Intense, work-heavy colleges vs fun schools

[Anonymous]

I assume all of you are wealthy and connected so can line up jobs for your child when they graduate? We are not so our DD is going to a school which hopefully will line her up for better options than we had.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I assume all of you are wealthy and connected so can line up jobs for your child when they graduate? We are not so our DD is going to a school which hopefully will line her up for better options than we had.

This is something to consider if your DC doesn't already have job options lined up. It is a good idea not to pick a grind school if your kid isn't super academically inclined. However, it is also not good to select a school known to be easy, because recruiters know this too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It has more to do with majors.

Op here. Electrical engineering.

Engineering is going to be a grind everywhere. There's no soft way through it. Even at the "happy" schools, engineering students are studying very hard. But there are some engineering programs that are notorious for being much more unpleasant than it needs to be. Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Johns Hopkins, Berkeley come to mind. My mechanical engineering DC wanted to avoid those and focused on schools that had a more collaborative and community-oriented vibe. DC chose Rice for that reason. Very happy there.

Add MIT, Caltech, Princeton to this hard engineering list. Also, 'hard/grind" and "collaborative" aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. Some schools have a collaborative culture, but in spite of this, the students are just expected to work really hard and the material they are expected to master can seem crazy at times.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I assume all of you are wealthy and connected so can line up jobs for your child when they graduate? We are not so our DD is going to a school which hopefully will line her up for better options than we had.

Do you think a kid who avoids CMU, JHU, Cornell, UChicago and goes to let’s say Brown or Yale has poor employment options?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I assume all of you are wealthy and connected so can line up jobs for your child when they graduate? We are not so our DD is going to a school which hopefully will line her up for better options than we had.

This is something to consider if your DC doesn't already have job options lined up. It is a good idea not to pick a grind school if your kid isn't super academically inclined. However, it is also not good to select a school known to be easy, because recruiters know this too.

The correlation between grinding and employment is not as straightforward as some people would like it to be. Socializing is often indistinguishable from networking.

[Anonymous]

And you think Brown and Yale are not grinds for engineering?

I think this is the main point that most folks miss. It's not just the school, it's the major that dictates grind vs not. All the schools listed previously (JHU, CMU, MIT, Princeton, Caltech..), these are heavily focused on STEM and I think are unfairly labeled as no fun schools. Students have options to have fun but they do have a heavy workload if they want to excel in their chosen STEM major.

Ps - this is not meant to dish on non-STEM majors. I'm certain the SLACs are just as tough but escape the grind moniker

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:College should be fun. Go to parties. Go to football games. Never schedule a class before 10 AM so you can go out drinking all night. That's what every one of these kids should be doing. Enjoy these years while you have them.

This. Best years of my life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD has had impressive college admissions but admitted that high school has been a grind, not a lot of fun, but very high achieving. She is thinking of going somewhere more fun for college instead of continuing the drudgery (her words). Anyone else's kids feel this way? She will be successful wherever she goes, I am confident, but I want her to be happy too.

No your kid is an immature dolt

But good for her Trump has bigger plans for women this dumb.

This is OP, and this is the kind of stuff her male classmates say to her every day. She wants to avoid 4 more years of it too.

[Anonymous]

Hard but collaborative would be great for my kid. Hard and the next kid over is trying to tear you down to climb over you and the culture says that’s right? No thanks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I assume all of you are wealthy and connected so can line up jobs for your child when they graduate? We are not so our DD is going to a school which hopefully will line her up for better options than we had.

There is some truth to this. We are not wealthy, but well connected with friends from college and graduate school. I do believe that we can help DD with getting an interview at some places for internship or job opportunities. But, the rest will be up to DD, realizing that getting an interview is a huge advantage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It has more to do with majors.

Op here. Electrical engineering.

Engineering is going to be a grind everywhere. There's no soft way through it. Even at the "happy" schools, engineering students are studying very hard. But there are some engineering programs that are notorious for being much more unpleasant than it needs to be. Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Johns Hopkins, Berkeley come to mind. My mechanical engineering DC wanted to avoid those and focused on schools that had a more collaborative and community-oriented vibe. DC chose Rice for that reason. Very happy there.

+1 on engineering going to be a grind everywhere, so you want your kid to find a campus that offers a reprieve from that. And that can look different for each kid based on what they enjoy and how they unwind. Do they like city life and all that offers? Nature and hiking? School spirit and big sports? Small dorms with built in community? Also, what kind of opportunities exist for engineering students on campus? Is engineering a smaller program in a sea of liberal arts students or would your student appreciate (as my engineering daughter wanted) more of a tech school vibe where a large percentage of students are engineering focused; that brings a ton of design teams, course electives, 10+ engineering disciplines (in case your student changes their mind about electrical), and gives a feeling that much of campus is grinding together v. the engineering students being buried in work while the rest of campus seems to be having more fun.

Have your daughter focus on what she wants her day to look like after studying 6 hours straight for a differential equations exam: what kind of extra curriculars she can plug into at each school, how she can build a network of study friends - especially female support in male dominated engineering classes on some campuses.

FWIW, my daughter has had an amazing engineering experience at Virginia Tech. She chose it for some very particular reasons over places including Ohio State, Purdue, NC State, and Duke and it's been a perfect fit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DD has had impressive college admissions but admitted that high school has been a grind, not a lot of fun, but very high achieving. She is thinking of going somewhere more fun for college instead of continuing the drudgery (her words). Anyone else's kids feel this way? She will be successful wherever she goes, I am confident, but I want her to be happy too.

Its nice to have some freedom after HS.

My only red flag concern on this is if your daughter has been sheltered and has not gotten into any of the "vices" that most high school kids get involved in. Back in my day in HS I had a friend who wasn't very social, didn't like HS that much and didn't party much at all. She got to college (Vanderbilt) and went absolutely nuts - dropped out after one semester.

[Anonymous]

OP, ignore the name-caller.

If your daughter is interested in getting away from sexism in the classroom, suggest she consider women’s colleges. Wellesley and Mt. Holyoke are middle of the road work wise.

Bryn Mawr is great, too, but is an intense academic experience. Barnard is very much in the shadow of Columbia.

For co-ed, avoid Swarthmore, the Pomona Colleges, and Williams.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It has more to do with majors.

Op here. Electrical engineering.

Engineering is going to be a grind everywhere. There's no soft way through it. Even at the "happy" schools, engineering students are studying very hard. But there are some engineering programs that are notorious for being much more unpleasant than it needs to be. Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Johns Hopkins, Berkeley come to mind. My mechanical engineering DC wanted to avoid those and focused on schools that had a more collaborative and community-oriented vibe. DC chose Rice for that reason. Very happy there.

Huh?

Just because these schools are rigorous doesn’t mean they aren’t collaborative.

Your kid was misinformed.

[Anonymous]

There are plenty of rigorous but collaborative schools. And HS kids sometimes forget how much unscheduled time they will have in college compared to high school. There is time to work hard and have fun. It would be a shame to ignore the learning, peer group and challenge part of college just to party all the time.