<p>I crossed Skidmore off my list after a visit. I disliked the campus, very uninteresting brick buildings. It was also very apparent that the sciences were not a part of campus life at all, in fact academics in general were on the back burner which was off-putting to me. We spent over half the tour on arts related things. It also made its financial aid sound horrible in the info session, also a bad sign. The place was crawling with hipsters also.</p>
<p>I’ve had positive experiences on all my other college visits, but I crossed Colgate off my list after I saw how truly isolated it is (good tour and info session though, I liked the school otherwise). Cornell was probably my best visit, with Union a close second.</p>
<p>Northwestern acceptance rate is somewhat high. I am sure they would not mind seeing the acceptance rate drop a little bit via more applications.</p>
<p>I crossed Grinnell, Carleton, and Amherst off my list after visiting them all because they all felt small, isolated, and isolating. They all seemed to have campus “bubbles”, and I really disliked that.</p>
<p>Good point, Jolynne, about the importance of the admissions office staff as salespeople. Goucher went from “might as well check it out since we’ll be in the area” to “major contender” within five minutes of our arrival; the admissions office was just bursting with friendliness from both the older, full-time staff and the students. It definitely makes a difference.</p>
<p>callie123: I don’t really understand what you’re so worked up about. We’re customers, shopping for a very important (and expensive) product. We’re absolutely entitled to feel however we want to about these places, and to share those feelings in public; there’s nothing “ungrateful” about it (what, exactly, are we supposed to be grateful for?).</p>
<p>I’ve mentioned here and elsewhere that my son didn’t like Tulsa, so I should mention that the admissions staff was great, especially considering he hadn’t even applied yet. We had our very own tour guide, even though there were at least a dozen other kids visiting that day. My son got a one-on-interview with an admissions counselor, was able to sit in on a class, met with a physics professor, and met with someone from the study-abroad program, which is the best of all the schools he’s visited so far…just wonderful. It’s kind of too bad he didn’t like the school more, really. It wasn’t for any lack of effort on their part.</p>
<p>Son’s reactions:
Fordham - Too “stuck up” and unimpressed by info session
Quinnipiac - Dorms, horrible tour guides
Ithaca - Too cold
Emerson - Boston Common is not a campus</p>
<p>Also have to agree with the people who crossed off Northwestern. It felt less personal than the bigger state schools I have toured and was not impressed by their idea of “aid” as giving my parents 150K in loans!</p>
<p>We had a different experience at Brown. The staff was very pleasant, the tour guide was great, and enthusiastic students yelled “Come to Brown!” out of the dorm windows. The info session was held in a chapel, and was good. One of the things I liked about the tour was that at some point they separated the kids from the parents so that we could ask questions in an uninhibited manner. S was very gung ho after the visit.</p>
<p>The one negative was the parking situation. I think we got a ticket. <g></g></p>
<p>Like mythmom’s kids, the two of mine to have gone the route “knew” their schools from Minute One, S----Marlboro, D---- CIM (terrific guide when she visited in 11th grade)
Still one to go and he is going to be the rough one-has no real feel for a major, won’t give a thought as to schools he’d like to visit, nothing… What do I do with this one?</p>
<p>UC Santa Barbara and Berkeley: too big.
Whitman: great school but too far from anywhere for D’s liking.
Univ. of San Francisco: loved the city but didn’t get a “my kind of place” vibe from the school.</p>
<p>Got a weird snail mail letter from Columbia just today. It was addressed “To the Parents of (D2)” and bragged about their great finaid and told us that we should not let money concerns stand in the way of applying for admission.</p>
<p>I may have to strike them off D2’s list because she no longer has a list. She applied to Columbia last year and they waitlisted her (she did not pursue the waitilist). She is now a freshman at a rival school. Odd.</p>
<p>Consolation, you got a ticket at Brown too? </p>
<p>I parked at a meter that was good for 2 hrs, attended the info session and asked the tour guide whether she thought I should put more quarters in the meter- she assured me that there wasn’t much ticketing around there and that the ticket was only like $15. Well, I got a ticket and it was more like $30. I don’t think that was a major factor in my D’s decision to cross off Brown from her list.</p>
<p>Cornell–During the info session, in response to a question of what was their weakest area, the admissions person said probably their music department with 3 music majors…D ultimately became a vocal performance major, so that was a real turn off. From my perspective, it was too huge and cold feeling, but in an out of touch sort of, isolated way. Did not like the vibe of Ithaca…too hippie throwback and the whole town and environs needed to be painted. I’ve never seen so much peeling paint!</p>
<p>Tufts–Came off as very pretensious. Admission person bored us to tears and kept talking about Tuft’s place in the global community and how they were going to change all their students into global citizens, etc. Made me think they wanted everyone recreated in their own image. Then tour guide kept saying “f–cking sweet” about 3 times during his walk around campus.</p>
<p>Boston University-- We all disliked the shape of the “campus”…along 2 sides of a highway. The admissions counselor who gave the info session could not come up with the percentage of males/females on campus. She said…“well it is 43% male…so that would make it…” She couldn’t do the math!!! For a full minute there was silence…stunned silence… with everyone in the auditorium thinking…and she is going to decide the fate of my child’s future???</p>