02 March 2014

First College Visit

We were in New Hampshire visiting family and took advantage of being there to add a college visit to the itinerary. Bob, Sweet Pea, and I went to Plymouth State University for a look around. We took the official tour, had lunch in the dining hall, and got to catch up with an old friend of mine who works there.

This is Sweet Pea's top school at the moment so we really wanted to get her there to take a look around to see how she liked it in person. Turns out, she liked it a lot. The tour took us through an academic building, she got to see a dorm room (bigger than she was expecting), the student union building and it's gym and fitness center (the athletic fields and arena are down the road, across the river), and finally the dining hall. After the tour, we ate lunch and the food was good. She really liked that they had a salad bar.

We went back to admissions so I could talk to someone about her transcript. The director of admissions talked to us and really liked her transcript.  That's a good thing. I never did get a clear answer if they want course descriptions so I guess I should work on those so if they do want them, I'm not in a rush to get them done by a deadline.

When we were done in admissions we went to meet my friend. She works in the student services office. It was good to catch up with her since I haven't seen her in over 15 years. It was also good to get a really good idea about what the student services office there offers, lots of study helps for all students, not just those with an IEP.

So all in all a good visit. One more coming this summer - University of Maine, Farmington. We'll head up there sometime in August.

I think it will be a tough decision because both campuses are situated in similar places - small town New England, close to the ski slopes (very important), they are similar in size, and offer similar programs. She'll have to dig into more details about her intended major to figure out which might be better.