Purple, true about happiness and weather but it is a personal thing. So for OP to say that weather is stupid reason just means it is stupid to him. There are some students who pick colleges solely based on academics, but a look at “stupid reasons kid didn’t like college X” thread shows that other factors play in. Lots of kids pick schools that meet a list of criteria including access to sports, surroundings (urban/rural), distance from home, greek life (yes or no). Of course they should consider majors offered, class size, research opportunities (if applicable) but it is a whole school they pick. Parents, the ones who know their child best, should have some input on colleges, but cost is only reason that we emphatically took schools off the table.
Looking at CC list of top LAC, my daughters were accepted to several of these, and D1 attended one. D2 at South Carolina. There are pros and cons of each.
This winter was bad for everyone. I don’t think people in Atlanta and parts of Texas had it any easier than people in the NE.
It doesn’t matter whether it is a 250K or some another number for COA, it is a large number for any family. I am a very practical person when it comes to deciding which deal to take, it is the best product for what I can afford. In this case the product is quality of education, what it could do for one after graduation, and in longer term for one’s career, even for one’s kids someday.
As far as my kid buying a place…She was thinking about Brooklyn Heights because of various fit issues. I pointed it out to her that buying an apartment is more than her own preference, she needs to consider resale value and maintenance of it. She liked old world charm, and I said the operative word is “old.” Someone her age is often lured by the look and feel at the moment, then regret it later, and some of those regrets could be costly. It is no different than when students get all excited about the weather, looks of the campus, and forget the reason why they are in college. My good friend’s daughter insisted she had to be in a warm weather, so she chose a school in Charleston. It turned out not to have majors she wanted, too small, too many girls…Now she wants to transfer to a larger U.
I have no opinion about USC and do not want to appear like I am bashing USC. It only came up because OP used it as an example. I am speaking more on a general term.
I agree with @oldfort 's views on this topic. Parents should steer their kids away from major blunders in big decisions. Kind of like having veto power. Apart from that, the student should be able to make the final choice.
@romanigypsyeyes I am allergic to cold also - I can get hives from being exposed to cold water or on my legs if I walk outside in cold weather. It’s genetic - one of my kids is the same.
We live in the midwest, my last child probably can get into a fairly selective school, but will not because she wants to go to a warmer climate. Now dont get me wrong, there are some selective schools in warmer climates, Vandy, Duke UVa, to name a few, but by in large the bulk of the selective schools will have snow and possibly lots of it during the winter. She just doesnt want that weather anymore. Now, if a warm climate school doesnt make sense financially, she wont go, but if money is equal, I have to let her go.
“Recently just spoke to some parents that picked an inferior school, vastly inferior, because the kid liked the weather better.” (Original post)
OP, I realize you are at a disadvantage because you are unable to respond for three weeks, but I’ll make a suggestion anyway: How a person frames a question really does matter on CC. Your post contains several assumptions that have created a lot of noise, deflecting what is otherwise a legitimate question. You assume that “the parents” made the choice, that South Carolina is a “vastly inferior” school, and that weather was the deciding factor to “the kid.”
South Carolina’s President, Harris Pastides, was a first-generation college student who went to SUNY Albany undergrad. Would one label SUNY Albany a “vastly inferior” school? My guess is that he went there, in part, because it was close to home and the price was right (probably did not go for the weather, though). Are these legitimate reasons? He subsequently got a Ph.D in Epidemiology at Yale, and has had a great academic career. You do a disservice to the 1600 faculty and 47,000 students at South Carolina when you call it vastly inferior. (BTW, it is hard for me to imagine that any school with a $600,000,000 endowment could be considered vastly inferior by any standard.)
Another person, asking the question in another way, might get a more useful set of responses: “Just spoke to a family whose child will be going OOS to a public university in the south rather than to a prestigious LAC in upstate NY. The child likes the weather better down south. Are weather and location commonly significant factors in choosing a school?”
You don’t know that the family is unhappy with the child’s choice. There are situations in which a family begrudgingly accepts a child’s choice even though they think it’s a poor one for other reasons (maybe there are other battles to fight in the household), and there are situations in which a family is fine with the child choosing whatever as long as he’s happy. It seems to be that you’ve sort of assumed that the family would have really preferred Colgate over U So Carolina but the kid-gets-what-he-wants. Maybe the whole family is happy with the choice. I don’t know.
Can’t speak for Atlanta, but Texas has had it a lot easier than the NE. We’ve had a couple of snows/ice, but they have pretty much melted off in a day or two. We like to complain, but no way could we say we’ve had it worse than the NE.
Catch us in the summer, though. We are in desperate drought conditions here, and temps over 100 don’t help us one bit. We can get a similar feeling to the seasonal affective disorder when it’s 108 for the 30th day in a row with no rain in over 6 weeks.
Weather is one criterion. Prestige is another. There are dozens more, all potentially important to…someone. Weather would be an issue for my youngest, who is a Southern girl who freezes if it drops below forty degrees. She’d be miserable in upstate New York. Even if they had the tippy-top program in her major and it came with a lifetime supply of cookies, Colgate would have been out in the first round, assuming it even made it onto the list.
D1 applied to some schools on my request, and refused to apply to others I requested.
She applied to some schools I knew about, and some I had never heard of.
Money is limited, so she knows that financial support (and therefore her college options) are constrained by the bottom line price after financial aid packages are put together.
There are some schools that, knowing where else she could and did get in, I just would not be willing to pay for over others. I want to know that if I pay anything, I’m getting good value for the money I spend. That doesn’t mean I can control where she goes.
I’m pretty sure that she’s pragmatic enough that she will go to one of the (multiple) schools where I’m satisfied my money is getting good value for her. She knows, for example, that I’m at least satisfied she’s getting good value if she goes to any of the IS public schools here. She may end up someplace much better, or she may end up not having the budget to go anywhere else.
We don’t know and won’t know how the bottom lines compare for a few more weeks yet.
I cannot insist she go to any particular school because she’ll be an adult and simply not go if she doesn’t want to. I can only counsel her, really, and tell her what I am able and willing to pay. Beyond that, it’s sort of like learning to swim by being tossed into the deep end of the pool of adulthood.
The parents and student (most likely) together made a list of potential colleges adding in factors such as cost, competitiveness, selectivity and possibly, weather. Maybe Colgate was a reach academically and the student was afraid they wouldn’t make it academically, there? Maybe USC has a great honors program where the kid will be treated as an incredible asset to the school? Maybe the academic programs were not similar in quality because of something very particular? Maybe the parents caved due to some dislike of upstate NY on their own part? Maybe transportation or airfare to one place would make the difference financially? Maybe parents didn’t want to say the real reason as mentioned above? Maybe the kid and parents are not being truthful about the acceptance or financial aid? So many maybes.
Ultimately, I agree with Post #90, the steering should take place before the applications are sent, and then the student and family can be happy with whichever school becomes the final decision.
Having said the above, I wish I knew then what I know now, which is that upon graduation, DC said that would never want to live in the other state and came back to our state where DC has no college support system and little alumni network.
I’m in Central TX and we’ve had some freezes but they haven’t lasted too long. This is the first year in 7 years that my artichoke plants haven’t frozen and died back in the winter! I’m not complaining about the weather this year, this winter has brought us some MUCH needed rain!
BTW, my D is all about the weather! She wants to study meteorology and wants to go to OU where they have it all, rain, snow, sleet, hail, thunder storms, ice storms, tornadoes, straight line winds, drought, floods, lightning … everything but hurricanes, and she ruled out University of Miami in part because of the high humidity… go figure;-)
Like others have said, there are several parts to this question.
is it valid to consider weather as a factor in choosing a college? Definitely, in my opinion. I picked Berkeley over Cornell for grad school in large part because of weather (that wasn’t the only factor, but it was big). My daughter narrowed her college search down to just west coast because of weather. Since that still leaves a lot of good choices, it seemed like a valid first pass. A lot of people don’t care, but many do.
whose choice should this be… the parents’ or the student’s? Every family is different, but I think the final decision needs to be the student’s, after a certain amount of guidance from the parents (e.g., we’ll pay this amount. We think you should aim at this level. I think this school might suit you better because x y z factors that maybe you haven’t thought about… that sort of thing). I’ve seen attempts to be more controlling than that backfire. (Friend of mine has 3 kids. She thought she was doing them a favor by telling them they need to major in a STEM field. This strategy worked well for 2 of them but the third has dropped out of school entirely for now. She would make a great elementary school teacher, but her mom thought that wasn’t a lucrative enough career).
how important are rankings and prestige in picking a school? Again, this is going to vary by family. For us, it’s a factor but not the only factor. I think you can get a great education at probably most of the top 300 (picking that number out of thin air) schools in the US, and you can get a crappy education at most of the top 300 schools in the US as well. Some kids thrive on competition and need the drive of a top 20 type of school. Others would do much better in a less intense and more supportive environment.
I’m not familiar with the reputation of either South Carolina (sorry, for me, USC = university of Southern California) or Colgate. I can tell you that Colgate is not a household name in California and would not get you brownie points for prestige if you said your kid got in there.
I do think it’s valid to say ‘no party schools’. Not sure if that’s the issue. Or to say, you pick a party school, I’m not paying for partying. If the grades drop below such and such, I will not continue to support you.
It was a cold, snowy night in January 2009 when D learned she was accepted to both UCF (Orlando, FL) and Purdue (somewhere in Indiana). Both had excellent rankings in her major. She couldn’t decide.
She went to the weather, saw that it was 70 degrees in Orlando and 18 degrees in Indiana.
She chose UCF, has been there ever since. She received an internship during her summer before senior year, which worked into a full-time job in her field upon graduation and now they are talking about transferring her to a management position in Tampa.
If the parents are paying, they should set the limits of what they will contribute and the child needs to stay within that. If they want to go somewhere that is more, they should find the resources to make up the difference. I am fully aware that some parents know their kids better than they know themselves and some gentle prodding toward “appropriate” schools that “fit” may be warranted. But, ultimately, it should be the kids decision because they alone have to live with it. And as we know, you can succeed going to almost any institution of higher learning if you have the drive and determination.
Finally, it also rests on the type of relationship you have had with your child over the years. Some kids value their parents’ opinion and the college decision is more collaborative. If your relationship with your child has not been the best, the college choice process is going to exacerbate this dysfunctional relationship and it may become a test of wills. It is almost impossible to change dynamics that late in the game.
