Monday, February 1, 2010

College Choices

I guess by now many of you know that calling me a fan of Penn State University would be a gross understatement. Sure much of this has to do with their football team but it actually goes further than that and for four years we were proud Penn State parents as my son graduated in 2008. For the past several months we have been going through the college process again with my daughter Alex and while everyone assumed she too would be a Nittany Lion I don’t think at first she wanted to follow in her brother’s footsteps. However as time went on Penn State became her first choice and it was one of the half dozen schools she applied to in the fall.

The first school she heard from was Michigan State and when she was accepted into their College of Communications it became a place she would seriously consider. It had everything Alex wanted, a big school with big-time sports and great school spirit. She liked what she heard from students there and we scheduled a campus visit late last week. Meantime while she was accepted into other schools she was still waiting to hear from Penn State and a decision was expected by the end of January. We decided that she and I would make the visit to East Lansing and just before we left last Thursday she got the word she was waiting for….acceptance into PSU for the fall semester. We were all very happy, especially my son who now figured he was a place to crash for the next four years when he visited. However I did not want Alex to rule out Michigan State so we made the planned trip.

We had a really good couple of days together and the campus was pretty much what we expected. There were things we really liked and certainly couldn’t make a big deal out of the single digit temperatures because it was pretty much the same back home. Ironically they have had less snow this winter then we have although that’s not the norm. The best part of our trip was catching the sold out Michigan State-Michigan Ice Hockey game…we were among almost 7,000 fans and I really got into rooting for the Spartans.

Anyway it was a great experience and I’m glad we went because I was thrilled to spend time with her. So will it be Michigan State or Penn State? Well we’re going to make a campus visit to State College, Pa later this month but the decision has been made. Happy Valley…here comes Alex Williams.

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