We lived in Tucson for many years up until 7 yr ago and my sister currently lives in Tucson.
Toured it with D24 and we’ve been there several times for swim meets back when my kids were younger.
If your kid is looking for a left-leaning college, U of A definitely would fit the bill in my opinion. Tucson is much more liberal/progressive than the Phoenix metro area and the university is even more so. There’s all of the normal rah rah that goes with a big college with football and basketball. U of A is better known for its basketball team though. There’s Greek life there if you want it but if you aren’t into that, more students are NOT in Greek life than those who are.
On campus housing is not guaranteed after freshman year. Your odds of getting into the dorm you want are based upon when you get your housing deposit paid. It’s not refundable. So once your kid gets accepted, if you can afford it, pay the housing deposit and they will get a better date/time slot in the spring to pick their dorm.
The Tucson area has a lot of outdoorsy things to do in the area. There’s a streetcar that you can ride to get downtown. There’s a huge hospital on campus, too, so if your kid gets sick and there’s an emergency, that’s available near by. My family has used that hospital in the past and in our experience, they provided good medical care there.
If your kid has learning disabilities or has disabled students sort of needs, you should attend an info session with their SALT Program. It’s an extra fee every semester on top of regular tuition but from what I’ve heard, it’s a great program. They have online info sessions for that FYI if attending in person is challenging.
The Tucson airport is about 20-30 min drive from campus. Very easy to get to from campus. Your kid would have no issue being able to get an Uber or Lyft to the airport.
Tucson has some of the best Mexican food in the entire United States and if you go visit in person, you should go eat at El Antojo Polbano on/near St Mary’s Rd west of the freeway. Their cuisine is from southern Mexico and everything I’ve had there is amazing. Get the Gordita appetizer if you go there. The mole chicken is so good. The tortillas are made from scratch. Seriously, everything there is fabulous and it’s a family run business.
Thank you so much for the detailed review. Really appreciate it. We are considering University of Arizona and ASU for S26 too. S26 is considering Biology or something in that realm for his major, not premed, more into research, wants to go to Grad school.
Took D26 on a tour of Boston College yesterday. I posted a more detailed review on the thread about colleges moving up or down the list. But in a nutshell, it is off her list. She knows it is a fan tactic school, especially for nursing, but feels like the vibe will be “too academic” and she really wants a low-pressure environment since she knows nursing is hard. She also is a kid who puts a lot of pressure on herself and does not want a school where all the students are like that.
It was a really fun day though and nice to have the one on one with her. Weather was gorgeous and it felt awesome to be back on campus (BC is my alma mater). She still got a sweatshirt though and will definitely wear it. BC is a super popular school around here and she plans on attending football and hockey games this year and next year so it will get use.
So it looks like her list will be very similar to her brother S24’s list in the end- almost all SEC schools- some direct admit BSN and some she would have to apply as a “pre nursing” major. She will visit three more schools in April during her spring break and visit her brother’s school early April for a long weekend.
That sounds similar to my D19’s reaction to Georgetown (which would have been a reach anyway). She loved the campus etc but it felt like it would be too much pressure academics-wise. We didn’t visit BC when we were in Boston as they either didn’t have tours while we were there or they were full, but the campus sure sounded pretty.
X26 will be looking at schools that have absolutely no intersection with what D19 was interested in!
Georgetown and BC are VERY similar- I worked at Georgetown hospital and precepted their nursing students and the programs are very similar. My son is at Auburn and loves it. It is academically challenging but not a pressured environment and there are a lot of resources to help students succeed. Applied to almost all SEC schools other than UMD and NC State. In the end just really wanted SEC atmosphere and loves the vibe at Auburn. Many were shocked he turned down UMD and other higher ranked schools but he went with his gut and found a great fit.
Yep, fit is important. D19 was told by a Princeton AO (someone I know) that they look at applicants a little differently than most other ivies and she had a chance there, enough that he encouraged her to apply (he would have been honest if he thought it would be a wasted application). She had zero interest in applying though. She had a very clear idea of what fit her, which our east coast tours crystallized for her.
I am hoping to get a similar reaction from S26 when we do tours, places where he’s clear he does or doesn’t want to go. So far his only negative is Stanford because he thought the dorms were crappy I tried telling him that was only for the summer program and most likely he’s not getting in. I get the feeling that it’s also too close to home and he wants some distance from us which I get.
Yeah, x26 is kind of vague. “A nice place to live” and not the opposite coast, without any details. So far we have LA, SLO and Boulder are acceptable, Chicago probably is (weather is a concern), but Eugene is not. Can you discern a pattern among those lol?! I can’t. Ideally a blue state, purple ok, but obviously you get a lot of different locales to choose from within that.
both of my kids (D24, D26) have expressed similar desires to your D26’s “too academic” concern. They don’t want pressure cooker, turbo environments. Thankfully, there’s a lot of colleges all across the US which fit the bill for that requirement!
Our family has learned a lot since D26’s 1st shift at Taco Bell yesterday evening, such as:
she broke down & started crying while shadowing a manager. I think she had a bit of a panic attack.
she learned that working fast food is ‘really intense, like, it’s REALLY fast, and there’s SO much to do and remember all at once. I don’t know how people do it.’
she learned that she pretty much hates it with a passion, with all of the pressure to hurry up, quicker, faster, now now now.
she doesn’t know how to calm herself down very well yet when in such a situation
Mom here is going to start hunting for a therapist for my kid because it feels like we need some help & suggestions from somebody who has more experience in this than us parents do
she REALLY misses D24 and really misses not talking to her all of the time (they’ve shared a bedroom since D26 was 2)
she said that the reason she didn’t like mock trial last year was because it felt like it was an intense acting class and hated the pressure & feeling super intimidated being in front of a bunch of people in the courtroom, plus having the pressure of memorizing a 2-page witness statement & know that your team’s score will be based, partially, on how well you stick to the script of the witness statement that you wrote.
she doesn’t want to work a food job ever again
the general manager of this Taco Bell location doesn’t actually post the work schedule; you have to send him a text message. So she doesn’t actually know yet when her next shift is going to be. It freaked her out when the shift supervisor/manager told her that they’ve had a hard time keeping people because a lot of applicants can’t handle the intensity of the job. D26 was worried when the supervisor made a comment about ‘different managers train people differently.’ D26 thought that was a red flag (I agree based on my own fast food experience from way back in the day)
she intends to quit today/aka retire from the short adventure into food service jobs
and has decided that retail would be a much better fit for her at the moment
and has applied for some jobs already at a couple of Sprouts locations in our area
and she emailed the counselor at school asking for a meeting with her & us some time the week after fall break because she wants advice/help in figuring out extracurriculars
she hates extracurriculars that involve everybody participating in some sort of competition. Whatever the activity is, if there’s a competition involved, the competition part ends up sucking out all of the fun of the activity. And a lot of the academic clubs at school center around competitions of various sorts.
she said that even though she only did robotics club for grades 8-9, "I feel like I got a lot out of it because before that, I was thinking maybe I was interested in engineering and afterwards, I learned that nope, engineering is NOT for me. So it wasn’t a total waste of time. I mean, I learned something about myself, ya know. And I learned that I like tech/computer stuff, but I don’t want to be an engineer so I’ll pursue it another way.’
she’s applied for a hospital volunteer position at a local hospital. Does she want to go into healthcare? No. What’s the purpose of the volunteer thing then? To do SOMETHING and get SOMETHING on her resume and some of those volunteer hours could count toward NHS. Of course, start to finish, we know from D24’s foray into hospital volunteering, it can take awhile to actually start.
D26 is really glad that we aren’t pressuring her to be stressing over PSAT/SAT. She said that’s helped a lot.
Whew. It’s a lot. I myself am a little overwhelmed by it all. So she & I are going to the movies later today.
Enjoy your movie! It sounds like you both need an escape.
My middle son (who has anxiety) had a similar experience his first full shift working fast food. He cried the whole way home. I told him to stick it out for two weeks. If it was still causing him severe anxiety after that time, then we could talk about quitting. At the end of the two weeks, he was coping okay. (I’m not sure anyone ever likes fast food work, but he was managing.) He eventually stuck with the job for more than a year – and learned A LOT about life through the experience. Several of his co-workers were adults who worked two minimum wage jobs to support their families. It gave him a huge appreciation for the hard work put in by minimum wage workers, and the value of an education. More importantly, it taught him that he can do hard things. He subsequently struggled with his transition to college and more recently studying abroad. I was able to remind him of how panicked he was at the start of his fast food job, but how he got more comfortable with time. Of course, every situation is unique. I just wanted to share that you are definitely not alone when it comes to anxious kids! Starting a new job (like many things) can be super triggering for a kid who is already anxious.
Yes and no. We have a very rough list – but we are still not sure where her stats will end up, so it is hard to create a targeted list at this point. So many BSN programs are insanely competitive.
So far, we have visited Marquette (a surprise hit), University of Minnesota (general tour only, just ok), Elon (beautiful campus, but nursing program and clinicals were only so-so), Pitt (favorite nursing curriculum and liked the urban campus), Loyola (too close to home), and UMich (favorite by far but a huge reach).
Right now, I am just trying to keep her focused on getting good grades.
What about you? Feel free to DM me – it would be great to connect with another prospective BSN family.
We are in the same boat in terms of having a list, because we don’t know how the stats are going to look at the end of this year. Junior year has been brutal so far for my kid, really struggling in quiet a few classes, including APENG that I predicted.
I don’t know where else to vent this but I am FURIOUS with someone who I guess was a friend but (for a number of reasons) I have been disengaging from the friendship. Anyway I had lunch with her recently and her oldest has just started at ASU (the business school). She had said before that he was disappointed at that being his best choice but actually what came out of the lunch was that she feels he should have done better and should have worked harder and she feels envious when she sees her friends posting about their kids at better schools (I didn’t ask what counts as that). I just noticed today that she has taken down the posts on Facebook she had before of taking him to admitted students day and move-in weekend. I doubt he bothers looking at her Facebook but what other conclusion to draw if he does and sees nothing behind his high school graduation photos? basically what I am drawing from this is she’s disappointed in him because she thinks it reflects on her, or something?! I am just so mad at her for clearly not supporting him as best she can in this. Already see so much stress that these kids put on themselves. Parents should be alleviating that, not adding to it. sorry for the vent !
(Obviously I don’t need to add: nothing at all wrong with ASU, I know it’s on the list of a few of us here)
Edit: I see this went on as a reply to the previous post rather than the thread in general, not intended
Sorry about that. Junior year is tough.
My kid battles with history - we haven’t figured out why or what to really do about it yet. Just trying to make it through this year…
I think that there are some parents who view the whole “where is my kid going to college” thing as something like a report card or grading system of how good of a parent you are/were. And for whatever reason, those parents are a little insecure about it all.
I know a few people like this. We started out as pretty good friends, but as things progressed and more of their competitive spirit of “I want MY kid to be #1” and “MY kid is going to be on top above all the rest of your kids” came out, the more turned off I became. I chose to gradually drift away from a couple of them and with another person, who totally went off the deep end on attacking everybody about politics all the time, I had to go cold turkey and stop talking to them altogether all of a sudden. None of that is ideal in any way, of course, but sometimes you just have to disengage.
I recommend taking a break from the person’s social media for awhile. Put them on ignore or hide for 30 days, for example.
What’s ironic re: your friend is that if you’re a business major and you want a job after college, graduating from ASU w/a business degree is a great option.
What your friend also might not realize is that once you’re out of college and in the working world, nobody really gives a rip WHERE you went to college (except in a couple of very specific careers). Heck, once your kid graduates from high school, all of the “What’s your GPA and test scores?” talk totally ends and…NOBODY CARES what rank your kid was in the high school graduating class. When you’re going through it and in the moment, it seems like those are some of the most important things in the world.
Take my boss’s kids, for example. They’re solidly good students. Boss’s younger kid is a junior at ASU and is an accounting major. It’s been a great experience and great major for her so far. Boss’s older kid graduated from NAU and is in a master’s program in engineering there right now…guess what? That kid just started an internship at Intel…and NAU is not a high ranked school AT ALL.
Your friend will get a clue eventually. Some people just need more time to figure it out.
I have a friend whose daughter won a prestigious scholarship and I congratulated him and said wow with the money she could pay a big chunk of an education at Cal. He looked and me and said with that level we only expect Harvard or MIT. I just stopped talking to him about kids after that, I have no idea what he expects to gets out of MIT for his daughter that Cal wouldn’t provide.
We have multiple friends who graduated from Stanford and have pretty normal jobs, one person is a RE agent. Another runs a restaurant.
People attach so much importance to the colleges where you will have no idea what career your kids will be in 30-40 years from now. Relax and let them go to the best place for them.
We are going to visit UC Davis this weekend with S26. I don’t know that it’s a fit for him but excited to see it as we never toured it with D22.
Over Thanksgiving break, I booked a few tours, U Washington, University of Puget Sound, Reed College, and Oregon State. (My brother and his wife live in Portland so we will fly to Seattle, rent a car and drive south to spend the holiday with them).
That should give us a big swath of school types to assess (urban, small town, college town, huge campus, tiny campus, ranges of selectivity).
sorry for the vent !