<p>Dadx3: thanks! </p>
<p>My DS just entered his dream school this fall and already he’s filling out transfer apps. Why?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The school doesn’t quite “jive” with the image it portrays in the glossy brochures as a studious, highly academic environment. What the photos don’t show are the cigarette butts all over the ground throughout the campus, the filthy dorms, the lack of administrative cohesiveness, the faculty apathy/dissatisfaction, and the stressed and stoned students who are in their 5th and 6th year of education to earn a BA.</p></li>
<li><p>The school is considered an intellectual’s paradise, but the imbalance (what with all the let’s-sit-around-talking-about-esoteric-things) leaves a lot to be desired when my ds wants to do something active, like go hiking/kayaking/biking through the woods, go horseback riding, go to an amusement park (or even the county fair, for that matter). He can’t find anyone who is willing to tear him/herself away from the non-stop gab sessions about the socioeconomics of matriarchal communities in the Ezulwini Valley of 1980s Swaziland. </p></li>
<li><p>A “major” that doesn’t have a single professor in the department! Example: An archaeology department with courses taught by anthropologists, psychologist, and sociologists. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>There are some great things about my ds’s present school, and he is sad about having to face up to the fact that this very selective school with the fabulous accolades isn’t working for him. </p>
<p>And the irony of it all is that the particular field ds is pursuing actually has the best research facility and instructors at our state third tier school! So it’s doubly hard for ds to reconcile this all within himself, especially after having bad-mouthed the state school for so long…</p>