Congratulations on the invitation! If your DD hasn’t already visited Miami, I’d encourage her to dig into it on Reddit and online. I helped my D26’s BFF put their college list together and Miami was right up at the top of it- not too far from home & we know students who have gotten excellent merit aid (like full-pay families who get the Presidential Fellows award). Her friend visited and immediately crossed it off the list. Their feedback was that it was “too preppy white rich kid vibes”. I have only heard good things, the campus is supposed to be gorgeous, but her friend’s impression was that the lack of diversity and lots Greek involvement made it somewhere they couldn’t really see themselves. I’ve also since talked to people from the area who had similar impressions. So it really depends on the vibe that your D26 is looking for in a school.
Submitted an AP test scores report today to be sent to UofA because according to the College Board website, we only had D26’s test scores sent the summer after 10th grade. College Board’s site says the college will receive it by 1/20. U of A’s website says it can take them up to 4 weeks to load the test scores into your student profile, get the credits applied to courses, etc.
Glad I thought to do it now instead of waiting until later.
Day after tomorrow is U of A EA decision day. FINALLY!
Their orientation is all online. No in person stuff. I think it might be a good idea for D26 to try to get an earlier orientation date so she can have better odds at class times she might want.
Yes, hence my reservations, lol.
We visited for a tour last year, and it’s true we didn’t see many students of color. D26 is mixed white/Asian, so this is worrisome.
But then, she spent a week there for a summer program, and she said the counselors – all current Miami students – weren’t preppy at all. Lots of alternative kids and hair colors and various pronouns. On top of that, she has the idea that because she’d be in the emerging tech department as well as marching band, she’d be able to find her people – even if the student body is overwhelmingly white and preppy and Greek.
I share your concerns, though, and I have reservations about the political bent of the area.
However, I am wary of trying to influence my daughter’s opinions at this point. I think it will be a good thing for her to interview for the scholarship – she’ll get two days to see what kinds of kids would potentially be attending the school. She is definitely not a kid who would fit into the preppy/Greek crowd, and I trust she’ll learn pretty quickly if everyone else is like that. Plus, she’s not great at interviewing, so this will be good practice. I’m going with her, so we’ll be able to talk about the environment further after we see it again.
So, yeah – I hear you, and IMHO she has some other acceptances that are far preferable for a number of reasons. But it’s also a conclusion that D26 needs to come to on her own, you know?
Some factors I’d consider:
- Would she like to live in the area post graduation. If a school has a more regional reputation, her best employment opportunities may be around there.
- Will she be studying a competitive major. Oftentimes, I think it’s better to be the best student at a safety school than a medium student a super selective school for both career and from a graduate school perspective.
- Does she want to meet completely different people. D24 had this classmate who was introverted and attended Dartmouth which we thought would be a horrible fit but he’s joined a fraternity and has embraced the social scene and seems to be doing well.
Congrats on your D for getting an invitation to the full ride! That is very impressive! I understand your reservations. We are on the same boat. S26 got a huge merit/grant offer from Susquehanna University that is so hard to pass up. Their creative writing program sounds amazing, but I have reservations about social and academic fit for S26. Not diverse at all (we are asian) and my S26 is at their top 25% stats-wise, probably top 10%!. Like you, I don’t want to influence my kid. I’m hoping that once he gets more acceptances that he is able to take some time to compare offers, programs, campus, and overall fit.
Yep, this. D26 promptly withdrew her EA apps to Case and Michigan.
I just have to say I am proud of D26 for finishing out the fall semester with A grades, despite the extremely dysfunctional AP Physics C class that you’ve all heard me complain about before. After much effort from senior teachers who are all trying to help this new physics teacher, D says “he’s become about 10% better at teaching… if he keeps this up, I expect he’ll be a good teacher in maybe 5 years or so…”
This is a great set of factors to consider. We’ve considered all of these for D26’s “safety” that she loves. And, D26 thinks she could see herself living in Atlanta area post graduation, and honestly I think it would be great for her to live there as well in part for factor #3 reasons. Though I have to admit, that is the part that breaks my heart about it. The notion that she may settle all the way across country. So, I’ll add my point #2a to your list:
If she will go to grad school, it may lead to her getting into an awesome grad school close to home and moving back after a fantastic 4-6 year adventure. 
This is interesting. I think sometimes kids want to “reinvent” themselves when they go to college. They may consciously or subconsciously pick something totally different than what you’d expect just because they want to shed the persona they’ve had forever.
This isn’t really in reference to @SpreadsheetMom’s D26, but just general pondering…
We’re thinking about this now, as our oldest considers grad schools. She applied all over – Texas, Colorado, Delaware, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Illinois, Virginia, Georgia.
BUT, she didn’t look as far as California because that seemed too far away. Also, I would be thrilled if she got into the Georgia school and picked that one. 
She toured it over the break with a friend of hers who is from Birmingham – he applied to the same school for a PhD program.
What partially drove her grad school choice was friends who were applying to the same schools – because she thinks it would be nice to know at least one person. It’s simultaneously hard and awesome to watch these kids grow up and make life decisions, knowing that hometown location might have a smidge to do with it, but not necessarily the primary factor.
I think this is the reason some (not all) kids dont want to go to their flagship state university where they’ll know multiple people even if it’s unlikely they’ll see them much on campus among ten to forty thousand people.
Sometimes the kids they know are ones they didnt like in HS and they dont want to interact with them (even though unlikely).
My kid wanted zero to do with our state flagship or even many of the privates in our state, even though our state flagship is further away than a couple of the schools in other states that she applied to because she didn’t want to go where everyone else was going. She loves it here and has lots of great friends and I don’t think she’s intent on reinventing herself, but she just doesn’t want to move on to “13th grade”. She’s ready to be where “everyone doesn’t know everyone else’s business”. That’s also why she only wanted to go to a big school. But your point still stands.
It’s interesting that your kid thought of your state flagship as somewhere where everyone knows everyone’s business, I always thought of them as the opposite of that because of size, even if tons of kids from a kid’s high school goes there.
My kid wanted nothing to do with flagship, or any state school because they are huge. She only wanted small schools that feel like a little community with shared values. All the stereotypical college experiences those schools don’t have (frats/sororities, big time sports), are things she wanted nothing to do with. It kind of reminds me of when I lived in New York and everyone tried to tell me how awesome it was because you could get takeout or do whatever at 2am. I was like, I don’t want to be doing whatever at 2am. She really is my kid. 
Brings to mind the first kid D19 met at NYU, at move-in. Introduced himself as Jack. His parents kept calling him “John” during the parent tour. Apparently it was the same name as his father and this was his chance to be his own person.
I don’t know about reinventing herself, but D26’s private high school is a small, homogeneous bubble where she’s been attending for 14 years (did an extra year after kindergarten) – and she doesn’t quite fit in. She friendly with a lot of kids, especially the band/theatre kids, but she doesn’t have tight friends.
She definitely wants to break out and go somewhere completely different, and our state flagship was never on the table. But partially that’s because it’s a giant SEC school with big sports and Greek life, and that’s not who she is at all.
(The marching band thing causes a conflict, because that’s where you find marching band – at a big school with sports.)
Anyhow. She’s still soul-searching for the right kind of fit. Small schools are out because she very adamantly doesn’t want High School 2.0.
She sees the sort of friends that her older sister has found in college, and she’s hoping for that – which is why she’s really trying to think out her college choices.
I dated a woman in college who gave herself a completely new name when she got to college. Family and everyone from home knew her by a different name. Knew her for months before I learned that. Wife’s best friend went by her Korean name in college after using a bland American name all growing up.
My sister did that but for grad school. Had always been one name growing up (her given middle name), had a nickname that very close people knew her as, and then changed to her original given first name. It is still weird to me that most people call her by her formal given name now.
I think part of this may be the cheer thing. At our state flagship, there would be a few others on the team that she’s cheered with over the years.
I’m with you on this. People used to complain about how everything in Boston shuts down at 1 am and in NY you can do whatever all night long. I was always like, “yeah, I prefer not to do whatever all night long. I’m good with sleeping after 1 am”.
Sounds like she’s being very deliberate about it and she’ll land in the right place for her!
Mine wants nothing to do with her state school or anything close to here - she really just wants to explore and do something different. (Also she says we live in a boring area -haha! It is very ‘suburbia’). Right now her best option is still in the midwest -but she’s hoping for some news from one of the coastal schools. She just wants something COMPLETELY different!