Northwestern won't be too big for him?

It might be, but they do only have 8000 undergrads. Grand Valley, which he felt was too big, had 21,000 but is one of the smallest state schools (in Michigan)that isn't more than a 5 hour drive away. He's apparently willing to travel to the East Coast for an Ivy, but not for any other school.

The school itself is only medium size, but isn't it essentially in Chicago?

It's in Evanston- not quite as city as Chicago. We'll see. I thought the campus seemed pretty big when I visited with Hypo.

It's big, but there is a lot of green space, and you could do everything you want to do without ever leaving Evanston (says the woman who lives in E-Town and is in Chicago almost every night).

The Northwestern campus does seem big because of the 8,000 grad students. If you are serious about NU apply early admit, which gives you a much better chance than regular admit. NU wants students who want to go there rather than the second choice behind Harvard/Princeton/Yale.

No. :)

Don't get me wrong, there is easy access to the city but it's far enough away to be its own thing.

Halo's Eagle project is about half way done! I think we'll be able to finish it by Tuesday night. It's been a lot of physical labor- far more than I've done in a long time- and while I'm exhausted, I'm exhausted in a good way, if that makes sense.

The Eagle Project is done! Woohoo! It looks great too :)

Ok, I got a college visit road trip all booked and set! We're flying into Providence on Saturday, November 2, renting a car, driving to Ithaca on Sunday to visit Cornell on Monday, November 4th and driving back to Providence to visit Brown on November 5th and flying home that night! I would have flown into Providence on Sunday, but it was $600 more EACH to fly on Sunday so it was cheaper to cover food, car and hotel for an extra day. I love Providence though, so that's fine with me We can meander Sunday between Providence and Ithaca so he can see both places well before the actual tours. Google maps says it is a 5 hour drive- that's not too bad.

His dad is going to take him to see Northwestern November 16th. I did Northwestern with Hypo so that's fine with me. I have an outlet mall shopping trip planned with a girlfriend for that day so that works out great! Christmas shopping

Cornell is my all-time favorite college campus, but it has been many years since I have been there. At the time, we did not visit Ithaca College, too. I've always wanted to go back to Ithaca to see Ithaca College, an older private college and Cornell's buildings again.

They remind me of the University of Kentucky and Transylvania (Transy) in Lexington, KY. One is a big university and the other a smaller private institution in the same town.

I am frequently in Evanston (IL) and on/around Northwestern's campus. It is beautiful and I love it, but have always personally preferred the campus at the University of Chicago.

Hypo and I went to the University of Chicago also. The older part of the campus is incredible but I found the art deco library and dorms to be at odds with the older section. Lots of campuses have a wide variety of architecture- from old to new- but U Chicago's just seemed more starkly different.

It's weird being proud of someone I don't know. But I am. :)

Halo has had a very busy and exciting senior year fall term. I never mentioned on here how Cornell ended up on his radar. He came home from the first day of school declaring "I love AP Stats, I want to go into social statistics." A week or two later, Cornell sent a viewbook on their Industrial and Labor Relations school and he read it. It was a very, very good fit with his interests. They have six areas of focus:
Collective Bargaining, Labor Law and Labor History
Human Resource Studies
International and Comparative Labor
Labor Economics
Organizational Behavior
Social Statistics
It seems like a super fit with his interests in politics, psychology, statistics and business.

This year, he has 3 AP classes- Stats, Calc and English along with a variety of business, creative writing and humanities electives. When he finishes, he will have taken all the AP courses offered and very few "fluff" courses. His electives this term are Virtual Enterprises (a business course) and Myths, Legends and Lore (humanities- Greek mythology, etc). In Virtual Enterprises, they are hooked into some kind of network across the country and develop a virtual business as a class. They had to apply for and interview for "jobs" and Halo is now the CEO of their business. He's loving that class.

He was also on Homecoming Court which took a lot of time over a couple weeks. He just finished up the varsity tennis season. As I said, it has been a very busy fall. He decided to try out for the school play and got a small speaking part in Dicken's Christmas Carol. He has never done drama before.

He just finished the last merit badge requirement that was outstanding for his Eagle so he needs to get his paperwork all submitted.

Seriously, I'm questioning him on how much he is committing to right now and have brought it up to him. He says he's fine, but he seems stressed out at times. Early Action deadlines are looming and he has not started his essays yet. I told him yesterday his essays for the Common App and Michigan need to be done next weekend. He said "I have until the next weekend, don't I?" I pointed out that 11/1 is a Friday so no, he doesn't!

Early Action schools:
University of Michigan - 11/1
Kalamazoo College- 11/15
Albion College- 12/1

Regular Decision schools:
Brown- 1/1
Northwestern-1/1
Cornell- 1/2
Oberlin- 1/15

He also has a new romance brewing. Oh my.

Getting kids to do these essays is the worst...everyone I know says their kids procrastinate. Encourage him to start his essays early enough so that he has time to sit on them, reflect, and revise. I think GenerallyGreek rushed some of her essays, and when she went back and reread a couple of them later in the year, she found things she would have changed.

The best essay was the one she did for her scholarship. She really took her time with that one, and had a couple teachers read it and give her feedback. The worst ones were the couple that she reworked from HS papers. Her Georgetown one fell into this category...I'm sure that was a stinker compared to others they received.

If Halo is going to apply to Northwestern, he should visit. GenerallyGreek was specially invited to visit the music dept., meet with professors, etc. She didn't think she wanted to major in music at the time, so she blew that off. Big mistake...even though she'd attended all those summer programs, I think that hurt her in the admissions dept. Guess who's now majoring in music...apparently they knew her better than she knew herself! Last year's Northwestern Gamma Phi chapter president told me that their admissions dept. definitely tracks contacts and visits (this comes from sisters who have had student worker jobs in admissions). We also found that off-site interviews were very limited, and she couldn't get one. Halo might have better luck, but I think they feel we're close enough to visit. If he isn't that serious about NU, I wouldn't bother with that application fee.