Twelve universities. Roughly 3,200 miles driven. Plenty of impressions that started to crowd each other towards the end. A few obvious judgments and a number of decisions of greater nuance. Four additional colleges that did not fit into our travel plans were also in the mix. Two of those were from the cheaper/safer category. One
The last stop on our tour. A level of fatigue certainly sets in. It’s not that we are not enjoying campus visits anymore, rather we are challenged to differentiate. Our first few visits each generated a couple of pages of notes. Our last few – less than a dozen lines each. But Georgetown scored in
For a student who wants to aim high and cannot be lured to a no-name school, cheaper college education these days means a single option: Going to a public institution. Even as an out-of-state student, your costs at a state school will be at least 25% and possibly 40% lower than at most upper-tier private
NYU had a chance to become my own alma mater. They blew that opportunity when I was offered way too few transfer credits based on my Russian undergraduate studies. (I went to a cheaper school that offered me full two years of transfer credits plus a generous merit-based scholarship.) I don’t hold grudges. And when
With the exception of just a handful of the States in the Union, for a student aspiring to the Ivy League-level education, the nearby state school gets designated as a “safety” choice: An institution with a much better chance of being accepted to than those super-selective top schools, but something that will only be considered
The second liberal arts college on our itinerary is the one that offers an engineering degree among its majors. Doesn’t that make their “liberal arts” designation invalid? Not that it matters to us, as already mentioned in the past. The college grounds are simply gorgeous, worthy of a royal residence, with a long tree-lined alley
Sometimes people check out stuff they come across in the infomercials. Drexel was nowhere near our list of targets for Becky’s higher education. It is not big on liberal arts and humanities subjects, instead priding itself on offering strong programs in applied sciences and professional lines of study. Not at all what our undecided applicant
Cornell topped the list of matches for Becky’s various interests, when that research was conducted, which is not at all surprising given its founder’s motto of offering any subject of study to its students. It was our second Ivy League school to pay a visit to. Its suburban campus sits high in the hills surrounding
Not all colleges on our touring itinerary were selected because they matched up exceedingly well with Becky’s interests. Several were selected for reasons that could be summarily expressed as “why not”. U of R was one of such selections. We heard a couple of good things about it from acquaintances, and we were making the
The sequence of different-type-of-campus visits continued on our call to Boston U. Unlike our previous stops, BU’s campus sits smack in the middle of a major city, strung along a public transportation-served artery for over a mile and a half, with the riverside as its northern boundary. “Beautiful” does not enter the conversation to describe
Why would a secular Jew consider a Jesuit Catholic education for his child? By luck or accident, the first few college visits all brought us to different kinds of campus. We started with one well integrated into a moderate-size town. We then went to a largely self-contained campus of mostly rural characteristics, bordering a small
The second destination on our college tour was one of just the couple of liberal arts colleges on Becky’s list. I have a feeling that calling your school a “liberal arts college” these days has to do more with pretense than with a true distinction from a “university”. Yes, engineering is normally not an option
We started our college-touring itinerary aiming pretty high – with the better of the two Ivy League schools on our list. It is arguable whether you want to be comparing up or comparing down later on when you go through such exercise, but I will not strongly defend our choice to designate the best school
When I was a college-bound kid – where I grew up is of significant importance, of course – both the task of applying and the ensuing admission process were comparatively simple exercises. Not easy, just simple. You’d pick your future profession, for all senses and purposes, and then you’d apply to the only higher education