any advice on teens making collage decis
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any advice on teens making collage decis
| Sun, 03-04-2007 - 11:01pm |
ds 17 we thought he had it down what he was going to school for and choice of the two collages. he has been offered a schoolarship of 10,000.00 per year at the one collage and was accepted into the computer science program at both schools...he has been seeing this girl for about 3 months and comes home tonight from her house telling me he thinks that he has made a decision on what he wants to do about school...said he wants to go to school between Pennsylvania (home) and NJ because his girlfriend he found out next month is moving to NJ and he wants to go to school near where she is living. i can tell when he was telling me he was paying very close attention to my reaction and asked what i thought...i told him that i don't think he should base his collage decision on where a girlfriend of three months will be living. ... and his reaction was...well, the way i feel right now is i want to be near her and i will go to a collage that i can take my core classes and it doesn't matter where i go as long as i get my education. i tried to explain to him that if he lived at home he would not have all of those expenses ... he said that i took care of him all through hs and grade school and now he needs to do this....i chose to let this conversation kind of linger off because i am hoping that this was just a decision he made tonight after finding out she was moving and he will wake up w/i the next few months and realize differently. What is your opinions.? Does it ever end? arrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

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In the end, common sense should prevail when choosing a university.
Take me, for example.
I got into Monash University, a prestigious university in my home state. However, to get there meant a lot of travelling - we're talking five hours there and back for a one-hour lecture. It just wasn't feasible, because I don't have a license, nor did I want the upheaval of living away from home in my first year of uni. It's double the transitions.
So instead, I applied for Victoria University. My mum works at the same campus I'm doing my degrees at, and I get the added bonus of free transport. Even without that, though, it would still be easier to get to VU than it would be to get to Monash, because I live much closer to VU.
In the end, you really have to weigh up what's important. If the course isn't offered anywhere else and that's your dream, then go there by all means. But what you need to ask yourself is, "Is my dream worth giving up my life?" Because it's gonna be a long three, four, five, even SIX years, kiddo. A long, hard few years.
And I can pull out my acceptance letters and say, "Hey, I got into Monash. I did it. I just chose a different dream."
BTW, here in Australia, there are very few occurrences of "following friends to uni". Most people I know don't follow anyone to uni, they follow the opportunities their final scores gave them.
However, take my advice with a grain of salt as we have fewer universities. I still see heaps of people from my school at VU - I joke that like, a third of the Class of 2006 ended up there!
The only people that generally live at, or near, uni, are international students, country students and people that live on the other side of the city who think commuting sucks.
Lots of kids, though, do end up moving out of house and home or commuting to university.
My friend is studying a double degree at Deakin University, which is located on the other side of Melbourne. She travels five hours, there and back (on a good day), sometimes for only a one-hour lecture. She comes home late and she doesn't want to study. We are only beginning our second week of uni, and already she complains about how tired she is.
I'm tired too - I feel like I've been run over by a particularly nasty, vengeful, sadistic, heartless truck - but my days, for the most part, will never be as long as hers.
My cousins attended the University of Melbourne (this is the big one - this, along with Monash, is the Ivy of Victoria). They lived just outside of the city and could walk to uni. One moved to Monash because she found Melbourne "too snobby". Their father rented them an apartment ten minutes away. The other started out at Monash and moved to Melbourne.
My point? It's not about what university you attend. It's about whether it suits you, whether you get what you want and need from it, and what you become.
Any employer who refuses to employ you on the basis of what uni you did, or did not, attend, is not an employer you want to be working for.
Edited 3/5/2007 8:34 am ET by abbag1rl
I'm pretty sure I'm the other mom going through a similar thing that Pam referred to in her post, lol. My DS18 has chosen to go to the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. UArk is a good school, and Fayetteville is lovely....but we live in Indiana. DS had been accepted at several prestigious schools (Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Northwestern to name a few), but has been in a relationship with a girl from outside Fayetteville since fall. We have a family history with UArk (my brother got his doctorate in Optical Physics there) and he had always considered going there, but it jumped to #1 on his list after gf entered the picture.
We told DS how we felt about his decision, and told him what we were willing/able to pay toward his undergrad and then left most of the decision up to him. Darned if we didn't get notification this weekend that he has been awarded a $40,000 scholarship that offsets the gap between what we will pay and what out of state tuition and fees are. LOL, that kid is nothing if not resourceful. DH and I have accepted that he has made his decision and we can either support it or not support it- and we've never *not* supported him in anything. He is a good kid and has kept up his grades, never been in trouble and has always made us proud so I feel he has earned the right to make his own decision regarding college. We had always hoped that he would go away to school- don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to get rid of him or anything, I just think it is important for kids to leave the nest for college even if they are just going across town to live on campus. I'm not sure I'm going to like having him 8 hours away, though!
We're going down to Fayetteville the first week of April (spring break) to meet with the Honors College advisors, see dorms and meet the track coaching staff (DS would like to try to walk on to their track team). I haven't been to Fayetteville since my brother's graduation 12 years ago, and although DS has been down twice in the last 6 months this will be our first "official" campus visit with a guided tour and all. I am looking forward to it and am really excited for him.
Both my son and his best friend were unhappy with their choice this, their freshman year. The best friend transferred at semester. I convinced ds to stay out the year but he will not be returning next year
It was THEIR choice but they didnt really investigate. They wanted to attend the local university but a 3.0 doesnt cut it here either. So they just randomly picked this college because there were limited dorms and they thought theyd get an apartment. This mom refused-other mom would have and surely blames me for their unhappiness-oh, well. I'm confident I was correct in that decision.
He will be at our community college next year with hopes of transferring to the original desired university his junior year. Mom is caving to the apartment this time-not sure that's a good decision :(
It's tough! I think there are so many more choices than back in the day, its overwhelming.
Anyway, my point was-kids transfer-a lot. If this doesnt work, he can transfer at the end of the year
I ran into DS2's English teacher a few weeks ago and she asked how he was doing. I filled her in and she said "Oh, he'll be fine; it took me 6 to get it right"
Oh, please no!!
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