I thought he was going to love it, I love Chicago. I couldn’t believe he had such a negative impression given we visit NJ multiple times to see my sister. Who thinks Chicago is uglier than north NJ ? He admitted the music scene was better in Chicago, but that was about it.
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So I haven’t quite caught up on the latest posts (love that this group is so active). We got back last night from our east coast college visits / vacation.
We really liked Boston and Philly, and had fun exploring both cities, eating well, etc. We even caught a 76ers game. But D26 did not fall in love any of the schools we visited. I guess it was productive because we were able to cross off some schools, and I definitely have a better sense of what type of schools she’ll connect with.
A summary is as follows for those interested:
Boston University (D liked the urban campus and diversity; but it does not have her preferred major and she felt it wasn’t worth 90k)
Northeastern (D overall hated it, although I rather liked the campus. She did not like the co-op model, multiple campuses, late start programs, etc. Said it lacked cohesion and felt like students were always coming and going. Also, the student speaker — who also ended up as our tour guide — was an aspiring finance bro who repeatedly mentioned his spreadsheet internship. Was not a good fit.)
Boston College (Probably the only school that will stay on D’s list, mostly bc the student speakers were so great. And it’s on the T line so urban adjacent.)
UConn (Way too rural for D26 with no real college town. Where do they hang out? Nursing presentation and tour was underwhelming, see below. Clinicals are up to 75 miles away!! Yes, that’s one way. Must have a car. Weirdly, the nursing presentation/tour was done entirely by students — one freshman and two sophomores — with absolutely no adult there at all. I like hearing student opinions, but this seemed weird and a little unprofessional. Anyway, we left before the general info session/tour.)
Villanova (D said too suburban, too spread out, too religious, no diversity. Campus seemed sleepy — It was a crisp day but still mid-day on a school day. Did a nursing specific tour. A nursing administrator provided a little info (was fine) but the student who did the nursing tour seemed unprepared so it was uncomfortable. This was the one time my D appreciated my questions. Otherwise it was all awkward silence.)
Edited To Add: I want to be clear that I am not criticizing the students themselves, but rather the adult decisions to have freshmen and sophomores running info sessions and tours — or not providing adequate tour training to students.
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I would say that it’s all about the quality of the training, not about whether it’s run by students. Plenty of schools have students successfully running the tours and presentations, and also have students in leadership positions training and supervising the tour guides. It is great experience for the students and can be done very professionally. Freshmen and sophomores can give perfectly good tours and info sessions, also. My S23 (now a sophomore) has been working as a tour guide since freshman year, and gets great reviews. Tour guides at his school spend their first semester training on all the information they need to know (must pass a test on this), write their own tour script and get feedback, give at least one mock tour and get feedback, and start giving tours in their second semester on the job, after they successfully get through training. After working one year, tour guides can apply to join the leadership team, and supervise and train other students.
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UConn is the only major university Ive seen without a major hotel within 15 miles of campus.
Where do they hang out? At the puppet museum.
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Agree its a cute college, but it isn’t that well known even in the Bay area! My kid isn’t interested either because of the required religion classes.
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You are absolutely correct. Training is the key. And, of course, almost every tour I have ever been on is student led.
I think this (nursing specific) info session felt different because there was no adult to even welcome us or introduce the students. Also, because the students had not started clinicals yet, they couldn’t say much when asked questions in that area.
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If you don’t mind me asking, what was the summer program? I only ask as my d26 has been rejected twice from nsliy for South Korea. Her first round she made it through to the interview and then got rejected. This last time she didn’t even get an interview. She’s going to apply again for a gap year.
I could be totally off base and you’re talking about a different program, but the timing lines up
It was a different program – I wasn’t familiar with nsliy, so I looked it up. Oh my goodness, that sounds amazing. But they have so few available spots that I can imagine it’s crazy hard to get into.
My D26 was applying for something much less reachy – our state governor’s honors program. A student has to jump through some hoops to be nominated by their school, then they get to choose a subject area to pursue and do a lengthy application that likely includes several essays, etc.
If they make it to semifinalist level after the application, then they’re invited to an interview. But the interview might include different things based on subject. The social studies kids are given current events topics and put in a group with other interviewees and asked to discuss. The communicative arts kids are given an article to read ahead of time and then put in a group to discuss.
My D26 was applying for Latin – the initial application had a translation and a series of pictures that she had to caption in Latin, in addition to essays about what she does outside of school for Latin, her opinion of the Romans’ greatest contribution to society (with no outside sources used), and so on.
She was invited for an interview, and she also had to take a poetry translation test in person, which she said was fairly challenging.
She didn’t get in after this stage. My D22 did, however, four years ago to the same program, also for Latin. (The process was a little different because Covid, but she did get to attend in person, albeit masked the whole time.) It was life-changing for her, so it’s a little disappointing that D26 won’t have that same experience – but you can’t win 'em all. And honestly, Latin isn’t really central to D26’s story like it was for my D22 (who is still taking Latin and Greek and classics in college and thriving, lol).
That stinks that your kiddo hasn’t gotten in to the nsliy South Korea program. Fingers crossed she can make it happen!
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Anyone else waiting for school day SAT results later today ?
During one’s time in college would be a great opportunity to do 1 or more study abroad. All is not lost and your child’s career goals are not shot if they don’t get into NSLI-Y.
A lot of colleges have semester-long study abroad, but your kid could, for example, choose to TWO of them and do both in South Korea. Combine that with a college with a strong Korean language program and you’d be all set.
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Omg. C26 got 1500 on the SAT! (740E/760M). So that’s one and done! I am thrilled. (I was a little worried that they’d want to try again to shoot for 800 in math because they can get like that, but they’re happy to be done too lol.) I think it’s above the 75th percentile of every department (some of the colleges have higher overall) that they’re looking at. Now we just need to keep the grades up amid rehearsals…
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WOOO! So great to be done with that!
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Hey - does anyone know where the results thread hides? If there is one? I want to take a look and see if my daughter’s safety-target-reach list seems realistic. I know it’s never a perfect match -but it might help make sure the list is realistic.
There is this thread: Can more graduating/graduated seniors do "actual results" threads?
But if you have specific schools you can look at the results in those specific threads. Type the name of the university and class of 2029 in the search engine and you should be able to find this year’s conversation.
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Thank you! I just want to make sure she is set up for at least some good results. We need some need/merit funding to come through -so that makes it extra nerve wracking.
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In addition to the discussion results thread, they’ve set up spreadsheets for a lot of the schools with results summaries.
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Do you know where those are ‘hiding’? 
So they’ve changed the website a bit and I’m on an iPad so I don’t know if that changes the interface, but if you look at the “colleges” tab on top it has an alphabetical list as well as by acceptance rate
If you go into each college you should see a results thread example in university of Arizona, it’s the “ University of Arizona Class of 2029 Official Thread” , but I don’t see a results spreadsheet (possibly because of its auto admit criteria)
If you look for example at Boston University, it also has a thread called BU RD Results Survey 2025 and if you go into that you can choose the link to view results. There may be an easier way. (The old home page used to have the alphabetical list at the side in the home page which I found easier to get to a particular college.)
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I just looked at the pages for the schools D26 is looking at. All portal astrology, nothing really meaningful. Boo.
Yeah that part’s annoying