The main help we need is group therapy.
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At least sheâs honest!
Fyi - Epic Universe is only at Universal Orlando.
What school in CA are you going to visit?
Noooo- I thought Epic was at both!!
So sad 
University of the Pacific
I had never heard of it until D26 came back from a college fair and decided she wanted to add this one to her list.
The college recruiter must have been awesome and was really selling this school- with all the schools there- this was the only one that caught D26s attention and got added to her very short list of schools she is interested in.
The name pops up from time to time. A big drawback seems to be its location, in Stockton. Theyâll probably tell you itâs âBay Areaâ but oy, the traffic. Definitely one youâll want to visit before applying to get a feel for where it is.
Plenty fun stuff at universal Hollywood for a day there! But probably a day is all you need. Would you drive between the college visit and LA? Iâd say if youâre going all that way to check things out probably makes sense to find one or two others to at least look at?
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University of the Pacific is in Stockton, which is in the central valley of CA. I grew up in the SF Bay Area and lived there for awhile after college. At least in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s, Stockton was considered a very undesirable place to live. Lots of crime. I donât know if thatâs still the case.
The college counselor at D26âs school recommended we take a look at that school. Nearest airport is probably Sacramento, which is about an hourâs drive away. D26 isnât going to have a car for the first couple of years at college, so being carless in a place like Stockton would not be desirable.
And from where we live, flying to Sacramento would be kind of a pain. Likely needing to change planes somewhere, which is another negative.
According to SCOIR, 84% of students are from within the state of CA. 34% Asian, 27% Hispanic, 16% white, 3% Black/African American.
Definitely go and visit in person so you guys can see for yourselves and then decide.
If your daughter is interested in Computer Science, itâs definitely worth asking the admissions office & the computer science dept about what % of graduates are employed in a computer science job after graduation, and how do they help students land internships in their field.
Commuting from Stockton to Silicon Valley daily for an internship is not doable unless you want to live your whole life in your carâŠlike 5 hours a day in the car round trip.
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I think itâs still relatively high crime but itâs the commute to anywhere fun or to work in the Bay Area - from a city that doesnât seem to have much in and of itself - that seems the bigger issue. Itâs like an hour and a half into SF if itâs low traffic. If you hit the rush hour commute - and honestly rush hour seems to be half the day in the Bay Area these days - it can be significantly longer.
Oakland airport would be a slightly longer drive but probably quite a bit easier to find flights to than Sacramento. Not sure how youâd get there from the airport.
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Stockton is still considered high crime, there was a large homeless camp outside of the city that was cleaned up last year. Def visit the city before you decide on adding the school to the very short list.
Universal in LA has Nintendo land which is a lot of fun. BTW Stockton is pretty far from LA but it can be an awesome road trip if you have the the time to go through Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Big Sur on your way up from LA.
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S26 went to prom with his friends! And he had a great time, even spent most of the evening dancing with a new girl (he went with a group of friends and so did she). Heâs still sleeping so I donât know if he saw his ex and her new guy, but he was happy regardless. Whew!
We still havenât sorted through summer plans. Itâs leaning toward job. He could take a fun class at Brownâs pre-college program for a couple of weeks and then we could bolt on a few campus tours but I think heâd get more out of a job and working on his essay.
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Also, on the UoP topic, itâs true that Stockton is not what most people have in mind when they think about going to college in CA. But the UoP campus itself is beautiful and in a safe area. And the school seems to fill a niche in a state dominated by a huge public university system. Itâs a small private school that is not religiously affiliated and not highly selective (I can only think of one or two others that fit this description). Two dear friends from high school went and loved their experience; my nephew just graduated from there and loved his experience (he played D1 soccer there). If your daughter is captivated by it, Iâd spend time online doing the virtual tours and if sheâs still into it, itâs worth taking a look.
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Thanks all for the information on the California school.
I will pass all this onto D26 and ask her to look into this area and school a bit more.
If she is still interested, then we may go do a California vacation to see it in person.
My husband travels to the San Jose area regularly for work- so at a minimum- just have her tag along with Dad on one of his trips and add a day or 2 in to get at least a quick visit in.
If she gets into either Mines or Limerick- then she will most likely not even consider other schools (at least as of this moment). With her profile, I assume she will get accepted into one if not both of those. But always need the plan B, C and ⊠just cuase you never know!
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Prom last night! She had fun and so did our exchange student but the weather was pretty miserable so no nice outdoor photos.
Today has been a buckle down and study day. Except NHS induction this afternoon she is told is not optional. WTH. A Sunday. After prom. The weekend before AP tests. Whoever scheduled this clearly doesnât have a stressed out kid.
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What the heck is right! Why wouldnât they schedule the NHS ceremony on a week night instead? Totally dumb.
College Essay question:
For those that have students working on the essays this Summer, where do you find the prompts?
Or do they just write some generic essays that can then be easily tailored as needed?
Also you can create a parent account on the Common App. Add the colleges your kid is thinking of applying to and if they have supplemental essay questions, those will show up there also.
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Dude, seriously? Ugh.
I booked a trip to Worcester to tour both WPI and Clark University toward the end of June. Weâll see what D26 thinks.
And, this is cool â when we toured RIT earlier this year, we learned that they had a high school awards program where a school can nominate juniors in one of six categories (computing, arts, etc). If accepted, that student has a waived application fee to the school, plus a $24K per year scholarship to be used for any major at RIT (provided they apply and get in, of course).
D26 asked her counselor about this, who agreed to nominate her â so just today she was presented with the Women in Stem scholarship for $96K! Itâs a fancy certificate and everything. They presented it to her at the Monday grade-level meeting in front of the whole junior class, so that was fun.
(Granted, RIT is hella expensive, so $24K per year isnât actually much in merit â but it did say that if she qualified for more merit, sheâd get the larger of the awards. Itâs not stackable, alas.)
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Good luck to all kids taking AP exams today and in the coming days!!!
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I hardly dare post that S26 is definitely not stressed. He has had the easiest school year. Partly that has to do with his changing schools and attending a brand new high school, there were some scheduling hick ups that left him without any APs this year. But I also did not press it too much, because I knew this would benefit his unweighted GPA. Since many of the Southern schools use unweighted GPA for their scholarships, that was fine with me.
We have done five college visits over the last two weeks and have a preliminary list:
Co-number 1: Ole Miss and Tulane. Both are financial reaches for us and Tulane is obviously an academic reach as well.
2: Louisiana Tech, attractive safety. The school has been hugely popular with boys in our area in the last few years and most of his close friends will likely end up there
3: Mississippi State and LSU (our flagship)
He still has not seen a SLAC, so he might do some virtual tours over the summer.
The tours made him realize that his only shot at Ole Miss being maybe affordable will be a higher ACT score, so he is signed up for the June date and will spend the first part of summer doing test prep.
The most disappointing tour of all was LSU. We just did the tour this morning, since S26 is off school today and we are somewhat local. Iâve been on the campus many times and it is beautiful, business and engineering buildings are amazing, dorms are great and rec center is out of this world. The tour guide was good. But in comparison to the MS schools, it seemed they just donât need to woo applicants. In this area LSU is a religion, so they seem to feel assured of large applicant pools. I took S26 and his friend and both reported feeling meh. They will both apply but itâs not their number 1.
I love college touring with S26, we had so many good conversations!
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I have one applying to the University of Limerick as well!!
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