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Consolation
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| Joined: | Mon Apr 9th, 2007 |
| Location: | USA |
| Posts: | 474 |
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Posted: Sun Mar 30th, 2008 10:40 pm |
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The most dramatic events of my own college application saga had to do with Bryn Mawr.
First, I had the interview trip from hell. My father was supposed to drive me down, but he had an unexpected business trip, my mother was working and couldn't get a replacement easily (she's a nurse), so I had to drive all the way from CT to PA by myself at the age of 17, even though I had only had my license for about 2 months. I still recall the terror I felt driving south on I-95 with all of the huge semis around me.
There was a tremendous amount of road construction in the area, and the other drivers would not let me change lanes to get off at a detour exit on the highway. (Now I would have done it whether they like it or not, but then I was too timid.) I missed the exit, had to continue on and get off elsewhere, and got lost. I was driving with a map open in my lap, and a gust of wind blew in the window and made it flap up in my face. I was so startled that I took my foot off the brake, and my car rolled forward a few feet and bumped the car in front of me. (We were stopped at a light.) There was hardly a dent, but it made my head snap forward and I hit my front tooth on the steering wheel, breaking it off halfway! There was a bite mark on it ever after.
A nice policeman arrived and took pity on me--I was crying at this point, as you can imagine. He gave me directions, and I eventually arrived at Bryn Mawr, hours late, with a broken front tooth, and completely distraught. The Dean of Admissions was SO nice to me, and we ended up having a great interview. She also suggested that I stay overnight instead of attempting to drive back the same day, which had been the plan. (Now that I look back on it, WHAT were my parents thinking??) I think she called my mother for me. I stayed with a very cool girl who was doing a thesis on Sidney's sonnet cycle Astrophel and Stella, and went to parties where Andy Warhol "movie stars" like Ultra Violet showed up. I participated in some kind of ceremony with owl lanterns...can't reall the name.
The next day I drove back to CT, and somewhere in the vicinity of the Cross Bronx Expressway the radiator boiled over! Turns out that during my fender bender the fan clipped the radiator and caused a leak....anyway, this time a nice young man stopped to help me, and I went off in his car with him --yes, I know that all mothers are now turning pale with horror!--but instead of disposing of my body in the East River, he just took me to a gas station, where under his direction I purchased some stuff to pour into the radiator that would temporarily plug the hole and some extra coolant. He then drove me back to my car, and added both of these things to my radiator, and sent me on my way.
When I eventually got home, my mother looked at my snaggletooth and burst into tears. (THAT was comforting...not.)
The upshot was that by some miracle I actually got a likely letter from Bryn Mawr. (I guess I stood out from the pack!  )
Last edited on Mon Mar 31st, 2008 12:24 am by Consolation
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CarolynLawrence
Administrator
| Joined: | Sun Mar 5th, 2006 |
| Location: | USA |
| Posts: | 3191 |
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Posted: Mon Mar 31st, 2008 12:03 am |
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Consolation, you really should consider a career as a comic writer. You have a way with words, and painting a picture! LOL! Snaggle tooth indeed!
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outwest
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| Joined: | Sun Mar 4th, 2007 |
| Location: | CA |
| Posts: | 540 |
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Posted: Mon Mar 31st, 2008 06:35 am |
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But you didn't choose Bryn Mawr? 
People weren't as worried about young drivers then. I used to drive to the beach and back every weekend. There were not all the people here in CA that there are now. At 17, I agreed to drive a car all the way to Denver, Colorado. I got a friend to go with me and my mother didn't bat an eye! The owner of the car was a business man who didn't have the few days it took to get the car there (he moved there). He paid for our hotels and all the gas and planetickets home. My friend and I had a blast in New Mexico- that's another story. Your experience sounds horrible!
College visits? What college visits? 
Last edited on Mon Mar 31st, 2008 06:37 am by outwest
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scoop
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| Joined: | Wed Oct 4th, 2006 |
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| Posts: | 546 |
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Posted: Mon Mar 31st, 2008 01:33 pm |
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| Consolation...I don't think my D will ever get from home to the high school in a car, much less to PA! You are a great writer.
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RMmom
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| Joined: | Fri Oct 19th, 2007 |
| Location: | California USA |
| Posts: | 46 |
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Posted: Mon Mar 31st, 2008 01:42 pm |
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Seriously things have changed with teen driving! When I was 17 my mom let a couple of friends and I drive to a concert at the Forum in Inglewood by ourselves. If you know LA, you know that even 30 years ago Inglewood was a bad part of town and it was about 50 miles from safe, sheltered South Orange County.
I didn't get to decide which colleges to visit. My mom had an agenda for where she wanted me to go. She thought I would be better off at a small sheltered school, I wanted big city, bright lights. We visited UCSB and UC Santa Cruz (we couldn't really afford privates so I was discouraged from visiting them). We also visited Cal Poly SLO only because a friend of mine was there. I hated both UCs, especially Santa Cruz. I remember thinking that I would absolutely suffocate there it was so small and isolated. I applied to SLO only because of my friend.
I ended up at UCLA, even though my mom almost 'forgot' to mail my application. I had also applied to Northwestern, Radcliffe and Columbia on the off chance I might get a scholarship. I got accepted at all 3, but no money so they were out of the question. Interestingly enough, the only school that didn't accept me was Cal Poly.
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mackinaw
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| Joined: | Mon Mar 6th, 2006 |
| Location: | Michigan |
| Posts: | 776 |
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Posted: Mon Mar 31st, 2008 11:44 pm |
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Visit colleges? It never occurred to me!
In my junior year in high school, I sat down with an uncle of mine who was a professor of geology at Caltech. He gave me a list of colleges to consider. I went to the public library and checked out college catalogues. I wrote letters requesting applications.
The only ones I applied to were from my uncle's list. My only rule was that I didn't want to go to UCLA (right there in my home town), so if I went to a UC it was going to be Berkeley.
I ended up at Reed. The first time I saw it was when I arrived for orientation. Within hours we all got on buses for the trip to Camp Westwind on the Oregon coast. That's where they held orientation. Three days in the woods, so to speak, talking about the honor principle (after doing our required reading: J.S. Mill's "On Liberty"), singing folksongs, telling stories, and meeting our classmates and some upper classmen.
(On driving, I got my learner's permit at 15.5, and my license on my birthday at 16. Within days, we were driving wherever, which during the summer meant heading to the beach two or three times a week. From the San Fernando Valley (in L.A. area), our favorite spot was Zuma Beach but we would also sometime go to Malibu, Santa Monica, Redondo, or Leo Carrillo. It was great fun driving over the Santa Monica Mountains on Topanga Cyn or Las Virgenes Roads to the coast.)
Last edited on Tue Apr 1st, 2008 11:33 pm by mackinaw
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outwest
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| Joined: | Sun Mar 4th, 2007 |
| Location: | CA |
| Posts: | 540 |
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Posted: Tue Apr 1st, 2008 01:52 am |
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Yah, that's what I did Mack. Every weekend I could, my friends and I would pile in one car or the other and drive to Newport, Balboa or Laguna desperately trying to get golden brown. Nobody cared about skin cancer and baby oil fried you up pretty nicely. The drive I remember the most was when my friend's VW bug wouldn't go out of 2nd gear. We drove at 30 miles an hour the whole way.
Once, five of us saved our earnings from various little jobs and actually rented a house on Balboa Island for a week. It is too expensive for kids to do that now, thank goodness, because I know what we did that week....
Last edited on Tue Apr 1st, 2008 01:54 am by outwest
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RMmom
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| Joined: | Fri Oct 19th, 2007 |
| Location: | California USA |
| Posts: | 46 |
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Posted: Tue Apr 1st, 2008 02:06 am |
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You guys are too funny. I remember taking the bus from Irvine to Newport Beach during the summer. We didn't drive because we were too cheep to pay for parking. When we did start driving to the beach, we would pile 7 or 8 of us into my Honda Civic. When we got there we would find a parking space just inches bigger than the car and a couple of guys would pick it up and place it in the parking space.
I still let D and S take the bus to Laguna Beach in the summer. They have a great time and it gives them the freedom to come and go as they please.
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patsmom
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| Joined: | Sun Mar 5th, 2006 |
| Location: | USA |
| Posts: | 165 |
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Posted: Tue Apr 1st, 2008 06:22 pm |
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I never visited any colleges, either. I had seen UF when I was about 13 but that was it.
I remember looking through some huge Fiske Guide-type book and finding a few colleges that looked interesting. Eventually I narrowed it down to William and Mary (my reach), Mary Washington College (my match) and Stetson University (my safety). I had never seen any of them -- had never even BEEN to Virginia but something about it appealed to me. Got rejected by W & M, accepted at MWC and got a scholarship to Stetson, but chose MWC, which was back then the women's college of UVA.
They mailed me my roommate info and it worked out that she lived in Annandale in Northern VA. Her family agreed to pick me up at the airport in DC and drive me and my luggage to Fredericksburg when they brought her. I can't imagine that happening today, but I guess it never occurred to my parents to drive me or go with me on the plane. My memory is fuzzy but I think I must have only had one suitcase -- how else could they have fit all of our stuff in the trunk of their car? I know I shipped a footlocker before I left.
Consolation, your story was great! What confidence you must have gained from that experience! How times have changed, huh?
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mominva
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| Joined: | Sun Mar 5th, 2006 |
| Location: | DC Suburbs |
| Posts: | 332 |
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Posted: Tue Apr 1st, 2008 06:42 pm |
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I never visited, either, unless you count going to a local LAC to use the library!
I was the first in my family to go to college. I applied to 2 privates, both local (one whose library I was familiar with), one CUNY school and one SUNY (the only place I'd need to move to).
My parents did take me to the SUNY accepted student event in April. I really grappled with my decision. My wise mother told me if I moved away and didn't like it, I could always come home; but if I stayed local, I might always wonder what I might have missed.
I went to that SUNY and met the man who has been my spouse for near 30 years!
A humorous aside, my mother wondered why I wanted to 'chase your children away' when we said we expected them to go away to college
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scoop
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| Joined: | Wed Oct 4th, 2006 |
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Posted: Tue Apr 1st, 2008 08:58 pm |
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| Most of my friends parents were bribing them with cars if they went to a local school. My mom never went away to college and actually graduated 25 years after she first started. She really wanted me to have that experience. I ended up at SUNY New Paltz for no particular reason except that it wasn't too far and I knew one person slightly. I met my husband of 20 years there. It all worked out well in the end. It was the only school I visited and that visit consisted of my friends brother showing me around, I never went to an info session and certainly never thought of visiting other schools. What a different time it is now.
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hummingbird
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Posted: Tue Apr 1st, 2008 09:49 pm |
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Looks like I'm not the only one who didn't have any college visits. For whatever reason, it just wasn't discussed in my family. I assumed I would go to Oregon State University like my dad, but I truly never thought that much about it, despite being an excellent student. My tiny high school had very little in the way of guidance counseling. So I'll blame it on that!
In October of my senior year, my BF and I decided to get engaged and get married right after I graduated. So I didn't apply to any colleges except to register at the local community college. We got married in June, I went to CC in September, then transferred a couple of years later to Portland State University to finish my degree.
24 years later I have a second degree (from Oregon Health & Science University) and the same husband.
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Lupine
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| Joined: | Thu May 17th, 2007 |
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| Posts: | 129 |
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Posted: Sun Apr 6th, 2008 01:15 am |
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I took one college trip. We flew from San Diego to Chicago to visit the University of Chicago. I checked in at admissions, and was asked to go to the Chemistry department for an interview. I'd put on the application that I wanted to major in Chemistry, so that didn't seem unreasonable to me, particularly since I didn't know anything about college admissions. At the department I was asked many questions -- just about a grilling -- and about 10 minutes into it the interviewer (who was some professor) asked in a puzzled voice why I wanted to pursue a graduate degree in chemistry with the background I had?
Meanwhile, the more mom saw of the University's location vis-a-vis the tough part of Chicago, the more she insisted that I could go anywhere, but NOT there.
So, we left Chicago, and flew down to Purdue. Between the stench from the ag school cowfeeding unit, and just plain not liking the campus, I would have been encouraging mom to just drive on by. Unfortunately, we had flown in, and would have to fly out, so we spent a very cold two days looking at it anyway.
Thus ended my college visits. About that time I also learned that the University of California would admit me automatically simply based on SAT scores, and the $212 a quarter in fees couldn't be beat.
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MaizeBlue
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Posted: Sun Apr 6th, 2008 02:12 am |
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| I never saw UCLA's campus until the day I turned in the application, in person! My dad, who had briefly attended Cal, was a diehard Bruin fan from his youth growing up in LA. Since we lived about 2 hours from the Bay Area, he took me to every UCLA football and basketball game played against Cal and Stanford. Despite having spent time at these lovely rival campuses, there was no doubt that I was a future Bruin. My dad drove me down to LA on November 1st, 19**, and, after a 7 hr. drive, I deposited my app at admissions at noon. Dad and I then wandered the campus. I never took a formal tour nor attended an admission session. We returned home the same day. The next time I went back was the following September on move-in day. And Lupine, I remember the $200 per quarter tuition too! I think r/b was something like $2300/yr? I think my parents sent me ~300/mo. which was to cover everything. Last edited on Sun Apr 6th, 2008 02:13 am by MaizeBlue
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Thumper
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| Joined: | Sun Mar 5th, 2006 |
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Posted: Sun Apr 6th, 2008 06:04 pm |
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Back in 1969, I'm not sure many did college visits. I know I sure didn't (unless you count looking at the glossy black and white pictures in the catalogs in the GC's office 'visitiing'). My first "visit" to my freshman college was the day I moved in. Truthfully, if I had visited prior to that, I probably wouldn't have gone there. I transfered after one year...also to a school I had NEVER seen. BUT I had a lot of high school friends who were students there. First day there...was my move in day. But I graduated from that one!!
Ditto grad schools. I applied, and the first time I saw my grad school was the trip I made the summer before to find a place to live.
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