College Report

I was so grateful for the responses I received on the post College Questions.  It was great to hear so many perspectives on the huge question of what to encourage your child to do after high school.  If you didn't see Sherry's comment towards the end, it was very helpful as we think about what to do with Bantam19 next; she seemed to join the Lord in nudging me to think harder about college for him too.  Thanks again, everyone!

After our visit to Wheaton College, Blondechick and I drove to the cornfields of Indiana to check out Taylor University.  Back when I applied to Wheaton, it was sort of a joke that the kids who were at Taylor were all the Wheaton wanna-bes—and I did know kids who weren’t accepted and went to Taylor.  Secretly I guessed that it was a school filled with really nice kids, and time has confirmed that suspicion.  Taylor’s reputation now is that its academics are on a par with Wheaton, but its real strength is its community.

A perfect way to compare the two schools is to look at chapel.  At Wheaton, chapel is required (3X/wk); seats are assigned and attendance is taken.  The usual lineup includes a hymn, some announcements, and a speaker.  In my day, and I gather that things haven’t changed much, the main motivation to go to chapel was not to miss a good speaker.  You didn’t go to chapel to actively worship—you went to WCF on Sunday nights for that.   If the speaker was boring, you felt like chapel was a waste of time.

At Taylor, chapel is required, 3X/week, but seats are not assigned.  You sit with the people you live with, and that’s the accountability.  There is student-led worship at the beginning, at least three songs, and all around us we saw student entering in to full-hearted worship.  Some raised hands, many didn’t, but all were clearly there to worship, and after the speaker (it was a panel discussion, not as inspiring as usual, we were told), many stayed after for two more songs. 

Blondechick, who is far more relational than academic, felt much more comfortable at Taylor than at Wheaton.  As I guessed she would.  She was a little appalled at the middle-of-nowhere feeling—the nearest Targest is 1.5 hours away, but there is a Walmart within 20 minutes—but she told me she liked it so well, she was willing to look for the positives, like saving money.  Also, the sense of community on a Friday night has got to be stronger, and don’t limited options breed creativity?

She also figured out that she probably doesn’t want to major in Psychology, as she was thinking.  She’d like to be a therapist and work with teenagers, but she doesn’t want to have to go on to grad school.  When she asked the Wheaton psych prof about that, he hedged and told her about all the jobs she could go into with a psych degree, and when she asked him point-blank if she could be a therapist with just a BA, he said it was all a matter of supervision and certainly she could do groups.  The Taylor prof answered the same question with an honest “no, you won’t be able to do one-on-one therapy with teens without a master’s degree.”  So now she’s thinking about Communications.

We are now going to look at Trinity International University in Deerfield, IL.  If she doesn’t get accepted at Taylor—and she may not have the ACT scores to get in; she’s always tested lower than her abilities or grades whenever she takes a standardized test—she should be able to get in there.  In fact, it appears likely that Bantam19 could get accepted there too, on probation, and I think their financial aid package may be attractive.  If Blondechick does well there, she might be able to transfer to Taylor after a year or so, or maybe it will be a good fit for her to stay.  We’ll see next week—I’m taking them both.

I'll take other recommendations, too! Our main priority, really, is a student body (and a faculty) that will encourage our kids to grow spiritually, and we want them to get a quality education as well.  Secondarily, I think it needs to be a school that's within a day's driving distance.  Any suggestions, corrections, comments?