What would make you as a parent not allow your child to attend a particular college?
Is this a financial aid question?
Please move this post to College Search and Selection
Mine will both be 18 when they start. I will have opinions but they will be adults and so it will ultimately be their choice. There isn’t any allowing or forbidding.
Not getting accepted. 
Cost probably is for a lot of families.
There was one school D2 liked that I thought would exacerbate her absent minded professor tendencies. I asked her not to apply because I didn’t think she would grow in areas I thought were important while in college, but also told her that if she thought she would be on an analyst’s couch someday talking about her mom keeping her from her dream college that I was open to more discussion. She laughed and dropped it from her list.
If I had serious safety concerns about the college, I might have an issue. I probably would not want my kid to attend a college that allows students to have guns on campus. Adolescent boys plus alcohol plus guns – what could go wrong?
Cost, of course. We are not in position to pay for any and every possible option. We set a budget before she applied to any school For us, a college with a history of racial issues would be a huge red flag. Fortunately, D did not apply to any such college, but we’d have discouraged her if she had.
She DID apply to, and get accepted to, a college where I thought she would not be challenged much and would be in the middle of nowhere, when she’s said all along that she wanted to go to school in a city. I expressed my concerns and in the end, a much better fit offered her a better deal so it all worked out.
State flagships in states that are currently slashing higher ed budgets. My son’s GC suggested U Wisconsin as a safety for engineering – I’m not taking him to visit because their legislature has reduced the budget by $250 million and has threatened to eliminate tenure. Why do I care? Because the word on the street is that many, many of their best faculty members are getting out while the gettings good. They certainly aren’t going to be able to recruit. Even UCB makes me nervous since they announced that they are reorg’ing to reflect the “new normal” of reduced state funds. This is likely to exacerbate existing problems for kids who can’t get into the courses they need.
I second the guns on campus concern. Did no one read about the kid who got into a drunken argument outside a dorm, went to his car (where the law said he could keep his gun on campus), retrieved his gun and started shooting? Again, there are faculty in Texas threatening to move or retire if they have to let kids bring guns to class. There’s going to be a lot more suicides in dorm rooms and drunken accidental shootings than there will be bad guys thwarted.
I might have refused to pay for a school that was academically suspect, especially if it was one of those ‘for profit’ places.
S knows what we can afford. He knows that if a school offers significantly less than its NPC indicated, that he might not be able to do it but that’s not the same as me not allowing it.
Not a fan of colleges in Colorado due to the legal status of marijuana in that state.
And 2nd @higheredrocks comment on guns on campus
And I’ll second you back @wisteria100 on Colorado -schools - son thinks smoking is gross, but I can see college kids feeding each other those laced candies and baked goods.
This has been complained about for years, yet graduation rates keep going up (though probably mostly related to increasing admission selectivity) and complaints about not getting into classes do not show up on the school-specific forum. The multi-phase registration system also means that all students get to pick their most important courses (about half of their schedules) before anyone can pick the rest of his/her courses, and departments can assign priorities or reserve space in courses by major, class standing/level, etc…
The issue may be more of restricted majors (though mostly due to increasing popularity from students, as evidenced by CS going from an open major to one where students need a 3.3 prerequisite GPA in just the last few years). The reason majors are restricted is to prevent the situation where majors cannot get needed courses to graduate.
Larger class sizes, for those who are concerned about that, may be a more visible “economy” measure.
- Not affordable
- Safety concerns
But we did visit all the schools both kids applied to and were confident the money would work out before they applied. So by the time acceptances rolled in, we did have our favorites but were fine with any choice they made.
Pretty sure the typical restrictions would be:
- Too expensive (net price after financial aid and scholarships).
- Not admitted (or not admitted to a restricted major that the student wants and would find it difficult to get into later).
- Not regionally accredited.
- Not accredited in the major, if important for the major (e.g. ABET for most engineering majors, AACSB for business,etc.).
I’ll add that a college with a history of a poor response to sexual assaults on campus would be a deal breaker too
I should add to my list
3) Unhappy with academics offered (ex. didn’t have their expected major, not accredited etc.)
But that was also something we checked before applications were submitted.
There are some very good points being mentioned in this thread - some which I didn’t consider when my D’s attended college.
Students feeling totally comfortable expressing racist points of views like the OU video or the report recently from TAMU
Not being able to write the tuition check.
Just out of curiosity, what was the school (if you don’t mind me asking)? @intparent