One of the major takeaways from each students introduction to a college campus, is the dynamic or setting of the school. You can do all the research on the majors, degrees, ratios, staff background or even reviews. The most important item is the right setting for your students personality or comfort level. As parents we want to control this because we think we know what is best or we think we know our child. First, I am guilty of this huge hurdle for parents. I always dreamed of having a kid who go to school at NYU. All my friends who went to NYU, loved it there. I will even admit, on my daughter’s first two trips to NYC, I made sure to talk and stop by buildings at NYU. I pulled that stunt for the first time when she was 4 years old. One could easily say, I was “grooming” my kids to go there. Guilty as charged. My daughter bought into for a time, but as she grew older and more independent, she changed her focus and her tune. By the time she hit High School, I stopped talking about it, and started listening to her.

As parents we not only want the best for our kids, we secretly want to enjoy visiting them at school. And well, you can’t complain with New York City as your yearly college visit. I will say this, we are lucky that Paley will be possibly out of school by the time the twins head to college. Actually I should say “if” in that sentence. Honestly though, after our college road trip through New England, I was pretty open to all of the schools she had on her short list for applications. What I am not looking forward is to three kids in three different states, but we will make it happen, no matter what!

Our daughter got so much out of the road trip, what I got out of the trip was the exploration through backroads, small towns and villages. Before we headed out on this adventure, there was some signs that Paley was forming her own opinion on small towns versus the big cities. The same went for the size of the school. As she finished her final list of 12 schools to look at, we saw many large schools taken off her list. Schools that had upwards of 20,000 students. As mentioned, NYU had been huge staple in her early idea of what college was going to look and feel like. As Paley did her own research for the schools. She saw the student bodys at NYU and other similar schools were around 40k-51K students on the campus, and had some concern at a social level. Happy to say Paley kept NYU on the list for school to tour and attend info sessions. More on those school later.

Other areas of research Paley touched on was determining which schools had an open curriculum. She also researched extensively the details on the LBGTQ community on campus. There were a lot of wide open eyes during the download of that data. Some institutions still have not updated their student codes, to not only invite more students but protect students. One of those schools was Barnard, an all women school located in New York City. The school accepts trans students regardless of gender at birth, but they require that you identify as female when you apply. Which means trans male students, have to identify as female or hold their their transition until they are accepted, to identify as male. Times are changing, and there is hope that schools start to look at their trans policies to ensure more inclusion. Sadly there is still one school in the United States that still bans all trans student, Meredith College in North Carolina. I fear that number is going to see an increase moving past 2026.

The College Road Trip: City, Small Town, Big, Medium or Little

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