D24 considering all of these schools and looking for input as a parent to help her in her decision making process. Will be visiting CSU/Utah/Oregon State in the next month. Has visited U of A and loved it.
Admitted as Kinesiology major at all but Exercise Physiology for U of A. Honors for all but has not heard about Honors at U of A.
Wants spirited student body, big sports, surrounding area with “enough” to do. She does ski and hike but doesn’t necessarily seek those out. She felt she really wanted the So Cal beach vibe but has come to realize that it may be harder to obtain - will not hear from UCs until mid to end of March and we want to do research before that. Has been admitted to SDSU and it is on her list.
She may want to go into Physical Therapy or maybe medicine. I am not a fan of the cut throat environment in the prerequisite classes at many of the UCs for my daughter. Would love if she could be at a school with support through the Honors college that would challenge her but not have her feeling like she was drowning from day 1.
We are booking visits to Colorado State, Utah and Oregon State. She is sun loving so not sure how Oregon State visit will go. She doesn’t think she will be interested in the Greek system and would love a school that has a strong social scene not dependent on the Greek system.
Looking for general input from anyone with experience at these schools. We would like her to be positioned to have solid opinions once the UC decisions come out to not have a frantic few weeks in April. Any input re academic environment/support, housing issues, food, school spirit, social scene welcome. Any input from CA families - good, bad or otherwise also appreciated.
I think after your visits she’ll know. Some schools just speak to you.
The U of A Honors dorm is awesome with a dining hall on the bottom and gym abd counseling center adjacent. Lame skiing an hour away but the desert landscape is great. It could be, depending on the student, less than a UC $ wise.
You’ll find no better skiing or hiking from a major flagship than the U. It’s close. It’s huge in quantity etc.
The Oregon coast - an easy drive from
Corvallis - is super nice.
That you’re visiting will tell u tons. Eat in the dining hall. Stop kids on campus and ask them about the things you care about- housing, food etc. Ask the academic depts to set you up with a student to talk about the programs. .
S23 goes to Colorado State and is in the Honors program. Check if there is an Honors tour that you can get as part of your regular tour (there was when we went). They do a great job explaining the program. He loves it. It’s more of a “show what you know” program than a test heavy program and he has loved the small interdisciplinary discussion based classes vs. the boring gen eds he’d have to take instead. The honors dorm is very nice, but there is no guarantee you’ll get in as there isn’t enough space for everyone. My son picked a learning community in another dorm based on his major and loves it.
The school in general is pretty laid back and has a “you do you” attitude. Definitely not cutthroat.
Fort Collins is an absolute gem of a college town. Old Town is walking distance from campus and has everything you’d want in a college town. It’s fun and charming. To the south of campus is every big box store you’d ever need.
My son has really taken advantage of all the outdoor activities and goes hiking and exploring every weekend. Horsetooth Reservoir is only 10 minutes from campus and is a fun place to go if you don’t want to spend a whole day exploring (although you could). If you rent a car when you visit, I recommend you check it out. RMNP and Estes Park are only an hour away.
Housing varies, but everyone seems to be happy where they end up after the disappointment of not getting the “best dorm” wears off. I highly recommend joining a learning community and Health Sciences would be in Pinon which is very nice.
There are several dining halls with good variety. Something for everyone. Basketball and football get a large crowd. The marching/pep band has its own following. It’s easy for students to get their free tickets. Football has been fun to follow this year.
The social scene seems to be friend and activity based as there is a lot to do both on campus and in Fort Collins. I’m not sure about the party scene as my son is in bed early on weekends to get out hiking before the sun comes up.
There are tons of kids from CA. If you join the CSU parent page on Facebook, they are very welcoming.
We have found CSU to be very “user-friendly” and they seem to try to keep families in the loop about what is happening on campus. My son has had great advising and opportunities, but I suspect that can vary from major to major.
100% agreement with vwlizard’s assessment of Colorado State and Fort Collins. It’s a great college town and an active campus which, as part of WUE, has a fair amount of out-of-staters. That’s something to look for when you’re looking at another state’s public universities - you don’t want campus to empty out on weekends.
In addition to being part of WUE, Colorado State offers scholarships to out-of-state students, as you probably already know.
You didn’t mention it, so you might’ve already discarded it as a choice, but I’d also like to put in a word for ASU if it fits your daughter’s academic goals. It’s not part of WUE for the Tempe campus (neither is UA, though) but it’s trying to become a national university and so it offers good merit aid to out-of-staters. There’s a scholarship estimator on its website (I don’t know if we’re allowed to link).
I’m mentioning it because it has the athletics and other activities and of course is sunny, but also because it really belies its party-school reputation. My best friend’s daughter went there and graduated with honors even though her high school years were spent on athletics and social activities - ASU was the making of her, academically.
I thought of ASU because you mentioned the CA beach vibe and ASU has TONS of California students. When my friend’s daughter started in 2013 there were over 1000 CA students in her first-year class. ASU knows that it’s an option for CA students, and they commit to getting students out in 4 years. The advising and scheduling assistance really helped my friend’s daughter.
To be honest, you could wait until later and apply to ASU only if you needed to. I know someone who applied and got a scholarship AFTER he found out that he didn’t get into any UCs. But the regular deadline for applying to their honors college, which is very well known, is tomorrow (Monday 1/15) just in case.
Your daughter will have an amazing choice of schools! Good luck to her.
We are originally from California, live in Bend now. Our family friend (also from California) is at CSU honors now and couldnt be happier. She’s super outgoing, social but didn’t go greek and feels that it’s not an issue. The honors kids seem to hang together.
The UofU is great in all of the ways mentioned. Strong honors program, unbeatable skiing, not heavily Greek socially, etc.
But important to note: the student body is about 36% Mormon. That might not sound like a lot, but if your student isn’t familiar with Utah Mormon culture, it will likely be a culture shock. And if it matters to them, it impacts who is available to date.
The U is much more religiously diverse than it used to be - both because of the in-state students it attracts (non-Mormons and ex-Mormons) and because there are so many more out-of-state students than before.
This isn’t a big surprise given the students that choose to go there from in-state and the overall vibe of SLC - Which is less Mormon than the rest of the state, or has the more liberal Mormons or ex-Mormons, who tend to not join any other church after leaving.
SIL is in the DPT program at UU. PT program is ranked as one of the top in the nation. They do favor the “home” team in admissions.
Campus is tucked right up against the mountain at the east/northeast end of town. Great hiking/mountain biking trail leaves right from one of the dorm parking lots. Light rail runs right up to campus and makes it easy to access downtown. Bus service is also very robust and runs regularly.
Greek life isn’t a really thing at UU. I mean it exists but doesn’t dominate campus life. Football and basketball are taken seriously in Utah, but again they don’t dominate the social scene either.
There’s plenty to do around campus. Nice campus town area and it’s a short train ride to the 15thx15th area–which is undergoing a wonderful expansion/renovation. Lot of unique restaurants/fast casual dining, Target, movie multiplex and other big boxes stores as well as one of a kind boutique-y type stores. It’s great neighborhood.
SLC is much less Mormon that I was expecting for town whose downtown is centered around the Mormon Temple. The city itself is pretty liberal and has an active LGBT+ and alt lifestyles scene. (Something else I wasn’t expecting of SLC.) No one is going to proselytize you or your student.
Skiing is incredible and student can get discounted Ikon passes to use at the 7 major ski areas nearby. It looks like SLC will be hosting the Winter Olympics again in 2034 --if that’s something you may want to consider.
SLC is less ethnically diverse than coastal cities ( it’s mostly white), but there are growing immigrant populations that are Asian, Hispanic and African in the southern part of town.
Off campus housing close to campus can be hard to find and expensive.
SLC does get really cold, blustery wintery weather with plenty of snow, but the city manages snowfall well and there are seldom any major disruptions. When it’s not snowing, the weather is bright and sunny in the winter.
The SLC is the major western hub for Delta so there’s easy access to flights to CA.
Great points! We did visit ASU and for whatever reason, she wasn’t feeling it. I do agree it checks a lot of boxes. She loved U of A.
Thank you for the thoughtful input.
CSU’s Greek system is a great size in that those that are in it are very happy, but if you’re not Greek it’s a complete non-issue. You wouldn’t even know it exists. It’s very “not in your face”.
I think there is a nice split of Honors students that choose to make that their main point of socialization and those that don’t. You can have a great time socializing within the program and the Honors dorm, but you can also have a friend group of mainly non-Honors students and live in another dorm or RLC (like my son does) and still feel very comfortable within the program.
Thank you for this! I just finished reading about the inversion layer over SLC and how it leads to possible effects from pollution and gray skies. Any experience with this?
I just finished reading about the inversion layer over SLC and how it leads to possible effects from pollution and gray skies. Any experience with this?
Yes, D and SIL have lived in SLC for 5 years now. In the winter the air quality can be bad. Like the worst in the US bad. Occasionally the worst in the world bad. There’s a brown cloud over the city. (Think LA, only worse.) Plus they rent an older house with drafty windows and gas forced air heat. Both contribute to increased indoor air pollution. Their second Christmas in SLC, I gave them a large room air purifier which they run at night when the air quality is bad. They still use it 4 years later. However, they live not terribly far from Liberty Park, so way downhill from campus. The altitude of the campus puts it near the top of the pollution layer or above it, depending on the local conditions.
The brown cloud seldom lingers too long, though–a few days, a week, then it get blown out by a storm front.
Unless your child has asthma or another breathing disorder, or is a pro-level athlete who trains outdoors everyday, the AQ isn’t a deal breaker.
The newer issue is blowing dust from the Great Salt Lake in the summer months. As the lake has shrunken over the last decade (drought plus chronic overuse of upstream water for irrigation), many feet of shoreline is now exposed that used to be underwater. The salt plains are grainy and loose. If the wind is blowing hard enough in the right direction…you get dust storms. But it all depends where you live. The dust seldom gets blown as far as campus. It’s mostly an issue west of I-15.
A lot of what I would have said about Utah has already been mentioned. D18 attended and it was a leading candidate for S23 (it was his favorite campus but wasn’t as strong as other options for astronomy/astrophysics). One thing I’ll mention (although it probably isn’t hugely different at the other schools you mention) is that having a car is very common. Even in freshman year many bring cars at least in the spring semester, because it is so common to go skiing at weekends and the flexibility of having your own transport is incredibly helpful. And in freshman year it will make you the center of a social group who’ll go skiing with you. Skiing also gets you out of the inversion and into the sunshine (unless there’s a blizzard).
The kids do drive a lot - D and her friends traveled all over for skiing (not just local, they went 8 hours to Mammoth for the weekend and 15 hours to Banff for spring break), hiking (Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Bryce, Capitol Reef, Lake Powell, Moab etc), climbing (Joe’s Valley as well as the Cottonwood Canyons), even going 12 hours to the Oregon coast for surfing! A Sunday afternoon stroll to the hot springs (an hour’s drive south) was quite common if they couldn’t get away for the whole weekend. And they drove to Bryce once (4 hours each way) just to see the sun rise. Even friends in her ballet program who weren’t at all outdoorsy tended to end up enjoying trips to National Parks etc. She drove back and forth to CA on her own (11 hours) to come home and didn’t think anything of it.
D also stayed every summer, even during COVID (Utah had a lot more to do than California) and again found it fun to go to the mountains or lakes at weekends. She was in a sorority, but it wasn’t a dominant part of her social activities. It was no problem being a liberal atheist from CA, though you do encounter some aspects of Mormon life (like classmates getting married during college) that wouldn’t be the same in CA. She was in the Honors college, and had great cohort classes with her scholarship (she was an Eccles scholar, unfortunately now all but impossible for OOS students to win) but found the rest of the Honors requirements more of an inconvenience, due to her being so overloaded already (she did a double degree BFA+BS Hons earning ~155 semester credits in 4 years). Because you pay tuition by the credit hour, some other students also decide against completing all the Honors requirements. However, if you can get Honors housing (far from guaranteed after freshman year unless you have a scholarship that includes a housing subsidy) it is amazing (she lived in the MHC on campus for 3 years and off campus at Block 44 for one year, all were brand new apartments with sitting rooms, full kitchen etc). The majority of her friends stayed in SLC after graduation - it is a great place for young people with a vibrant economy and so many opportunities to get out at weekends.
Colorado State is getting very popular in our area. H has a co-worker whose kid applied there this year and is strongly considering it. We have a neighbor who nephew is in his senior year there and has had nothing but good things to say about it.
My co-worker’s kid applied there and it is one of his top choices. Though Oregon State and University of Oregon are ranked a bit higher as is University of Arizona. But, still CSU is a choice! The guidance counselor at the school I work at said that 7 kids applied to CSU this year, which is the most ever.
My stepfather got his masters and PHD at Utah and my stepsister got her BA there. Keep in mind that this was a long time ago. Way back in the olden days I worked with a lady who went to Utah. She was Mormon, but she was very friendly, smart, and well traveled. I lost touch wither her, so don’t know what she’s up to know. My school has had kids go to Utah over the years, mainly recruits for sports, and from what I’ve heard they all enjoyed their time there. From what I can remember one of them was Mormon.
One of my co-workers who is a history teacher went to ASU. She went there for both undergrad and grad school. She is a very kind, smart person and is a wonderful teacher. Yes, the school does have a party reputation, but then again it’s what you make of it. The teacher I mentioned above wasn’t a huge partier and she managed to graduate with honors and have a good career. D’s friend’s mom went to ASU and has had a wonderful nursing career.
D applied to Oregon State and got in, but she decided to go elsewhere. We didn’t get around to visiting, so I think that might have swayed her. I think if we had visited she might have considered attending. The only person I know who attended Oregon State is a family friend of ours, he grew up in Oregon. He loved his time there.
All are large state schools, so you need to get into the nitty gritty when comparing.
S23 goes to CSU and absolutely loves it. Kids are happy there, but I think you will find happy kids at all 4 schools. He picked CSU because it is very strong in his major (Wildlife Biology and Conservation) and houses the Human Carnivore Coexistence Center (which is the area he wants to specialize in). It also had a minor in GIS which is a valuable skill for Wildlife Biologists. He found the honors program comprehensive and the quality of life in FoCo to be exactly what he was looking for. So, while it’s the “perfect” school for him, there might be a better match at one of the other schools for someone with different interests.