<p>Kate, Aunt J just called from her farm just south of Pittsfield, Mass and we had to tell her the bad news about Billsville, too. She , as a retired prof from Barnard, already has had to live with disappointment in this process. (She’s holding her breath for Amherst) Those SAT Subject Tests just didn’t seem to make the cut for Senior year activities. Simply poor prior planning on Dad’s part.</p>
<p>Ohio University-It sounded wonderful, really, but I realized I didn’t want to go anywhere were I couldn’t practice martial arts.</p>
<p>UWashington-Beautiful campus but not accessible at all.</p>
<p>Dartmouth-I couldn’t get in, and I don’t like a frat scence. Still love the ski slope thing, though.</p>
<p>Northwestern-Same as above, only replace “ski slope” with “Chicago”</p>
<p>UAlaska-If it had the programs I wanted, I’d be there in a second.</p>
<p>Spashmom,</p>
<p>Agreed about Rhodes, especially for S1. (Not that that comes as any surprise to you!!)
And congrats on the 33! Wow!</p>
<p>I am sorry that S2 is not looking at Sewanee, but anything might happen, and he has yet to complete apps to any college!</p>
<p>I still wonder about Oberlin which my D got into last year off the wait list, but in the end, she chose Colgate.</p>
<p>Fortunately, D is not mourning, I think she recognizes that it and her classmates are more mainstream, but so far she is happy there, is comfortable standing out a bit and it has gently nudged her in directions which we as parents are happy about.</p>
<p>Why is everyone here mourning the loss of Williams? While Admissions does a great job at painting a wonderful picture of the place, it’s not so great once you get there.</p>
<p>Colleges removed from son’s list:</p>
<p>Cornell - too big
Clark - too many safeties/low matches and one had to go
Union - too fratty
Amherst - too rural
GWU - too urban
Wash U - I think all the mail left a bad taste in his mouth
Wesleyan - didn’t like the physical campus; it just didn’t click
Rice - too close to home</p>
<p>The one I hated to see go was Wesleyan. I loved the feeling I got from the students… But it’s his choice.</p>
<p>williams07, I thought you were transferring out. You seem to be in the minority. Sorry your experience at Williams hasn’t been good.</p>
<p>D is so happy where she is. I mourn Cal just for the PC wildness of the place. But D is, as they say, over the moon at her smaller university and I cannot mourn for long.</p>
<p>Firefly, MoWC, Curmudgeon, Im sorry I wont have a chance to talk Williams with you. For a small school surrounded by mountains and cow pastures, Williams certainly generates a lot of emotion! The response is visceral and immediate love/hate. I never argue with a kids reaction, though. There are too many fine schools out there to try to force the peg in the wrong shaped hole. For my son, it seemed to be and has proven to be, a perfect fit.</p>
<p>My sons highschool limited the number of applications to 8. Since he could have easily come up with 18 I didnt discourage any editing on his part. Ultimately he was accepted by his ED choice which meant he edited ALL others and this is just theoretical, but personally I regretted that Amherst and Swarthmore disappointed in the arts area and would have most likely been xd.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>And Stanford and Wellesley. . .but you can only go to one school.</p>
<p>Add me to the list of moms regretting the loss of Wellesley. My d. even had an on-campus interview scheduled, then cancelled after she had arrived in Boston. She just has this thing for boys. </p>
<p>Funny, my son was the opposite… he opted for a college with a whole lot of girls…</p>
<p>Don’t know what she’d say, but:</p>
<p>Williams (I’m with Momrath, and I know she’s a Williams parent - it is a love/hate thing, we loved Williams, she couldn’t wait to shake the dust off her tootsies)</p>
<p>Wellesley (another no boys-no way)</p>
<p>Carleton (it did make the final list, nicest admit department)</p>
<p>Univ of Chicago (in the end it would not have been right for the person she has become, but maybe she would have grown differently)</p>
<p>Stanford (Stanford would have been great for the person she HAS become, but I would have hated sending so far away :))</p>
<p>Momrath, both my daughter and I really appreciated Williams- it has so much to offer. Ultimately she decided her list was top-heavy and she likes her other reaches more than Williams. It was the last college to come off her list, and it was done with a good bit of regret.</p>
<p>My D is so loving her choice (& I for her), but like others here, I mourn her not being able to partake of many colleges simultaneously. I respect each campus for what each has to offer, uniquely. Yet I realize that those she turned down (Penn, Yale, Berkeley), are grad-school possibilities.</p>
<p>She is living such a balanced life where she is (audiophile – just providing some correction to your D’s assumptions). And yet her classes are as challenging as she sought in a U. (i.e., extremely so). When she was in h.s. she & I got so sick of alums returning to their rigorous h.s., to inform the student body that college was “so much easier” than high school (!). Her classes are very demanding, yet she’s going to campus & off-campus events, going into The City, continuing 1 on-campus & 1 off-campus extracurricular, loving her roommates, finding new friends, keeping the old. Oh, & she’s working a few hours a week.</p>
<p>Well, although I don’t recommend this route to everyone, DS is attending two schools this year. Bates right now as a Visiting Student. Tulane when he returns in January. He never even applied to any small LACs, since he’s Engineering-bound. But I love the fact that he had this experience. But, as I say, “don’t try this at home.”</p>
<p><em>just a little dark humor</em></p>
<p>jmmom:</p>
<p>Very true! Actually, you can attend more than one school even without the spur of Katrina. It’s called Visiting Student program if in the US or Study Abroad program if outside. I don’t know of students who do both.</p>
<p>removed:</p>
<p>oxford. it just seemed too unattainable.
carnegie mellon. too much tech/eng emphasis.
mcgill. didn’t seem like a good place to figure out what you wanted to do…seemed like you needed to know already. plus it required that you use your ap/ib credits and i would have had to go into my 2nd year and i didn’t want to do that.
ucberkeley. didn’t want to go to cali, train ride would have been far too far.
swarthmore. visited and didn’t like it.
williams/amherst. figured they would be similar to swarthmore…just too small.</p>
<p>more that I cut, but don’t remember exactly why:
johns hopkins
upenn
columbia
syracruse
cornell</p>