To be fair, my job requires me to visit college campuses so my kids get dragged along with me. My 27 has been with me since 9th grade on my campus visits. So I know they have visited many more than most!
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Lots of schools to visit in Boston! That’s great they can look at schools together. WPI is great. I love Worcester, a lot to do and it’s close enough to Boston to go do things on the weekend. You can get between the two cities via the commuter rail.
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It is one of my 27s favorites, and I wouldn’t be shocked if they end up there…
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I hope you can share your experience of WPI’s Spring Preview Day. I think they have another one in April and I might suggest it to my son. It’s not too far away from us. I have heard from parents of students there that their kids really have loved it and have had a great experience.
We went to the fall preview day already! And 27 went to “Frontiers,” the 2-week summer program last summer:)
I love that you can switch majors there, readily. It sounds like just filling out a form, which is kind of amazing for an engineering school. Obviously if you do it late, you may delay graduation or something, but that this can be impossible many places.
At the open house, they realized the summer program they did was basically a big project - the same project that the majors do in the first term of their major! 
. They went to the robotics engineering 2-week program, and then on tour at preview day, went on the robotics tour and learned that:)
I learned it is possible for some kids ot get a Master’s in 4, yes 4 years (!) if they have substantial credits coming in, which is wild and typically very easy to get one in 5. You can’t fail a class, which they do for mental health reasons, the class will just disappear from your transcript (if I remember correctly) and you obviously have to retake it! Seems pretty easy to get research opportunities since not many grad students.
The term abroad (or away) project sounds really cool, though you don’t really get to pick what the project is, which is a bit strange, but for a very short time, and it seems like an incredible experience regardless, and you learn a ton of real-world experience of some sort.
I do n
ot love the small triple rooms many first years are in, but they are very conveniently located in center of campus, so there is that which is great!
It sounds like a great school in so many ways. But thinking more, it’s probably not the best fit for my child who at this point is interested in sciences (biochemistry, bio, or environmental science at WPI) but not engineering, although it is close enough to visit just in case. Although probably would be a reach, I’m guessing? Ha, now I’m talking myself out of suggesting a visit! Could combine with a visit to Clark, which I think could be a good fit and he could potentially get decent enough merit there to make it affordable.
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Yes, do that!
My 25 applied and got into both Clark and WPI! Both are great schools and have different vibes, obviously.
WPI has an INSANELY transparent and detailed next destinations dashboards where you can see where kids go to work and to grad school BY major, by year: https://cdc.wpi.edu/first-destination-dashboard/ which might be helpful….
Clark has a free (!!) Master’s program for many degrees, which is kind of amazing too. I have a relative whose kid is there (not science, though), and it has been a transformative experience for them.
My 25 had a not-incredible GPA (3.5UW?) , decent rigor for their school, good ECs, and was TO and got 23K at both Clark and WPI. They were initially deferred EA at WPI, but got in when ED2 was announced, so they didn’t have to wait until RD. At the time, WPI was test blind (not it is TO).
(feel free to message me 1:1 if you want more details, etc etc)
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My kid who is interested in WPI is interested in computational biology rather than engineering herself as well. It’s one of the few she found with a solid comp bio major that has a lot of both CS and bio in it (rather than bio + programming class). The major is small, but I imagine the classes all overlap with cs, bio, and bioengineering majors. She visited MIT on a free fly-in and wanted to add other STEM/tech schools to her list, and she liked the project-based idea as well as the no prerequisites flexibility of WPI.
Hi all. This is my first post on the site. My kiddo is class of 2027 here in NC. We are doing five college visits over spring break later this month: Univ of Puget Sound (UPS), Western Washington University (WWU), Lewis and Clark, Pacific University, and Willamette. I’ve cruised the boards to read others experiences, and that’s been fun. Looking forward to the visits personally, and I’m hoping it ignites more engagement in the kiddo.
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Welcome! The Pacific Northwest is one of my favorite areas of the country.
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When the Kid started high school, the Spouse and I told him that our parental financial contribution to his college education would equal the cost of attendance for the most expensive UC. I looked at the websites for the various UCs, and Berkeley appears to be the most expensive campus. The total cost of attendance for a student in the dorms entering this fall, including health insurance and personal expenses, is $54,388. That is a big chunk of change. Aside from real estate, the Kid’s college education will be our biggest purchase ever.
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Welcome! That’s a great tour plan. It doesn’t surprise me that you may be more excited, as I felt the same way before our college tour week. I think it did inspire my 27 a bit as we did visit a school they loved. I hope it does the same for yours.
@stuffedtacos that was a good plan. College is so expensive. We have communicated a budget and agreed they can apply to academic/financial reaches, but we can only contribute the budget.
Discussion of college on hold for the next few weeks except for March Madness.
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At UC Berkeley, if your student already has health insurance, you can waive the school insurance. It’s still really expensive, but that will save over $2,000.
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@gam Welcome! I’ve never been to the pacific northwest (!) I look forward to hearing about the trip.
@L_NewEngland Thanks for the info on WPI. The SATs are this week (in school) so that may help us have more sense of targets vs reaches, although I know the schools he would be considering would be TO. (Also, he’ll take the SATs a second time - he’s still in Alg 2/Trig and AP Lang with 2.5 months left of each class, despite AP exam being in May for AP Lang).
For those whose kids took the SATs recently, I hope they all felt good about the exam.
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Only got a brief update from my family on the first part of their trip. Kid didn’t move WPI up or down her current list – she liked it a lot on paper, so good that it met her expectations. My husband said he was more impressed than he expected to be – that their project based ethos seems real and meaningful. They also visited Wellesley (which my D28 wanted to see) and he said it was really obvious that Wellesley knows it’s prestigious, and WPI knows it’s not.
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Parent of class of ‘24 and ‘26. If anyone is still searching for a SAT resource, both my kids used the Erica Meltzer books for the Reading/Writing sections. They’re inexpensive and though the material is dense, my kids found them helpful.
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We visited Wellesley last week and had a fantastic tour and an abysmal information session. The family sitting next to us also could not believe the admissions counselor and then we saw another family later at lunch and that’s all we talked about was that info session. PM for more details if you want - I was upset and my student was “appalled” (their word).
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My third and youngest S27 has already seen UTK and Virginia Tech bc that’s where his siblings go (won’t apply to either) as well as Utah and Mizzou (didn’t like either). He’s a middle of the road with grades and test scores so a much different process than my older 2 who were much more competitive. Heading to U South Carolina and Indiana U next month s hoping he likes one of those at least! If not, I can’t imagine him applying to more than 4 schools as our state school is a great option.
Ooo we have a Wellesley tour in a couple weeks, I’m so intrigued now! I don’t expect D27 to love the vibe, but her school college counselor recommended it and it might be a good fit for her sister (D30) so we tacked it onto the trip. I’ll be sure to report back 
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Just returned from college tour with visits to Wash U, Vanderbilt, GT, Duke, Carnegie Mellon and Pitt. I think Carnegie Mellon might be off the list - I was happy my child likes Pitt because we need more targets.
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