Colleges your child crossed off the list after visiting, schools that moved up on the list. Why?

[Camasite]

@CollegeBoundBrit

I’ve clearly had way too much time on my hands but here are my thoughts on my virtual visits:

Moved up:

Ole Miss - Honors college seems fantastic. For such a large school, it seems very personable - I’ve had lots of people move down via email. Campus seems gorgeous. I love the idea of Oxford as a literary nerd. Feels very Southern and homey which I love.

LSU - They seem like they’re really trying to focus more on academics. Students I spoke to seemed very friendly. School spirit is very high at the moment which helped.

Clemson - This school was almost off my list and has now moved way up. I was worried it was too STEM focused but it did not feel that way at all. Fantastic school spirit and traditions. Lovely campus. Felt like home. I reached out to one of the professors in my department and he was so so wonderful - answering tons of my emails and offering zoom calls. Lots of the other faculty members reached out to me as well.

South Carolina - From what I saw, I loved The Horseshoe - so so beautiful, which is where honors students live. Honors college seems incredible. Southern hospitality was very clear.

Tennessee - Southern hospitality does not even describe how friendly everyone was. I’ve had quite a few students reach out to me. Feels very homey.

Iowa - I just felt very comfortable and welcomed. Iowa City seems really really great and the school spirit is much stronger than I thought it would be.

Vanderbilt - Everyone seemed really genuine and friendly. I came away not just impressed with all their world class research and rankings and job placements like all the other T20s but could genuinely see why Vanderbilt would be a good fit for me and be worth a good, not just financial, but personal, investment.

USC - I went to a USC on the road event in my home city where I was definitely the poorest person there, and I’m upper-middle class (it was in a hotel ballroom) and came away thinking it’s nickname was well-earned. Well, now whilst I’m sure there are some people like that there, as with any top college, I now know that there are lots of very down-to-earth students there. Incredible alumni network and I was blown away by the opportunities.

Syracuse - School spirit seems incredible and very strong alumni network.

Stayed the same:

Alabama - Honors college and dorms and very wow, school spirit seems incredible (duh). Can’t recall learning much beyond that. Didn’t get that homey feeling.

Duke - It’s Duke. They assumed that would be enough to convince me to apply. But maybe it is. They personable attention and small classes may have been a bigger sell if there weren’t 350 computers logged in to the zoom meeting.

UNC - This was definitely the weakest virtual visit of any of them. UNC is in my top 5 but I literally learned nothing new. I did it again in case maybe the people I had were just bad but nope.

Mizzou - Eh.

Arizona - Campus and honors college seem nice enough. Not sure if it’s enough to suffer through the Arizona heat though.

Moved down:

Florida - Great school spirit but some of the students I spoke to seemed stressed out and competitive.

Virginia Tech - The school spirit and traditions seem very strong. Everyone just seemed very…cold. I just didn’t feel very comfortable with anyone I talked to.

Iowa State - There was nothing I could put my finger on that didn’t seem right, but something just didn’t click. It was 3 hours long, but I only lasted an hour.

Off the list:

Wisconsin - The admissions guy spent most of the presentation going over what majors they had. It just felt like any other flagship. Meh. None of the students I asked seemed to know anything about campus ministries compared to the Southern schools in which everyone was saying how active they were on campus.

Pitt - I knew this wasn’t for me about five minutes in when half the pictures on the slides were of the city, not campus. They kept talking about how ‘the city is your campus’. Didn’t bother finishing it.

Interesting. Thanks for the run-down. We visited any of these same schools a few years ago for my oldest daughter and had very different experiences at some of them based on the actual real-world visit compared to the virtual visit. For example, LSU has a gorgeous campus and Greek Row. But once you get 3 blocks off campus you find that Baton Rouge is a very run-down and unappealing crime-ridden city with little to recommend it But of course you would never see that on a curated virtual tour. And frankly, Louisiana is not a particularly attractive state. By contrast, Madison WI is one of the prettiest cities you will find anywhere in the country with parks and trails and lakes everywhere.

I know we are in the world of virtual visits and there may not be any other way to do it for students entering in fall 2020 if you haven’t already made in-person tours. But buyer beware. I think there are going to be a lot of students next fall who are going to be somewhat surprised that the campus and city they are seeing for the first time looks nothing like what they saw on their virtual tours.