<p>My Yale tour was absolutely incredible, the campus is stunning and the guide was really personable.</p>
<p>I guess none of you guys came on my tours at Brown…</p>
<p>My least favorite tours were at Harvard and Yale. I disliked both for many of the reasons above-- so much was about the name, history, buildings, etc., that it was rammed down your throat that this is one of “those” places. I also really do not like when tours take you into a library. Though Harvard feels this way more than Yale, I really don’t like the urban campus feel when the result is that no one around you feels like they’re affiliated with the university. At both places I didn’t feel like I was intruding or an outsider, I felt like 2/3s of the people around me who clearly were just hanging out or walking through and not members of the community.</p>
<p>My favorites were Brown, Wesleyan, Case Western, and URochester, even if two of the four brought you into the library (Wesleyan and URochester).</p>
<p>i had a really good tour at swarthmore and i thought it was just the most beautiful school. the sunken amphitheater really took my breath away. i also loved wesleyan’s tour, my tour guides were awesome and i really loved the school. hated boston college, vassar, and holy cross. tufts, notre dame, and amherst were okay. i actually didn’t visit yale until after i got in and the tour was only so-so.</p>
<p>We loved an Amherst tour that we did last summer.<br>
The student at the information session told a story about the science professor who volunteered to meet with her for an hour once a week for the entire semester to encourage her to take a class.
A different student tour guide told the story of the professor who brought her soup and lecture notes when she missed class with mono.</p>
<p>Columbia was a lovely campus but the tour guide was too soft-spoken over the din on Manhattan. Great campus. One of our favorites not mentioned here so far - William & Mary. Yes, it was 95 F and the middle of summer, but the campus was great. My son ended up at Swarthmore instead - another lovely campus. Agree that Tufts tour and the school are great as well. Heard wonderful things about Colgate - very clean. Lafayette was terrific, as was Trinity University in San Antonio.</p>
<p>Brown was pretty good, I think it was because I had a really great tour guide though. It wasn’t too long and I got to see a lot of the campus. However we did not get to see dorms or inside the caf.</p>
<p>BC was alright, nothing special. I mostly remember the million dollar staircase. Would you really want to attend an institution that spends a million dollars on a staircase? Didn’t get to see the dorms on this tour either.</p>
<p>Yeah at Brown we have a constant struggle with ResLife about the dorm room thing. We were allowed to bring admitted students up there on special tours in April this year, which was considered a huge victory. Walking into the cafeteria is up to the tour guide-- most of us don’t do it because it’s toward the end of the tour and generally felt to be a waste of time in nice weather. I also constantly complain that we don’t get to do a 1.5hr tour instead of 1hr. Just my own preference-- we have a lot more of campus that students spend time in that’s quite nice we don’t get to show on the tour that we could incorporate. Apparently people don’t like 1.5 hr tours. No one ever complained the science tour (1.5hr tour) was long-- you just have to be a good guide. As a former tour guide, I’m always interested in this stuff.</p>
<p>Maybe I was your guide… :D.</p>
<p>Anonlymous91, There was nothing wasteful about BC’s big stairway…the notion that it’s heated is a myth: </p>
<p>[Hidden</a> Gems: The truth behind the million dollar stairs - Features](<a href=“http://media.www.bcheights.com/media/storage/paper144/news/2006/12/04/Features/Hidden.Gems.The.Truth.Behind.The.Million.Dollar.Stairs-2520250.shtml]Hidden”>http://media.www.bcheights.com/media/storage/paper144/news/2006/12/04/Features/Hidden.Gems.The.Truth.Behind.The.Million.Dollar.Stairs-2520250.shtml)</p>
<p>Pretty much anywhere in Massachusetts, if you dig below the surface, you run into rock. My family was originally from the Midwest, but we moved to Mass when I was in high school. We wanted to put up a basketball hoop in the driveway, and we figured it would take about 15 minutes to dig a 2-foot hole for the post. I think it ended up taking us about 2 hours to dig the hole. Making that stairway at BC must have been a nightmare.</p>
<p>ILoveCake, I’ve visited all the colleges you mentioned in post#1. As far as the campuses are concerned, the 2 big variables seem to be the architecture and the atmosphere of the areas around them. </p>
<p>ND, BC, Stanford, and Princeton are all surrounded by very calm and safe areas, which some people might find dull. BC straddles the Boston/Newton line, so it’s much closer to urban excitement than the other 3 are. </p>
<p>As somebody else said, that whole Harvard Square area feels like it’s got several hangers on for each person actually associated with the university. A lot of the hangers on try a little too hard to make themselves look interesting. Not as bizarre as Berkeley, CA, but a similar theme of thinking they are doing something special and intellectual just by BEING there. I would think that whole Harvard Square scene would get exhausting after a while. Some people claim the area around Columbia is safe but if you"re not an experinced city person i can see how you’d be uneasy there.</p>
<p>Some people seem oblivious to the architecture around them, while others can get invogorated or annoyed by certain types. If Gothic bugs you, BC would be uncomfortable. If red tile roofs bug you, Stanford would be a nightmare. Harvard has plenty of red brick and a few modern eyesores. Princeton has a pleasant mixture. Notre Dame’s architecture is different from any other college I’ve seen, but it seems exceptionally easy on the eyes. Columbia seemed rather sterile…like a movie set. Except for Stanford and Harvard, all of these schools are quite compact. Also be aware that the climate along the coast of Northern California is not what most people think of when they think of California fun and sun.</p>
<p>I second Union College in NY</p>
<p>Lovely campus and great tour</p>
<p>UCLA is the best looking. Stanford, Cal were pretty good, UCSD okay.</p>
<p>UCI is hideous. I hate the surrounding area, too.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And Penn has a statue you can pee on!</p>
<p>^they pee on john harvard too hahaha</p>
<p>Awful tour: Cornell. Felt like we were the cows on a cattle drive. Group way too big, guide made no attempt to be heard past the first few people–very unenjoyable.</p>
<p>University of Rochester has a STUNNING campus.</p>
<p>Cornell University was pretty big and a lot of the buildings were run down, it felt way too urban!</p>
<p>SUNY @ Geneseo was a cute little campus, very nice for a SUNY school!</p>
<p>Bowdoin es muy atractivo.</p>
<p>Cornell being Urban. Thats a new one!</p>
<p>In Virginia, William & Mary, UVA, Mary Washington, and University of Richmond are always cited as being very beautiful.</p>
<p>Ucla was amazing. Funny guides, gorgeous campus that is easy to walk and lots of good looking people, nice area, good food. I hated Berkeley. Did a 3 day overnight stay there, but also did the whole standard tour. Tour guide was GREAT, and for some odd reason, I knew every trivial factoid regarding cal he threw out in question form. LOL. Nyu tour was pretty much all inclusive, Although having to make reservations was a bit much. Lots of kids from all over the world, and at the end of the info session when you actually go on the tour, it got more personal and stuff, although there was a group of ghetto kids there from the Bronx that were pretty annoying. It was crazy, just cause the security guards there were psycho and checking I’d’s and name tags EVERYWHERE. We even got to go to classrooms and dorms! I chose nyu stern in the end.</p>
<p>Princeton, Swarthmore, and Vassar were my top 3 in terms of looks in the North East. </p>
<p>Franklin and Marshall is also nice, though as an alum I am biased. Was surprised that the facilities compared so well against other schools with bigger reputations.</p>
<p>Best tour of our 25+ was Chicago but the campus was not as impressive as I had expected going in.</p>
<p>Princeton was the most beautiful. i’ve never seen anything like it. i never took a formal tour though. I visited Yale once for this conference but wasn’t impressed. Buildings were nice on the outside but crummy on the inside and one of the cafeteria areas where they made us eat lunch didn’t have AC. I visited Columbia as well. It was ok but not what i would consider pretty. I think the city detracted from the school. My UPenn tour was the most enjoyable the guide was nice and peppy and the campus had a nice balance between the city and the traditional campus. it also had trees, the other city schools i went to didn’t. I visited Swarthmore. I could be considered very pretty but it wasn’t my thing. I felt like i was in the middle of a forest and the campus is crazy small.</p>