Weighing People, Place and Program...

fallenchemist
Mon, 22 Apr 2013 10:58:58 +0000

Newstome, I am going to say exactly what you don’t want to hear, but what I feel the reality is. There is no good way to weigh one set of considerations more than the other, in this case. It is so personal, and of course your D suffers from the dilemma that so many of these incoming students do: She is only 17/18 and has little actual experience on which to base this decision. I can only say that personally I weigh the overall environment more than any particular program.

I say this based on some general reasoning and personal experiences with my kids. The general reasoning is essentially two-fold: The fact that at 17/18 they think they know what they want to do, but by that very fact they have not yet been exposed to various areas of study and pursuit that might have them changing their minds completely. As you have no doubt read on here, somewhere between 65-80% of students change their majors at least once, if you count what they thought they wanted coming in. Additionally, Tulane does have the program your daughter wants, it is apparently just not as famous a program as the other school.

Secondly, college is about a lot more than “vocational training”. This is a highly debated topic these days. How much should a university be about just finding a job and how much should it be about a great overall education in the classroom and in life. Obviously I fall strongly into the latter camp. Thus I believe most students are better off at the school and environment they think will fit them best as a person and they will be happier with the overall quality of their life for those 4 years.

Anecdotally, both my kids could have attended schools with programs in their intended majors (and ones they ended up staying with) that had better reputations and more offerings. But for a combination of reasons including the overall feel of the school and financial considerations, they went to where they liked the total package more. Tulane for my youngest and a different school for my oldest. What they found is that both schools still had plenty of offerings of very high quality in their majors, and that they made the right decision to go with the school that felt right to them. Most of their time is not involved in their majors. So a student really has to think about the 80% of their time that is not spent studying in their field of choice. In the end, my oldest had excellent success leveraging his Russian major into a full ride scholarship to law school (there is a lot of support out there for people immersed in critical languages such as Russian, Chinese, and Arabic), and my D is graduating in December with numerous strong prospects for short-term work in her field of China studies before she begins grad school on scholarship in the following Fall semester. It takes a bit more initiative when the school doesn’t have as strong a network as some others, but that’s not a bad thing.

I know this was a bit rambling and if I had more time I would tidy it up some, but hopefully you understand where I am coming from at least. I am not saying it is an easy decision, these are close calls that are highly influenced by an individual personality and values. I am sure whichever way your D goes she will be successful, and I wish her luck in reaching a decision she can really feel good about.