<p>This thread is fascinating. Just shows how one college can have so many different takes on it depending on what type of kid is looking at it! Like Missypie, when we’d travel we’d drop into a school with our kids and walk around a bit just to start the wheels turning in our son’s head. Now he’s a Junior and we’ll have to get serious about it starting next month, but the places we “ducked into” along the way earlier were Harvard (“these kids look so nerdy. Too much traffic here.”), Middlebury(“This place is spooky. There’s a graveyard next to the tennis courts!”), and Amherst (“Ahh…at least I can breathe here. Nice grass!”) I guess I’ve raised a hick.</p>
<p>Sometimes you just have to trust your instincts, sometimes you don’t get a choice.
My girls I knew from the time we stepped onto Marist, wouldn’t say they fit in there. Later they both said, it was like being part of a pretty picture but the students they saw in the cafe and walking around, were too preppy and they couldn’t picture themselves with them. Daughter A felt the same way about Villanova.
BUT Holy Cross was a different feel, they were grumpy because we were late, missed the tour, but the extremely friendly students, the diversity they saw in race, dress, etc. made them love it and we stayed for over an hour looking around. Who would have guessed?</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I was aware this reductionist metaphor for women was popular in the college dorms among freshman boys, but I had no idea that women’s colleges engaged in it too.</p>
<p>Holy Cross places a lot of emphasis on getting prospective students to tour the campus because they know that most get sold once they see it in person.</p>
<p>One that disappointed me was MIT because the buildings facing the Charles River are so impressive but if you actually take the time to walk around you realize it is really just an impressive facade and the rest of the campus is quite abysmal.</p>
<p>I hope I am not suggesting something already posted; we visited schools after D was accepted. The advantage here for many of the schools was that she was invited to spend the night in the dorms (not for all) and got, what I think, was a good feel for the schools. The school she chose was one she wasn’t interested in at first due to where it was. After visiting, she fell in love with it.</p>
<p>Here are the places she was accepted to, visited and turned down:
Oberlin -initially her first choice but felt there was too much drama between the girls in the dorm where she spent the night. There was an extra girl sleeping on the floor in the room she was in who had been camping there for a month (couldn’t get along with roommate).
UNC-too preppy and vanilla (not much variety-d wanted more internationals and national representation); too large overall with big lecture hall classes-it was the instate option.
Vassar-too much of (her words) an “indie look” though the campus was beautiful
Reed- a bit too “organic”-I think she meant hippies…
Case Western-scary location, too bad-it seemed like an interesting school
Lawrence-pretty campus, some of the students appeared too “high schoolish” after her dorm stay and there were beer cans all over the quad (she now knows this is fairly typical of lots of colleges on Sunday afternoon)</p>
<p>Where she is:
Grinnell-when we first drove across Iowa from the airport (it was April), we thought we were viewing a moonscape-brown, barren, sparsely populated and very few trees. Getting off the interstate we passed a tractor plant and a Walmart-heavy sighing here. The campus, to her was like entering Oz- beautiful. She spent the night, went to classes and, when I checked in with her the next day at lunch, she smiled and said “this one is right”. </p>
<p>She is now a second year and, even with the horrid snow, she loves the place and feels college is going much too quickly. The isolation doesn’t bother her-she feels it makes for a tighter, more accepting community.</p>
<p>My closing advice-have your child do an overnight and eat in the dining hall-you learn a lot!</p>
<p>The surprisingly negative:
TCU – see my visit report
UT-Dallas – just not for my non-engineering/CS kid
University of North Texas – had a fun visit; didn’t think the academics would meet his expectations</p>
<p>Surprisingly positive:
Texas A&M – he felt a great sense of community but not as scary cult-like as we feared</p>
<p>The rest of the colleges left us with the impressions we expected.</p>
<p>I’m going through the search process for the fourth time, (two nephews and two sons), and I’ve come to the conclusion that finding the “right” college a lot like finding your spouse. </p>
<p>All the logic in the world goes out the window when you finally lay eyes on “the one”. “When the angels sing” there are no flaws that can’t be overlooked. When your friends and family try and steer you toward your perfect match there is an endless list of trivial things that you will find annoying. When you finally make your choice and people see you’re happy their emotions will range from joy to anger and confusion to envy.</p>
<p>I hope I am not suggesting something already posted; we visited schools after D was accepted. The advantage here for many of the schools was that she was invited to spend the night in the dorms (not for all) and got, what I think, was a good feel for the schools. The school she chose was one she wasn’t interested in at first due to where it was. After visiting, she fell in love with it.</p>
<p>Here are the places she was accepted to, visited and turned down:
Oberlin -initially her first choice but felt there was too much drama between the girls in the dorm where she spent the night. There was an extra girl sleeping on the floor in the room she was in who had been camping there for a month (couldn’t get along with roommate).
UNC-too preppy and vanilla (not much variety-d wanted more internationals and national representation); too large overall with big lecture hall classes-it was the instate option.
Vassar-too much of (her words) an “indie look” though the campus was beautiful
Reed- a bit too “organic”-I think she meant hippies…
Case Western-scary location, too bad-it seemed like an interesting school
Lawrence-pretty campus, some of the students appeared too “high schoolish” after her dorm stay and there were beer cans all over the quad (she now knows this is fairly typical of lots of colleges on Sunday afternoon)</p>
<p>Where she is:
Grinnell-when we first drove across Iowa from the airport (it was April), we thought we were viewing a moonscape-brown, barren, sparsely populated and very few trees. Getting off the interstate we passed a tractor plant and a Walmart-heavy sighing here. The campus, to her was like entering Oz- beautiful. She spent the night, went to classes and, when I checked in with her the next day at lunch, she smiled and said “this one is right”. </p>
<p>She is now a second year and, even with the horrid snow, she loves the place and feels college is going much too quickly. The isolation doesn’t bother her-she feels it makes for a tighter, more accepting community.</p>
<p>My closing advice-have your child do an overnight and eat in the dining hall-you learn a lot!</p>
<p>D1’s college was not even on her list when we went on her big east coast College Tour. But I convinced her to take a look because it was “on the way” between two colleges that were on her list. She was immediately impressed by the visit and it shot to the top of her list. She got in and loved her four years there. The admissions visit was crucial to the process.</p>
<p>Pixeljig, we’ve toured at leat 2 dozen campuses during 2 of our kids’ college searches. Univ. of Miami was our first tour. Son liked it, but had nothing to compare with. I was disappointed in it. I expected beautiful landscaping and it just wasn’t there, even in April. There was a campus run bar, and as a parent, I thought it was odd. (I have since seen this on one other campus.) I hated the dorm they showed us. It was newer, but was built with hurricane shutters, which, while beneficial during a hurricane, did not allow much light into the rooms. There was no cohesiveness in any of the architecture. The greeks were having a function with inner-city kids, which should have been a plus. Unfortunately, I saw little interaction between the greeks and the young kids during the 10 minutes I observed. The tour guide was good, but was a commuter student, and didn’t know the percentage of students living on campus.</p>
<p>The silliest reason my daughter didn’t like a school was because, when meeting the head of an art dept. (her intended major), the man put his arm around both of us. That “creeped” her out. She would have to have him as an instructor.</p>
<p>I love this thread and thank everyone for sharing their kids’ (sometimes exceedingly funny) reactions to different schools!</p>
<p>Well, our child found something positive and very few negatives at each campus we saw, </p>
<p>Georgetown - loved it but we live outside DC, so a bit “too close to home”</p>
<p>BC- Even though it was a miserable rainy day he liked - didn’t love it. Probably our least favorite. I wasn’t crazy about the freshman on Newton campus.</p>
<p>UVA - Liked it alot but would not have been his first choice because he wanted something a bit smaller</p>
<p>Wake Forest - Loved it. Beautiful campus but was a bit isolated</p>
<p>UNC-Chapel Hill - Loved it but wasn’t crazy about the small amount of in-state students.</p>
<p>Cornell - Never actually saw but they showed tremendous interest in him and he absolutely refused to even look. He never really gave a reason, just had ZERO interest. Just a mystery.</p>
<p>Vanderbilt - Dream school - hands down! Loved everything about it and compared every other school to it. Is currently a very happy freshman there!</p>
<p>It’s funny, though, how a random comment on a board like this can really color your opinions of a school. I find myself having certain reactions when schools are mentioned, realize I have a preconception, and if I dig hard enough, I realize it is based on one little thing I once read somewhere!</p>
<p>But yes, visits are great, more for crossing off than for finding “the one” and for getting the kids out of the mindset that the only schools they can consider are ones they hear their friends mentioning.</p>
<p>Let’s see –</p>
<p>We did mostly midwestern schools. Biggest surprise – Both Ds toured Madison separately, two years apart, going in with it as their number one choice on paper. Neither chose to apply. They found it too spread out; younger D, who loves urban feeling campuses, still felt like the campus was so big she would exhaust herself getting around to class and taking care of things like seeing profs and going to the bursar and whatnot. </p>
<p>Older D was willing to look at schools of all sizes. She hated Knox and Augustana, but liked St. Olaf – what the difference was, I never got. Didn’t love UIUC, but did apply and was accepted and did consider it. She’s pretty practical, didn’t really expect to “fall in love” anywhere. She “discovered” Marquette in Milwaukee, the school she is at, because of her major, and I had severe reservations about campus and the area. These were pleasantly dispelled by a visit and she immediately felt at home there, the “I can see myself here” moment.</p>
<p>Younger D is more vociferous in her reactions – can’t stand the small schools, they give her the heebie-jeebies, including some of my favorites, like Illinois Wesleyan. Doesn’t want a big school in the middle of the cornfields (won’t even consider UIUC). Thought she would love Madison (see above) and Northwestern, hated both (the Northwestern info session really turned her off.) Ends up that she is only applying to two midsized privates in big cities (Marquette and Saint Louis U – we had a terrific time in St. Louis so the visit really did make a difference) and to a smaller college within a big university also in a city (the College of Biological Sciences at the University of Minnesota – she loved it there and liked the campus feel much more than Wisc’s).</p>
<p>It’s funny how the Northwestern info session is turning so many kids off. Maybe that’s by design, assuming that Northwestern wants to scare away the kids who can’t handle the workload. Or maybe the info session gives an accurate view of the school. I don’t know. We’ve never visited the campus, but I know it’s a terrific school. My daughter was also turned off by the presentation Northwestern gave at her school for the college fair. It was the Northwestern admissions guy and two students who were, I think, alumni of my daughter’s high school. She walked out of there thinking that it wasn’t the place for her.</p>
<p>No insult at Williams being the base, and colleges can only go up for there,
but for balance’s sake I will say that S feel madly in love with it the second we stepped foot on it, and he’s very happy there as a junior.</p>
<p>And he has done many of the things he’d planned to do.</p>
<p>He’s quiet so don’t get many reactions from him. I wish I did because some of the kids’ are so funny.</p>
<p>D: Loved Sarah Lawrence, like the intellectualism of Bard, hated Skidmore, thought it felt like HS, felt the administrators at Smith were too pushy and it was “cultlike”, but she still applied and would have continued attending, refused to look at Bryn Mawr, refuse to step foot west of Albany and south of NYC.</p>
<p>Stepped on Barnard/Columbia campuses as a child and never wanted to leave. Although she’s just graduated, she really misses her part of Morningside Heights.</p>
1 Like
<p>Yes, although D had odd reasons relating to architecture (not an architecture major) for not wanting to attend certain schools, I never really believed that was what it was…When she did finally choose her school, it was a mad love affair and she has not been disillusioned since. Loves the school, the kids around her, her professors, the very air quality! Happy, happy, happy. So, wierd reasons aside, I’ve never been much of a one for arranged marriages. 
I would have gotten it completely wrong.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/705291-stupidest-reason-child-wont-look-college.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/705291-stupidest-reason-child-wont-look-college.html</a></p>
<p>OP here’s another long thread along the same lines. One that I have never mentioned is my son #2 crossed one school off his list because “there were too many blond girls that looked high maintenance.” Oooh kay.</p>
<p>Hated it:</p>
<pre><code>High Point U: Way too much focus on the physical (constant comments about how the college was like a Ritz Carlton) and the president even made jokes about admitting only good-looking students. (I posted a full report on one of the High Point threads in the “Colleges” section.)
</code></pre>
<p>Didn’t like:</p>
<p>Hampshire: Visited with every expectation that D would fall in love with the campus and the hipster student body. Initially, she loved it - - everyone had piercing and skinny black jeans - - but upon reflection she realized it wasnt a good fit: isolated campus, curric too unstructured, too many kids smoking, dorms looked really run-down.</p>
<p>UNC-Charlotte: Too big and too spread out. In fairnessm was never more than a “maybe,” and we toured primarily b/c we were visiting school in Greensboro. </p>
<p>Pleasantly surprised:</p>
<pre><code>UNC-Greensboro: The campus was lovely and D saw lots of students engaged in a water fight - - our tour group got close enough to cheer, but the combatants were careful to make sure that none of the prospects got wet.
Queens Univ Charlotte: What a surprise! This was a last minute addition. On paper, the school didn’t sound like a great fit, but we figured it was a possible safety. WOW!! Everyone on campus was SOOO nice that Queens remains on D’s list even though we say no hipster types on campus. (I wrote a lengthier post, which interested parties can find by searching using either my name (nyc) or “Queens Univ.”)
</code></pre>
1 Like
<p>D and I recently attended the Northwestern campus and I really didn’t think the info session was any different from the others I’ve seen. Most tend to be pretty boring. I think the challenge for them is that they have a lot of different schools within the university, each of which needs to be given some time in their presentation. By the time they are done covering all of them, their 45 minutes are over. There was a similar problem at Penn and Georgetown. It is a much easier task at an LAC that has just one student experience to talk about.</p>
1 Like
<p>nyc–what you say about expectations vs. actual response to Hampshire is almost exactly the same as our experience, the only difference being that we visited in the summer so there weren’t enough kids around for the smoking to become an issue. But that would have been another turnoff if he had seen it.</p>
<p>One of the nice things about this thread is seeing that other people’s kids have responded to a college very much as ours did, which makes me feel a little less worried that we just caught them on an especially bad (or especially good) day.</p>