Decisions, decisions

It is only 10:25 and already my mind is at risk of getting hijacked by the swarm, the concerns and anxieties of others. Which is to say that I responded to a couple of texts and looked at Facebook before turning to the blog, always a somewhat risky proposition. I've also had a fair amount of coffee, including some before eating, which is something that I do every day even though I know I probably shouldn't, according to a lot of research.

In any case, the topic at hand is: college. Specifically Natalie going to college. She had a great application season, candidly I will say she got into Yale (which I've already said), UNC, Smith, Barnard, and Cornell, but got dinged by Columbia and waitlisted by Duke. She had already come to the realization that she didn't want to go to a place where everybody camped out to get tickets to a basketball game, so Duke was more or less off the list anyway in the absence of a fat merit-based offer.

She reasons that, having grown up in Princeton and then Chapel Hill, she has always lived in college towns, so she is biased against Smith and Cornell on that basis (this was exactly my process in weeding out Amherst back in the day, so I can't fault her there) So the decision is now basically down to Yale vs. Barnard. Yale's financial aid offer was better, largely because its financial aid formula treats home equity in one's primary residence more favorably, so that's a mark in Yale's favor.

Plus Yale is just, well, Yale.

So we are restraining ourselves and trying to let her make her decision, but I will confess that it's hard not to just take her by the shoulders and make the decision for her.

But Barnard has things going for it too, and last night at Caroline's 50th birthday party James and Hayes were plumping pretty hard for Barnard, saying how the Barnard kids they hired were totally kick-ass, while some of the Yale kids were kinda duds.

I am reminded as well of the experience of a couple we know, whose girl (a friend of Natalie's) got into Columbia and got a full ride to Emory but almost had a nervous breakdown and ended up going to Duke. They stayed above the fray and let him make his decision.

In the end, it's all good. I remember a couple of summers ago, Natalie and I took a one-night road trip from Larchmont up to Cornell and Colgate, plus hanging with Corinna (a Barnard grad) and John Adams on the way. We listened to Frank Bruno's Where You Go is Not Who You'll Be, a very wise if occasionally dry book about our college-selection insanity culture. In essence, he is right.

In honesty, I am being driven crazy by the fact that she is leaving, not the brand with which she will be associated going forward.