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Posted
6 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

It sounds like he’s In the right place and the debt / money factor is in his favor. He still a kid, let him figure things out and live 

me / ee - I was a chem e major and we had a petro e program. Of the people I graduated with, i never saw near the success with ee’s as I did chem / petro e’s, and it’s not even close. The most successful ee I knew was a good friend and she went to work for a large company. She was young, columbian, drop dead gorgeous and damn smart: she got high end fake tits within 6 months of hiring on. Locked down a sr vp at her company and became a stay at home mom: maid, nanny, they travel the world. 

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Posted
1 minute ago, FirstTimeCaller said:

Sounds like you are already. 

What does the kid say about your ideas?

He says "thank you for everything you've done for me."  He literally tried to start college without owning a computer.  Some caring person fixed that. 

 

Posted

Also I would not assume that because he is doing well in mechanical engineering that he would do well in EE or CS,

EE is very abstract and theoretical and the aptitudes can be somewhat different. Kid sounds like he has some inborn mechanical aptitude and is enjoying and succeeding at the theoretical underpinnings. That may not hold true for another engineering degree. 

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Posted
36 minutes ago, CoTex said:

I don't know what python is going to do for him but, along the lines of CS or EE, he may to need to code sooner or later.  He's going to sit around for 30 days over the holiday break, and I thought this might be a nice line to add to his resume "Google Professional Certificate - Python."  I guess I could tell him to watch Breaking Bad reruns or play Assassin's Creed but I thought I would challenge him and throw him some cash for a little side gig.

I majored in business and went to law school.  I know dick about engineering or computer science other than you'll probably like the women in the college of education or nursing better than you'll like the women in the cs building.  Journalism and Social Work can pay off too.

I also know dick about welding other than there seems to be a lot of it in small towns, and his high school shop teacher thought he was good at it.  I don't think there's anything wrong with being a welder but I think this kid has some horsepower to burn.

 


honestly i have no clue what python is, Id suggest learning as much excel as possible. It’ll empress any employer

has he thought about law school ? Through friends and family, i know 5 kids at ut in the mechanical e program, 4 of the 5 want to go straight to law school 

Posted

Thanks to all of you for the input.  I'm a little out of my element on this one and appreciate the thoughts and sounding board.  

I need this kid to hurry up and be a success so I can worry about other things like, how to gamble on the sugar bowl in such a way that I can pay for my tickets to the national championship game.

Present thought is to buy tickets now, and then bet against Texas, maybe the moneyline.  Texas loses, I get a stack of cash and can sell my tickets to some poor Alabama/Michigan fan for a loss.  Texas wins, I get a stack of cash and when ticket prices spike I'm already locked in.  Haven't really worked out the numbers yet but I'm a shitty gambler and I'm pretty sure that me betting against Texas guarantees a Texas win. 

Posted
4 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:


honestly i have no clue what python is, Id suggest learning as much excel as possible. It’ll empress any employer

has he thought about law school ? Through friends and family, i know 5 kids at ut in the mechanical e program, 4 of the 5 want to go straight to law school 

It's a good idea.  I suspect IP work isn't going away.

Python is a programming language.  My internet research leads me to conclude it is a more common language and decent starting place.

 

Posted
1 minute ago, royiv said:

Sounds like you need to buy him a set of high end fake tits.

I was thinking low-end.  If we're headed down the trail of skimping on educational quality, why stop there.

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Posted

As to which flavor of engineering he ultimately decides on, keep in mind he has completed one semester of college. Its been awhile since my days on campus but the first semester is probably just generic Calc, Physics, one introductory ME class and a couple of bullshit pre-recs like technical writing. Once he gets a few ME specific classes under his belt, as well as spending time around other engineering majors, he will likely have a better idea of what path he wants to follow. Most of what you study in year 1 is applicable to engineering in general. 

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Posted
1 hour ago, tx 3 putt said:

A good welding shop that can get qualified with the right customers, can do $10mil a year 

Maybe gross but not netting that amount unless it’s a speciality O&G pipeline shop… My Ag BIL has a fabrication and welding shop where we’re he does stuff on most of the major construction projects in his area and he isn’t clearing that much… I think his welders get in the 22-27$/hour

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  • 1 year later...
Posted

Bumping this after perusing various college-related threads and tracking down the book I believe @CooterBrown referred to a couple of pages back, which is Jeffrey Selingo's "Who Gets In and Why."  Was only $1.99 on Kindle and that's two bucks very well spent, although his new book is coming out soon and the spreadsheet he puts together on various colleges is free for download on his web site. That spreadsheet is very useful.

Couple of questions: anybody hired a coach or other consultant? Would be interested in hearing your experiences, as others on this thread probably would. We decided to hire one on the cheap ... our son, who's graduating in May and who probably has his younger sister's ear a lot better than I do. She listens, but she doesn't talk, and that's what we need right now from her. She'll get into either of the two flagships closest to us, but she has other good options that she simply refuses to talk about right now. Teenagers ...

The other question: has anyone had good success using Selingo's tips, especially the "buyers/sellers" approach? I did "persuade" my daughter to take one visit this summer but only stumbled onto Selingo's book afterward because of this thread. Turns out I was pretty much following his approach in choosing this particular visit and I feel good about the school's potential. But getting my daughter to wake up to a few things is our biggest struggle now.

Posted

We hired a college admissions consultant only because our son would not listen to my wife and I but hung on every word the consultant said, even though we were all saying the same thing. A complete waste of money but worth every penny because I couldn’t take it anymore.

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Posted

My senior is full on big man on campus attitude right now and is procrastinating like a mofo on apps. He’s grounded today and finally produced a draft essay. We are working through draft 2 before he gets to go hang with friends. It’s remarkable, after 3 years of killing it, almost on autopilot, he’s now regressed to what I expected his fresh and soph years to be but never were.

I fucking hate this.

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Posted
3 hours ago, BottleRocket said:

We hired a college admissions consultant only because our son would not listen to my wife and I but hung on every word the consultant said, even though we were all saying the same thing. A complete waste of money but worth every penny because I couldn’t take it anymore.

Both a waste and the best money you can spend, IMO. 

Had our son not come home this weekend, I wouldn't have thought of hiring him. Wife and I just agreed to pay him $1,000 to be his sister's admission consultant and we're giving him an additional $1,500 to play with as bonus money to get her to visit three schools while he's here for a week or two (and he'll be in charge of taking her). He can use the money to bribe her to go if needed, so we'll see how the capitalistic aspect of that works. (Aside: son just came home a little early from his D.C. internship; will continue doing some agency work remotely while also doing a remote campus job that's pretty high in managerial responsibility, but he said he was going to work at the country club with a buddy as a fry cook to have something else to do while at home. Part of his duties are to read the Selingo book, which will be of help to him in his campus job.)

2 hours ago, troph said:

My senior is full on big man on campus attitude right now and is procrastinating like a mofo on apps. He’s grounded today and finally produced a draft essay. We are working through draft 2 before he gets to go hang with friends. It’s remarkable, after 3 years of killing it, almost on autopilot, he’s now regressed to what I expected his fresh and soph years to be but never were.

I fucking hate this.

Me: "Do you know if Jane is around this summer?" (not her real name: goes to MIT, is on an intercollegiate team in a common sport with my daughter)  

Daughter: "No." 

Dad messages Jane's mom, asks if she's around. Mom says she'll have Jane reach out.

Me: "I know you're probably not going to like this, but I contacted Jane's mom to see if she's here this summer ..."

Daughter: "WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT!!??!!?!!  I see her every day in summer team gatherings!"

Yep. I hear variants of your story over and over and over, @troph. We've got a family meeting coming up this week with some laying down of the law. Counting on son to be the moderating influence.

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Posted (edited)
3 hours ago, troph said:

My senior is full on big man on campus attitude right now and is procrastinating like a mofo on apps. He’s grounded today and finally produced a draft essay. We are working through draft 2 before he gets to go hang with friends. It’s remarkable, after 3 years of killing it, almost on autopilot, he’s now regressed to what I expected his fresh and soph years to be but never were.

I fucking hate this.

Went through similar shit with son who ended up at WP, but it was in the back half of his sophomore year.  Finally after his mom reaming his ass on the regular; I looked at him and asked him if he was going to be able to live with himself if he gave up on what his potential was and just settled for local state school and going through the motions.  I reminded him of what he had achieved to date, which was substantial.  I reminded him that he didn't like to work near as much as I do and reminded him that everything we had came the hard way.  Maybe that isn't applicable to everyone, I know it is not; but when I asked him if he could live with settling-  if he thought it'd be cool when he was in his mid 40's, with kids of his own; could he look that guy in the mirror and be happy with what he did with the opportunities he had for college.- he wasn't having THAT!!!

Luckily, the work piece scared the hell outta him, and granted, he's since worked his everlovin ass off; but not necessarily like what he saw his mom and dad do throughout his childhood.  The regret piece also piqued his mind.  I was like, "you gotta do it because YOU want to do it, not us; but just the same- is 45 year old you gonna be able to live with giving up on some great opportunities of a lifetime?"

 

He could have blown me off and said fuck it, like many kids do; but credit to him, he got it in gear and applied himself on those apps and the processes; as well as his school work.  His mom almost killed him because he wouldn't do his daily work.  I just told him, stop pissing her off- and oh yeah, when you're 45 and we're at Thanksgiving dinner, I don't want to hear a fucking peep about about how you COULD have gone to West Point...

It was a shot in the dark.  Luckily it landed.

 

Hang in there.  All you can do is communicate...and/ or kill them.

Edited by Iceman
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Posted
1 hour ago, Iceman said:


It was a shot in the dark.  Luckily it landed.

 

Usually feels like everything is a shot in the dark, and you know you can't keep spraying those bullets around. Both tough love and sympathy seem like crap shoots, but when your kid knows you care, things are usually registering more than you think at the time.

In this case, even if our son doesn't have a lot of luck with his sister, he deserves the money anyway because he has needed very little from us. He's basically paid his own way and has had some really cool experiences. He's smart with his money. Our daughter is very money-driven, and she knows he's probably going to roll over his 529 into an IRA when he's done. When she gets the advance bottom-line figures from us, she'll listen to him very carefully ...

And if I don't have to be in charge of a couple of the campus visits, it's the best money I've spent all summer. I've survived one. Good visit, but outsourcing is my new best friend.

 

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Posted

I think it will be ok, his second draft today was decent. I told him he’s got 5 more drafts before it gets easier and it’ll be 12-15 drafts before it’s final. He was kinda shocked. I said, dude, this is what writing is all about. It’s hard work communicating precise concepts to an audience that is considering and determining your future.

the shit thing about it is he was working for me but he’s told me he wants to quit so he can hang out with his friends. Ok that’s fine but now he has no money. He had to transfer all his savings for his (measly) portion of his car insurance. I won’t let him go without minimal gas money, but he’s now down from a legit paycheck back down to an allowance of $200 per month. He’s got a girlfriend who is actually in another town, I have no idea how he’s going to afford seeing her. The kiddo is just not paying attention and fucking it all up. School starts in 10 days, we’ll see. At this point I’m just going to ride his ass until the college apps are done. Ground him, scowl at him, who the fuck knows but I told him I’m not here to be your friend or to even be liked, I’m here to make sure you don’t fuck up your senior year and your college opportunities. It’s days like today that make me glad I’m divorced, he can go be her problem for a week. But rest assured (and yes I’ll be rested), in a week when he comes back his ass is mine until those apps are in the barn. Idgaf.

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Posted (edited)

The funny thing is his essay is about his experience as drum major, it’s a pretty good structure, a story that demonstrates poor leadership that led him to apply when he saw no one doing the right thing, he talks about his feeling and experience of what not to do then describes his philosophy of inclusivity, lead by example, and accountability both directly and indirectly with a story of his leadership success. He’s off the rails on the second two and yet he’s writing all about it. The humor isn’t lost on me at all. 

Edited by troph
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Posted (edited)

What do you mean by "off the rails," @troph? According to what I'm reading in the Selingo book, the admissions committees want to see an essay that demonstrates traits like passion, compassion, leadership and whatnot. Lots of discussion in the book about applicants who aren't just checking off the extracurricular boxes, but really taking part, demonstrating positive traits and skills, and able to articulate that in an authentic manner -- their own voice.

Sounds like he's got a lot of that covered. Hard to tell about the voice, of course, but it sounds like he's on the right track.

Edited by Hayduke
Posted
16 hours ago, Hayduke said:

Bumping this after perusing various college-related threads and tracking down the book I believe @CooterBrown referred to a couple of pages back, which is Jeffrey Selingo's "Who Gets In and Why."  Was only $1.99 on Kindle and that's two bucks very well spent, although his new book is coming out soon and the spreadsheet he puts together on various colleges is free for download on his web site. That spreadsheet is very useful.

Couple of questions: anybody hired a coach or other consultant? Would be interested in hearing your experiences, as others on this thread probably would. We decided to hire one on the cheap ... our son, who's graduating in May and who probably has his younger sister's ear a lot better than I do. She listens, but she doesn't talk, and that's what we need right now from her. She'll get into either of the two flagships closest to us, but she has other good options that she simply refuses to talk about right now. Teenagers ...

The other question: has anyone had good success using Selingo's tips, especially the "buyers/sellers" approach? I did "persuade" my daughter to take one visit this summer but only stumbled onto Selingo's book afterward because of this thread. Turns out I was pretty much following his approach in choosing this particular visit and I feel good about the school's potential. But getting my daughter to wake up to a few things is our biggest struggle now.

We used a consultant with our oldest. They started working together sophomore year to tailor her school schedule and start working on other things that would help her through the process. By the time her senior year started, she was completely done with everything application wise and was just waiting on the process to open. They spent her senior year working on scholarship applications, trying to get another point or two on the ACT, etc. My oldest wanted to go out of state to schools that were hard to get into, so it made sense to us to do it.

My youngest is a senior this year and hasn’t done anything at this point. She has no interest in going to an exclusive school, so she should be fine. She’s going to work with the school staff, so we’ll see what the differences are.

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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Hayduke said:

What do you mean by "off the rails," @troph? According to what I'm reading in the Selingo book, the admissions committees want to see an essay that demonstrates traits like passion, compassion, leadership and whatnot. Lots of discussion in the book about applicants who aren't just checking off the extracurricular boxes, but really taking part, demonstrating positive traits and skills, and able to articulate that in an authentic manner -- their own voice.

Sounds like he's got a lot of that covered. Hard to tell about the voice, of course, but it sounds like he's on the right track.

His essay is on point - basically a couple of short vignettes demonstrating the impact of poor leadership that lead him to his view on leadership, inclusivity, lead by example and accountability. He finishes with vignettes where he did those things as drum major.  It totally shows compassion, leadership and passion.
 

off the rails - I mean he’s quit his job and has no money, he quit doing things around the house without asking, before we left for a vacation he got drunk with his friends (not the worst thing a senior can do but way off his baseline), he’s running on adrenaline and full of cortisol as he tries to be the baddest drum major ever and it’s not a good look. He’s told me to be quiet 3-4 times in the last week where before it was rare. He’s got an inflated ego beyond anything I’ve seen from him, he won’t work on his college apps without me sitting on him, and he’s acting like a dick and is just an unpleasant kid to be around where before he was a dream kid to raise. I’m taking it in stride but it isn’t fun rn.

he's got a mix of mostly big state schools out west but some Cali schools that will admit out of state like elites, and his back ups are pretty safe so in the end it doesn’t really matter. 

Edited by troph
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Posted
17 hours ago, Hayduke said:

Couple of questions: anybody hired a coach or other consultant? Would be interested in hearing your experiences, as others on this thread probably would. We decided to hire one on the cheap ... our son, who's graduating in May and who probably has his younger sister's ear a lot better than I do. She listens, but she doesn't talk, and that's what we need right now from her. She'll get into either of the two flagships closest to us, but she has other good options that she simply refuses to talk about right now. Teenagers ...

I got my daughter assistance through College Inroads.  She was a hard-working self-starter in high school, and she pretty much knew what kind of college she wanted to attend and where.  But the application and essay process these days can be fairly daunting, and given my daughter's course load and extra-curricular commitments, she felt overwhelmed at the process.  So the college coaching helped provide the structure and support, and the experience to help her craft essays that might better grab the attention of admissions staff.  Overall it was worth the investment, and I'll probably do the same for my son.

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Posted

Keep in mind that you’ll end up doing 20+ short essays. For many colleges, when you go into the individual college’s additional info tab, they’ll have 2-5 short answer essays that are all completely different from the main essay. Don’t burn a kid out because they’re going to write a fuck ton more than that just that one.

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Posted
2 hours ago, troph said:

His essay is on point - basically a couple of short vignettes demonstrating the impact of poor leadership that lead him to his view on leadership, inclusivity, lead by example and accountability. He finishes with vignettes where he did those things as drum major.  It totally shows compassion, leadership and passion.
 

off the rails - I mean he’s quit his job and has no money, he quit doing things around the house without asking, before we left for a vacation he got drunk with his friends (not the worst thing a senior can do but way off his baseline), he’s running on adrenaline and full of cortisol as he tries to be the baddest drum major ever and it’s not a good look. He’s told me to be quiet 3-4 times in the last week where before it was rare. He’s got an inflated ego beyond anything I’ve seen from him, he won’t work on his college apps without me sitting on him, and he’s acting like a dick and is just an unpleasant kid to be around where before he was a dream kid to raise. I’m taking it in stride but it isn’t fun rn.

he's got a mix of mostly big state schools out west but some Cali schools that will admit out of state like elites, and his back ups are pretty safe so in the end it doesn’t really matter. 

***unsolicited advice disclaimer***

 

Sounds like classic teen rebellion.  Reads like textbook.  He's dealing with the huge change from childhood to adulthood with antisocial behavior.  

A taste of failure may be the thing he needs to get on the right track.  Might be less long term painful for him to fail at college applications now rather than many of the next level rebelling activities.  Knock a girl up, drink and drive, waste 6-8 years on undergrad....

And that's much easier to say about someone else's kid, of course.  Not a psychologist but did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

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Posted (edited)
26 minutes ago, Incredulity said:

***unsolicited advice disclaimer***

 

Sounds like classic teen rebellion.  Reads like textbook.  He's dealing with the huge change from childhood to adulthood with antisocial behavior.  

A taste of failure may be the thing he needs to get on the right track.  Might be less long term painful for him to fail at college applications now rather than many of the next level rebelling activities.  Knock a girl up, drink and drive, waste 6-8 years on undergrad....

And that's much easier to say about someone else's kid, of course.  Not a psychologist but did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

I agree 100%. I'm venting here, pissed off, etc. but I'm taking it in stride, no yelling, no major shit, just cause and effect, consequences to his behavior.  I do think he's far away from actually fucking up his college experience. It's way better to see this now even before school starts than at a critical point when he can lose something he's worked for, or even worse his freshman year of college. The only non-negotiable at this point are his apps and it's the only thing I said I would ground him over. But he wanted to quit work, I convinced him part time, then he did the square root of jack shit for a few days and this weekend. Saw me brushing the pool, adding chlorine, my wife testing the water, he bugged out and went to hang out with friends. later said he was going to do it sunday. I was like, "bro, you can't look at a pool tipping over to the green side and say, I'll do it tomorrow. I checked the chlorine tabs twice this week (we have 2 spots for chlorine) and both times they were empty."  On sunday morning I told him I thought quitting was a good idea. He's now got $100 for gas and food for two weeks and his other parent can subsidize if she wants to (she lost her job, is burning through savings, and will take a pay cut so good luck with that). I strategically chose his job with me to be his acute failure/pain point this time around.  He had enough savings to pay his subsidy of his car insurance through 12/31 so I took that.  He honestly has no idea what's coming in terms of senior year, having a cute girlfriend he wants to keep, and being broke.

 

 

Edited by troph
Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, CooterBrown said:

Keep in mind that you’ll end up doing 20+ short essays. For many colleges, when you go into the individual college’s additional info tab, they’ll have 2-5 short answer essays that are all completely different from the main essay. Don’t burn a kid out because they’re going to write a fuck ton more than that just that one.

he's spent all of 3 hours on his primary essay, he'll finish it around the 12-15 hour mark I think, it's also the one that touts his primary resume accomplishment - being in charge of 250 peers as the drum major. he's gotta nail that one imo.  

anyway, enough but my hooligan.

Edited by troph

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