Preparing my daughter for college...

What does your daughter want to do? Has she any ideas about a career?

At this point she doesn't have any strong ideas as to what she wants to do. She says she wants to make a lot of money and love doing it. That doesn't tell me much.

I didn't get past the end of your first paragraph. Foo with the counsellor unless the world has recently tipped - and while it rather has, economically, I doubt it this much. Bypass that person.

I'm sure there are whole websites for form filling advice - and I remember one NYT article about how arduous it is to apply to the very best schools, but this is silly.

Certainly she should apply to the local good universities/colleges as well as others of interest.
People now get advanced placement credits for some classes which can bring them above 4.0s, and that may be why he frowns at 3.5, 3.85.

(I only got through school because there was no tuition then in the UC system, so I speak as lucky and rather fervent about availability of advanced education to those prepared. I also want people tutored up, if they're borderline. Your daughter doesn't seem borderline.)

Well, I'll be interested in what others say.

Well, it's time she starts focusing on what she wants to do. What are her interests?

She is a little obsessive and loves math. She is so proud of her progress in that class. I think she'd like to continue with the math. She was thinking arcitecture at one point.

Yes, interest matters..

though I changed within college and the decade after. I started out loving medicine, history of science, and so on, and moved through time to interest in art and architecture once I knew more about those, which took a while.

The only people I know personally who went to universities in washington are m.d. friends, and they're pretty happy people (talk about a generalization) - but I don't know of a local range of schools up there.

Oh, wait, I'm forgetting piffka, peace and love, and jeanne d'seattle. Can't come up with where they went, offhand, but they're all superb women.

Hah, maybe architecture or engineering or, dare I say, landscape architecture (people usually learn about that later on.) Or design - there is this whole fascinating world of design, and some schools might be better than others for that.

I like land arch (when I do) because it taps my artist self and my engineering self (not very advanced, but I 'get' a lot of civil engineering.) Some of my best pals in the height of my work years were the 'civils'. Well, ok, one firm I challenged and won, and they didn't like me. Also am interested in structural engineering. She could look up Arup. There's this guy, a head guy there ... initials are C B - carlos balmain? just guessing, who has combined engineering and architecture in a unique way.

Well, I'm babbling, your daughter can't know now. But some schools may be better than others re fit - for accepting her in the first place, for being good re elasticity if you need to change focus, re what they're liked for - what their reps are. At least a couple of the Cal State colleges, then universities, were well known in agriculture --- but later, architecture and land arch. I heard Roberto Burle Marx at a Cal Poly... (famous guy). And Davis was one of those far places. Now well known in lots of fields, including oenology.

Well, not to discourage her from applying to the immediate universities, I didn't mean that, I think she should. But I'd also look around, no, not for cosmetology (I once wanted to be and md or a cosmetologist) - but for sense of fit.

I'm a bit down on school counsellors, anyway, but cosmotology? This is for bubbly little personalities that can't do anything else, or so it seems. Counseling is for those who can't stand up to the tougher courses of study in college, and their real goal seems to be making little marks in a book to represent how many people they've "helped" per day to justify their own jobs.

A liberal arts major might not be bad for freshman year, till she finds a sense of direction, if she doesn't have one before graduating high school. My sister started University of Miami as a language major, looked at the employment opportunities and switched to math. In 1963, she was recruited from across the country by Douglas Aircraft, and chose to retire at age 55 from a career in defense programing.

Oh, her high school counsellor hadn't even heard of her. She graduated third in her class from a very large high school. Someday, ask me what I think of counsellors.

Find a school which has avoided becoming a political correctness factory and in which the professors teach for a living. The military academies are like that and I know one other school like that i.e. Norwich in Vermont and I'd assume there were others.

I never went to a counsellor except the one that wanted me to be a nun, and I only went to interview her. Never saw one in university, might have benefitted, but might not. There's a field called psychometrics testing, where they ask you questions. But I could skew most tests back then.

Some people know their interests early and some haven't even heard of the interest.. In the meantime, a good background in liberal arts is - to me - a foundational start - whether by reading on one's own, as some do, or in a class structure.

your mistake is expecting anything out of High School counselors. They have far more work than time in most cases.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20081214_Counselors_have_a_daunting_workload.html

don't know if you are in the seattle district but they are running at 400/1 in the collective bargaining agreement, when the max recommended by professional organizations is 300/1 which is at least 100/1 more than it was back in the 70's at my school, and even then only the gifted or troubled kids got any attention from them.


http://www.seattlewea.org/static_content/contracts/contracts/Cert%20CBA/CertCBAArt9.htm ....80% of the way through the page....

Daughter started out in anthropology but it didn't take her a year to figure out she didn't want to do that for the rest of her life. Switched to sociology and now has her PhD and is doing very well. (That is a field I would NEVER have imagined would suit her.)

Son started out in Administration of Justice and pre-law, switched majors twice before settling on engineering and music. He makes a good living as a professional engineer; he teaches piano, composes, and plays in a praise band to keep himself sane.

Tell your daughter that if there isn't a lucrative scholarship offer involved, in which case she might have to accommodate that while pursuing her true love, she doesn't need to decide now. Keep making those good grades and taking tough courses to qualify for the college and field of her choice. If she still doesn't know by her freshman year, she can focus on core curriculum until she knows. Most schools don't make you declare a major for awhile.

We're heading to St Louis in April to visit family and I told her that I'd like to take her on a campus tour of Washington Univ. Very good school--her reply--But I don't want to go to school in St Louis.
I explained to her that it was just for practice and to get an idea of what a big school looks like.
She has been putting up some resistance in my wanting to help her. She thinks I'm pressuring but I told her that I just don't want her to be running around at the last minute.
I guess the one good thing that came out of the meeting the other day is that the counsellor agreed that now is the time to start looking.

If she likes Math then I'd suggest starting out as a Math major. If she finds she likes something different, she can always change majors.

Math majors are very much in demand in the job market. In all kinds of jobs, not just science or math.

Math is very flexible; if she decides to switch majors, it will further her in just about any science/engineering field.

I had a friend who went to Wash U, as she called it, worked on the team that got the nobel for something about insulin. Ah, well, a long time ago. What I remember about her is not that, but that she wore fifties clothes in the late sixties - those felt skirts with appliques - poodle skirts. Looked funny under a lab coat.

NYU is great for math majors, and if your daughter enjoys math, she'll have
great opportunities to enter a college of her choice, as this particular field
isn't female dominated and I am sure, she'll receive open doors.

I have a friend who majored in math - she always was the only female in her
classes.

This cannot be said enough. She is, what, 16 right now? She doesn't know what she wants to do with the rest of her life and if she professed to know, I would be immediately suspect. How the hell anyone at such a tender age can know what will make them happy for 5 or more decades is beyond me.

She needs to go to a school where she has options. Usually this means a university. It can be a large school so long as she can get some smaller classes (some kids thrive in large classes, others shrink and are intimidated and hate it -- I think those are traits you need to know about more than almost any others).

She should not go some place with only one or two specialties if she is not even sure of her general direction, then she will end up either pushed one way (which would not necessarily be the best way for her) or would end up feeling she had to transfer in order to get what she needed.

I speak from experience. I went to a large school, Boston University. I had no idea, really, what I wanted, it was vaguely something in the sciences but I truly had no clue. Changed my mind several times, finally got my degree in Philosophy. Large classes or small didn't bother me but I did better in smaller ones when push came to shove. My closest friend from High School attended a tiny college, Virginia Intermont, which had two specialties: horsemanship and ballet. She was going for horses, then realized during her first year that she wanted something with more of an employment potential and there was nowhere for her to go there. She transferred to Messiah College, another teeny place, but was able to take classes at Temple. I believe her degree was finally in Radio, TV and Film, and she regrets not having just transferred over to Temple and gotten the BA with the Temple name on it rather than the Messiah name. She doesn't even work in RTF any more but I offer her experience as a cautionary tale re making a choice far too early and then feeling boxed in (twice!). Transfers happen, for sure, and minds are changed. Far easier in a larger school if you are unsure, as you have options and won't be as tempted to just want to escape, with all of the ground-losing that can come with that.