Looking for the right college...

is this like picking a dog's name? or deciding to have kids?

i'll take a shot in the dark. go to nyu for english. or columbia. as long as you got plenty of money to sink into a liberal arts education, you'll be fine. nyc could always use some fresh blood [wish you were from the midwest. that's our favorite]!

If you're set on the writing thang, Northwestern (Chicago) had a good j-school, which has a specialization in magazine writing (at least for their graduate program). As someone with a journalism degree, I can tell you that it's not necessary for a writer to hav that particular degree, though. I would suggest taking a major in something complimentary (like poli sci or somesuch) and doing stuff on the side as an intern or freelancer. Ultimately, potential employers are gonna want to see a clip file anyway, and that will matter more than how many journalism classes you took.

For what it's worth.

I haven't much advice, except that you will probably do a lot of interesting writing in any humanities or social science major, but a big school might have a more interesting variety of courses for you if you really want to focus on specific areas. Best of luck!

We're midway through the earliest stages of the process for our older one, and holy shit is getting into college crazy right now, due to a number of factors (test optional, birth-boom). Schools that used to be safeties are now competitive, schools that used to be competitive are now difficult to get into, schools that used to be difficult to get into are now practically impossible. For example, the Ivies just sent out their letters, and the numbers are sobering.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/04/07/admit-rates-ivy-league-pandemic-test-optional/

Only three of the batch at all above a 5% acceptance rate. Harvard dropped down to 3.4% (!), a record low. I guess in a couple of years they're hoping for some sort of correction, when the post great recession mini baby bust hits, but for now what has always been a traditionally stressful time for kids has become even more so with the level of competition. Like I said, it's not just the Ivies, it's pretty much every school of repute, from state flagships to private universities, tightening up. Just crazy.

Crazy to think that at least 30% of the student body at my alma mater at the time (myself certainly included) wouldn't get a second look from the place these days.

But is it actually harder to get in or are there just more people applying? We know schools intentionally encourage people who are going to get rejected to apply so they can become more "selective."

I'm sure that has a lot to do with it. Don't how test scores today stack up against those of my day, but I do know that the application of today's average high-schooler is wayyy more impressive than what my generation could cobble together. Extracurricular activities, the fuck are those?!

Just to pick a random good state flagship, the University of Michigan reports a 23% accept rate this year and it's a hell of a lot better than Dartmouth.

Anyway I also have an early high-schooler and also look upon the process with some small horror

U of M (a place my kid is considering) is a good example. 23% is definitely less selective than (for example) Darthmouth's 6.2% this year, but at U of M that's (checks math) just one-in-four, which is still pretty tight!

The test scores may be optional for a lot of schools right now, but they still play a big role, and heave steadily crept up as well. Like, for the most competitive schools, anything below 1500 is probably not enough. But even then, there seems to be no rhyme or reason to this stuff. My friend's niece, for example, is pretty bright, and got into Georgetown, but not William & Mary, even though I always thought those schools pretty comparable. I guess it would have to be pretty random if you're getting 50000 applications. NYU got something like 110,000 applications this year, which, yeah, is partly by design, to goose admissions rates, but still makes things more competitive, because with so many people applying, the odds probably go up that there are more people just like you in the mix, but possibly better.

My own school I went to is literally ten times harder to get into than it was back when I went. There is no way I could get in.

I honestly couldn't say whether I still would have gotten into the college I ended up going to if I were applying now, as opposed to when I did, considering I was born the year with the lowest birth rate in recent history ... like, statistically it would have been the easiest year to get into any US college. However, I was outside the common demographic profile for said college (and colleges of its type), so it also is a matter of their approaches to diversity and having a student body that aren't all from affluent families with advanced degrees or children of celebrities.

We've been reading more accounts as acceptance/rejection letters stream in across the country, and whew, what a confluence of fucking headaches for these poor kids. Test optional policies this year encouraged more Hail Mary applications to schools, kids increasingly willing (and able) to travel to schools upped applications from all over to what once were considered regional powerhouses and so-called "public Ivies," kids that deferred or took a year off last year coming back to school this year. plus the sheer number of kids this year (that is, born in the early '00s) is automatically making this an uphill numbers game. Then also factor in what a fucked up year this has been for seniors, full stop - little in the way of traditional in-personal school, no in-person college tours, little face time with teachers, fewer opportunities for jobs, extracurriculars and other stuff outside of schools - and man, it just sucks.

Oh, and just because many of these schools have gone test optional does not mean people are not taking tests. In fact, since it encourages only those with the best scores to submit, it's goosed those numbers, too. NYU, for example, reported a record high median SAT: 1540. Now, I'm not that great at math, but that is *insane.* That school just about a decade ago had a 35% acceptance rate. This year, it was 12.8%. Not that NYU is not a great school or anything, but those numbers are crazy.

Schools also having trouble determining their "yield" from accepted students in this weird year. My daughter got waitlisted at 4 schools, hearing similar things from many of her friends.

Oh yeah, for sure. Because with seemingly record numbers of kids applying to (at least the top 30 or so) schools, those schools have absolutely no idea how many of those kids are applying just to apply and how many of them have any real intention of attending. It will be interesting to see how it shakes out by, when, May? How many of those waitlisted kids actually end up both getting accepted and actually attending. Anyway, good luck to you and her, bulb. Did she get into any of her favorite schools?

She did get in to one of her top 3 choices, happily. But in the interim she has decided she really wants a film program and they don't have one.

So, she's going to see what happens with the waitlists. We need financial aid though, so even she gets in off a waitlist, I don't know that the money will be there.

(After initial disappointment, she has come round to the idea that she can make the school she did get accepted at work without a film department. And I think it's a great fit all round)

NYU in particular is a real estate company with a sideline in overpriced undergraduate degrees, or so reporting from a couple years ago led me to believe

the netflix doc about the admissions scandal has Unsolved Mysteries style reenactments of released phone transcripts and might be fun for you rn, JiC

Oh, we saw it. That plays into this mess in a way, too. As a college admissions podcast we listen to put it, a couple of decades ago people made fun of USC as "University of Second Choice," and now people are willing to go to jail to get in there.

xpost Eh, that's probably true for just about any school in a big city, which begs the question: what really is the value of an undergraduate degree, anyway? Is it ever worth $200k+?

FWIW, they're predicting a slight dip in college applications in a couple of years, when a small baby bust kicks in (post Great Recession). But I doubt it will really shake out as a meaningful correction. Really, the best outcome of this mess would be these highly competitive schools expanding their student body, though I doubt most would consider that. In fact, I heard that Princeton recently *reduced* its student body, rumor has it with the intent of pulling its admissions down below the 4% mark. Which I guess worked.

A funny post I saw:

From Stanford’s rejection letter: “we wish we had more space in the freshman class” Tf? LIKE BITCH YOU HAVE 8,000 ACRES AND $30 BILLION

And the goosing continues, which is why I keep hearing of kids getting piles of circulars and emails from the likes of Harvard, or invitations to enroll in, say, Columbia's summer program. In fact, as for the latter, I've seen a couple of posts on forums of kids rightfully pissed at getting denied from the latter, and then the next week getting an invite to pay thousands to enroll in one of the school's useless summer programs. Like, fuck you, right?

seems like so many kids fail out at every school. think good advice might be to relax about freshman year. go to (nearby school) and kickass for first year. apply to your dream schools for second year.

also save at least ten thousand dollars in the process, since most "dream schools" are expensive

another lesson from that doc. there are monsters propped up by their parents getting into every school, and they can't all last.

speaking as an instructor who has seen way too many first and second year kids fail out in the past two years, that is excellent advice xp

thanks for the confirmation! I have ~13 years before I need to worry about it but will probably encourage that route if nothing changes. xp to myself: "monsters" is wrong since the kids are probably fine in most cases. They're just being pushed or managed at a level that can't be sustained when left on their own.

As someone who got into an Ivy as a transfer student, I recommend it. Only downside is if your school of choice has an intense core curriculum, because if you haven't taken the right classes to have your credits transfer, you'll end up having to cram the core requirements and the classes for your major into three years. So that's something to bear in mind when signing up for classes freshman year, and also when choosing a school to transfer to.

I will say, in defense of parents, it's taken a lot of work on my part to educate myself on the current situation. What was achievable for my parents was a stretch for me. What was a stretch for me is statistically impossible for my own kid. These things change, and have changed a lot over the past couple of decades, and since there's no reason for anyone not directly affected to pay attention to this stuff, there are a lot of surprises in store. I wasn't exaggerating before when I said it's now 10 times harder to get into the school I went to. Back then (1993) it was something close to a 70% (!) acceptance rate. 20 years later it was closer to 7%. Last year it was around 6%. I can only assume this year it will follow trends and shrink again. It's the same top 10 school, except my personal experience was that it was possible, and it took some more current research to disabuse me of that notion, because how would I have known that? It's not just parents being pushy, it's also parents applying their own experiences without realizing that the current situation is out of control. I've read plenty of stories of kids being pressured by grandparents to apply to school x, because the grandparents, like many of us, were raised to equate said school with success. But where once (or maybe more accurately, often) good grades and good scores were more or less likely to get you into a "good" (which is to say, name) school, that's really no longer the case.

One factor that I was unaware of until we got into the process: in the 80s there were approximately 12 million college students, which went up to 14 million in the 90s. Now there are roughly 20 million. And the "elite" schools haven't expanded their student bodies to match that growth and some of the top public schools have actually reduced their enrollment (in response to declining public funding and other factors).

Cannot emphasize strongly enough, though, re

a "good" (which is to say, name) school

that, with very few exceptions, a flagship university is going to have thousands of students in every class who are as academically strong, interesting, and intellectually motivated as the entering class of the "good (which is to say, name) school" -- what people are paying for is a) the opportunity to not go to school with the other 30,000 students, who are also awesome, they just don't have as high SAT scores; b) some sense that they will get "more attention" at a smaller school -- in my experience something many students don't take advantage of, and if they do, they are probably the same people who'd get lots of attention at State U. c) access to career networking through fellow alums -- I am just doubtful that outside a very small set of schools this makes much of a difference to a kid's future prospects.

looking back on it, pre-existing family wealth has correlated best with future success.

the parents from the admissions scandal should build their own university and push their kids until they are "award winning" professors, lecturing audiences that don't want to be there. Citizen Katsopolis.

One factor I've only just recently learned about is research opportunities as an undergrad. Not every school excels as much in this. Other than specific stuff like that (a specific program, say, or the tracks of a tech school like, I dunno, Colorado School of Mines) it probably ultimately doesn't matter what school you go to, as long as you work hard and take it seriously. I do, however, have a handful of friends that either graduated or transferred from schools that were just not particularly challenging, surrounded by kids who mostly partied and goofed around, which especially at that age kind of hampers motivation. You can get a great academic education at a school with a less rigorous curriculum for sure, but it might be harder to stay focused on it when there's an outdoor pool at your dorm. That depends on the student, I guess, but it does take a certain degree of discipline.

a smaller liberal arts school will have better lectures and individual attention. A larger research university will have more opportunities for undergraduate research. If you're at the larger research university, you should absolutely take advantage.

I met many more engaged, smart, active undergrads at (large flagship state school) than I did at (big name school). Like, orders of magnitude more, and they had better access to instructors, facilities, opportunities… almost everything.

One thing I wish I'd known as a high school student is that medium-sized schools exist. I thought it was a choice between small liberal arts schools and huge universities; I didn't realize there was a lot in between.

Yeah, that's something my daughter has had to take into account. Her high school is huge (around 3400 students) so she doesn't want to go to a college smaller than that, which makes sense. I've told her one great thing about bigger schools is that just like living in a big city you're essentially carving your own life, your own customized smaller school, out of that giant mass of students into something that fits just right.

The place I went to has about 12,000 students total, and while that was not a criteria of mine at the time, that size felt just about right. Small enough that you kind of knew almost everybody else, at least by sight, and large enough to host shows by the Smiths and Husker Du.

Reed accepted me with very good SATs, poor grades, some bullshit extracurriculars and one teacher recommendation. Can't imagine that flying now. (nb: didn't go because my parents weren't about to sign for loans and I - dodged a $100k+ bullet there)

worth noting to all and sundry parents that the sticker price of an expensive private school is not the price most students from families with even above-average means will pay, assuming you've filled out all their forms. What this means in dollar terms is reported to the department of education and can be reviewed in a standardized format. For example here's Reed's net price stats from the past few years!

https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=reed+college&s=all&id=209922

of course this has me looking at documents mentioning stuff like

in 1990-91, Washington state contributed 82 percent of the total funding per UW student FTE, and families were responsible for 18 percent. In 2020-21, state funds are projected to cover only 38 percent of the total funding per FTE, leaving 62 percent to students and families

I'm just going to post this article from today, since it's paywalled, but here's the link:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-04-12/covid-college-admissions-season-brings-rejection-heartbreak

The Burbank mother knew her high school senior would have a tough time competing for a freshman seat at a University of California campus in a year of record-shattering applications — more than 200,000 students were vying for about 46,000 spots. Still, she thought her daughter — with a 4.3 GPA, eight AP and honors courses and a host of extracurricular activities — would have a shot.

She was floored in March when the campus notifications began rolling in. Out of seven UC campuses, her daughter was denied or wait-listed at all but UC Merced.

“It was heartbreaking,” said the parent, who asked for anonymity to protect her daughter’s privacy at a time of great disappointment. “And I got really angry. We just got the rug pulled out from under us. What more could our kids possibly have done?”

That’s the question thousands of families and high school seniors are asking themselves in a college admissions season like no other — one marked by pandemic isolation, remote learning, disrupted activities and the elimination of standardized testing requirements at most universities across the country.

Surging college applications have been hailed as a sign that the dropping of testing requirements has lowered entry barriers for many students. But the flip side of more applications is more rejections and heartbreak — as well as widespread confusion over what it takes to get that coveted acceptance letter.

“I hate that im crying on camera but i just got rejected from 3 of my top UC’s,” @nicolesmangos said on a TikTok video. “Nothing just make sense to me right now.”

Although UC campuses will not release their admissions data until the summer, several private universities are reporting some of their lowest acceptance rates ever. USC dropped to 12% from 16% last year, admitting only 8,800 students among a record-high 71,000 applicants for fall 2021. In the Ivy League, Harvard declined to 3.4%, Columbia to 3.7% and Yale to 4.6%.

But many California parents expected that, unlike private universities, UC campuses supported by their taxes would have more room for their children who had toiled to earn top grades, challenge themselves in multiple college-level courses and engage in sports, student clubs and community service.

Claudia Boles, a Los Angeles clinical social worker, was disappointed that her son, Philip, was wait-listed at UC Santa Cruz, his top choice.

The campus seemed a perfect fit, offering the natural beauty and strong science courses that feed his passions. He seemed well qualified, meeting the mean 3.9 GPA for admitted Santa Cruz freshmen. His hobby of creating complex biospheres of plants and ponds for crustaceans, reptiles, fish and microorganisms, Boles thought, demonstrated her son’s talents.

He was accepted to two other UC campuses, but his heart is set on Santa Cruz, and he’s appealing for reconsideration. Like many students, he applied to multiple UC campuses.

“It’s frustrating because we know he’s qualified, and we know it’s the best fit for his interests and personality,” Boles said of Santa Cruz. “But he has two other options we’re all grateful for. We know it’s what you make of your experiences.”

UC admissions officers say the unusual year has presented myriad challenges. But some decision-making insights emerged.

Majors matter, they say. At UC Irvine, admissions officers had to review a record 108,000 applications for freshmen spots. Almost half of the students applied to just six of 85 majors — with biological sciences the top choice, selected by nearly 12,000 applicants. Other popular majors were business administration, nursing science, computer science and psychology.

Dale Leaman, UC Irvine’s executive director of undergraduate admissions, said Irvine probably couldn’t accommodate more than 10% of biological sciences applicants. Less popular majors would probably have a higher admission rate, he said. He added, however, that students shouldn’t try to game the system by applying to less selective majors, because they might not be able to change them under the strict rules for doing so.

Chloe Wilson, a San Marino High senior, said none of her friends were accepted to UC Irvine. She was, which excited but surprised her. Although her 4.2 GPA and eight Advanced Placement and honors classes were impressive, she said she felt “kind of underqualified” compared with friends who were wait-listed or denied despite stronger high school records.

But Chloe’s friends intend to major in science and psychology while she applied as undeclared and expects to major in a humanities field.

Without standardized test scores to guide selections for competitive majors requiring strong calculus and statistics skills, Leaman said, reviewers took a close look at whether students took a progression of increasingly more challenging math classes, including college-level AP courses.

At UC Santa Barbara, which received a record 105,640 applications, faculty told admissions officers they wanted active, engaged learners who involved themselves in their school and community. Even during the pandemic, did they seek out opportunities to learn through TED Talks? Did they volunteer for online tutoring or help family members stricken with COVID-19?

Lisa Przekop, UC Santa Barbara’s director of admissions, said her team also looked for evidence of sustained passion. If they expressed a love of science, did they take four years of the subject rather than the required two? Did they join any related clubs or summer programs? Reviewers counted intention to do so, she said, noting that the pandemic caused the cancellation of many such activities.

“Basically, we’re looking for patterns that supported their interests,” Przekop said.

She added that Santa Barbara increased its wait-list offers to 14,000 from 10,000 last year as a hedge against pandemic uncertainty. But she said it was still too early to know how many wait-listed students would receive an admission offer, which varies. It climbed to an unusually high 1,400 for fall 2020 — compared with 253 the previous year — as more students declined to enroll for remote learning.

Santa Cruz also increased its wait-list offers while others, such as Irvine, kept about the same numbers.

UC admissions directors stressed that they evaluated students in the context of their own schools and communities to assess how much they challenged themselves and took advantage of available opportunities. A student who took all six AP classes offered at her school might be more impressive than the one who took six at a school that offered twice as many.

A campus might admit a student with a 4.0 GPA who ranked at the top of an underserved school over one with a higher GPA but lower class rank at a more high-achieving school.

“The thing I take the most pride in with the UC is that it’s all about achievement within context,” said Michelle Whittingham, UC Santa Cruz associate vice chancellor of enrollment management. “We get these calls: ‘My kid got this GPA.’ But at that particular school, it could be average or below average.”

UC application readers also look for persistence, resilience and grit — low-income students who had to work multiple jobs, for instance, to support their families and still excelled in a rigorous curriculum.

As UC touts equity and diversity, some families wonder whether certain demographic profiles are getting preference. But UC admissions officers say that reviewers are blocked from seeing the name, race, ethnicity and gender of applicants to avoid bias. The state Constitution bars affirmative action in public education based on race, ethnicity and gender but socioeconomic status may be considered.

“When a student is denied, it’s only natural for them to look for that one specific reason for the denial, but that’s not how the admission review process works,” Przekop said. “We do a holistic review, and every bit of information they share in their application is taken into account. Given the large volume of applications we receive, the realistic explanation is that there were just more applicants who were rated higher. More than half of our freshman applicant pool has a GPA of 4.0 or higher.”

Amanda Alarcon, a 17-year-old Los Angeles High senior, was thrilled to win acceptance to UCLA and Berkeley. Her 4.1 GPA ranks at the 25th percentile among admitted students at both campuses. But Amanda, the daughter of Salvadoran working-class immigrants who will be the first in her family of seven to attend college, is the school’s salutatorian, the second-highest-ranked student. She took six AP classes and 11 community college courses — giving up Netflix binges — and helped with family cooking, cleaning and other chores.

She also pushed herself to overcome her lifelong fear of speaking up by joining the Academic Decathlon team, winning awards for her speeches and interviews. She demonstrated math, engineering and teamwork skills in school club activities and served in a leadership position in her international dance group.

Her motivation? “I’ve seen how hard my parents work,” she said. “They always told me to work smart, not hard, and that education can get a job that isn’t as physically draining as theirs.”

Some Los Angeles Unified high school counselors said they believed that dropping standardized test scores in the application review helped their students. UC regents voted last year to phase out those testing requirements, saying the SAT and ACT were unfairly biased against disadvantaged students.

Lynda McGee, college counselor at Downtown Magnets High, said she’d been happily stunned that 17 of her students had been admitted to Berkeley — well above the five to eight who usually get in. UCLA has admitted 16 students at University High School Charter, more than double the number last year, said college counselor Paula Van Norden. Heather Brown at Los Angeles High said UC Santa Barbara did not turn down any of her students who applied.

“I’m seeing exuberance,” Brown said. “They’re getting into UCs and Cal States across the board, and they’re very happy.”

UC San Diego admissions officials said they didn’t believe the absence of test scores affected the quality of students admitted. The campus retrained application readers to evaluate students without test scores and did a pilot study last summer to see whether they would select the same students without those metrics. “We were able to see that — no surprise — good students were still being admitted,” said Adele Brumfield, UC San Diego associate vice chancellor for enrollment management.

UCLA, the nation’s most popular university, drew a record 140,000 freshmen applicants for fall 2021 and remained a tough target to reach. Last year, the campus admitted just 14% of first-year applicants and expected the rate to drop this year.

But Youlonda Copeland-Morgan, vice provost of enrollment management, said students who aspired to become Bruins had other pathways: They can apply a year or two down the road as a transfer student, a route with a higher admission rate at 24%, or as a graduate student.

“When you have this many applications, you’re going to have more disappointment, but that’s not a reflection on who these students are,” she said. “They’ll have amazing options and we’re rooting for them.”

Sounds like some more of those UC applicants should’ve applied to classics

Anyway I’m glad I never have to apply for college again

Gotta love the idea of kids pressured and pushed into STEM and then discovering, after getting rejected because too many people applied to their STEM field, huh, I guess I wasn't the only one.

Science is dumb anyway

in 1990-91, Washington state contributed 82 percent of the total funding per UW student FTE, and families were responsible for 18 percent. In 2020-21, state funds are projected to cover only 38 percent of the total funding per FTE, leaving 62 percent to students and families

But tbf in a lot of cases, it's not the regular families of that state who pay the price -- rather, state U.s compete to be attractive to affluent out-of-state (and, more and more, out-of-US) applicants who will pay full ticket price if admitted. The university uses those students in order to keep tuition reasonable for families of ordinary means who live in the state, which used to be the role state funding played. Works great, except for the majority of universities that don't win the zero-sum competition for OOS students, and for the universities that deform and distort their offerings with the intent of appealing to that audience.

faculty told admissions officers they wanted active, engaged learners who involved themselves in their school and community. Even during the pandemic, did they seek out opportunities to learn through TED Talks?

now that is the real dystopian shit, TED's new revenue model is selling the names of video viewers to college admissions offices

or more likely charging parents $$$$ to certify the number of TED talks their kid watched

Some more crazy numbers from a newsletter we get:

UCLA alone received a jaw-dropping 160,000 applications, a jump of 25% over the previous year. Many of these same schools also set records for how many students they “denied”—what the rest of us simply call rejections. Harvard rejected 97%. Princeton and MIT, both 96%.

By the numbers: A few of the more startling trends we found are worth mentioning here.

Since 1980, the total number of undergraduates at U.S. colleges has swollen by 62%.
The 16 public universities in the U.S. News rankings have nearly kept pace, growing 55% in the last 40 years.
But the privates? They’re up just 18%. Some, like Northwestern and Boston College, have actually gotten smaller in that time.
Princeton, Dartmouth, Stanford and Duke, for instance, have combined added just 2,400 spots since 1980. Let’s put that number in perspective: that’s about the same as the public-school enrollment in my home county in Maryland grew in just one year (2019)—and we’re one of 3,000 counties in the U.S.

The gist of the newsletter was a followup to the author's WaPo op-ed about private universities expanding their capacity. Also referenced this interesting chart:

https://i.imgur.com/sKB6xbG.jpg

OK, the college search and application process has begun in earnest. Off the bat my older one has said she's generally not interested in schools she perceives as (or actually do lean) "conservative," which is to say, have a lot of students that identify as Republican. We've had a few people respond to her aim with variations of "it's good to learn how to get along with people with different beliefs," or "isn't exposure to different or new or more challenging views one of the whole points of college?" I mean, they're not wrong, but the way we look at it, she'll get both of those things wherever she goes - people with different beliefs, different viewpoints - so why pay tons of money over the course of four years for the privilege of being in a place, surrounded by people, that makes you even a little uneasy? We live in a very liberal locale, but we don't feel like we're missing out on right wing politics. Whether we see people with MAGA hats or not (we don't) it's still everywhere - in the news, on the internet, on TV. And if she wants to learn about right wingers, she can just, you know read a book or something.

So is she (are we) way off base here? To be fair, few college students are likely frothing right wing lunatics, and imo if anything traditionally it's *conservatives* that get exposed to new ideas on campus. Plus, yeah, it is good to learn to get along with others, and related, she could be an activist voice or agent for change somewhere rather than just another blue vote lost in a sea of blue. The most interesting feedback we've had was from a family member that is gay, Jewish, liberal and currently lives with his husband in a deep red state, but remains a *huge* booster/defender of one of the alluded to more conservative schools my daughter had researched, as a place for vibrant debate and the free exchange of ideas (though that was back in the H.W. Bush era). While we admire their courage and tolerance, my kid still wasn't convinced. Nor should she be! In the end it's all up to her.

Granted, only one or two of the schools she's looking at boasts any sort of conservative bona fides, so it's mostly an (er) academic discussion. But do any of you have any opinions on or experiences with this modest conflict?

Has she considered studying abroad?

Not really. There's no particularly obvious school she'd want to go to, and given that the schools outside the country she knows about are as hard to get into and just as expensive as their equivalents here, there's really no reason to look. Fortunately, several of the schools she's likely applying to at home have abundant and generous study abroad programs.

no matter where she goes she'll get to experience the liberal teenage intellectual vs communist teenage theorist political conflict which is more interesting than getting your "mind broadened" by conservative teenage nofappers

Ha, that's what I figure. Anyone that identifies as Republican these days, I really don't see how they could do so on intellectual grounds. Though like I said, I imagine most college kids that identify as Republicans do so out of a sense of familiarity/family loyalty more than anything else. You have to be a special kind of little shit to leave college more conservative than you arrived.

I think, the political views of 18-22 year old Americans being what they are, that almost everywhere she goes as long as it's not Liberty University or VMI she's going to be in an environment where a large majority of people vote Democratic, are queer-friendly, are vaccinated, etc, and where at the same time there are plenty of people who will challenge her views (this includes Republicans and Marxists and movement atheists and committed Mormons and etc and etc.) I would be really interested to know what colleges she thinks of as "conservative-leaning."

I do tend to lean towards "it's good to learn how to get along with people with different beliefs," within obvious limits, but in my opinion "15% of the students here vote Republican" is within those limits. There is no city she can live in in the whole USA where there aren't 15% of people who vote Republican. OK, DC.

My own experience on a very liberal campus was that I spend a decent amount of time arguing with my Republican friends -- I didn't have a lot, but I had a few -- and it made me more left-wing because my reaction was "I assume the people who got into this selective college represent the people who can make the strongest possible argument for these politics, every one of these kids is smarter than Ronald Reagan and if even they can't make a convincing case I'm even more sure Republicanism isn't for me"

The conservative leaning school was Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Something like 35% repeatedly identify Republican, 20% or so independent, which means Republican, and located in a very Republican part of the state, just a bit beyond the very Republican part of another state. At the same time, by all accounts extremely tolerant of different views and lifestyles, much more so than a lot of other even more conservative schools, and still 20+% Dem. But open mindedness of course unfortunately means inviting people like Milo to talk there. My family connection said that when he went to school there, Paul Ryan was a political science lab partner, and iirc when he was there they invited someone from the Westboro Baptist Church as a religion class guest speaker, though just because they were there to illustrate their extremist views, that wouldn't make me feel any better having them there. (Of course that same family member now lives 15 minutes away from the actual Westboro Baptist Church.)

But sure, I don't believe the school is some right wing bastion. The President is a Democrat and by all accounts awesome.But hearing that 35% identify as Republican really jumps out at her after learning that a school like Indiana University has more like only 4% identifying as Republican.

Fwiw, I went to a college that at the time probably leaned conservative, but none of the conservatives I knew there were remotely culture warriors, iirc they were all very free market economy minded.

i have met/known people who went to miami u and it doesn't surprise me to hear how republican it is. but i think they were all democrats and were very bland, normal people. it wouldn't be my first choice. why does political science have a lab though?

Not a chemistry lab, just working on a project together.

iu and miami-ohio have larger contrasts than the size of their minority political leanings