Surprises (positive and negative) at your child's college vs. expectations (name the school)

Parents Forum
1

For parents with current college students (or with fairly recent college graduates)

  1. What has most underwhelmed/disappointed you and/or your child at their chosen school

  2. What has been the most positive surprise for you and/or your child at their chosen school

These positive and negative surprises are in comparison to expectations you and your child had before freshman year began. These expectations may have been based on how a college marketed itself and set expectations for you (from a tour, an info session, published material, college representatives, etc.) or could have been based on expectations you created based on having known other students who attended there or having gone there yourself many years ago, etc
(some detail around what the expectation was and why you think that expectation existed and how the college has completely missed the mark or overdelivered would be great). Please name the school.

We are just beginning to think about fit for our kids (oldest is S21), and I think this would be helpful (and fun).

2

GaTech
1.class registration process is very drawn out/anxiety producing students adjust to this, do not panic !
2. academically strong and friendly classmates, very rigorous classes, leafy green campus in the middle of Atlanta, very strong student clubs, and lots of energy and spirit, lots of connections to European internships, and study abroad options for all majors, keep classes small for a larger public school, very good out of state price for the quality of education.

CWRU

  1. nothing, there was absolutely nothing that we don’t love about Case Western
  2. merit awards are jumbo, all incoming freshman read a summer book.
    cool fall break trip to Toronto, lots of faculty really CARE, hard classes, great friends, good living arrangements
    and food, lots of on campus research, very top mentoring for undergrads, and help with job search and/or grad school admissions, lots of help with applying to scholarships, additional merit offered to juniors and seniors, discount Cleveland Orchestra tickets, funding for conferences, IM sports, healthy frats, service work built into SAGES curriculum, fantastic graduation speaker and ceremony.

Note we are half way through GaTech and all the way through CRWU, so I may have some new info in another 18 months on GaTech.

3

My daughter is in the honors college at Purdue (first year engineering). I had a ton of anxiety about the size of the school, worried about scheduling classes, her ability to make friends, etc
 I was really hoping she’d land at a much smaller school, 8000 or so undergrads, but Purdue was by far her #1 through the whole process.

  1. NOTHING! I was initially concerned about her being placed in a quad that was originally designed as a triple but she loves it so much she and her roommates want to stay in it next year. (That's basically been our entire experience with Purdue, everything I was worried about turned out to be awesome).
  2. My daughter has totally found her people. She works her tail off but loves, loves, loves all her classes and her new friends. They have house dinners twice/week, watch Disney movies in the lounge, go to art shows, sporting events, musicals, etc.... She never worries about eating alone because she always finds someone she knows, even if she didn't make plans in advance. She's not a partier/drinker and that hasn't impeded her social life at all. Academics have been super, scheduling courses was a breeze, and she has individual relationships with some of her profs and all of her TAs. She's eaten dinner with profs, has met their families, etc.... All things that I was worried would never happen at a school this size.
4

One of my kids graduated from Boston University and the tout from Santa Clara University.

I honestly can’t think of anything disappointing about either school for either kid.

5

DS19 is in his first year at American U.

  1. This is a small issue but it did underwhelm me. My son was assigned a dorm based on an honors program he was asked to join. The dorm has yet to be renovated since being built. The dorm that is its mirror image was renovated over the summer and here’s the kicker - we pay the exact same amount to live in the crappy dorm as those living in the fully renovated dorm! His floor has almost no furniture in the common area. The table has been broken for over a month and they refuse to replace it. Also, the loft we paid extra for was not put together well. Luckily my DH is handy and realized that the bolts were loose and needed to be tightened. So housing is definite let down. I wouldn’t be salty if we’re not paying the same as the other halls that have been renovated.
  2. How well my DS would adjust to college and how he really has found his place. We knew AU was a great fit for him, but it has far exceeded my expectations for fit. He very happy (despite his broken table!) and has made a lot of friends. He’s doing well with the academic load and has found a club/organization that he really loves. He’s so busy we barely get to talk to him.
6

Williams College:

  1. Disappointments are few:

-so-so wi-fi in some spots in some dorms

-weird registration process; you can get dropped from classes randomly

-To the annoyance of my spouse, some parts of campus can seem kind of run-down when you are paying $70,000 (other parts of campus are gorgeous, but still
).

-Sometimes, the high volume of one side of the political spectrum can mute other views, which can be a little tiresome even if you mostly agree with the noisy ones.

  1. Positives are many:

-Classes have exceeded expectations in every way. Small, great conversations, professors are knowledgeable/ entertaining/ caring.

-It so easy to make friends there! The “entry” dorm system and the freshman orientation program are both awesome. Orientation involves a week and a half with no classes, just getting used to college and being put into social situations where you interact with other students, which really facilitates the making of friends.

-The Ephventures programs put you into an intense situation, like backpacking, where you are spending four days on end with one group of people. You become friends.

-It was uncertain how the newly revised freshman entry (dorm) system would work, now with 40 people in the entry instead of 20. But it is better than ever, with the ability to interact with various different people within the entry. The entry is one big extended family, with everyone being friendly and supporting one another. Junior advisors arrange some entry events, and entrymates arrange many impromptu social gatherings and outings themselves.

-People are so friendly. You can just walk into the dining room and sit with people you don’t know, and they will be welcoming and nice.

-Diversity is real, with frequent and genuine interactions among people from different backgrounds. Students have friends from many different states and other nations, from all socioeconomic levels, of all different racial backgrounds, with varied interests, etc. The entry system really promotes this, because each entry is designed to be a microcosm of the college.

-“Life of the mind” is alive and well. Students really do spend time at meals and in the dorms talking about ideas, books, etc
 as well as normal kid stuff! It is a very intellectual place, filled with kids who love ideas and learning, and also a genuinely human place.

-Single room is nicer than expected, and though small, it is big enough to be comfortable and to hold all your stuff. It is great to be able to go to the common room to be social and then retreat to your own space to study or make a phonecall or just unwind.

7

Texas A&M : School spirit beyond any expectations. Professors’ concern for students surprising for such a huge institution.

Northwestern: Staff (admissions, financial aid, housing) could not have been more professional and cooperative. Faculty showed the sort of concern for undergrads you’d expect only at a small college. Students a bit more nerdy than expected.

U of Nebraska: Amazingly well organized. Convenient, compact campus. Everybody was friendly. Great dorms. Locals welcoming of out of staters.

8

West Point:

  1. Underwhelmed/disappointed: Academics Plebe year were not challenging regardless of the hype. Our son found that most cadets were just unprepared for true college-level work and time management. Once he was into his major, he was tapped into what the academy could offer, but he was generally underwhelmed by the academics his first year (and he validated every class he was eligible to validate).

His parents were disappointed in the weapons of mass destruction and the military-ness in general.

  1. Positive: Both son and parents were surprised at the level of tolerance and respect for ALL opinions, genders, and beliefs. The academy was nowhere (and I mean nowhere) near as conservative as expected. The level of engagement with and honest debate of current issues are refreshing and not one-sided or pre-determined at all. Though trained to understand and follow orders, the corp of cadets is also trained to make executive decisions and give orders under pressure. This training means looking at issues and problems from ALL angles for best outcomes. No one is served in life-or-death situations by agendas. Though I can’t say the same for parent clubs and online forums, the academy culture is modern and refreshingly open to ideas and encourages strong, intelligent debate without tolerating platitudes. Almost four years in, and we’ve been humbled by the recognition of our own prejudices concerning the military.
1 Like
9

Mount Holyoke:

  1. Underwhelmed/disappointed - for all the hype about the 5 college consortium and the proximity to Amherst and Northhampton -the bus service is not great and the connectivity between the 5 colleges is really underwhelming. Not sure why between 5 schools they can't pony up the funds for a private student bus system instead of having kids ride the increasingly underfunded public busses.
  2. Postivie - everything else. Daughter is SO happy, making friends, interesting classes, gorgeous lovely dorm room in one of the old classic dorms on campus. It really is the right place for her.
10

Great thread!
Rice:
Positives.
1)Son who chose Rice despite being fairly anti-Texas now truly loves Houston and would like to stay there after graduation. He really enjoys the diversity of the city and all the things to do.
2) How the school handled the hurricane last fall was tremendous. They communicated frequently with parents and really helped us stay calm and collected.
3) Classes. By and large, son has been happy with most of his classes and professors.
4) Not specific to school, but to kid. Really positively surprised by how well son has handled adjustment to college. Was feeling some stress and so on his own started to going to counseling center. Rice is rigorous and students take a large course load, but he has managed to do really well and have time for other things. He is off campus this year and has handled that process of finding an apartment, signing up for electricity and internet and all that good stuff, very well. Having him far away also hasn’t been that big a deal. Flights are not too expensive and he handled putting stuff in storage for the summer, etc.

Disappointments

  1. We thought that the residential college system was amazing and I still love the concept. Unfortunately, son didn’t click with a lot of the people in his particular residential college. He has a few close, predominantly female, friends from his college, but enjoys people from other residential colleges more. Made me realize how hit or miss this can be and it’s sort of a bummer because you are tied to this college for all years you live on campus.
  2. Food. Son really doesn’t like the food, although others do. There is also a surprising lack of options outside of the cafeterias compared with other colleges. Hadn’t really paid attention to that previously.
  3. Classes. Not as many classes in his social science major as I would have thought or liked so fewer choices and Rice eliminated public policy as a major for undergrads which we thought was something son would have considered.
  4. Career advising. Not sure about this as yet, but son thinks they may not be as helpful as at some schools.
  5. Parties. Son sees his friends at big state schools and schools like Tulane and they look like they are having more fun. He says that security is so present at all of the university parties that it sort of dampens the fun. I think this is happening at lots of schools, even state schools, myself.
  6. Son says Rice is enrolling many students from Asian countries because they are full pay, but their language skills and cultural differences mean that they often self-isolate and so son thinks that reduces the pool of potential friends.
  7. Not as many social type clubs as he would like. Son has gotten involved in some activities, but would like to do more and has found it hard to find a good fit.
11

D is a junior at Bates.

Surprise negatives: the gym facilities need updating. D doesn’t care, because she never uses the gym. Lack of good fruit in the cold months. For the money, could they at least provide clementines? That annoys her and us. My D would agree with points 5 & 7 in post 9.

Surprise positives: Lewiston is improving all the time. The kids enjoy being there. I LOVE Clayton Spencer and hope she never leaves. Really hasn’t had a dud class. Food is great, but that’s not a surprise. Being able to get into the countryside or to the coast easily is a nice bonus. She has raved about all of her profs but one, who she thought was totally wrong for the class. (Guess that could be a surprise negative too.)

12

@lindagaf - Tell her not to worry about #5 - she is almost old enough to go to the Blue Goose and I saw people drinking in there at 10:30am on a Wednesday when I went brought my D to see it! :))

13

@momtogkc maybe I need to check out the Blue Goose this coming weekend, lol!

Should have added to my post that one thing D is surprised about is that Bates is very rigorous. She thinks there’s a perception that it is more laid back academically than some other NESCACs. That is definitely not the case, and she is pretty sure Bates has grade deflation. Also, there are allegedly plans in progress to renovate the gym facilities.

14

@Lindagaf Check it out! It is a tiny hole in the wall bar that smells like a fraternity basement. I had to go in because my dad and brother went to Bates and both hung out there in their day. My brother says they have a famous Spam pizza but I didn’t tay long enough to try that! The locals in there were very nice, brought the plastic goose down from the shelf so D could hold it in a picture. (I wish D would consider Bates but it is too far and too small for her :frowning: )

Back to the thread - I love this idea, I hope everyone of the schools we are looking at is listed at some point!

15

How many of us are Bates parents? Love the college. The huge surprise was in how D1 really took to the college experience, did so much, dug into the academics, without intimidation. How she worked closely with profs. No complaints. But she had visited on an overnight weekend and we saw a tremendous openness among admins and faculty.

Sorry, folks, she was there right before Spencer clamped down on the partying. Wild. Work hard/play hard and she loved it. Don’t know about the Blue Goose, she did her drinking in the dorms. (Oops.)

16

Cornell- CAS/Humanities
Worries before D attended:
Social Adjustment: D is the only child. At HS, she only had a few good friends (like 3). She was more like an outsider.

Academics: She was good but not a top 10 in her HS. We were not sure how well she would do at Cornell.

Positives: So many. Just from the top of my head:
Friendship: Our good friend suggested D would be better of at one of the community programs than in a regular dorm. D loves cultural diversity and people from different parts of the world. What a great fit!! She has met and made friends with more people than we’d ever imagined. She has a group of good friends (male and female). They like one another so much they stayed together at the same program house again this year (sophomore), all 10+ of them. With the program houses, students can choose to stay all four years. Otherwise, sophomores move to the West campus or off campus.

Social Life: Some say Cornell is a party school. D said there are people who party and those who don’t. D was not interested in a sorority, either. She has her group of friends who she hangs out with and “parties”. They go to dances together. They have heard of wild parties but they are not interested. There are over 1000 clubs and student organizations so it is easy to find activities and like-minded students to interact with.

Academics: She is a humanities major and loves what she is studying. She has done very well. Her department is small (fewer than 50 students per year). Classmates are friendly. She knows all her professors and most of the TAs in her department. All the profs are very accessible and down to earth. Because of her major, her class size, on average, is fewer than 20 students per class. She said she likes all the classes she has taken (so far). There are also many free presentations, talks, activities, etc. that are open to students.

Food: Cornell food ranks as high as 3rd among all colleges, I believe. A lot of good food choices and locations. D loves to explore food places. She may have eaten at almost every one of them on campus, including food trucks.

The Dairy Bar: Cornell’s own ice cream shop. Students who attend food science classes compete in new ice cream flavor creation. The Diary Bar uses the recipe from the winning group to make a new ice cream and adds it the menu with the names of winners and ingredients on display. How cool is that?

Ithaca: A lovely city. It has a good blend of cultural and natural beauty. We love the Farmer’s Market and the many ethnic restaurants. The surrounding area has many state parks, gorges, waterfalls and trails to see and explore.

Negatives: just two
Brutal winter: D is from New England. One would think she is used to bad/harsh winter. The cold, gloomy winter from Dec - March dampened her and many students’ spirits. I think most of them suffered winter blues during those months. Per D, it was a long, cold, dreary, wet, depressing time. Cornell is hardly ever closed for bad weather. Her prof said it was closed two days in 17 years.

Internships: Her profs said there are less internships for humanity majors. Most internships are geared to STEM and Business students. It’s a real downer.

Overall, she loves everything about her college experience. She is in the right place with the right group of people and studies what she loves. We could not be happier. She is not a STEM student so her experience may be quite different from those students. There may be a lot more competition and stress there. D said students in business school are nicknamed “snakes” for a reason :).

17

D is first-year at Davidson.

Worries: She almost went to college 3000 miles away on West Coast and then in the end surprised us by picking Davidson which is only 2.5 hours drive. I was worried it’d feel too similar and close to home but that hasn’t been the case at all and since students are from all over the country (and world) it still seems to feel exciting to her. Her RA is from India, etc., etc.

Surprise positives;

– Davidson is known for grade deflation, but her grades so far have been good and she’s really happy about that!! Fingers crossed it holds the rest of the semester!
– She’s loving a small college and ability to jump into a lot of interests and clubs (including a club sport) quickly.
– I could go on and on – but overall she really loves college, loves her classes, and has developed friends quickly.

– Oh, I’m surprised that given how active she is already that she also seems to be getting plenty of sleep and exercise so far so she’s using her time really well.

Surprise negative:

– They have a somewhat complicated system where first-years can only use meal swipes at the 2nd dining facility certain hours. (Though you can use dining dollars there anytime.) I think it’s to designed to get the first-years sharing more meals together at the main dining hall and to cut down on congestion at the 2nd (smaller) dining place. The consequence is she’s often eating meals at odd hours (like lunch at 2:30 and dinner at 8) to get around the restrictions. She doesn’t mind; I think it’s a bit annoying.

18

Good thread. D is a senior at Willamette. It has been a great fit for her with a few minor grumbles.

Grumbles -

  1. Freshman year entry advising she took 3 classes that were breadth requirements and when she enrolled she also thought the 4th class was as well based on the convo she had on the phone with the advisor, but it later turned out that this sociology class was difficult, boring, and didn’t fulfill any requirements. She could have gone back and checked herself but just assumed the person on the phone helping her out knew what they were doing.
  1. The dining system came under new management during her 2nd year and suffered for a while. It seems to have recovered.
  2. A surprising number of her friends transferred out for different reasons (mental health, financial issues, wanting a major that wasn't available there).
  3. This might be my own perspective but I didn't get the picture that her RAs did much in the way of advising or programming or hall bonding activities. It is quite possible that they did and my daughter just never took advantage of them, though.

Positive that was a surprise
Freshman orientation was amazing. The kids were put into orientation groups with an upperclassman for activities and were in the same group with a professor for their freshman seminar class, and this group met together frequently for the first few days until the other classes began. It was a great way for kids to find a manageable peer group to get to know initially.

Can’t think of anything else that was really a surprise, but don’t let the 4 grumbles to 1 surprise make it sound like we’ve been dissatisfied. I guess the other surprise is how many other kids we now know from our suburb who are either going there or seriously considered it. There’s definitely a market for small LACs on the west coast.

1 Like
19

College of the Holy Cross
Surprise positives -City of Worcester has a lot more to offer than expected and has been a pleasant surprise.

  • Freshman dorms don’t ‘show’ well on tours, but once you live in them there are lots of positives. Good storage space. Lots of natural light. Bright, wide hallways mean kids hang out there and meet others. RAs build community.
  • Career services - lots of support there and great leads for internships/jobs. Alumni are actively involved with career services as well.
    Negatives - grade deflation. Bathrooms and stairwells in dorms could use updating.
20

Carnegie Mellon
Surprise positive
My loner son who really only had 3 friends in high school, made lots of friends. He even made frieds with alums from some on line listserve and went to the Carnival with all them. They have what they call computer clusters and he hung around with them chatting, doing homework together and playing games.

The CM network is amazing. When my son’s first internship got cancelled due to the financial meltdown. Friends were able to point him to companies that were still looking. The following summer he got recommended by a friend for a Google interview. That led to an internship and later a job.

Negatives
The food is terrible, but we knew that going in. It’s mostly fast food and there are mostly very small tables so that socializing over meals doesn’t really happen.

Housing is first come first serve for freshman. My son did not make the decision to go to CMU until the last possible day, so he ended up in an off campus dorm. (Luckily he really liked it - he had a one bedroom apartment with just one other roommate. He chose to stay in the dorm as a sophomore as well.)

Tufts
Positive
Food is really great

Surprise Positive
My kid got involved in some interesting long term activities via the Global Leadership Institute that took him off campus meeting kids from military academies not just colleges.

Arabic department was very good. (But also very, very hard. They gave out C’s like candy.) He didn’t get an A until he was a senior and had spent a year in Jordan.

Surprise Negative
International Relations. Not sure if it was office politics, or the fact that’s it’s a committee not a real department, but my son felt they skated along on the reputation of the Fletcher School. They were pretty persnickety about what they would allow credit for. They gave him no credit for anything he took in Jordan, no credit for EPIC (which was probably the best and most demanding IR course he took),

He had absolutely nothing in common with his roommate freshman year, even going by the questionnaire they filled out.

In general this kid who had lots of friends in high school, does not seem to have made any lasting friendships from Tufts. (This is partly due to taking a very time consuming course with mostly upper classmen freshmen year and spending his entire junior year off campus.)