When our family visited colleges with our daughter, we realized that it was often the very small things that turned out to be a big deal when it came to deciding if she liked it or not. Even though we were all interested in the “bigger” things, most of those we had researched online before we even chose to visit a place, such as academic opportunities, or we could see when we were on the tour, such as the quality of the physical facilities and the beauty of the campus. So when we did visit, we started to realize the little things that jumped out at us, at first just by accident, but then later we started looking for those things intentionally. I’m curious to know what has been important to other prospective students and families. I think it would make for an interesting discussion, and be helpful as well! Here are the little things we look for:
Diversity. But by diversity, I don't just mean in the college as a whole. I graduated from a college that was pretty ethnically diverse, however, there was very little mixing between ethnic groups. In fact, it was common knowledge on campus that most of the black students lived in this dorm quad, most of the Asian students lived in that quad, etc. We look to see if small groups or pairs of students walking across campus or sitting in a common area are homogeneous or heterogeneous. It's very noticeable if you are on the lookout for it. The schools that seem to score highest in this for us were Vassar and Grinnell.
Social interactiveness. We like to see schools where common areas are buzzing with activity and conversation. It gives us a good feeling for the sense of connectedness students have to one another and to the school community. We visited some schools where it seemed like every student we saw was alone on their computer or walking across campus with earbuds in. You could walk through the largest common area in the student union and everybody still seemed to be by themselves. My daughter ruled out any school that was like this, so all of the schools on her list scored high in this area. Dickinson really stands out to us though, as it had the busiest and most active student center we saw anywhere.
Flyers: We always look at the flyers posted on poles and walls and bulletin boards. It's interesting to see how much there is going on on campus. we like to see lots of different kinds of club meetings, guest speakers, fun social events, performing arts productions, social and political activism, etc. My daughter got really excited over a flyer she saw at Vassar for a visit from Philippe Petit, the man who walked the high wire between the twin towers and on whom the movie "The Walk" was based.
Smiling! Seriously, how happy do the students look? I mean, I'm not looking for Stepford wife kind of smiling, but really if everybody looks miserable and stressed that doesn't leave a good feeling. The students at Macalester and Kenyon looked really happy!
Nothing else is coming to mind at the moment, although I’m sure there’s more. What about everybody else?
Nice list and it mirrors the one my kids had. Also of importance for my kids was a relationship of trust between the student body and administration and a preference for a fair amount of student governance. No heavy handed administrations that ruled with an iron fist and didn’t treat students like the young adults they are.
My D picks up on subtle themes while visiting colleges. What do the admin reps, tour guides, and other students talk about that may be unique to their school? You can tell what they value. (These are all my D’s impressions. YMMV). At many schools it’s varsity sports and school pride. At Rochester it was collaboration (and dealing with the snow lol). At Toronto, the students all got a twinkle in their eye when they talked about their libraries. At Tulane, there was an emphasis on the local festivals, opportunities for learning outside the classroom, and life balance. At UBC it was all about being physically active and enjoying the outdoors. (Honestly, the talk there was mostly about academics but you could draw conclusions by the incredibly fit student body. Wow!)
I think you’ve got a good list and some of those that are things that we have considered as well. Others for us:
*Cleanliness of common areas. If there was a lot of trash left lying around, we felt it reflected poorly on whether students really cared about their school.
*True accessibilities for students with mobility challenges. This is likely not to be applicable to many families, but is for us. We quickly noticed that some schools tout that they are 100% accessible, but have made all their ADA compliant entrances on the back sides of the buildings, meaning that students have to walk further to avoid stairs . Or they don’t have laundry in each dorm, and may require a student to lug their laundry elsewhere.
*Food choices and availability. Some schools have set meal times and may not have options available outside of those meal times. If I’m paying for an overpriced meal plan, I want my kid to be able to eat, even if she can’t grab lunch until 2pm one day!
@IBviolamom, your list makes me laugh. D1 favored schools like your D in #2 & #4 in particular. She is an extrovert. And attended Dickinson.
D2 the introvert was put off by schools with a lot of social activity, and could very well be happily sitting alone in a common area at her college as we speak. She has friends, but they don’t buzz as much.
Fit and vibe. Sometimes we talk about them as if they’re mysterious forces but they’re basically an aggregate of what was listed here. I think it’s helpful to think about it the way OP does, since some students and parents seem to be looking for a mystical sign from above, complete with rays of light and trumpets, signaling that they have found their place.
It didn’t matter to my son but I was sitting at the coffee shop on his campus and noticed that not a single woman there, student or faculty/staff was wearing makeup (or noticeable makeup). That was a perfect fit for me!
@Otterma
“It didn’t matter to my son but I was sitting at the coffee shop on his campus and noticed that not a single woman there, student or faculty/staff was wearing makeup (or noticeable makeup). That was a perfect fit for me!”
I’m an unreconstructed eavesdropper (I do have boundaries, and won’t do it when I’m invading privacy). My suggestions to my kids were largely based on assessing whether my kids would have been part of the conversations I overheard (i.e., fit).
I did not check flyers; if I had more kids I’d add it to the list :). Skidmore and Yale were good fits for 2 very different kids.
@“Erin’s Dad” , Yup.
Not reconciled to social, political, or economic change;
Some people seem to think that eavesdropping is a horrible habit. I don’t think so. Much of what I’ve learned during travel has been through eavesdropping. I think as long as you respect reasonable boundaries, it’s okay.
We also noticed the above criteria! One campus we visited had no posters about anything intellectual or cultural–just movies (not films) and sports events. There seemed to be less going on there than at D’s high school. At another college, no one on campus was reading or working on a laptop or even carrying any books. That really concerned me.
One school quality that may only slightly affect the student once s/he arrives on campus but which definitely impacts how we feel about the school is administrative responsiveness and quality of communication and PR materials. For example, will a school’s Financial Aid Office or Admissions Office actually answer a specific question from a prospective student not explained on their website, and in a timely manner? (For example, D had submitted all the required forms, but after a week or so, the portal was still showing her application incomplete. We needed to find out why.) We are still waiting for a response from one college that was among D’s top 3 at one point. Needless to say, it isn’t any longer. Another school’s coach ignored 2 e-mails from D, and she would have been a fantastic recruit for him. She did visit and met him there accidentally, but couldn’t quite forget he was the only coach who hadn’t responded to her, while the others had all replied very enthusiastically. On two college academic departmental websites, D filled out a “request more information” form about a year ago, and yet never received anything from either college to this day. Why offer interested students a brochure or whatever if you aren’t actually going to respond to those requests? She also e-mailed a professor at one college to ask a specific, simple question about how an interdisciplinary program worked, and again never got an answer.
Hopefully, D won’t need to deal too much with the administration once enrolled, but if she does, I’d want them to be efficient and helpful to her. So that’s why D applied ED to the one college that was very friendly, helpful, and prompt in their responses.
@IxnayBob, we learned a lot by eavesdropping in college cafeterias. D2 likes it if people were talking about subjects that seemed to be extensions of their classes. She figured if the classes were interesting enough for that, and the students were academically engaged enough for that, it would be a good fit for her.
@TomSrOfBoston I can’t claim this for everyone, but at least for our family the “little things” are the sprinkles that make the cake better. I would assume that by the time you are putting the sprinkles on, that basic necessities such as affordability have already been added to the mix.
I think the diversity thing is hard to accomplish. If a school is majority white, the minorities may not have any option but to join the white kids, date the white kids, live with the white kids. There might not be enough Asians or Blacks or Hispanics to have their own dorm or dining room. My daughter went to a high school that was only about 15% minority and there were still small groups that formed, but for the most part everyone mingled because there weren’t a lot of other options.
My daughter’s school has a lot of minorities and international students, and they do tend to split off into their own groups. We noticed it on our visit day when a group of international students (I think from Taiwan) started coming out of classrooms and gathering to head to lunch together. At first there were just 2 students, but within minutes there were 10 or more, and their conversations got louder and more animated as more friends joined in. I can understand it as they’d just spent a few hours in class, probably struggling to understand the English instruction, and now wanted to relax, eat, and talk to their friends in their own language, about subjects they like (music, movies, friends, home).
On her campus, there are definitely divisions by race or ethnicity walking around together, but she hasn’t felt left out (my daughter is racially Chinese, but all American in other ways - music, clothing, food, interests). Her groups are her team, roommates, sorority (actually a pretty diverse group), a few classmates, her boyfriend and his friends.
We recently visited a college that S18 says he liked. DH and I thought it failed on all of the things listed in the OP, plus more. Not a single person said hello to us while we were walking around campus; no one even waved to the tour guide, either, which has always happened on every tour we’ve been on. The tour didn’t include the insides of any buildings other than Admissions Office, Library entryway, Athletic facilities, and Student Center. Therefore, we were unable to determine whether any student research was being conducted because we did not see any academic project posters. Fortunately, S18 currently has one other college that ranks higher on his preference list based on visits, so we have not expressed our concerns yet. More colleges to visit in the spring which we hope will rise higher than this one.
At campuses where sororities and fraternities are a big presence, perhaps noting whether they tend to be segregated or not may be helpful if that is of concern.
Nice list(s)! Back in my college-visiting days, I was surprised how much differentiation you could get from the bulletin boards and lampposts with the flyers.
Some other, similar things my kids considered:
– The library. Both the physical structure and the vibe. It was a huge negative at one quite prestigious college that at 2 pm on a rainy Saturday in the middle of a term there was absolutely no one in the library who wasn’t being paid to be there.
– What kids talked about. It had to be something more than TV, getting wasted, and hooking up.
– What kids talked about, and how they talked about it, on college-related social media. This was actually a very powerful factor for my first kid. There were big differences between colleges in this respect. She followed various sites associated with the colleges that interested her for months, and she got (or at least thought she got) a pretty deep sense of what the culture was like.
– When my younger kid visited the college he would later attend for the first time, he was wearing a Tintin t-shirt. Five or six women approached him to chat him up about Tintin. He had hardly ever met anyone his age other than his sister who knew who Tintin was, much less attractive women who wanted to talk to him about Tintin. He thought he had died and gone to heaven. He later visited other colleges he liked, too, but the glow from the Tintin conversations kept that college near the top of his list forever. (Illustrating, of course, the random, unreliable nature of college visits.)
