<p>Karenindallas,
I second kinshasa about looking at the old reports. Some of them were very detailed and helpful (including where to stay and which buses to take!). In a nutshell, my son is a humanities nerd with great ability in math but no desire to pursue that subject (tests equally as high in verbal). He desires a very intellectual, urban campus. He has no interest in sports or frats. Politics, debate and journalism are well-developed interests. We researched schools that fit his criteria and came up with 8 possibilities (UC Berkeley, UC Davis, Rochester, Harvard, Yale, Chicago, George Washington, Georgetown). We've visited all but two. </p>
<p>As I already posted, our son loved Chicago, felt at home there. He also loved Harvard, which was our first stop. We did the info session, went on the tour, he sat in on a senior seminar with a nationally-known author/political scientist, ate lunch in the Harry Potter-style freshman dining hall and met kids there. He just seemed to click with everyone that he met. He said the people he talked/listened to were incredibly intelligent and interesting and intense. He liked Boston being so close. The history of the place (both the city and campus) really appealed to him. The students seemed confident, worldly and unpretentious. It seemed like a place for serious pursuit of interests, without regard to appearances. (Of course, we were there for just one day, so we didn't see everything or everyone.) While S was at the class, the three of us ate lunch at a great hamburger place down the street where all the burgers are named after politicians and celebrities. The Coop bookstore was the best bookstore we'd ever been in, bar none. Talk about character. I could live in that place.</p>
<p>Yale was next and, my goodness, it's a beautiful campus with beautiful people! Our impression of Yale was that it's more social and athletic, but still very intellectual. The Yalies we saw seemed fairly preppy, balanced (physical with intellectual). The senior who ran the information session was quite friendly and talked about how happy everyone at Yale is. The tour guide was a pretty and articulate junior young lady, also very happy. The campus was majestic but not cold-feeling even though it was pouring rain. I can only imagine how beautiful it is on a sunny day in fall. The residential house system seemed maybe a little fraternity/sorority to us, although I like that they break the campus into houses to make the university seem smaller. It does seem a little cliquey, especially since there are preferred and not preferred houses (even with random placement as a freshman) and you are in them all four years. We had picked out a class for S to visit and he had permission from the professor via email, but unfortunately, I blew it and had jotted down the wrong time on our itinerary so he missed it while we were on the tour. He had an interview in the admissions office with a senior science major. It went okay, he said, but they didn't quite click, possibly because their interests were pretty disparate or because S is not good at small talk. We spent a lot of time in the bookstore during his interview because we had the younger sister and it was raining so hard. It was night and day from Harvard's. Very corporate, run by Barnes & Noble. Hardly a soul there, even at lunch. Had a great lunch at a pizza place (a few people from Yale said New Haven made the first American pizza, so we had to try it.) We weren't able to spend as much time as we wanted at Yale because we had to drive to DC (a mistake, it took 8.5 hours instead of the 5.5 predicted by Mapquest... next time we'd fly or take the train.) Overall, my impression of Yale is that our S could fit in there, but not as well as at Harvard. And the lack of a big city nearby was not a plus for him.</p>
<p>Georgetown was similarly gorgeous, more like Yale than Harvard in appearances. We went to the info session and tour and hung out a bit in the bookstore. The info session was very professional (a crisp, efficient PowerPoint by an admission rep). The tour guide was a junior girl, preppy with up-turned collar, articulate, self-assured. The students were very dressed up for class for the most part (leather jackets, some girls in dress shoes, full make-up). There were a lot of athletes around and foreign languages everywhere. It seemed urban, polished and very pre-professional. Lots of talk about grad school placements and careers. We had a great lunch at a vegetarian Indian restaurant in Georgetown. In the end, S felt it wasn't nerdy enough, a little too preppy for his tastes. It looks like a great school for the right kid, but not him. All of us thought he might not be happy in that environment, so we dropped it off the list. But it might reappear in four years if he does decide to go to grad school. The political/government connections are very appealing.</p>
<p>We ended with Chicago, which if anyone wants to know more about I can share. (Also, I can share about George Washington.)</p>
<p>-- Momof2 in CA</p>