Parents’ Week: Getting into BU—A Mom’s Perspective
By The Quad | Oct 18th, 2011
BU's CAS Building. | Photo via Wikimedia Commons user Fletcher6.
In preparation for Parents’ Weekend, we have asked our staff writers’ parents to submit blog posts to The Quad. Our copy editor/campus reporter Lauren Michael’s (CAS ’15) mother, Shannon Michael, wrote this post for us about when Lauren received that bright red folder from BU.
“You had me at hello” is an iconic line from the film, “Jerry Maguire”. That’s the effect the first piece of mail from Boston University’s admissions department had on my daughter and our family.
It was a beautiful shot of Bay State Road’s line of brownstones covered in crimson ivy and trees in full autumnal color. We were already in love with the city of Boston after a family vacation to the area in 2004. The photo sealed the desire of my Pacific Northwest born and raised daughter to attend a New England university.
The postcard announced a Seattle visit by an admissions rep coming soon, so my husband took my daughter to the event a few weeks later. I vividly remember them coming home from the session and each of them exclaiming a very positive experience.
For my daughter, it was, “They have a quidditch team!!!” She was now sold on applying to BU. As for my Notre Dame educated husband, he uttered in a pouting voice, “I want to go there!”
Fast-forward almost two years later, and after visiting schools and going through the application, acceptance and moving across the country process, we now have a happily ensconced freshman in the Kilachand Honors College.
Many well-meaning friends have asked us how we could allow our daughter to move so far away from home. This question always surprises me when asked, because the answer is so obvious to me: I want my daughter to thrive, succeed and be happy in her choice of where to attend college.
She is already six weeks into her first semester at BU and is doing just what I wanted for her: thriving, succeeding and being happy.
What more could she or I ask for? Nothing…except maybe a visit from her beloved dog back home. That’s not going to happen, so she’ll have to settle with a visit from Mom. It’s the next best thing to snuggling with her pooch. But, moms can take daughters shopping. Dogs can’t. I win!
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