College visits

[Grace is Sufficient]

Okay, now I feel like the folks who show up at the high school board saying, "I can't believe my kids are old enough for me to be on this board!"

 

But, I have a junior and a sophomore, and I'm told 11th grade is when one ought to do 'college visits.' Unfortunately, neither of mine are terribly motivated about a particular college, or even a particular field. If that doesn't change, they'll either get a gap year, vocational training, or inexpensive community college while living at home.

 

In hopes that it will change, I thought I'd do some 'generic visits' to local schools. By this, I mean: visit a small, rural private school; a large urban state school; a Christian college or two; and ??? What else? Are there any differentiating facets of colleges I should use to pick a school to visit?

 

Also, if anyone is familiar with schools in or near Northeast Ohio, any suggestions of schools? Here are the ones I'm planning to try and visit:

 

Hiram College (small, rural, private)

Akron U (large, urban, state)

Mt. Union (smallish, located in a small city, but very much IN town.)

Malone: Christian in a a more urban environment

 

I'm avoiding downtown Cleveland at this point, so not Case Western or Cleveland State. I'm also avoiding Kent State because of the intensity of the liberalism I've heard about from folks who've attended there in recent years.

 

All the ones on my list are very close, within 45 minutes or so of home. If I go a little further afield (a couple of hours) I could add Grove City and/or Cedarville.

 

Any thoughts appreciated!

[MgoBlue]

My daughter is a senior and has only gone on one college visit. She's having a hard time figuring out where she even wants to visit! We live in Indiana and she's dead set against going to college in this state! We've only lived here 4 yrs - were in Michigan for the rest of our lives. Both her parents graduated from Michigan and she's wanted to go there since she was 7 but the out of state tuition is out of this world! I guess I'm just writing to say I understand how difficult it is to figure out the colleges to visit.

 

I say just brainstorm with them & visit a few.

Not much help.

Paula

[TravelingChris]

My daughter wants to go to college but had very little idea of what she wanted. We were traveling to get her driver's license and we decided to visit some colleges on the way back. She had decided she didn't want a large college so we only chose medium and smaller. We kept telling her these aren't the ones you necessarily are applying to but here are some that have good programs in interests you have and are in the right size category. So she visited two in cities, one a fairly large university though with a medium 5500 college student body, one a small women's college, then we visited a smaller college in a rural location, and two somewhat larger colleges (2200) in small town near or suburbs of large cities.

 

This trip not only helped her but also helped her much younger sister. Between other things she has noticed in her life (she hated the cold weather in Philadelphia in January), (she hates registration processes in community colleges), she is narrowing down her choices. Now she has some ideas. She will go to a large college fair in October and take the PSAT then too, and then we will plan additional visits, etc. SHe is getting a break from college stuff in September.

[readwithem]

I don't know any of those colleges (sorry!) but you're wise to start with what's local - being able to sleep in your own bed makes it a "free" college visit - it only costs you some gas and your time :)

 

We've learned something from every college visit, even the ones my dd was adamant she didn't want to attend (still doesn't, it just helped her identify in her own mind what's important to her). She takes a notebook and writes down her observations in the car afterwards.

[Gwen in VA]

:iagree::iagree::iagree:

 

Visit local ones, even the ones you KNOW you are not interested in. It gives you a feel for what you are interested in. Then you can pay money to travel and visit others.

[K-FL]

Adding my agreement too. Dd#1 only visited 2 colleges (1 she's attending), but that alone helped her understand what she wanted. 1 college was "in a field" meaning, you couldn't walk anywhere from there. The 2nd (her current school) is downtown with lots of interesting museums, shopping, etc in walking distance. If she'd just gone w/o visiting, she wouldn't have really been sure what she liked.

[Guest Katia]

We just came back from a weekend visit to Ohio and we toured both Malone and Mt. Union. :001_smile:

 

Not too much farther away is Oberlin. You really ought to tour it, for perspective. My dd did a music audition there, and it was.....an experience. It is a super liberal private college.

 

If you are able to, I would add both Cedarville and Grove City to the list. I've also heard very good things about Bowling Green.

 

Well, there's two new ones for you list, and I don't even live in Ohio. :D

[Leanna Tomlinson]

If you do choose to visit Cedarville, they have "CU Fridays" in the spring and fall with special presentations planned for visiting families. You can sign up online. Individual planned visits are available as well.

 

My eldest is a sophmore at Cedarville and she absolutely loves it! My current highschool senior is taking classes online through Cedarville Academy. She is earning college credit for required Cedarville courses and we are paying a fraction of the tuition. I am planning for my ds to start classes through Cedarville Academy in his junior year.

 

Another way to sample Cedarville is to try their "Christian Life and Thought" camp in the summer. Your student can live on campus for two weeks, take a great course on Christian Worldview, and earn 3 credit hours for this required Cedarville class. Students can attend this camp the summer after their junior year.

 

~

Leanna

[Grace is Sufficient]

We just came back from a weekend visit to Ohio and we toured both Malone and Mt. Union. :001_smile:

 

Not too much farther away is Oberlin. You really ought to tour it, for perspective. My dd did a music audition there, and it was.....an experience. It is a super liberal private college.

 

If you are able to, I would add both Cedarville and Grove City to the list. I've also heard very good things about Bowling Green.

 

Well, there's two new ones for you list, and I don't even live in Ohio. :D

 

I'll definitely look into Bowling Green. I've heard of it, but don't know much about it. Oberlin's not even on our radar, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on Malone and Mt. Union.

[Grace is Sufficient]

If you do choose to visit Cedarville, they have "CU Fridays" in the spring and fall with special presentations planned for visiting families. You can sign up online. Individual planned visits are available as well.

 

My eldest is a sophmore at Cedarville and she absolutely loves it! My current highschool senior is taking classes online through Cedarville Academy. She is earning college credit for required Cedarville courses and we are paying a fraction of the tuition. I am planning for my ds to start classes through Cedarville Academy in his junior year.

 

Another way to sample Cedarville is to try their "Christian Life and Thought" camp in the summer. Your student can live on campus for two weeks, take a great course on Christian Worldview, and earn 3 credit hours for this required Cedarville class. Students can attend this camp the summer after their junior year.

 

~

Leanna

 

Both the Cedarville Academy and the summer camp sound very interesting. My current junior especially might like the camp.

 

Thank you for the info!

[Guest Katia]

Mt. Union is a Methodist college, we learned, and they have chapel services plus Sunday services but none are required attendance. They are available for your personal edification. Also on Sunday they have services for different religions (Methodist, Catholic and non-denominational).

 

We liked what we saw and my dd had a very interesting visit with an older gentleman while waiting for our tour. He was an old alum and I enjoyed watching the college employees' reactions to him; they were very respectful and fond/loving of him at the same time. Dd's appointment was held up by his 'visit', but at no time did anyone try to rush him away; they just went on to other things until he was done. This impressed me!

 

On the whole, my dd was more impressed than she thought she would be with Mt. Union. Even though it is very 'in-town' it's a gorgeous campus and the dorms were very nice as well. They had one 'just girls' and one 'just boys' dorm and then one co-ed. I think they do lean more to the liberal side but not so far off that it would be a problem for our family.

 

Mt. Union has a required class/classes for Freshman to get them used to college life, with group meetings and lots of follow-up. They want their students to succeed and if they aren't finding or getting something.....there is someone there to help them along. I liked that and so did dd. This has been the only college we've toured so far that has year-long required Freshman orientation-to-college-life classes.

 

We liked the scholarships that dd was/would be granted just because of her ACT score (and I don't think it's all that high, but they do), and we really liked the way their full-ride scholarships are handled: you are given an invitation to compete for them with an interview and essay. They give 6 full-ride scholarships per year. Last year they had 152 students compete for those 6 scholarships.f

 

Oh, and Mt. Union's school color is purple, which happens to be my dd's favorite color, lol!

 

Malone, on the other hand, was very overtly Christian and not afraid to tell you so! Chapel is mandatory there and your student ID card is how they tell if you've been to chapel or not.....I was confused by this as...couldn't someone just take your card and swipe it for you? Anyhow, the ID card is used for everything there: meals, snack bars, entrance to library and dorms, etc.

 

Malone has a lot of new buildings and their campus is growing. My sister went there for her Freshman year in 1977 and she loved it. She transferred to Akron U after that because Malone was so expensive to live at, and it wasn't that far for her to just drive to Akron U for classes......but had we lived closer to Canton I'm sure she would have just finished at Malone.

 

As with Mt. Union my dd would qualify for a 1/2 tuition scholarship based on ACT scores. Malone didn't mention anything about full-tuition scholarships. They did, however, tell us that they don't ask for anything 'extra' from homeschooled students, and that they actually prefer them! (Mt. Union doesn't ask for anything extra either; just the reg. counselor form filled out by 'mom' and a transcript)

 

We didn't get to look at any dorms at Malone because our tour guide was a male and he couldn't take my dd into a boys dorm, and no one had a student ID card to swipe to get into the girls dorm in the admissions building. I thought that was a bit....odd.

 

They did give my dd a free Malone t-shirt!

 

Malone was a much smaller campus and would be easier to navigate in the cold winter months. The people there were super friendly. The student center was an old refurbished barn and they host some very original yearly competitions. Looked like fun.

 

You'll need to just go and visit yourselves to form your own impressions, but these were actually just 'add-on' colleges for my dd as she has her top two choices already and we wanted her to take a look at a couple more to just get-the-feel of other campuses and see what else was out there.

 

Malone and Mt. Union are two nice places!