The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Choosing colleges, cheeseburgers
Over the holidays, I talked to several parents of high school seniors trying to decide on colleges. A common concern: Should they push their children to Georgia’s top public campuses, many of which are large, or suggest smaller schools where students are less likely to get lost?
My older kids attended a mix of big, medium and small. And my youngest, my twins, are now at the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech. Where kids will flourish may depend on what I call the cheeseburger test. If your children order a burger with cheese at a busy lunch spot and it arrives naked, will they flag down the server to get a new sandwich? Or, will they hiss to you that it’s fine and stop making a fuss?
The teen who does not want to impose on anyone or make a fuss may face challenges at a big school where students have to sometimes take off their shoe and pound on the table to be noticed. This is often hard for first-generation college students who won praise in K-12 schools for not bothering the adults in the building. But keeping your head down in college can lead to being overlooked and running
into walls, especially on a big campus where opportunities abound but are not delivered to your doorstep.
For example, registering for classes at most large campuses resembles navigating I-285 at rush hour. Timing is key, and you have to seize an opening. It’s such a daunting gantlet that students complain to me that the inability to take the courses they need threatens their on-time graduation.
When I went to the mass orientation at UGA this summer with my daughter, she met with an advisor who plotted out her courses. No need for a Plan B, as the adviser assured my daughter all the classes still had room. It turned out my daughter needed a Plan C.
When this happened again this semester, I asked a UGA administrator why it was so hard to get courses. Her response: “This year has been particularly harder because the incoming class was much larger than expected.”
One smart mom — a UGA grad herself with a grip on what courses students need for what major — shared her son’s orientation/registration saga. He was a transferee to UGA’s business school and left his 20-minute advisement session with a collection of classes his mother felt didn’t make sense. Earlier that day at orientation, they’d heard a dean in the business school speak so she told her son they were going to track down the woman and seek her advice. The dean was in her office and sat down with the young man and reviewed his schedule. She agreed the classes were wrong for him and enrolled him in an entirely different set.
Of course, there are great advantages to big schools, especially for high-energy teens who need an array of options. If you child wants to be in a mosh pit one night and an orchestra pit the next, a small school might not work. I talked to a student at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville who is considering switching to Georgia State. She likes the 24/7 energy of a city campus and wants hot and cold running poetry slams, karaoke and German film festivals.
Kids who thrive at smaller schools are often more focused on relationships than experiences; they want to run into professors on the quad or at the campus coffee shop. They like seeing the same classmates; they find familiar faces reassuring. I attended large schools for undergrad and graduate school, but was probably a better match for smaller campuses.
How common are mismatches? The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center found 37.2 percent of college students changed schools at least once within six years. The center looked at the cohort of U.S. students who began college in 2008 and graduated by 2014. That included 79,422 Georgians, 30,000 of whom transferred at least once, giving the state a transfer rate slightly higher, at 37.85 percent, than the national average.
The center didn’t discern why students transferred; certainly, finances played a role. But I suspect some students simply didn’t feel comfortable at their schools.
Several friends have lamented their college freshman is not excited about returning to campus this week. I believe students can create a fulfilling life at college, but it takes a year to figure out how. Most students will realize, probably in April when the campus is abloom and everything seems possible, that they can make their school work for them.