Colleges that surprised you?

@Leigh22 My 11yr old blurted out the other day that he’s going to Wooster. When asked why, I thought he was going to say something about the sports facilities or the campus. Nope, should’ve remembered who I was talking to. He said, “Mom, the cookies!! And Coccia House pizza!”
Ha

For me, it was two:

  1. Randolph-Macon. I was expecting just another small, middle of the road, LAC that didn't stand out from the myriad of others in the Mid-Atlantic region. But alas, I came away extremely impressed with the facilities, the people (faculty, staff and students) the programs (throwing lots of money into the sciences), and the services (especially career/internships). Campus is very nice, definitely small but very "homey". This was my #1 choice for D, but she wanted something a bit bigger.
  2. Kutztown University. High on my D's list was a rural location, an equestrian team, and a student-body that wasn't populated with ultra-competitive type A students. I know she wanted to go further south but this was about 2.5 hours from home so it was an easy drive to validate her perceived desires. Let me tell you, I was blown away. The library was great, the course selection was plentiful and the student services they had available were impressive. Everyone we met was super friendly, helpful and genuine. I left thinking this was a great fit even though it was never intended to be a contender.

@ChaosParent23 we went to a reunion for our grad student dorm at Berkeley a few years ago (International House) and brought the kids along. Brunch was part of the day. Afterwards my younger kids both decided they wanted to go to Berkeley… because they have ‘all-you-can-eat bacon’.

I have an improbable one - Pasadena City College. Went there when I was chaperoning the high school choir a couple of years ago and they attended a clinic on the campus. Wow, when I think of community colleges I don’t think gorgeous SoCal campus, amazing location, and the music department faculty member we worked with was top-notch. I told my kids if they need a college backup plan they could get an apartment in Pasadena and take courses there for a couple of years. (Partially but not entirely kidding… our local CC is also very good and it would be a lot cheaper to just live at home if they go that route. But for the kid who really really wants to leave home but doesn’t have the background for a 4 year school…)

Southwestern U in Texas – gorgeous campus with history, nice students, devoted faculty, and generous FA. Also near Austin–and career services seems amazing. I was not expecting to be blown away. Also – can get into it! If that school was in the northeast it would be impossible to get into.

Wellesley - I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised but this was early in the college visit/search process. D17 was not happy about being dragged there on our last day of a vacation to visit family and in the car she angrily proclaimed, “I’m not going to an all women’s college!”. We were both very impressed with its beauty, resources and opportunities for students. D loved it by the end of the tour. While it ended up being the only college to not accept her, she ended up at a school that seems like a better fit and also has many of the same qualities as Wellesley.

Hamilton. Really a powerhouse in ways many LACs aren’t. Excellent balance of small school with attention to undergrads with productive research labs. Undergrads get the kind of opportunities you’d expect only available to grad students at universities. Hamilton seems to combine the advantages of a small liberal arts college with the best aspects of larger universities while avoiding the pitfalls of each. Pretty remarkable.

Syracuse and Penn State. I was prepared to hate them, especially PSU. I used to be not a fan of big rah-rah schools, but that’s what my son wants, so we visited. Lovely campuses at both (well, parts of PSU are lovely) and lots of happy students who clearly adore their schools. PSU has its own ice cream store, with homemade ice cream. I mean, how can you not like that? Syracuse was frigid when we visited, but no one seemed at all fazed by it. Left both campuses feeling my son would be happy at either one.

University of Rochester. My daughter wanted to go see it; I wasn’t convinced. I hadn’t heard much about it, and I kept getting it mixed up with RIT and I didn’t know why my kid, who was not interested in an engineering or technical school, wanted to look there. But agreed to stop to see UR because it was halfway to Boston and we were on a college-tour road trip. We were both blown away by the campus, the curriculum, the public health opportunities, and the student body. It was her favorite from that visit on. She’ll be graduating in the spring.

From visiting colleges for our three children over the last 4 years, we have been to a couple of dozen schools including Dartmouth, Columbia, Rochester, Colgate, Hamilton, Wesleyan, Smith, Wellesley… etc. From our experience I have not seen a school as immaculate and as well maintained as the University of Richmond. Every building throughout campus seems like it is cleaned, power washed, carpeted every year. The entire campus is landscaped with pawers, and flowers. Nothing seems out of place. It is just a gorgeous school. My daughter is currently in her sophomore year there.

I really liked Lafayette. My kids started out very opposed to it for their own mysterious reasons, but they too liked it much more than expected, although neither ended up going there. Case Western Reserve also was a surprise winner - we had such a fun visit to Cleveland, which helped - but I ended up hating the place after they only accepted one twin after making a big show of being family-friendly.

@washugrad How can you resist the lure of bacon? International House looks like a pretty cool place to spend your time at Cal. The food is way better than the dining halls, from what I gather.

@Undercrackers it’s been a few years now… I seem to recall that the food was good but like any dorm, the variety started to lag after a couple of months. But it was a fantastic location and I met my husband there so what’s not to like :-).

Saint Michael’s in Vermont. We also visited Middlebury, Colby, Bates, and Bowdoin during Spring Break my Daughter’s Junior year. They were all busy as there was no snow compared to the year before. At Middlebury people were standing in the aisle, while there were many empty seats. At Saint Michael’s, she said there was going to be a full house, so if everyone could move over and not leave any empty seats it would be helpful. Info session 101 ; ) We also had a great tour guide at Saint Michaels, Brian, I still remember his name. At least 15 classmates and one professor said hi to him during the tour. They were just more friendly than the other schools. We got a cookie from the dinning hall, and my daughter picked up a free t-shirt. She was jacked about the free t-shirt.
The other one that surprised me was Smith, not in a good way. We visited during their Winter break, and we were the only one in the info session. After the info session a student came up and said there was no tour and handed us a map and said we could tour ourselves. We did register for both the info session and tour on-line. We live in Massachusetts and my wife was going to bring my daughter back for her interview, so they toured it then, and my daughter has pretty much forgotten about it. What if we had traveled far and weren’t going back? We visited Vassar latter that day and they gave us a tour even thought there was only one other student.

Southeastern Oklahoma State. I was in Durant, Oklahoma, and as far as college visits, they’re the only game in town. What a great job they do of serving their target population. It was a revelation to me about the great upsides of regionally focused no-name schools for the right kids.

Ohio State. I visited in 2014 without many expectations. It has become the standard by which I judge giant flagships. Great academic atmosphere, super town, many kinds of diversity, incredible library with intellectual art, housing everyone for two years. Loved it.

FSU. I had cajoled my son into visiting for its music school, but was expecting to find a large, sprawling land grant type state school with lots of ugly buildings and few trees. Wow! Gorgeous old buildings with a coherent architecture, lots of beautiful trees and fountains, campus did not seem as big as I’d expected, great honors program and a more caring, attentive atmosphere than many much smaller schools.

Vassar! Probably wouldn’t surprise many from the east, but while visiting colleges (Dartmouth,Princeton,Cornell Middlebury, Clark, Tufts, JHU this school fell in our path. Remarkable new science center without PHD students or Post Doc. Really a find for a science student who already has published work and who doesn’t want to be 5th in line at a lab for 4 years and who wants to work with profs. Also the campus was unbelievably beautiful with a progressive student body.

University of Kentucky in Lexington surprised us.

As Chicago area people, it’s no surprise to hear about lots of kids going off to UIUC, UW-Madison, U-Iowa, and MIZZOU.

University of Kentucky was completely off our radar – why don’t we ever hear about it? who even goes there? – we went to visit with low expectations.

We were very impressed with Lexington itself, plus the campus was very clean with many new buildings laid out well. Great tour. One thing we’d hear people say over the years was how great U-Iowa was for studies & careers in the medical field because the university hospital was “right there” on campus. Same with UK.

We felt like we’d discovered some awesome secret! It’s still rare to see a UK sticker on a car in our area, but when we do, we get VERY excited.

Kansas State in Manhattan, KS. I really didn’t expect much and expected S17 to hate it. We went because they had an early admit to vet school program. As we drove up his first comment was, “I love the architecture!”

Over a few visits we were consistently impressed by the helpfulness and happiness of every faculty member and student that we met. Wandering on campus a professor stopped us and asked if we needed any help. He walked us where we wanted to go even though we said he didn’t have to. Talked to us all the way. He ended up being the head of a department. Another faculty member stepped out of her class when she saw us looking at something (It was a food science class and the students were baking) and showed us things and talked to us for quite awhile.

S17 was sold when he went to a lab and the professor included him in the class and let him extract some DNA and when he toured the vet school and animal science facilities. He liked the Honors college and the study abroad office really impressed us.

We fell in love with the small town that still had everything he wanted, coffee shops, quaint places to eat, etc.

As an added bonus for him, when he walked by the student union he saw hundreds of girls outside. It was the second morning of rush before school started and they were all waiting to see where they would go that day. (They only do rush for sororities not fraternities). He liked what he saw.

Note: He got in the early admit program, goes there, loves it,and has one of those sorority girls as a gf since he first started. Every impression we had had held up over the past year and a half. Great merit aid for OOS students, he got 3 scholarships plus one this year for study abroad. He is going to study abroad this summer for a mini term. Lots of research opportunities for undergraduates and work opportunities.

Rhodes College in Memphis. Never heard of it before this year. Never been to that part of the country either. Rhodes has an absolutely beautiful campus. Friendly smart kids. Lots of research and internship opportunities. Memphis is a cool town.

We also loved University of Rochester and RIT. Very different schools but both really impressive. RIT seemed filled with bright quirky spirit-filled kids. Lively music scene in Rochester and both schools seeme to be plugged in.