Lucy and I decided a week ago that we would do a whirlwind college tour of the midwest US and Atlantic Canada this week. We were originally going to go at the end of May, since Memorial Day is not a holiday in Canada, so we could visit schools in Canada that day and she would miss one less day of school. But when I started scheduling the trip, more than a month ahead of time like a normal person, I realized that a lot of the schools we want to visit end in April and don’t have tours after that, so this week was basically our last chance to do it before she starts preparing college applications this summer. So while the kids were spending spring break in Costa Rica with their dad and his partner, I spent hours scheduling college tours, flights, and hotels, and they figured out how to change her flight so she could fly straight to Minneapolis from Costa Rica, a change that miraculously only cost $14. I made a detailed google doc to plan our trip, which involves visits to 5 cities in 7 days. I am very good at finding deals, and used lots of miles and special bonuses from traveling so much, but it was still ridiculously expensive to do this much with such short notice.
The motivation for this trip is that, given the mess going down in our country, Lucy started wondering if she should go to college abroad. She was thinking of England, but I suggested Canada, because I don’t think the British education system is ideal for someone who wants a liberal arts education and doesn’t know what she wants to major in. The US system is ideal for that, but Canada’s education system is more similar to the US than the British system. Lucy was skeptical, but wanted to visit colleges in Canada, because she just couldn’t picture going to school in Canada, but if she visited, she would be able to imagine it. I googled “liberal arts colleges in Canada” and talked to several Canadian friends, and learned that Canada doesn’t have many liberal arts colleges, but it does have a few, and almost all of them are in the East. I also learned that Canadian colleges are way cheaper than US colleges, even for international students, so sending her to Canada could save a ton of money. Since most of the flights to that part of Canada stopped in Chicago or Minneapolis, I figured we could also visit some schools there I thought she might like on the way. I researched a whole bunch of schools in Canada and the midwest and sent her my summaries. She ranked them and I put together an itinerary visiting 2 schools in the US and 3 in Canada that more or less met her desired criteria of “small school in big city.”
Lucy’s top choice for college is Barnard College in New York City, where I went to college, and where we visited when we went to New York a year ago. I loved Barnard, and think Lucy would love it, but I am worried about the state of US higher education in general, and Barnard in particular, because of the way its parent university, Columbia, is capitulating to the Trump administration. Barnard is also hard to get into, so in any case she needs some backup plans. She visited Texas Christian University in December on a trip to Texas with her other parents, and a bunch of Portland colleges with me in February: Reed College, Lewis and Clark University, Portland State University, and the University of Portland. We also visited the University of Washington and Seattle University to get a sense of the options close to home, although she doesn't want to stay in Seattle.
Today, Lucy flew from Costa Rica to Houston to Minneapolis, and went through customs by herself, and I flew from Seattle to Denver to Minneapolis. Both our connecting flights were late, and I didn’t arrive till 1:30am, but we found each other and got ourselves to our hotel and went to sleep.
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