The college tour redux

[Nords]

Quote:

Originally Posted by freebird5825 In my own experience, it was the fact that I did not separate myself from the guys that I think had a lot to do with my acceptance into the field. Granted I was an odd duck and w*rked as a mechanic and talked about guy things very naturally. I always netw*rked with both genders in college. If DD is going to w*rk alongside guy engineers when she graduates and gets a j*b, what purpose would it serve to have a separatist attitude from college experience? I'd like the guy engineers here to chime in, please, for other opinions. Don't want to start a gender war, but may be worth discussing, IMHO.

Well, it's not quite as bad as it seems.

Despite its tolerant and accomodative soft-pedaling, Notre Dame is a school founded on religious roots. It didn't even go co-ed until 1972. The dorms are already separated by gender (always have been, probably always will be), sex and alcohol are actively discouraged within those walls, and the chain of command goes a bit higher than the typical NROTC environment. Their version of the UCMJ is distinctively more Old Testament-- it IS the Old Testament.

So the women are separated from the guys to begin with but at least they make up nearly half of the student population. In my experience they're probably also the half with better grades, focus, and behavior. Putting the women engineers in the same section of the dorm just gives them the option to work together without the guys getting in the way any more than they already do. I'm sure the women know how to integrate the guys into their dorm life if they choose to do so.

When she goes out in the fleet ("It's not a job, it's an adventure!") women are about 10-20% of the wardroom. Their staterooms are along the same passageways as the men's staterooms. At sea, there's just no way to separate themselves from the guys. And frankly, once again they're generally better performers than the guys...

Who knows, maybe ND's women engineers room together so that they don't have to live with those icky liberal-arts [insert pejorative here]!

[LOL!]

I have to say that putting all the women engineers together is not good. Even same-sex dorms are kinda bad because in real-life (to my knowledge) same-sex apartment complexes are rare. I know of a university who had problems with all-male dorms being too rowdy, so they diluted the machismo with women.

Anyways, university and dorm-life can lack diversity, so no need to foist additional homogeneity on unsuspecting freshman. It's hard enough to get out "beyond the hedges" (that's for you Independently Poor ).

[Bestwifeever]

Although South Bend's weather through mid-April is not nearly as pleasant as Houston's during the same months, it is the unusual college-kid who even notices climate (although a Hawaiian upbringing may make her more sensitive to cold, I suppose--if she goes to Notre Dame she might actually wear a warm coat instead of just a hoodie like the other Leprechauns during those months, and hat and gloves? What are those?). So weather probably won't (and shouldn't) enter into her decision-making.

Sounds like she had good visits and better to love all her choices than not. The money will all work out no matter where she decides to go, so fingers crossed that all the schools she applies to see what a strong smart independent young lady she is.

[mews]

LOL, I lived in the women's dorms. Believe me, there were guys around.

I could tell from the vomit-noises in the bathrooms on Friday and Saturday nights. (a deeper, more resonant tone, yaknow.)

Ta,
mews

[freebird5825]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nords Well, it's not quite as bad as it seems. Despite its tolerant and accomodative soft-pedaling, Notre Dame is a school founded on religious roots... So the women are separated from the guys to begin with but at least they make up nearly half of the student population. In my experience they're probably also the half with better grades, focus, and behavior. Putting the women engineers in the same section of the dorm just gives them the option to work together without the guys getting in the way any more than they already do. I'm sure the women know how to integrate the guys into their dorm life if they choose to do so. When she goes out in the fleet ("It's not a job, it's an adventure!") women are about 10-20% of the wardroom. Their staterooms are along the same passageways as the men's staterooms. At sea, there's just no way to separate themselves from the guys. And frankly, once again they're generally better performers than the guys... Who knows, maybe ND's women engineers room together so that they don't have to live with those icky liberal-arts [insert pejorative here]!

Ah, so. I missed that part of the ND culture. I am a 12 year parochial school veteran, so I understand the religious based gender separation of living quarters.
I lived in an all girls' dorm my freshman year at a SUNY school on the recommendation of my older sister. It was a bad idea because it was kinda like HS the Sequel in atmosphere. It was the only non-coed dorm on campus.
It was a good idea because I had a quiet dorm to study in versus the social party in the library scene.
I moved off campus for the remaining 3 years. That was an economic as well as "I want to grow up and have my own apartment" decision.
YMMV...
So DD is eventually headed for fleet duty? I must have missed that part.

[CCdaCE]

Quote:

Originally Posted by freebird5825 Ah, finally a place where I can contribute. I'd like to offer another perspective on the SWE woman engineer thing...from a real live woman engineer, yours truly. I would like to think that gender bias in any field is history, but let's stay real here. In my own experience, it was the fact that I did not separate myself from the guys that I think had a lot to do with my acceptance into the field. Granted I was an odd duck and w*rked as a mechanic and talked about guy things very naturally. I always netw*rked with both genders in college. If DD is going to w*rk alongside guy engineers when she graduates and gets a j*b, what purpose would it serve to have a separatist attitude from college experience? I'd like the guy engineers here to chime in, please, for other opinions. Don't want to start a gender war, but may be worth discussing, IMHO.

Golly, Gee, Shucks, I have a hard enough time communicating with fellow male engineers, let alone a female one. So, I can't imagine it's any easier for women in the reverse situation. One female in an office of 17 guys.

It always irritated me when the Soc. of Women Engr's. had "more fun", but they worked harder to have it, too. Pizza parties, all-women design teams, etc. They arranged the funding, networked to get community/business/university support and achieved. Kinda what Nords is driving at, I think?

So, for these reasons and more... I would want the same chance for my daughter as I would for a son. In the workplace, I make a conscious effort to make equal or more opportunities available for the female co-ops, temps, new engineers, etc. Maybe that backfires on me, or affects me in ways that I'm not aware of, but, hey, I try.

Gender bias is alive and well, even after MY best intentions. So, I don't think it's a separatist issue, but, it's nice to have the option to be with "your own" once in awhile. Support group, you might say. Whether that's based on gender, race, home town, military branch, or whatever.

-CC

[Nords]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bestwifeever ... although a Hawaiian upbringing may make her more sensitive to cold, I suppose--if she goes to Notre Dame she might actually wear a warm coat instead of just a hoodie like the other Leprechauns during those months, and hat and gloves? What are those?

Notre Dame in July-- she was freezing her butt off. Sweatshirts and jeans every morning to breakfast, sweatshirt & jacket every night.

In her defense, I'd be freezing too if the temp dropped below 70. I can barely even stand to go surfing when the water's below 75.

Quote:

Originally Posted by freebird5825 So DD is eventually headed for fleet duty? I must have missed that part.

She feels that she's seen enough of USNA and doesn't need to repeat their very busy week another 45 or so times for plebe year. But at least she won't spend the rest of her life wondering "What if..."

However she finds the fantasy of the family business very compelling, and she likes the idea of having a job waiting for her after college. Very few get to enter the Navy's SeaBees right out of college so she'll probably go surface warfare after graduation. (Women can go nuclear power on aircraft carriers but she's not interested. She thinks aviators are nuts. She thinks Marines are almost as nuts as aviators. So...) The idea of a destroyer out of Japan (with port visits to Singapore, Hong Kong, Guam, Korea, etc) has her practically turning backflips. She's too happy for me to ruthlessly temper her enthusiasm with reality, so we'll let her figure it out for herself.

Heh-- I found a link to USNA's graphic novel depicting midshipman life for the Millenium Generation. Before clicking on the link below, please refrain from eating for at least three hours and ensure you swallow all liquids. Yeah, sure, our plebe year was just like that too...
http://www.usna.edu/PAO/BZ%20Adobe%20PDF.pdf

[freebird5825]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nords Notre Dame in July-- she was freezing her butt off. Sweatshirts and jeans every morning to breakfast, sweatshirt & jacket every night. ...Heh-- I found a link to USNA's graphic novel depicting midshipman life for the Millenium Generation. Before clicking on the link below, please refrain from eating for at least three hours and ensure you swallow all liquids. Yeah, sure, our plebe year was just like that too... http://www.usna.edu/PAO/BZ%20Adobe%20PDF.pdf

So RPI, Clarkson and RIT are obviously out of the question.

I read the entire comic book graphic novel. Ummmmmm...ummmmm..."incredulous" would be my best word here.

[Nords]

Quote:

Originally Posted by freebird5825 So RPI, Clarkson and RIT are obviously out of the question.

When we visited RPI she asked which dorms are air-conditioned. The RPI tour guide thought that was pretty funny, but she did share that if the dorm heat goes out then the facilities staff consider it a full-blown emergency and will start evacuating dorm residents to "alternate facilities" if they can't get the heat back on within 12 hours.

The alleged "city" of Troy makes South Bend look like a bustling metropolis... and RPI is one of the very few schools for which NROTC will pay not only tuition but also room & board. There has to be a reason the Navy's being so generous!

[freebird5825]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nords When we visited RPI she asked which dorms are air-conditioned. The RPI tour guide thought that was pretty funny, but she did share that if the dorm heat goes out then the facilities staff consider it a full-blown emergency and will start evacuating dorm residents to "alternate facilities" if they can't get the heat back on within 12 hours. The alleged "city" of Troy makes South Bend look like a bustling metropolis... and RPI is one of the very few schools for which NROTC will pay not only tuition but also room & board. There has to be a reason the Navy's being so generous!

Hmmmm...lemme think for a moment...
I know I know...

[Nords]

I think this is the end of our college tours. I'll have to start a new thread on "college applications".

Hard to believe she's only been home for five days. I was right about her needing a break from being mature & polite! Empty-nesting was sweet and I'm looking forward to resuming it in just 396 days. I'm sure she's looking forward just as much to going back to a college campus. But she's picked up her old routine and school starts in just two weeks. Actually school never really ended… as soon as she finished 11th grade the 12th grade AP teachers piled on the summer projects. She starts a week of "AP Brain Camp" today.

In general, teens lack the neurons and circuits to execute critical thinking. It's interesting to watch our teen try to through the pros & cons. She keeps trying to assign each category of "pro" to just one school, and she struggles to believe that every college could score a 9.5 on the same attribute. For example, every campus in the world probably tries to evoke a sense of "belonging". However she thinks Notre Dame is really the "only" school that tries to make the students feel like they belong. Then we help her to realize that she "belonged" at ND for three whole weeks while USNA was more about teambuilding (and yelling and sleep deprivation) and frankly she has no clue on the rest. Then as she tried to defend ND's "family" concept she realized it bothered her that ND was so full of WASP kids making stereotypic jokes about Asians. Her debate thesis that Notre Dame had the best family ended up concluding that ND might have issues and everyone else might be fine.

Same for another very important part of her life: food. ND has the "best" food (one dining hall looks like Harry Potter's Hogwarts). Then she realized that USNA was better quality but less selection & no buffet lines. Then she remembered her lunch with Rice students (the Owls made her feel as if she belonged!) and she confused herself all over again. She's still a bit skeptical of our assurances that every college is a 9.5 with food.

I've told her that college selection will not be based on Division I athletics. That went over well.

We've agreed for now that there will be no more college trips. I think she's ready to do more analysis, not collect more data.

So far the only concrete issues we've come up with are climate, urban proximity, and USNA's plebe year. Surprisingly Houston seems to add a lot to Rice in a way that South Bend and Pittsburgh do not, and I don't mean just thermally. Every other pro or con else seems to be a wash. We have a lot of reading to do on CollegeConfidential's discussion boards to see what else (if anything) we're missing.

I think we're going to have to tape a long roll of butcher paper to the wall so that she can start scribbling on it.

She's faxed the NROTC recruiters everything they need. She's scheduled one final SAT II test for October. (Rice likes SAT IIs.) Over the next two weeks she's going to try to finish the online common college applications for NROTC (Rice early decision plus ND, Carnegie-Mellon, UVA, & RPI) as well as USNA nomination letters. Then she has to move ahead on essays while the school counselor starts pumping out those official transcripts and she routes the recommendations paperwork. We should hear from NROTC next month and Rice promises early decision announcements in late Nov/early Dec.

After nearly 17 years of shipyards & sea trials, it's hard to believe that this kid is actually spotted on the flight deck and the catapults are warming up…

[RunningBum]

studentsreview.com seemed like a decent site too.

[LOL!]

Geez Nords, it reads like you are gonna apply to go back to school yourself. What college are YOU thinking of applying to? What's a good major for early retirees? Didn't I read that enrolling help qualify one for group health insurance rates?

[Buckeye]

All the white faces definitely gets old. Landing back home in Seattle and seeing faces of many shapes, sizes, and colors is a relief. Living in such a homogenous community as I do now in rural OH (i.e shared economic status, religious persuasion, ethnicity, politics, same schools, same teachers for generations, etc.) made me appreciate the diversity I had grew up with. Previously, I had taken it for granted.

Living among the lack of diversity is an education into how a large part of the US population lives. It's kind of like being in the military. You can never know what it's really like on the inside until you've lived it yourself.

[Texas Proud]

Being from Houston I know a very little about Rice.... one of the either good or bad things (based on what you want) is it's size... only a couple of thousand students... I remember hearing once that if you took ALL of Rice's alums.... you could not fill the football stadium... (or maybe it was Michigan's football stadium... it was a long time ago when I heard it)...

Also, what degree is she pursuing? The ranking of the schools would more than likely be different on these.... Rice has a business school, but it is not ranked very high...

One benefit of Rice is that it is right where most of the museums are located... so if she is interested in that...

[LOL!]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Texas Proud ... Also, what degree is she pursuing? The ranking of the schools would more than likely be different on these.... Rice has a business school, but it is not ranked very high...

One doesn't have to guess at rankings
Rice University | Rankings

[Buckeye]

Correct my previous post to read "........I grew up with."

[Nords]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RunningBum studentsreview.com seemed like a decent site too.

Thanks, it's a good one! I like the survey of whether their students would do it all over again at the same school. Great source of negative comments.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Texas Proud Being from Houston I know a very little about Rice.... one of the either good or bad things (based on what you want) is it's size... only a couple of thousand students... I remember hearing once that if you took ALL of Rice's alums.... you could not fill the football stadium... (or maybe it was Michigan's football stadium... it was a long time ago when I heard it)... Also, what degree is she pursuing? The ranking of the schools would more than likely be different on these.... Rice has a business school, but it is not ranked very high... One benefit of Rice is that it is right where most of the museums are located... so if she is interested in that...

As other Houston residents have pointed out, Rice ranks pretty high on engineering & science. ~3800 students (so smaller classes and more profs teaching), NROTC, good academic programs, civil & environmental engineering degrees, tough to get into, and good women's programs. Lots of research & internship opportunities with local businesses. Warmer weather than ND, USNA, CMU, & RPI. Great campus.

Of course another drawback is that it's in Houston and has warmer weather. But NROTC will keep her busy elsewhere during most of the summers.

Yes, she's a museum geek. She must get that from her mother...

Quote:

Originally Posted by LOL! Geez Nords, it reads like you are gonna apply to go back to school yourself. What college are YOU thinking of applying to? What's a good major for early retirees? Didn't I read that enrolling help qualify one for group health insurance rates?

Hey, every parent wants to give their kids get a leg up on the mistakes the parents made at that age. My own college search was pretty pathetic-- Carnegie-Mellon because of some high-school projects in their labs, Pitt because it was close to home, Penn State for a high-school field trip, and USNA with a friend. I knew nothing of NROTC. If USNA had offered summer seminars in 1977 then I would've ended up blowing code at CMU instead and struggled to pay the tuition.

I wasn't exactly an informed consumer when I joined the military, and when we visited friends at USNA our highly impressionable teen fell into the same trap. Three years and a summer seminar later, now she knows better.

Too many of our local parents are telling us about their kids who didn't stand on a college campus, take a good look around, and feel that they could belong there. It's especially common when it's a five-hour flight to the Mainland and there are few choices in the islands. Other kids were coerced into Mom & Dad's alma mater. They'd come home a semester or two later, move back into their old bedroom, and end up working at Taco Bell while they're supposed to be working on a new life plan.

I won't make her choices for her. However I think parents can be a big help at filtering out the irrelevant or distracting information. I can help her do the research and I can sift through tremendous volumes of useful (and not so useful) sources for discussions to help develop her critical thinking.

I want her to have done enough research to stop wondering "What if…" When she chooses a major and starts her classes, I want her to know that it's her own damn fault she made an informed decision. And most importantly to me, I want her to launch from the nest on the first try!

[LOL!]

Well, I'm just lucky that you love to write up all this stuff, Nords. Thanks! With your write-ups I get to do a few vicarious college tours and provoke prompt my daughter to get on with it herself. One thing that has helped us throughout our adult lives is that our best friends have done all this one year before us and we have learned from them just as we learn from you. It all started when we were college freshmen and they were college sophomores, so they

a. Got married a year earlier
b. Had kids a year earlier
c. Taught kids to drive a car a year earlier
d. Sent kids to college a year earlier
e. Dealt with dying parents a year earlier
f. Get kids married off a year earlier
g. Become grandparents a year earlier
h. .....

I also expect to learn a few tidbits from you to push along the college application process, so thanks in advance.

[BunsGettingFirm]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nords Heh-- I found a link to USNA's graphic novel depicting midshipman life for the Millenium Generation. Before clicking on the link below, please refrain from eating for at least three hours and ensure you swallow all liquids. Yeah, sure, our plebe year was just like that too... http://www.usna.edu/PAO/BZ%20Adobe%20PDF.pdf

Wow, they really know how to sell this stuff, don't they? To attract the kind of people that the USNA want to attract, I'd give them the big hairy audacious goals as a pitch as well. Heck, if I were 20 years younger, I'd be signing up just about now.