<p>In praise of driving through; We did UCLA that way. I thought we learned a lot just by driving through. The campus was compact on a hill with tall buildings. One could easily imagine how lively it would get. The statue of their mascot was at the center with open green space. It wasn’t hard to see where students will hang out. Easy to guage the school spirit as well. We didn’t have time to do an official visit. It was also raining. It was painless and useful ten minutes.</p>
<p>Schmaltz: Subscribe (temporarily) to Groupon in the cities you’ll be visiting and see if you can get segway tours. Your kids will be far more impressed by a segway tour of Boston than they will seeing Harvard, MIT, BC, BU, etc.</p>
<p>“I have to smile, because we just did a drive-by on Friday through Harvard and MIT because I wanted D to get a sense of them since she’ll also be attending school in Boston and her school has a relationship with MIT. I’ve been to both places before (walking around / touring) but D had not. It was about 45 minutes worth of sitting in traffic, trying to avoid hitting students and parents, and peering around corners (“see, honey? if you look through these gates, you’ll get a sense of what Harvard looks like!”).”</p>
<p>"We visited Harvard during the summer and it was packed with people and unbelievable car traffic. "</p>
<p>I can easily believe that…Cambridge was a motorists nightmare even back when I went to college in Boston. I’m quite sure we’ll park at BC and take the “T” past BU and then over to Harvard Square. BU is like a museum of ugly architecture, and I don’t want the kids to have to look at that law school building for more than a few seconds. One thing I have going for me is that I graduated from a high school near Boston and learned to drive there, so the vehicular insanity that passes for driving in Boston is no shock to me.</p>
<p>don’t miss the Infinite Corridor at MIT. [Infinite</a> Corridor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Corridor]Infinite”>Infinite Corridor - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>I don’t know if we’ll see the infinite corridor, but I’ll definitely show them the smoots, which are apparently still there. [Smoot</a> - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot]Smoot”>Smoot - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>"You may not need to spend more than 5 minutes at the Grand Canyon, but if you were driving through Flagstaff anyway you might take a couple of hours to have those 5 minutes, and feel like you hadn’t wasted your time. "</p>
<p>The only time I’ve been to the Grand Canyon was in a December a few decades ago. A friend and I were indeed driving thru Flagstaff and decided to see the GC. We got all the way to the edge of the canyon, and looked in, but it was snowing so hard we could only see about 40 feet down. I can’t even think of an analogy that reflects the level of ridiculousness of that anticlimax. I think that event planted the seeds of tourism cynicism that haunt me to this day.</p>
<p>The trip has begun. It rained throughout Day #1 :</p>
<p>R.I.T.: New and clean looking. Unimaginitive and repetitive red brick buildings. Looks kind of like a housing project or office building complex. Nothing much around it, either. Nobody’s pulse quickened.</p>
<p>U of Rochester: Nice signs thru the city lead you right to the campus, but the final sign, that tells you which way to turn to enter the main part of campus is very faded and the arrow is almost invisible. Can’t believe nobody thought to replace this sign. Nice campus next to river. Gorgeous main quad. Adjacent hospital complex spoils the tranquility a bit, but overall all of us were impressed. Kids wanted a t-shirt.</p>
<p>RPI: tired but still pleasant-looking town. Campus compact and unexciting, but with lots more character than RIT. </p>
<p>Syracuse U.: Got lost, so saw much more of this grubby, unappealing city than we wanted to. The only sign we saw telling us where the campus was was right next to the campus…so you had to already be at the campus to get directions to it. Cramped, ugly, hilly, unfriendly, unappealing campus. We all wondered why anybody would choose to go there.</p>
<p>Colgate: Incredibly pretty, even in rain. Everybody fell in love with it. Kids had previously mocked it for its toothpaste name, but all that vanished when they saw it. Met very nice workers at the bookstore in town. Very hilly, tiny town, and not close to anything, but still looked like a magical place to spend 4 yrs.</p>
<p>Both Syracuse and U of R are great schools for people who can look past exterior and surface details to get to know them. The problem with drive-bys is that major decisions get based upon trivial things.</p>
<p>Thanks, Schmaltz (love that screen name btw); I’ll be looking for your next post. I can’t believe you covered all that territory in one day; did I understand that correctly? Colgate would be a nice academic match for S but he/we are leery of its remoteness. S has it in his head that “remote location + prominent Greek life” is not for him. This equation, which may be overly simplistic, eliminates ALOT of schools, for better or worse…</p>
<p>Also for Colgate, you should also understand their core requirement. That is one other thing we got from the tour that gave my D a pause besides the Greek emphasis (she is interested in mostly pure science). The Friday the 13th thing is also cute but winter there must be a little rough with not much else around.</p>
<p>Day 2. Rained continuously.</p>
<p>Williams College: I’ve been visiting this school since the early '60s…uncle was coach there. The town is still quaint as could be; couldn’t see the mountains that are a wonderful feature (too much rain and low clouds). It’s a great school for those who like a campus to blend in with the town a bit. The many buildings built since the '60s are modern and clash with the more traditional older buildings. It’s like they took a classic New England liberal arts college and superimposed an ordinary Midwestern community college on top of it. Nobody in our group was in a lather over the school’s architecture or setting. Academics are obviously top-notch…no question there. </p>
<p>Holy Cross: I’d last seen it 34 years ago, and it was more impressive than I remembered…lived up to Par72’s raves. Nice mix of architecture styles. It’s on quite a steep hill, but is very compact. Everybody in family liked it. It’s not in the worst section of Worcester.</p>
<p>Boston College: MUCH prettier than when I went there in the '70s. The trees are much more prominent and they remodeled at least one modern building (Devlin) to fit in better with the neo-Gothic buildings. I’m not wild about the new look of the upper campus dorms, but eh. Surrounding neighborhood is still rich, classy, and beautiful.
All in family were really really impressed.</p>
<p>Day 3. Still raining.
Wellesley: Wow, wow, wow. If I were a female, this would be my first choice. Amazing architecture amid dense trees and bushes. The sort of place where you expect Robin Hood to drop out of a tree and steal your cash. A few modern buildings that blend in nicely. Both parents loved it, daughters not impressed by all-female college no matter how nice. Surrounding area is really classy suburb.</p>
<p>Northeastern: drive-by…area very hectic and urban. </p>
<p>Harvard: Beautiful buildings strewn around Cambridge and across the river in Boston. Harvard yard is timelessly beautiful and classic (I first saw it 35 yrs ago and it hadn’t changed). Harvard Square still a great circus of humanity. </p>
<p>Boston University: Looked nicer than I recalled. Significantly less urban than Northeastern’s neighborhood. Architecture isn’t much to get excited about but location is almost unbeatable.</p>
<p>MIT: not up the kids’ alleys academically, but we drove around. Nice, quirky neighborhood. The brainpower there is almost palpable.</p>
<p>Tufts: Two of us liked it, others didn’t. It has some pretty parts, and the proximity to Cambridge and Boston was great. Surrounding neighborhood looked fairly safe and interesting.</p>
<p>Day 4…rain over.</p>
<p>UConn: wife and two daughters liked it a lot. I thought it looked like a condensed version of Michigan State…some stately older buildings and lots of ok newer buildings. It was very clean and well-maintained. You have to go thru a whole lot of countryside to get there. Compact campus.</p>
<p>Trinity: wife and daughters hated it…you have to go thru a whole lot of slums to get to it. Some amazing buildings. It had more open land than I expected. I like it.</p>
<p>Yale: we didn’t have as much time as we wanted to explore it. But we didn’t see anything to make us want to come back. Quite disappointing. Local neighborhood looked nice…not the combat zone we expected.</p>
<p>Day 5:</p>
<p>NYU: Heaven for those who like a huge dose of urban with their studies. Hell for everybody else. Makes Boston U seem pastoral in comparison. Are any NYU dorms cockroach-free?</p>
<p>Lafayette: VERY impressive. I kept thinking “THIS is what a college should look like.” Town is old but not run-down…not the rustbelt ruin some people seem to say it is. Great hilltop location…but not overly hilly campus. Campus and surrounding area reminded me of Tufts a bit. First campus to make wife reach for the Fiske guide to read up on it.</p>
<p>What did your kids say? Are they tired yet?</p>
<p>We are DONE with the process for D1, but I thought our system worked well. 3 Boston and 3 NY colleges in August of soph year, 3 San Fran schools in November of Soph Year,
2 Washington Schools in Sr. Year, and 1 Chicago school (already had been accepted) in Sr. year. The first trip helped determine small vs med vs big, rural vs urban, NY vs Boston. The second trip focused on three schools that met the desired criteria, and the WA and Chicago trips were to schools that she had applied to without visiting based on their match to critereon and EXTENSIVE review on CC. We wrote up reviews on some of the schools on CC, which solidified our experiences. Keep your mouth SHUT until your child lists the pros and cons, and write really quickly. We wrote in a journal I kept in my purse - always handy!</p>
<p>Rather then a lot of ‘drive by’s’ you might want to consider doing a little research and seeing if there is anything interesting going on at a few of the campus’s. Maybe some music festivals, sports events, or an on campus art museum with an interesting exhibit?</p>
<p>For example, we watched the US Olympic volleyball team play an exhibition match at UC Berkeley one year, (and saw enough of the campus to know that it wasn’t going to be on either kids future college list.)</p>
<p>Last year, we saw a great photography exhibit at a campus art gallery called ‘Evidence of Evolution’. </p>
<p>There are some interesting things going on at universities, but you might have to dig for the information.</p>
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<p>Everyone’s entitled to their opinions, and I agree that the signage around Syracuse is horrible. The first time we went there, I got lost, too, late at night. And it was March, miserable and slushy. But we did the campus tour the next day (still cold and slushy), and it really is different when you get on campus and walk around to some of the buildings and areas that are not accessible by car. And Walnut St., where many of the Greek houses are, is very nice. </p>
<p>It’s like many, many other campuses, bordered by dire, bleak looking neighborhoods and/or industrial areas. </p>
<p>As to why someone would want to go there? How 'bout Newhouse? And their reputable study-abroad program/opportunities.</p>
<p>“Rather then a lot of ‘drive by’s’ you might want to consider doing a little research and seeing if there is anything interesting going on at a few of the campus’s. Maybe some music festivals, sports events, or an on campus art museum with an interesting exhibit?”</p>
<p>We simply didn’t have the time to do this. We went into the trip knowing it was superficial and exploratory…meant to expose the kids to as many areas and as many colleges as possible. So far it’s been pretty effective…confirming what we all expected to like about BC, Harvard, and UConn; surprising the kids with Rochester, Holy Cross, Colgate, and Lafayette (though D1 loved Colgate, she couldn’t live with the remoteness); completely eliminating RIT, Syracuse, Trinity, RPI. Jury still out on NYU, Tufts, Northeastern, Williams. Today, on the way home, expect to see Lehigh, Bucknell, and Penn State (and maybe Muhlenburg).</p>
<p>Wife and kids getting a bit weary of colleges, though the surprise of Lafayette last night seems to have invigorated them and made them realize the wisdom of at least taking a look around colleges that we get near.</p>
<p>So far, the biggest variable being discussed is being close to or in a major city. NYC was sensory overload (we were in the vicinity of the Gay Pride parade yesterday), and it’s hard to tell if kids are the type who would thrive in a big city or would be happy just visiting one once or twice per semester. I keep repeating the sentiment often heard on CC, that they have the rest of their lives to spend playing adult in a big city…there’s no reason they have to jump into the urban jungle at age 18, when they won’t be old enough or have enough money to make the most of it.</p>
<p>“It’s like many, many other campuses, bordered by dire, bleak looking neighborhoods and/or industrial areas.”</p>
<p>We live about 3 minutes from Detroit, so we’ve sort of had our fill of urban blight. We probably value a pretty setting and and interesting cities more than we would if home base was Chicago or Denver or some other place that isn’t an urban carcass. Any time someone in the car has said “this reminds me of Detroit,” it has been the kiss of death.</p>