Amherst vs. Columbia - Anybody Have An Opinion?

This week-end we are headed to the East Coast to check out Columbia University and Amherst College. I am also planning on banging on MIT's door to see how their "Wait List" is progressing - which will pretty much ensure that my daughter doesn't get accepted - so maybe I won't.

In the meantime, I thought I would ask to see whether anybody out in the blogosphere had an opinion on either Columbia or Amherst. I have never been to either, although early on in her college application process I singled out Amherst as a good place for her to go. Why? I liked the name. I also like the fact that it was out in the Massachusetts Pampas in a cocoon-like town, overrun by college students. That spells "safe" in my head.

Thinking about her going to Columbia, which is in Manhattan -on the "Upper West Side" - as I discovered during my ticket booking process- keeps me awake at night. I picture scenes from Law & Order and resolve to absolutely forbid her from setting foot in New York City. At least at 3:00 in the morning. During the day, after the sun has banished all of the Boogie Men, I think about how if it were me in her position, I would be at Columbia in a New York Minute. Hypocrite I am, but I can take care of myself, I think. What is my little girl going to do in NYC? Then I realize what they mean when they talk about cutting the apron strings and letting go. They just don't tell you the apron strings aren't made of cloth, but flesh and blood.

I still instinctively try to hold her hand when we cross the street together. Who is going to hold her hand when she crosses the street in New York City?

On second thought, never mind. Forget I asked that.

Berkeley is starting to look pretty good to me now - Although they have been the least doting of the schools she has been accepted to. Berkeley sent an email and a follow-up letter, but nothing in the way of warm fuzzies for the parents. Not that it matters - I know Berkeley pretty well; both my sisters and my father went there. We spent two summers in Berkeley when I was a kid - which is funny now that I think of it - because I was completely oblivious to the turmoil that must have been raging there at the time (c. 1970). But I digress.

What to do. What to do.

Stupid Stanford.

Any alums out there with some insight?

Sign me, Worried Mother and

RH


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Watching the Ivy Grow

Today the Ivy League Universities posted their admissions lists - I suppose other universities and colleges did as well, although it was our experience that everyone else sent their letters out a week to 10 days earlier.

This has definitely been an interesting experience - and quite different from my own college application process. I don't think I applied to anything else but the University Of California system - I didn't really have much choice either financially or academically. I must say though, I am quite happy with my education and I was far to big a goof-off in high school to have deserved an Ivy League education. Better it went to somebody who worked their tail off or is particularly talented in some area.

My daughter, of course, had to rebel - like most teenagers do in one way or another - and thought nothing of applying to all the snobby east coast schools with bad gardeners. Well not quite all, only six of them and now she has gone and gotten herself accepted into two of them.

How can this be? This means she will probably want to go to one of them. After I recovered from the shock and awe of what my little girl had just managed to pull off, I could not help but notice that one of the most blatantly obvious traits of these east coast schools is that they are, in fact, located on the east coast and are definitely not in California.

CURSE YOU STANFORD!

It is not fair that we Californians get stuck with Stanford as our only snobby east coast school. Although they are snobby enough to count for at least two or three additional east coast schools.

Newcomers.

To the mothers of next year's crop of wide-eyed geniuses, I can only offer this advice: Be careful what you wish for - you just might get it.

RH

PS: Harvard, Princeton, Yale - you are most definitely now on my S%#T list.

PPS: This site predicted the outcome correctly of every last one of the schools where my daughter applied - I think it was 12 all together. I am not sure yet what to conclude from that.