LOL! We might end up encouraging our daughter to attend an inferior school due to weather! She thinks she wants to attend UOttawa. It is a perfect match in terms of major and career objectives. BUT, she has never lived any place where snow lasts more than a couple of days at most and snow is like a fun, unusual event. (Even though she has lived internationally and moved around the U.S. quite a bit. Every place she has lived, 50-60 is far more likely the daily temp than anything close to freezing.)
Making the decision to attend school that far north will require traveling there in the middle of winter and experiencing it for a couple of weeks before she even has any real conception of what it is even like.
I’m glad you listened to your father also if that worked out well for you. Your dad knew you well. The parents who “allow” their kid to go to some school YOU think is inferior also know their kid well.
Post again when you have a high school senior of your own.
@wallybrown, your presumption that there’s a big difference in quality and job opportunity is unfortunately common and false. The not so simple answer is that it depends. It depends on what the person wants to study and where they ultimately want to live. Even powerhouse liberal arts schools like Williams, Amherst and Swarthmore are not widely known. They can be a detriment just as well as an advantage. The bottom line, and this is borne out in survey after survey, is that most people are retrospectively very happy with their school choice no matter where they went. It is what the student makes of it not the name that matters.
I have two by the way Barfly. We wouldn’t tolerate those kinds of choices. If the kid said I would rather go to Washington & Lee or Vanderbilt because of the weather, then the kid was making a rational decision.
Thanks for the clarification @planner03. Didn’t sound like a parent posting.
There are so many wonderful schools for students to choose from, including of course Notre Dame, Colgate, and University of South Carolina. I think parenting includes helping students consider important aspects of their education they may not have considered. Even if the student or parent says the weather was the deciding factor, that doesn’t mean it was the only factor, and weather is an important factor for many students. Sometimes it may be appropriate for the parent to choose the school, particularly if the student is very immature, very unreasonable, very stubborn, or is choosing the school based only on a completely inappropriate factor ( loser boyfriend or girlfriend is going there and it doesn’t even have the major your kid wants, etc.), and the parent feels very certain another school is vastly better for the student. Wally, was that your situation? Why did your father choose Notre Dame for you?
To my mind, weather is indeed a factor. It’s what made me leave NYC and move to southern California, which, in turn, has improved the quality of my life immeasurably. The most important factor in choosing a college should be fit, which can - and should - include a number of factors: the quality of the education one can receive, cost, major, research opportunities, location (e.g. big city, small town, isolated rural campus, and yes, weather), among other things. Between University of South Carolina and Colgate, I’d take USC any day…but between the two USC’s (Southern California and South Carolina), I’d take the former any day. The chances you would get me to want to go to Colgate (or encourage my daughter to go there) are somewhere between slim and nil.
@wallybrown, your presumption that there’s a big difference in quality and job opportunity is unfortunately common and false. The not so simple answer is that it depends. It depends on what the person wants to study and where they ultimately want to live. Even powerhouse liberal arts schools like Williams, Amherst and Swarthmore are not widely known. They can be a detriment just as well as an advantage. The bottom line, and this is borne out in survey after survey, is that most people are retrospectively very happy with their school choice no matter where they went. It is what the student makes of it not the name that matters.
Colgate isn’t for everyone. And I’m not quite seeing how South Carolina is “vastly inferior.” USC had 13 Fulbright Scholars two years ago.
To answer OP’s question, weather and location are frequently factors, along with many others. The vast majority of applicants don’t choose their schools based on perceived prestige, IMO. They choose them based on impressions the colleges have made during visits, strength of individual departments, how a student will fit in, lab facilities, course offerings, social atmosphere, dorms, etc. And weather (my D happens to like snow, so she hasn’t looked at schools in Florida).
By the time a child is 18, many parents have a pretty good idea as to how much leeway they can comfortably give in having the student make his or her choice.
If I were a parent being hectored by someone else over my college choices, I’d give that other person a “brush off” answer like, “Oh, we like the weather there a lot better,” too. Who wants that kind of condescending lecture, from someone who 1) isn’t attending the college and 2) is going to play no role in paying for it?
I can tell you haven’t lived or likely been in the South by that sentiment. You seem woefully ignorant and uninformed. Congrats on being 18 but I’m not sure what that has to do with anything.
We have had many discussions in our house about being at the top of your class vs. average among top students. It can play heavily on your college success. So, weather aside, if a large state school offers the degree of study the student is looking for and the student will pursue all of the good the school as to offer, it may be a better fit. I for one, don’t think a big state school would be right for my D. We’ve talked a lot about it. But, for some kids, it means a more positive experience, more success in class, better self-esteem. For my D, Colgate would be an issue because of it’s somewhat remote location, not the snow. There are a lot of factors. Regarding weather, my D thinks going to school where it’s sunny all of the time wouldn’t be the right fit for her. For her, it’s about new experiences. (We live in AZ and she’s ready for something new.)
And, for what it’s worth, my daughter has absolutely no interest in going to any school in the south. Truth be told, I would prefer that she not totally rule out a substantial area of the country with some mighty fine schools, but, at the end of the day, it’s a big country (and an even bigger planet) with a lot of very good schools. The way I see it, it’s her education, and she’s the one that is going to have to live wherever it is she chooses to study, so,assuming it is a well thought out decision that bears in mind the aforementioned notion of fit, I will respect her choice. As a parent, it is my responsibility to help guide her to make good choices.
Colgate is in a country setting. My son is going to a college with similar weather, but didn’t want to be nearly as rural as Colgate. Like, we had to drive 20 minutes to find a fast food joint.
If those were the only two choices, I can see picking U South Carolina.
Weather does matter, I went somewhere cold and rainy for undergrad, and some people from the South hated the weather. Some people from the North thought that they should have picked a Southern college (Duke being mentioned frequently).
How long do you plan to keep making decisions for your young-adult children, wallybrown? Parents control the purse-strings for college, and so they are capable of exercising veto-power in that choice, but do expect to dictate their majors, course selection, social activities, living arrangements? Did your parents intrude on your marriage and career decisions, also? You obviously feel qualified to judge others for allowing their 18-year-olds to navigate for themselves, not merely judging the choices that those young men and women make. Eighteen-year-olds can vote, marry, and enlist in the military without obtaining their parents’ - much less your - consent. The student you mentioned probably made a rational, informed decision. Why does it rankle so much that he or she made that decision without consulting you?
I think many parents are very misguided in the college process and allow to many superfluous criteria like location and weather to play a role. I think in the long run the kid loses when parents support superficial decision making. Just my opinion, of course.