quote:

Originally posted by architect:

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
She will freeze in Ann Arbor. Quite a change from FL.

The only place I've ever lived where the snow is so cold on the ground that it squeaks when you walk on it.

Two things make Winter in Ann Arbor even worse than it might otherwise be are the never-ending wind (AA is on the top of a hill), and the recurring overcast.

For months, you will wake up and look out the window to a brilliant blue sky, after your shower and breakfast it has become a solid gray that persists all day. This is pretty much every day in the Winter and most of the Spring, and is very oppressive.

I don't miss it one bit.

That said, I think AA has fewer negatives than the other cities on the list, with the possible exception of Williamsburg.

One negative you forgot was Ypsilanti,too close, like next door.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: shovelhead,

W&M is one of the toughest schools to get into in VA and there are a lot of good colleges in VA.

With my two kids I told them that we would give them a free four year ride to any college in VA and if they wanted to go out of state they would have to pick up the difference with either a scholarship or loans.

They both went to in state schools and are very successful in their careers and lives.

As someone who spends a lot of his waking hours with high school junior and senior girls and writes a lot of college recs each year, I'm going to look at that list and recommend far, far more safety schools.

I know, have taught and have recommended any number of very exceptional young women (many of whom I've known since like 7th grade on up) who apply to many of the schools on that same list and nearly all of them are rejected from that list, year in and year out.

Michigan is a likely on that list, if she has the right profile.

William and Mary is very competitive, but doable. We usually get one to two admits per year. (Our kids tend to go to Richmond, instead...which, as an alum, is not my doing.)

The California schools are very, very hard to get into if you're not from California unless you're really going deep into the branch campuses in the UC system. I've seen only one admit to Stanford in my 13 years at the school I'm at now (and that was 8 years ago). If she means Berkley, that's scary.

Brown and Yale are extraordinary long shots.

NYU is maybe doable, but no way I'd send my kid there. Columbia is almost as much of a long shot as Brown or Yale, unless you back door in via Barnard or similar program. A lot of our kids go to the other, less well known, schools in and around NYU and Columbia.

I don't mean to be a doomsayer here, just someone who has extensive experience with watching 17 and 18 year old girls go through this same process with lists that sound really similar to your daughter's.

Steel yourself as a parent. The process is brutal for most teenage girls. Granted, I work with a parent community that often has unrealistic expectations for their kids, but I know the abilities of so many of them and the number of rejections, especially from schools on that list, is often soul-crushing to young women.

Also as a parent, be very aware of the effect that TikTok has on girls' school choices. The last three-ish years has seen an explosion of all the Texas and other southern schools (plus Arizona), just because they're party schools with very active sororities on social media.

Good luck to your daughter in this process! Best thing she can do is set realistic expectations and clearly list out her untenables, her stretch schools and her likelys. The more wins she gets with likelys will help her confidence.

Importantly, tell her to sit down and do some self-reflection and come up with a plan for how she will handle rejections and acceptances.

Finally, make sure the teachers she asks for letters of rec are ones who know her the best and can speak directly--and with specific anecdotes--to her strengths, especially those who know her growth arc as a student. (If this is a public school, that may be difficult.) She should ask those teachers in person for a letter and ask if they would be able to speak to X, Y and Z strengths or areas that she plans to write about in her own essays. Her junior year teachers are the ones you want, unless she has someone during first quarter of senior year who also knew her in an earlier year, but generally, junior year teachers are the must-haves. Don't be afraid to ask teachers for classes she didn't do well in (though 4th grade handwriting may be a bit too far back). Being vulnerable and frank about things you're not good at are often real winners in these letters. (And, yes, that comes directly from the admissions counselors who read hundreds or thousands of letters at the schools like the ones she's looking at.)

Sorry if this is stuff you already know, but I write this as I look at some blank google docs of college recs I need to start writing before the year starts.

Oat, good to hear from you.

trapper, best of luck to you all.

Rice is top notch. A lot of the Northern schools are off the chain: think Harvard. I do not think you want your daughter exposed to Communism. University of Michigan and Wisconsin are quite liberal and are moving into that category.
I went to a very expensive private school.For me it was worth it as I continued my education beyond that. I paid the total bill for my daughters. My broker told me to take the average cost, double that and add 50 percent. He was correct.

quote:

She’s got friends going to Florida State this fall, it’s in state and she’s got at least free tuition instate at this point.

That's the smart play right there. Free tuition is not something to walk away from, especially if she doesn't know what she wants to do yet. At the very least she should take advantage of that for the first year or two to get her gen-ed out of the way without paying a premium for it. She can always transfer to a place with the program she wants when she figured out what that is.

I managed to get through college without a significant amount of debt, but I still cringe when I think about how much I wasted paying for gen-ed at a private school when I could have done it for a fraction of the cost at a community college.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
Rice is top notch.

Its been a few years since I've looked, but it's also the most expensive school in TX, closely followed by SMU.
I think SMU had a higher average tuition, but the all-in cost at Rice was higher.


I have 2 uncles & a cousin that got their degrees there. 1 uncle said he wasn't going to pay for his kids to go there, that the degree didn't have the weight & prestige it did when he went. Pay the kid from UT or Sam Houston $20k less [/cynical].

Lovely campus, for sure, though.

I did UT Austin for a year [Engineering] as a grossly unprepared [top 5% in my HS class] freshman. Took 2 years of community college to know out my basics & repair my GPA. Transferred to Sam Houston & changed majors [Accounting] & liked the smaller school quite a bit more.

Edit: Googled it, average all-in they're around $85k/yr tuition, plus room/board, for in-state. That's shocking
IIRC, 25 years ago, it was more like 20-30k/yr.

I graduated FSU in 1968, BS in Biology, Minor in Chemistry and Psychology.

I am prejudiced… still believe my education was second to none. Top notch Professors - opportunities for part time jobs on Campus and in the community, graduated with no debt!

Interestingly, my most personally valuable course was in Philosophy: Existentialism based on Martin Heidegger! I have used what I learned in that class over my entire career.

quote:

Originally posted by Oat_Action_Man:
As someone who spends a lot of his waking hours with high school junior and senior girls and writes a lot of college recs each year, I'm going to look at that list and recommend far, far more safety schools.

More than Florida State? My son got into FSU with much worse stats than my daughter. My son and I did the tour at FSU after he got accepted. In the first meeting, the woman went over the stats of the early admits; SAT, GPA, class rank ranges, and my son was none of those. My daughter is at the top of each of those.

Even if for some reason she didn’t get in as a first time in college, she can still apply as a transfer student as a junior. Most of her friends that were seniors last year got into FSU and three got into UF.

Her other two safety schools are W&M which has a higher acceptance rate than FSU and University of San Francisco which is higher yet. The other two California schools are UCLA and USC.

What I think she needs to do is expand her options to include Rice, Vanderbilt, and Chapel Hill.

She’s on it with the letters of recommendation. The hard part is her junior year was all college classes, but she had the same professor for honors comp 101 and 102. She got a lot of great compliments from that professor. I’m thinking her high school principal as well. When the local Rotary Club asked the principal for someone they could send to a leadership retreat to represent our area, the principal recommended my daughter. Then last year, when the new district superintendent setup a student advisory board for the district, the principal asked her to represent her school.

I’m trying to keep expectations in check. I don’t think we’re being unrealistic, but everybody that’s being unrealistic probably thinks that.

Thank you so much for the insight and advice though.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
Rice is top notch. A lot of the Northern schools are off the chain: think Harvard. I do not think you want your daughter exposed to Communism. University of Michigan and Wisconsin are quite liberal and are moving into that category…

Yes, the Ivy League of the South. Unfortunately, it is just as woke and lefty as its Northern counterparts.

quote:

Originally posted by 92fstech:

That's the smart play right there. Free tuition is not something to walk away from, especially if she doesn't know what she wants to do yet. At the very least she should take advantage of that for the first year or two to get her gen-ed out of the way without paying a premium for it. She can always transfer to a place with the program she wants when she figured out what that is…

Absolutely. Plus, because she’ll graduate high school with an Associate of Arts degree from the local community college, she’ll have already have the gen-ed classes out of the way for free. She could spend her first year at FSU just taking Intro to… classes. If she knew what she wanted to do, she could knock it out at FSU in two years and have plenty of money for grad school.

While the Florida public universities have to accept her credits and recognize her AA degree, the private schools and out of state schools do not. For example, NYU might accept up to 35 of her 60+ credit hours which is still a huge savings.

Believe me, I know what she should do. I have to believe she’ll make the right call when at the time that decision needs to be made.

quote:

Originally posted by trapper189:
Her other two safety schools are W&M which has a higher acceptance rate than FSU and University of San Francisco which is higher yet. The other two California schools are UCLA and USC.

USF is a Jesuit school in the middle of the city, good surrounding neighborhood, pretty campus but still an urban campus where school buildings and dorms have city streets that divide the campus areas. Class sizes are small so good student:teacher, known for a very strong nursing and accounting program. Tuition is costly, can't imagine what out-of-state is, one of the complaints is many of the students come from wealth/affluence so the 'keeping up with the Jones' effect can be problematic. There's no tailgating pregame culture or, traditional Greek-life, most city residents overlook the school don't even know its there, there's very little business, restaurants or bars that are havens for students like you'd find around larger schools. Political-socal vibes, of the universities in SF, USF is arguably the most centrist compared to the others that said, it's within the city and there's plenty of Leftist influence all around, to include student peer-pressures.

USC generally the most conservative of the Pac12 schools, as much of the student body comes from Orange County and private schools which serve as feeder programs. Campus is located in South Central LA, while its a sizable campus, security has improved and capitol investments continue, issues with crime linger. UCLA like Cal sits atop the UC system just depends upon the major, highly competitive academics with some of the smallest acceptance rates in the entire nation.

I'm 59 and I've lived the vast majority in Rhode Island. Whatever it takes, dissuade her from coming to this little shit hole of a Communist state.

Thank you, Corsair and Dan. I really appreciate the insights. I have no idea how Brown made the list. The good news there is there aren’t that many slots.

Especially, hearing now about USF’s Jesuit roots, I am confused how she picked these schools. I know she didn’t pick based any party schools or sororities.

They all seem so different from each other.

I am a Buckeye so I cannot recommend enough that she avoid Ann Arbor... But I will tell you, the winter will kill her. My son went to Ohio State after 6 years living in NC. He swore he didn't care about the winters. Christmas break his Freshman year he came home and said he would stay at OSU, but the winters might kill him....

As far as indoctrination is concerned, college campuses are full of it and I am not sure that will ever change. You have to trust that the foundation you set is solid enough to get her through it.

I will chime in on the "cost" issue. Who is paying the debt after the college fund is done? and if it is her, do the math for her. $100k of student loan debt over 20 years will cost her about $230k - or about $950 every month. Make her save $950 per month between now and application time and see how hard it is. She may change her tune on that inexpensive Florida College Education.

quote:

Yes, the Ivy League of the South. Unfortunately, it is just as woke and lefty as its Northern counterparts.

^^^^^^^^^^
How pervasive is it? Everyone I met from Rice was well educated and rather conservative. I love the Kennedy expression of "Why does Rice play Texas."

Why the hate towards the south ?

Lots of HR folks are wising up to the fact that liberal colleges are tainted now. All things being equal would you hire somebody from a school that tore itself apart about Gaza and Isreal etc or not, As an example. Whether the person interviewing was involved at all ?

UWF, up here in Pensacola is quietly under the Radar as a University of Florida public school. Still in state and close to Alabama and the water. Only ~3 hours to Tallahassee and New Orleans if she wants to party with her friends. No real Greek system I am aware of.

Unless money is no object for you I’d drop the truth bomb and say I’m not financing an out of state education, especially at a commie school. You can go to any FL school and be decades ahead of your friends financially upon graduation with relation to student debt.

She may not be into it but I'm a strong believer in sending kids to a smaller University/College for Freshman and Sophomore years, mega universities Freshman classes are not setup for individual instruction.

Most of mine at UofK were 500+ people you get little more than reading a book on the class with that size. Parties, Greek Life, Sports are all great additions to your life, experiences that can't be replaced, but, they can also overwhelm new college students. Most that enroll in the first year don't make it one semester let along 2, it's why those that can't get in early, can easily enroll as Sophomores.

Nationally 20% of the freshman class doesn't make it to the sophomore year.

Now if she wants to go to a mega university, FSU for Freshman and Sophomore Years if she is to attend a mega university. She has friends there who can guide her, keep her away from problem situations.

Have her check out Stetson in Deland, excellent school far enough she gets freedom, close enough you can get there to see her.

Vanderbilt is a great university academically, Nashville is a party town with big stars, so that might be a good attraction, yeah it's got a looney liberal mayor, but the rest of TN (Memphis excluded) is pretty conservative.