We got back from our spring break college tours this weekend. We drove almost 1300 miles all told, but it was really clarifying for D27, so it was well worth it. D27 is now sure she wants to pursue an animation major.
We saw Bryn Mawr (lovely, but no longer what D27 wants), RIT (more in a moment) and Carnegie Mellon (I’m kind of relieved others here weren’t fond of it, because I strongly disliked the school and C27 wasn’t into it, either).
RIT really impressed, though. My overall impression of the school is that it pulsed with energy and creativity. It was a cold and misty day when we visited, and that didn’t bother C27 at all! We joked ahead of time that the tour schedule was interminable (info session, campus tour, dorm tour and major-specific tour), but that turned out to be fine. D27 got an in-depth look at the animation department and was incredibly happy with it. I loved that one of the heads of the department came out to meet her and patiently answered all of my questions. He was warm and encouraging, which I appreciated.The tour also helped me realize that there are a lot of jobs available in animation (types of jobs, not actual numbers of slots), which made me less nervous about D27 pursuing such a narrow degree. This was the first animation school D27’s seen, but she absolutely loved it and is considering ED.
I have a vague recollection that your kid didn’t want a tech-y school, but I may be misremembering that. Below are a few “generalist” schools that could be possibilities:
Southern Illinois Carbondale: About 8600 undergrads, offers a doctorate in the 3 fields, and is a surprisingly heavy-hitter when it comes to people going on to earn a doctorate. Although there are certainly no guarantees, I suspect your D would be competitive for their full ride.
U. of Denver (CO): About 6600 undergrads and offers through a doctorate in the 3 subjects, though no PhDs were awarded in CS in the most recent year.
U. of Rochester (NY): About 6100 undergradsa and offers through a PhD in the 3 fields.
If more tech-focused schools are options then
Clarkson (NY) has about 2300 undergrads and offers through a PhD in bio, cs, and math, so I suspect there’s sufficient depth for your D. They tend to be very generous with merit aid, but make sure to take a look at the university finances (do that for all colleges, actually).
Illinois Institute of Technology has about 3100 undergrads, and its Chicago location means that it should be easier to get flights back home. Again, offers a doctorate in all 3 fields of interest leading to a presumption of sufficient depth.
Michigan Tech: About 6k undergrads and offers doctoral programs in all 3 fields as well.
New Mexico Institute of Technology: A WUE school of about 1100 undergrads that offers through a PhD in all 3 fields, though no math doctorates were awarded in the most recent year of IPEDS data.
Rensselaer Polytechnic (NY, about 5700 undergrads) and Stevens Institute of Technology (NJ, about 4200 undergrads) also offer doctorates in the three areas.
It is great to hear everyone’s updates. My kid is just back at school from a long spring break (he gets 2 weeks because our public has a “balanced calendar”). Was hoping he’d make more progress on the college search, but alas…Trying, somewhat unsuccessfully, to get him to squeeze in coach update emails in between music practices and sports practices and getting ready to take practice AP tests for his courses at school. He made some progress on his email at least over break, but doesn’t seem to like the whole deleting/filing thing. He had a good visit to Colorado College over the break–I feel like that might be a good fit for him as he is really outdoorsy. I feel like he still has a LOT of schools on his list and hasn’t done a lot of narrowing yet. 2nd SAT came back better in verbal but worse in math, so he will probably go with his ACT since that was better across the board (and he is hoping to do some flavor of STEM). I think extra testing is probably not something worth investing in at this point. There are a few other places he should probably try to visit to stay on coach radars, but I’m not sure it is going to happen before the end of the academic year. He is hanging on by the skin of his teeth in a couple of his AP classes (he is taking 5 of them this year), and staying caught up on the work while the big track and orchestra commitments hit simultaneously in the next month and a half is going to be super important.
Fyi my 25 is at RIT in engineering - feel free to DM if you have questions- it’s definitely full of clubs and a fit school IMO! Faculty do seem engaged and hands on, in great part as not many grad students..
it’s an interesting mix of kids!
the president juts started in July and so far he seems good from what I’ve observed from afar..
My new RIT fun fact is 2 alums trained Artemis crew to take Photos before launch (RIT has a very strong photography and imaging science program)
We toured at WPI last week – I think S27 was surprised at how much he liked it. He’s going to keep thinking on it for now – but a big down side for him is how far away from home it is, so he wants to think about other smaller/tech-focused/nerdy-vibe schools closer to home.
I went back to our initial research spreadsheet and picked out a few more for him to think on a bit. We want to take at least one more tour this spring/early summer. I think 3-4 hours would be his ideal distance, and there isn’t much that fits that description within that radius, but a 6-9 hr drive is still closer than attending a school that is definitely a flight away from home. We’ll see! He might still decide the smaller school vibe isn’t the priority and stick with a larger state school.
I think that one will be on my S30’s list (he would love a school closer to the mountains! ). It’s a little outside the range my S27 wants to look at for his next visit (it’s 13 hrs-ish for us). South Dakota School of Mines, Michigan Tech, Missouri S&T, and Rose Hulman are all more in range. Milwaukee School of Engineering, maybe…but S27 is less keen on big cities. I think Milwaukee has way less of an urban vibe than say Chicago (which is a definite “no” for him).
We are a little more iffy on Rose being on his list, because when S25 was admitted there the financial aid package didn’t really work out so well for him (Rice, where he ended up going, gave him a much better package!).
I live in the Chicago area and would advise against going to a college in Chicago. Our S25 is attending a college outside of IL and so will our D27. And as soon as she is off, we are moving too. Let’s just say I have been living here for 23 years (my husband and I have lived in more than 10 cities including New York City, Boston, and Miami), and at this point I feel like I am back at living in a 3rd world country raided by crime. We don’t allow our children to go to the city.
Chicago is my favorite US city! I’m originally from NY and my H is from Boston and we’ve lived all over too. We lived here back in the mid '90s and had to move away for H’s job and were able to come back 8 years ago. We’re in the city nearly every week. I don’t feel unsafe at all and I had no qualms about letting our D take the L when she was home from college. For sure it’s a city and you need to be street smart but that is true everywhere.
We have family member from back east who came for college and had a great experience!
My niece graduated from UChicago in 2025 and loves Chicago so much. She is still living there and has no plans to leave. She has said there are certain areas she avoids and being aware of her surroundings is important, but overall she does not feel unsafe.
everyone has different experiences, so I don’t want to dismiss anything, but we have a neighbor who’s son is going to UChicago and is having a great time and my wife’s cousin lives there with his family and they love it as well and we’ve had a blast every time we’ve visited. However, I’d only go in the summer… those winters seem like no joke
It’s fun to hear about all the visits going on and hear what everyone’s impressions are. My S27 is still not focused on identifying schools for visits, which is fine. We wouldn’t be able to visit any during April vacation due to other commitments anyway. The plan is to do a trip to NYS or PA this summer if there are schools there he would like to consider and then see a few NE schools in early fall. He doesn’t seem interested in going farther away at this point. This semester has been much less busy as his winter sport was more intense and disruptive to class with early dismissals. He seems to be managing better in his Math class, so his grades are better and he seems less stressed. He’s doing very well in his other classes. I’m quite proud of him. Other than that, he needs to work on finding a summer job. He works at a local grocery store already but says he wants something better this summer…I don’t think he gets that he needs to start working toward that now (I mean, we’ve told him that repeatedly but what do we know?)
Visited colleges with D27 (merit seeking high stats kid from the West, interested in Philosophy / Stats / Econ / PPE) in Virginia over spring break. Reviews of campuses is in the big “colleges moved off or up the list” thread. William and Mary (loved it will be applying), University of Richmond (beautiful, but not sure of student body vibes, its a maybe), Washington and Lee (really Greek and not her scene - basically hated it). We also saw Georgetown for a non-official visit since we were in the area. No merit there so it isn’t on her list, but was interesting to see. Hoping to do a Pacific Northwest trip as well before making her final list.
I have heard from colleagues that University of Richmond is strongly Greek and that Greek life dominates the social life there. The current statistic from the admissions rep about a month ago was that 44% of women are involved in Greek life. So if that’s not your daughter’s cup of tea, she may not be super happy there. Of course, students can always find “their people” anywhere, but to hear that Greek life is dominant and that percentage of women participate, it would make me hesitate to send a student there that wasn’t excited about the prospect of joining.
So so far, we’ve managed to get in all our tours over summer/spring breaks, but DS 27 has had his heart set on taking a tour of the music department at USC and they only offer them Fridays at 11 AM. Luckily their spring break didn’t overlap with ours, but earlier earlier in the year, I was thinking we would have to take a day off school/work to make it happen.
I wish there could be more of a happy medium. My kiddo has seven classes and only one of them isn’t weighted. He is not even doing the IB program, but he managed to make band count as an IB class. I kept waiting for his counselor to step in and say it’s too much, but no
S27’s SAT scores came back and he was pretty disappointed. Far below his practice scores and his target (which he apparently set for himself). Objectively, it was not a bad score. But it’s also definitely not a score that will make his applications more competitive. His plan is to take again in June and August, which to be honest we would have had him do anyway although he probably didn’t realize that. He scored much higher in Verbal than Math so I’m hopeful there is a lot of opportunity for improvement. On a positive note, he found out he earned the Seal of Biliteracy the same day his scores came out.
I have friends with kids in the Class of 26 who are making their final decisions now and its really cool to hear about all the different schools being selected and the reasons they are choosing them.
Both my kids (D24, D26) used Khan academy for math. They really improved their SAT scores the 2nd time they took it because they were more relaxed and were used to the format.
It’s a very small data point but if you’re chasing merit, may become a more important data point.
I dont think there’s any issue taking it 3 or even 4 times. The only thing I recommend is not to exert too much pressure.
My kids scored higher because they were relaxed, not because they studied more, although it’s important to identify patterns in errors and focus on those.
). It’s a little outside the range my S27 wants to look at for his next visit (it’s 13 hrs-ish for us). South Dakota School of Mines, Michigan Tech, Missouri S&T, and Rose Hulman are all more in range. Milwaukee School of Engineering, maybe…but S27 is less keen on big cities. I think Milwaukee has way less of an urban vibe than say Chicago (which is a definite “no” for him).