I live about 10 minutes from UPS. You likely dodged a bullet. They are in financial trouble. It’s so beautiful though.
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C25 has made their decision to attend a university “across the pond.” While it is the right decision, it will take me a while to let go of two which got away. Emerson College had the perfect major, student body, and environment for my quirky, talented, opinionated kid. The University of Toronto is one of the most highly regarded universities in the world in one of the most diverse cities in North America. Sigh. Maybe for grad school!
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This is me- I love everything about Elon. S24 ended up not even applying. D26 is likely applying but is already finding schools higher up her list. So it will likely be the one that got away, twice!
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For my son it was Carleton. He loved everything about it and really bonded with the alum that interviewed him. He tells me that he still thinks about it all the time, even though he loves his school and has had a great experience there.
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Do you have more information about this? We just visited UPS and were very impressed!
Thank you. The first link is obviously satire, but the second is helpful.
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Oh. Oops
“After members of the campus administration blew half the school endowment renting out a genuine live ostrich for a gala”
The way I heard the story was it was an emu that was purchased (not rented) and it was a wine tasting not a gala.
Are you sure this is satire not just factually flawed?
Upon further review, I will admit the discussion of the Chemistry department manufacturing “environmentally friendly” meth amphetamine to offset budget deficits did seem “sketchy”.
@Ally86 you may want to consider…
It appears the school had been deficit spending for several years but has started to implement some changes to ensure their future. I think a fair concern would be the extent to which these changes could impact a students experience.
They don’t appear to have any near term solvency issues although I do get concerned with statements like this; “millions of dollars of revenue enter the budget each year generated solely from unearned investment income.” Given the recent market negativity a school reliant on growing the size of its student body and investment income could find themselves squeezed on both fronts further adversely impacting the resources available to students.
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I guess now that the ink is dry on her SIR, I can share the ones that got away for me:
Top choice:
St. Olaf–Boy, this is such a great school. Warm, friendly, down-to-earth kids, beautiful campus, academic rigor in a collaborative environment. If I could re-live my life (and still somehow have my amazing friends from college), this is where I would have gone. I have an S27–maybe it’ll be a good place for him? We’ll see. My D25 couldn’t get over the lack of ballet, so it hasn’t really been the running for a while, but she hasn’t been willing to decline it, because it resonated with her for a really long time.
Special mentions:
Hope College–it never got the look it deserved, even though I know she likely would have chosen her present school at the end of the day. A friend’s daughter is considering Hope and she sent me a long message about it. I had D25 listen to it. She said, “I could have been happy there.”
WashU–D25 has stated that if she weren’t pursuing a BFA Dance, this is where she would have ended up. She loved the people/campus/community feel/high level academics, etc, etc, etc. She couldn’t entirely write it off, because she loved it, so now she is saying, “Maybe for grad school!”
She still needs to decline these and other schools, but these are the ones that pull at my heartstrings the most.
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Ok, it’s that time of year where the final acceptances are rolling in and students are starting to make their decisions. Time for another installment of — The Ones that Got Away.
I’ll start off:
As some of you may remember, my D25 was unsure whether she wanted to go to college at all. She planned a gap year living at home while working a job and taking some classes at Normandale Community College. But then in mid August she changed her mind, decided she was going to try “regular college” after all, applied to UW-Stout, was admitted and off she went! It has turned out way better than we had hoped, but that leaves me with the following:
Normandale. What a gem of a CC: quality classes, devoted professors, interesting and diverse student body, great ties to local employers, well kept facilities. Even walking trails and a Japanese garden! I would have been very proud to have a Normandale sticker on the back window of my car, and I still feel a little wistful whenever I happen to drive by the campus.
Augsburg. Another college with devoted faculty and diverse students. This one in the midst of an interesting, slightly gritty, part of Minneapolis. Part of a consortium with other schools in the Twin Cities, so you can take classes at Macalester, Hamline, St. Kate’s or St. Thomas. The vibe would have fit her in a lot of ways and her department of study has a lot of good profs.
Gustavus Adolphus. Some people think that St. Olaf is the quintessential upper Midwest liberal arts college, but they are wrong; it’s actually Gustavus. Don’t get me wrong, I have lots of respect and love for St. Olaf, but I might just love Gustavus a little more. The education is strong across fields, the professors are devoted, the alumni network is strong, and the campus is gorgeous. To get there you drive through some of MN’s most beautiful farmland with rolling hills and rivers, past The Jolly Green Giant, and there you arrive in about the cutest town ever. My daughter’s area of study is a particular strength there. If she were at all interested in LACs (sadly she wasn’t) this place might have been heaven.
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I love hearing about schools that I’m not familiar with! We have a school like what you’re describing in town here – Oglethorpe – that is not on most people’s radar, and I just love driving by it.
My D26 committed to Georgia Tech, which is great for many reasons.
However, I kind of loved WPI for her. She got in with really good merit, but it was still more expensive than she thought it was worth. For some reason, there was just nothing compelling about the school for her. Ah, well. I think it could have been a perfect fit.
She loved RIT and hated to let it go. She had that love-at-first-sight feeling when we visited last year, right after a giant February snowstorm. Lots of things aligned in terms of merit and an easy direct flight and friends who lived nearby, etc. But something about the major itself bugged her – it was too scripted, and she wanted more flexibility to forge her own path. And she thought she’d have fewer options to pivot if she hated it. Plus, no marching band.
Miami Ohio wasn’t a good fit overall, but the kid is wistful about the particular department she was looking at. Because she did a summer program there, she got to know the director and a couple of the professors, and then we spent a weekend there while she interviewed for a scholarship – so the faculty got to know her, too. I think she really would have liked the program, but alas, the location and school itself weren’t quite right.
Finally, she had applied to Pitt because they had a cool program, it was rolling admissions, and she fell in love with Pittsburgh – on paper – while she was considering Carnegie Mellon. But she got too bogged down this year with school and extracurriculars and visiting other colleges, and we just couldn’t make the Pitt admitted students day happen. She was tapped out and made the decision to let it go. But I can’t help but feel that we wasted the honors college acceptance and $15K merit offer!
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So many good choices!
I think the lesson from this thread may be that if you put a lot of thought into creating your application list, that by the end of the process you will have multiple “ones that got away.”
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The one that got away for us was one D22 was at for one semester before transferring, Warren Wilson College near Asheville NC. Tiny school, super hands on work college with a farm. Gorgeous setting, but she felt it was a little too hippy for her. H and I are still wistful about it 3 years later.
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My son’s best friend went there, was on a sports team, and was bullied pretty severely. He left after his freshman year. Anecdotal of course, but just thought I’d share.
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Rhodes College. DIckinson College. Vassar College.
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Wow, is this timely for us. Until Friday at 4:05 pm, it was essentially a three-college race between Holy Cross, Gonzaga, and UCSD. D26 got the (slightly surprising) news that she had been accepted to UCSD a couple minutes after 4 and called me immediately. The true surprise was that the next words out of her mouth were, “And I’m going!”
In so many ways this was a wise decision; to get into one of the top tier UCs as a CA resident is really “the dream,” especially with her relatively low GPA. There will now be the possibility of us helping her– somewhat– with law school should she decide to go; her major program at UCSD (philosophy) is very highly rated; we can still go on our fun family vacations together; she will only be 30 minutes away, etc. etc. etc.
But it’s still bittersweet. We both really liked Gonzaga when we visited, with its happy student body, sense of community, and sense of Jesuit values to serve others (although neither of us are remotely religious). They gave her merit to equal the cost of attending a UC. Secretly, I still have hopes that my younger daughter might attend there 
And Holy Cross, my alma mater, with its small classes, good connections with professors, and also Jesuit values and a happy, hardworking student body. And I have the feeling that if D30 applied there, she wouldn’t get in because they will see that D26 declined.
But… we just couldn’t get over UCSD’s advantages and opportunities, and most importantly the law school thing. With HC, I would have had to listen to four years of my husband’s b*tching (ok, somewhat justifiably) about paying $91K/year. And we would have had to sell a real estate asset that is in a fire-prone, difficult to insure area within the year.
Anyway, with one Yes come the inevitable No(s) and there’s a tinge of sadness to it. Today D26 and I are driving down to UCSD to get some merch at the bookstore, which should be truly fun
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D25 is doing well at Skidmore, but there were also really great things about each of her other acceptances that we visited (esp Oberlin, Denison, and Dickinson) that still give me a twinge sometimes. But one thing I am definitely appreciating: Skidmore is a 4-hour drive for us, but the others were two plane rides away!
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