My kid is very specific about the kind of school he wants, and most of the places he is looking at don’t have national reputations but they are great matches for him. He has learned not to talk about the college search with other people because so many of them will just tell him he should aim “higher”. I called my own mother to tell her we might be in her area to look at a couple schools and she tried to convince me to take him to the nearest Ivy League school instead.
Those are definitely situations in which you just smile & nod.
Like the times last school year when I had people say to me, “Oh, I thought since your kid goes to High School X, she’d be going to an Ivy League for college. What happened?”
When that happens, I usually think (but don’t have the nerve to say), “Did you really just say that out loud?” Instead, I ignore the tone of their ignorant comment and say, “Oh we’re so excited about her getting into College A, B and/or C. They have great programs in ___ and great merit scholarships, so it looks like it’ll make them all in the affordable range and they have great pre-health programs that she was looking for.”
…that usually shuts the person right up.
Sometimes rather than the person being ignorant, they’re just downright rude or mean. Rude/mean people aren’t worth your time.
Agree 100%. Our experience hasn’t been similar with our daughter’s picks.
She is currently number 2 in her class and her desire is to go to one of our state schools. People have questioned her and us ‘why’ when the topic of ‘what school’ comes up.
The nice thing about her picks is realistic affordability.
As a former hospital volunteer director, please have her look into other volunteer opportunities that she may find more interesting/engaging. Typically, kids who do hospital volunteering are interested in med school/nursing/healthcare, and it’s not for everyone, it can be quite high-stress (patients are in pain, in stressful situations, etc). Maybe see if there’s a local homeless shelter where she can make bagged lunches for clients for volunteer hours, or a food pantry where she can help organize food? Or the local humane society, walking dogs or playing with cats? Does she like younger kids? If so, maybe volunteer at an after school program or with a girl scout troop? I’ve found that kids who truly get the most out of volunteering are doing something they’re really interested in (plus it gives great material for their college essays, too!)
I appreciate the feedback. One should not assume that every hospital system handles volunteers the exact same way. D26 is pursuing the hospital volunteer thing regardless. The requirement to want to have a career in healthcare is not present at the hospitals she’s applied to.
In the meantime, we’re pursuing other additional options. Humane Society is out because of reasons I’ve mentioned earlier in this thread…very competitive application (essay questions + letters of rec), kid was not selected. And there are not any other animal shelters in the area which are accepting teenager volunteers.
The volunteer thing might be easy in other people’s locales, but we have found it to be rather challenging with the sheer # of teenagers looking to fill NHS hours.
Am not going to have 16 yr old D26 volunteer at a homeless shelter.
We looked up some food pantries. Only found ONE accepting teenager volunteers and that’s only for ONE 1.5 hr time slot over a month from now. All of the others have zero options right now.
Honestly, the whole NHS thing at this point has become a royal pain in the rear end.
Do you have any thrift stores in your area? We have one that is completely run by volunteers and students are able to fulfill volunteer hours there sorting clothing. I guess we’re lucky in that the kids can fulfill all their NHS hours by doing things through the school (helping out with grandparents’ day at the elementary, serving during various school open houses throughout the year etc.)
Have you tried your public library for volunteering? Ours takes teen volunteers and my daughter did this a few years ago. In our library system all volunteering is done in the teen department and she did things like help decorate for the holidays, get craft projects ready for programs, organize their storage space, etc.. Nothing terribly exciting but a safe space. My D also volunteered for the local animal shelter, that was neither safe nor healthy, a terrible experience.
S26 has not done any volunteering and he is also not in any organization that requires it. He is busy enough with his ECs that I will not force it.
After your very informative post, I also had a chat to one my young colleagues at work who went to UofA for undergrad (then did masters at an ivy, which he says UofA prepared him very well for). Anyway - he raved about it as an undergrad institution, knew a fair bit about SALT because he was a tutor there and was really a great ambassador for the college! It doesn’t have an ideal program for X26 so it will definitely be a backup but I must admit I’m kind of interested in visiting it now anyway.
We have two tours set up in the next week, both schools that are close by and seem to meet all his requirements.
I am still trying to sort out how you decide if a college is a fit. I feel as though so much of S26’s reaction to colleges has been whether he clicked with the tour guide. I think he sometimes feels like he’s different from his classmates at his current school, so he’s excited to think he might find people more like him. But there is a huge element of luck in that. There might be plenty of people he would click with, that don’t happen to be giving tours that day!
Anyway, any thoughts, particularly from those of you with older kids too, on how you sort that out?
I don’t know the “right” way to assess fit, but D19 seemed to have instinctive reactions to most of the colleges we visited - she either liked them immediately, or she didn’t. I insisted we stay for the tours for the ones she didn’t like at first, but none of them changed her mind. The only one it took her some time (by which, I mean by the end of the tour rather than earlier!) to decide on was Georgetown, and that was more due to the other potential classmates that were there than anything on the tour itself. So…I don’t know how helpful that is. (I do think though that a lot of what seems “instinctive” and maybe uninformed is your subconscious sorting through stuff pretty fast.) By the end of our spring break week having visited 8 colleges, she had a very good idea of what she wanted and there was a definite “type” of college she liked which I don’t think had necessarily been what she expected going in.
When the tour is all done and you’re in the car to leave, ask your kid to name 3 things they liked about the school and 3 things they didn’t like as much. Jot down what your kid says…either on paper or in a note on your phone. Save that for later when your kid thinks that all of the colleges sort of blend together and they can’t remember if it was this college or that college that had the better dorms, or prettier campus, etc.
Some ‘random’ questions I’ve asked on tours when my older kid was too shy to ask anything:
What’s been your favorite class you’ve taken here so far?
How big was your largest lecture class freshman year?
Where would you recommend for somebody to go if they wanted a quiet place away from their dorm room to study?
Has it been hard at all to get the classes you wanted/needed?
What’s your favorite thing to do for fun on the weekends here?
My D22 created an “assessment page” that she printed for every school we toured on her East coast college blitz tour. When we finished the official tour, we would find a spot on campus so she could fill it out. Often, we liked campus coffee shops for this activity so she could keep assessing the vibe. Mostly, I think she was reacting to a mix of school offerings (academic and extracurricular) + location + “do these people look like people I could be friends with” + campus beauty.
I personally think fit can be the most challenging element.
We took our D26 on tours to 3 different sized schools (within a 4 hour drive) that were on her list she made during the process of looking at various sources (college websites, virtual tours, YT pages, Common Data Set Reviews, etc..).
We started with the smallest then onto mid-sized then one of the largest in our state.
Our initial visits were during the summer and the campuses were pretty empty but we had full range to roam - before and after the organized tours. We made sure we hung out and talked about stuff we experienced which did include tour guide input, admission rep input and own self.
Initially she began leaning her preference to the mid and large sized schools. The subsequent weeks conversations took place discussing pros/cons of each.
We then took a second tour of each during the Fall sessions when there would be more activity on campus (though it was Saturdays so it was limited). This time we spent even more time exploring the surrounding areas that she’d be living in when going off campus.
The second time around yielded a little different result. Her number one pick (mid-sized school) remained. Her second pick swapped from the largest to the smallest on the list.
Seeing the weekend student activity and vibes she just got in general from the atmosphere on and off campus made her see things a little differently.
For us it showed, more than one trip was worth it and spending time alone without a guide was worth it (especially trip two).
Catalogs, websites and videos can only tell us so much then it becomes important for the actual experience itself.
It’s more art than science, for sure. I think the takeaways for me are: my kids can be happy in many types of environments so go with the flow on reactions and don’t try to pigeonhole them into a certain “type” of school (“you like small schools, so you can’t also like big schools,” that kind of thing). And then, in anticipation of the big changes they continue to make senior year, keep a couple of decidedly different options in the mix (and preference the ones with easier applications so it doesn’t feel like they have to do a ton of work to the schools you ask them to keep around.) I asked my D22 to keep Kenyon on her list, for example, because I saw a lot of things about it that I knew she valued. It was easy for her to say yes since there was no supplemental essay. She got in with a nice merit offer and it made her top 3 when she was deciding bc she saw that it could have been a great fit for her once she got to visit campus. That she could hold the polar opposite options of UCLA and Kenyon in her hands and see the value of both taught me not to make assumptions about the kind of environment my kid might find appealing!
Sounds like your daughter is learning so, so much about herself, her likes, her dislikes, what environments she feels comfortable in, and what environments are stressful for her. Well done! My only comment is to go slow on therapy as a response to her finding Taco Bell overwhelming. A first day at a fast food restaurant is likely overwhelming for MANY people. She got overwhelmed. She cried. That’s okay. She will have many events in her life that will be overwhelming and she will become overwhelmed and cry. That’s completely normal and healthy. Unless there are deeper issues you are hoping to address, I would avoid therapy and stress the fact that this stressful situation and your daughter’s reaction to it are entirely normal. That’s life. She learned a really valuable insight into herself - a type of work environment she hates. She can extrapolate to other careers - no to working in an ER, yes to working in a library, for example. Other people thrive on chaos and in fast paced environments. Now your daughter knows that she does not… At least at this time in her life. Nothing you described sounds pathological to me at all - no need for therapy. Your daughter reacted perfectly normally.
Yes! Everyone I know who went to Davis loved their experience, and it’s easy to see why. A very welcoming, friendly place—that was evident even from our few hours on campus. S26 wanted some swag so that’s promising!