In June 2001, I graduated from CUNY Grad School with a PhD in Political Science. That’s Jonah, my dissertation baby. I was at various degrees of pregnancy in Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Harrisburg, when I interviewed key political actors in the school voucher battles in 1999. By the time I got to Harrisburg, I was waddling. Later, after a very rough C-section, Steve and I took turns watching him and writing our dissertations in 2000.Â
That ceremony was particularly long and gruesome. Some old fart in the English Department gave an hour long speech that was so bad that one of the honorary PhDs loudly complained and walked off the stage right in the middle of the speech. Through the whole ceremony, I kept fretting that two-year old Jonah would start crying and upset my folks who were watching him. But all survived.
That’s just one of the pictures that I scanned last week. I upgraded a professional website and create a school board campaign website, so I needed some fun old pictures.
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Henderson’s take was amusing (though he did seem young), Eisner’s harrowing, and Senior’s sad.
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Nice picture. Looking at schools in central Pennsylvania. So many New Jersey kids driving down the acceptance rates.
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Yup (and, even from out here in the PNW).
Kid across the street is attending Penn State, which is really hard to get to from here, and not the State U a few miles down the road.
Our elder kiddo did a summer program in Lancaster years ago and that was really hard to get to, especially when the airline suddenly changed their rules on unaccompanied minors in between the booking of tickets and the flight. At least the college kids are not minors!
Predictability in college admissions is creating all kinds of chaos everywhere. Good luck!
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Thanks. All the rich, coastal people are supposedly going early decision because they don’t need to worry about financial aid.
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Yes, kids from families in the selective admissions game are highly encouraged to pick a school to apply to early decision. Some of those families are choosing an ED school that promises to meet demonstrated need and think they will get enough aid by those criteria. Those people looking for financial aid can still use early decision — because you can withdraw if the financial offer isn’t good enough and they do not plan to compare offers or search for merit/tuition reduction aid. That strategy only works for a small number of schools, though, 90 or so according to cappex: https://www.cappex.com/greenlight/articles/us-colleges-meet-need. And most of those schools still include loans as part of the aid package.
The schools in PA that are listed as meeting full need are Bryn Mawr College, Franklin & Marshall College, Haverford College, Lafayette College, Lehigh University, Swarthmore College, University of Pennsylvania, Carnegie Mellon University, Curtis Institute of Music, Dickinson College. Swarthmore & Penn meet demonstrated need without loans. Haverford & Lafayette for middle income families (<50K income).
"demonstrated need" is a term of art for filling out a certain set of forms and have a number pop out that says how much you should pay. Schools like Penn & Swarthmore then give a grant for the difference between that number and the cost of attending. Other "demonstrated need" schools use loans and grants to make up the difference.
(hope I'm not 'splaining, but this knowledge sits in my brain and sometimes spews out)
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I’m trying to avoid following this stuff too closely, but I might have been at one of those schools today and it’s possible I’m going to another one of them tomorrow.
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(And, by predictability I mean unpredictability)
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Oh, and I do love that you went to your hooding ceremony with little one in tow. My former college roommate went to hers, a week postpartum.
I didn’t go to mine, and now I plan to insist to the best of my ability that anyone else I know go to there’s. My excuse was that I had moved away and would have had to return the next year. I plan to insist in spite of dreadful speakers like you describe (someone walking off the stage is pretty epic).
I never wanted to go to my ceremonies as a young’un, but I have wholeheartedly enjoyed all the ceremonies for the littles in my world, even the pre-school “graduation” ceremony, with paper graduation hats (they didn’t know to throw them, though).
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The only graduation ceremony I attended was kindergarten. I was part of MN’S Access to Excellence program, so my high school wouldn’t let me participate. Y undergrad graduation was on a weekday. I was heading to grad school and decided not to take the vacation day, preferring the cash payout. The master’s degree ceremony fell in the middle of a planned trip to visit the in laws. Finally, I was presenting a paper at a conference during the PhD ceremony.
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