’d take the Greek-focused posts with a grain of salt.
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Yeah to be fair, same same… we are from an “affluent suburban neighborhood” and many of our high schoolers are going to the large instate publics (of course we have a lot more here…kids spread among Cal, UCLA - seems to have been a good year for these two in particular - UCSD, UCSB, UCD, UCI and cal poly all feature prominently on the high school insta page). Not that it was really an option as only 3 instate publics offer freshman-entry architecture and it’s super competitive at all of them, but C26 seems kind of glad to mostly leave the kids from here behind.
Yeah, the hotel for admitted student day definitely had a lot of engineers and some business, and not many arts related students. I think they are already comfortable that they’ll find their crew between the LLC 
(if they get in) and various clubs they like the sound of, and from what they saw on admitted students day, and that’s always the benefit of a large school: even if the majority of students aren’t your type, there will be a critical mass who are. This is something C26 already discovered moving from their small-ish elementary school to much larger middle and high schools.
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Mine barely ever looks at Insta, so if there is a class of 2030 page for GT, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t even know about it. She is not interested in trying to talk with people online to find a potential roommate group – she’s planning to go random. (This might change as her LLC adds new admits to a group chat, and she organically talks with people and connects – but that’s not a skill that comes easily to her, so I don’t know if she’ll even try.)
I wouldn’t fret – I’m guessing the people you’re seeing are not representative of the entire incoming class!
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D26 learned today that a large percentage of her class is skipping Friday to prepare for prom on Saturday – sort of an unofficial senior skip day? So, she applied for a discretionary day so she could skip, too.
I’m not thrilled about this – she has a Calc BC test on Friday (will take on Monday, I guess), and her grade isn’t great so she needs to do well. And just everything else is down to the wire academically.
But then, there are only 10 days of school left after this week, and I just can’t bring myself to care about it too much, LOL. Tomorrow is the big STEM presentation that she’s been working toward all year, but she’s ready, more or less. (Or she says she is – parents are invited, so we’ll see tomorrow!)
In other news, D22 committed to Vanderbilt for grad school. She was conflicted about it because of the cost, but it’s where she really wanted to be for a lot of reasons. I’m excited for her, and I hope she comes to terms with her decision soon. Now comes the fun part of exploring a new city and finding an apartment and all that good stuff. (But first, graduating, lol.)
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Fabulous! Such a relief to be done. D19’s bf’s family lives in Nashville and she’s spent some time there, and loves it. Also have an ex colleague who did his MBA at Vandy and loved it.
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