So with four acceptances it's time to start narrowing down the field. Green Mountain was the first to go; it was just too granola/crunchy/Vermonty for my girl. Johnson State is also a no. She told me the other day it was too generic. It's a newer school and looks it. The town of Johnson is pretty nice, it's really close to Stowe and other great ski resorts, but the campus is a mile or two out of town on the top of a hill and pretty boring actually. It does have it's own terrain park but that's not Whitney's thing. Still in contention is Plymouth State, which won her heart a long time ago and University of Maine, Farmington, which has the right program.
We had been planning our New Hampshire February vacation for this week for a while. Part of the plan was to head out to Farmington on Friday for another tour of campus, then going to a boarder cross race at Sugarloaf on Saturday. While we were still at home Whitney got information about the accepted students days at UMF. Conveniently, one of the days for her major fell while we were planning to be in NH. So we changed our plans a bit and went to UMF yesterday and scratched the bx race (she's got a sore knee so probably wouldn't have done it anyway).
There was a small group of kids and parents there yesterday. The kids went off for a tour of the school, to sit in on a class related to the major they're interested in, lunch in the cafeteria, meet with a couple of professors in their major, then finish the tour. The parents met with someone from the testing/counseling office and from student life (she talked about the dorms, clubs, and the trips her office plans). We then had a tour and had lunch in the cafeteria. The food is pretty good so that's a plus. There's much to like about the campus, except that it's about 12 hours away from home. On the plus side for Whitney it has the major she's looking for, she'll be able to work and snowboard (at some pretty awesome resorts), she'll have plenty of snow - they've had over 100" so far this winter. While she didn't have a chance to talk to the ski team coach, she did talk to the captain of the ski team and one of the other members. They really weren't much help, not knowing much about snowboarding, but were friendly and chatted with her about the team. They highly recommended that she contact the ski coach and talk to him. They thought that she would have no problem if she put out the word in getting more kids to snowboard with her.
She left with a better impression than she had last time. We had a bunch of our questions answered, so while she hasn't officially said yes to going there, it looks like she'll be a UMF Beaver in the fall.
