<p>Funny about Poughkeepsie being bashed here - we went to look at Marist, and I was warning D that Poughkeepsie might be a turn-off. The part we saw was fine! Strip malls, etc, not a tourist destination but certainly not off-putting. Maybe that’s because we’re used to S’s college, Lafayette, which despite its beautiful campus is located in Easton PA which is a truly run-down, tired small city (except for the area right around the college and the town square). Poughkeepsie was nicer than Easton or Schenectady, NY, which we had seen when we toured Union, or the section of Providence where PC is located.</p>
<p>^CCsurfer -LOL - at that point I would have said something and spared the enamel. Too funny. These kids don’t realize just what they do to us!!!</p>
<p>Syracuse dropped to the bottom of the list after last Friday’s visit. Campus is beautiful, dorm rooms nice, food great, professors we met were engaging, tour guide was dynamic. But the current students who participated in the panel discussion were curiously unimpressive and the emphasis on writing skill development made it seem an awfully lot like S2’s high school. It remains on the list because of the athletic tradition and the highlight of the visit was getting into the Carrier Dome.</p>
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<p>OMG, is that rude, and OMG, did it make me laugh!!! Sooooo funny!! (My kid would have immediately shot back, “No, but they are,” indicating his parents.)</p>
<p>Man, if there’s a list of what not to say to a prospective student, that should be added to it!!</p>
<p>I love this thread, even though I need a new keyboard now for having read it!</p>
<p>I had no idea that co-ed bathrooms still existed. I would never, ever, ever consider a school with co-ed bathrooms.</p>
<p>applicannot I went to UCSC which I think pioneered the co-ed bathroom concept back in the day. There was privacy. Changing rooms for showers and all that. In general when a person was using a toilet no one was looking underneath to see if the other occupant was wearing male or female clothing/shoes and people gave eachother as much privacy as can be afforded in any communal bathroom. Anyway, my point is that since I grew up in a house with one bathroom, two brothers and a father sharing with guys was a given and it really never felt weird.</p>
<p>Oh and at one school my daughters toured with single sex floors and bathrooms there were notices reminding residents if they were showering with a member of the opposite sex they should alert others so that there would be no surprise reveals. So even is single sex bathrooms you may come across members of the opposite sex.</p>
<p>All of our kids had some pretty silly reasons for discounting schools and co-ed bathrooms is as valid as anything else. I just wanted to give you my experience 
Good Luck with your application season!</p>
<p>Lafalum: The part of Poughkeepsie where Marist is located is not bad at all - yes, largely strip malls. The area right around Vassar (Arlington) is small-townish nice too. Depending on how you drive into Vassar, you drive through the city of Poughkeepsie, which is probably a lot worse than Easton.</p>
<p>Another plug for the coed bathrooms. There are closed stalls for shower and toilets. It was really quite natural. All the dorm mates end up being ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ anyway.</p>
<p>Still not digging it. I share one bathroom with five women, though. I don’t mind running into the opposite sex - just running into them constantly in the same bathroom. To each her own.</p>
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<p>Actually, a lot of the schools still have co-ed bathrooms. </p>
<p>Most schools that we have talked to said, that although they may still have some dorms that have co-ed bathrooms, usually the students vote and more times than not, the bathrooms stay single sexed(meaning, they may have to go to the other end of the hall or down one flight depending on what is voted in for that year).</p>
<p>Personally, if your child loves everything else about the school, I would not worry about this being an issue as I am sure your child could use another restroom.</p>
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<p>True, but what’s more apparent to me is that mass tours for prospective families should possibly be ditched entirely. Tours are for tourists. There’s a place for them: Parents’ Weekends, local or far-away visitors who are truly interested in the campus history, the campus grounds/architecture, that kind of thing.</p>
<p>Hosting days are a little more focused (although they can be activity-heavy and sometimes hyped or hyper in themselves), but the point is, they are geared more toward students. </p>
<p>I realize time is short, and hard-working students & heavily-employed parents mostly don’t have leisure opportunities to make lengthy visits, but spending actual time on a campus does wonders for a prospective student. Not every campus. If you really feel you must do the marathon-tour thing (my jaw dropped at that extensive CA list), I think it can be valuable to re-visit a campus or two that the student – especially after discussing first impressions more deeply with parents – had mixed feelings about but felt ambivalent about crossing off the list.</p>
<p>Most on-campus tours are superficial. Once in awhile a family/student lucks onto a great one, given either by a postiively representative student with unusual maturity, or by a slightly older rep who loves doing it and is full of good info.</p>
<p>Being the die-hard academic here, I have this radical notion that students will be spending at least half their time doing academics at college, so I always suggest that an actual class-in-session be visited, especially if the student was turned off by something superficial or by just “one thing” but is disappointed about abandoning the idea. </p>
<p>I do not consider aesthetics superficial. They’re key to a how a student will feel, so those first impressions are very valid to me, but some of the other comments which were just rash judgments about people? And people that the student may never meet again, or were enrolled in a major not of interest to the student? Hmmm… Also, again, I think this is a problem with a tour-marathon: the family gets the sense that they have to move right along. That invites the reactionary mode.</p>
<p>Tours and visits can be very deceptive, both positively and negatively. There are all kinds of threads and posts by CC students about their grand disappointment after enrolling in their supposedly dream school which they “swear” they had a good experience visiting. Sometimes that kind of disappointment could not have been predicted, because it arose out of a living situation or something else that had to be “lived through.” But just “gut level” impressions are often way off, particularly if they’re rapid. As someone said earlier, that’s what 17- and 18-year-olds do: they give often narrow or (seemingly) “petty” reasons for not going somewhere, doing something, enrolling somewhere. I agree: often those are excuses for true, valid gut reasons they can’t express verbally. But just as often they are hasty, and reflect not a “gut feeling,” but the mood of the day or a “prejudice” (strong dislike for some behavior or dress that the student tags as symbolic). </p>
<p>It’s also important to understand that on-campus tours can be 180-degree different from off-campus. We did a great deal of our “touring” away from campuses which were on their lists. Therefore, we had the opposite experience of some of the posters here, for the same campuses:</p>
<p>Northwestern: Great rep. (Adult) Yes, they had a big-screen video and all, but it gave the flavor of the campus culture, and the students. Very nice, and not for my D, but not at all how the local NW tour was described. Very midwest-nice culture that didn’t fit her preferences, and the academics offered were not what she needed.</p>
<p>Yale, Columbia, Princeton: Fully informative, deeply informative. Y and P were given by alumni. C was given by two youngish but mature reps thoroughly versed in communicating what the campus culture was. They took their time. They respected their audience.</p>
<p>UPenn: By all accounts I have read, another 180-degree difference. Fabulous off-campus presentation. By contrast, everyone we personally know who experienced an on-campus presentation despised it. Everyone. Not talking about the look of the campus, just the attitude, demeanor of the “tour” guide or presenter and the info offered.</p>
<p>Vassar: Given by recent alum. Good, informative presentation which also gave the flavor. Alumni present further validated the culture of a quiet, secluded LAC too tiny for my action-bound, urban younger D. It confirmed that there was no reason to visit the campus.</p>
<p>Another important point: Kids change. And can do so rapidly between age 16 and age 18. What they saw in February of Junior Year strikes them radically differently in April of Senior Year. The idea of whimsically “crossing off”, while virtually or literally “driving through,” is just bizarre to me.</p>
<p>D1 almost crossed off her list in junior year the U that she just graduated from and fell in love with during hosting days. And the reason for possible elimination had been a ‘first impression’. And this is a person who has always been unusually mature for her age. Most people joke that she was born with a 30-year-old psyche. Thank goodness she didn’t “cross-off” because of first impressions.</p>
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Well, quite…except that if you have a list of 15 or 20 colleges that seem, on the surface, to have everything you want, you have to eliminate some of them somehow (well, I suppose you don’t have to, but if you need to keep your investment in application fees under control, you will want to).</p>
<p>Ideally, the reasons for crossing off schools will be a bit more than whimsical, but that won’t always be the case, and it may not matter, because there’s really no way to be certain of what kind of undergraduate experience you will have at any given college. You may turn out to have a bad experience at the college you choose, and you might have turned out to have a good experience at a college you eliminated…and this remains true whether or not the reasons for your choices would have made sense to anybody else. </p>
<p>Obviously the first and most important stage in the process–deciding which colleges to look at closely–needs to be rational and fact-based. But beyond that point, unless your criteria are unusually specific, you’re likely to need to do some more narrowing down, and at that point the process becomes necessarily subjective and to some degree irrational; if this is a problem, I’m not sure it’s a soluble one.</p>
<p>Thanks for your thoughtful response, nightchef. Yes, eliminating from a long list of colleges, needs to be done, and part of that must wisely be done in the flesh. However, I guess what I was trying to illustrate is how mis-informing and how inefficient some of these Extreme Tour efforts can be, and in some cases unnecessary. You can do a lot of eliminating with a lot of careful research - online (and more so now, with supplemental blogs on the college website, chats with students, etc.) and through information sessions off-campus. If the highschool does not have much access to info sessions (because of location or h.s. campus policy), and the h.s. location is not a very metro one, to which reps likely travel, often they are in adjacent states, for example – which is a hell of a lot cheaper than spending it on more distant trips, taking more time out of school days & parents’ work days. </p>
<p>These info sessions are usually just packed with realistic info about the student body, and info which is not on the website. Both the Columbia and Vassar info sessions included additional alumni who were part of the presentation, some lengthily. Their comments spoke volumes, and their demanors sometimes, too. (When you say you were "really happy’ to attend College X, but every one of the panelists looks miserable as hell, and talks mostly about the stress and the high-pace they experienced there, it’s clear that a more laid-back, well-rounded student is not going to enjoy that campus experience as much.) When, OTOH, there are two alumni from a diff. college with soft personalities, who speak shyly in almost whispered tones about the gentle experience of College Y, it is very clear (esp. coupled with similar info by the presenter), that it will not appeal to a hard-driving extrovert seeking stimulation in the environs. (Since the College was “perfect” for an opposite-type student from your own, it is highly likely it will be rather imperfect for yours.) No need to travel thousands of miles.</p>
<p>But additionally, let the buyer (student) beware, negatively as well as positively. “Crossing off” an otherwise fab college/U because of one jerk, ditzy, bored, or pretentious tour guide is a pretty impulsive decision, especially not close to decision time, and with very little other info.</p>
<p>I can understand a student crossing off a school after a visit if they did not feel the “vibe” or felt the campus layout did not meet their expectations. I don’t necessarily agree with it but I am not going to try to change a teenagers mind. The one thing that does drive me crazy, however, is when D won’t look at a school because of the school colors. “Eww, their colors are brown and gold?” or some variation. It is weird because D usually is very open minded and rational. School colors is her deal breaker.</p>
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<p>Lafalum, thanks for the info. We were considering Union and Lafayette for my son but he wants a city. I was hoping there were nice places to go off-campus.</p>
<p>Another thing to remember is that sometimes the student DOES have a good reason for crossing a school off the list after visiting but can’t articulate it at that moment. So, you might hear something wacky like “too many elephants” or “I saw a cow on the drive out here.” I know my daughter came up with some doozies, but that a year or so later, she was able to tell me the real reason, and it usually made a lot of sense.</p>
<p>epiphany, I understand but so much depends on the kid-- not only how well they make decisions but how well they live with them. I had one kid who decided on a college clear across the country because it was in the south and kiddo wanted warm weather (other admission was up north). I didn’t think it was the better fit-- it was so far that we never once visited, it was large with no support (the other school offered a scholarship and the opportunity to be in a mentored program which I thought would be really good for this kid). In the end, kiddo spent one year there and came home-- eventually doing some cool stuff and enrolling in a top 25 uni near home. Now admits I was right but, at 17yo, that kiddo didn’t like taking advice.</p>
<p>One of my other kids had a very different reaction. Applied to Amherst ED a few years ago and was deferred and heartbroken. I got in the car and said we were going to visit all these AMAZING schools to which kiddo had already applied: Hamilton, Skidmore, Vassar, Wesleyan, Bates, Bowdoin, Colby. We saw them all (actually, now that I’m thinking about it, we didn’t see Wes because kiddo was so convinced that there was no chance of admission-- kiddo eventually got an early write at Wes and visited two or three times) AND, for our last stop, kiddo went to Amherst’s admissions office to hand in a letter. While there, kiddo spoke to the admissions officer, got back in the car and I set off for home. On the drive home, kiddo was very, very quiet and finally said, “Mom, I won’t get into Amherst.” I said, “Did he tell you that?” “No, but I know by the way he spoke to me. I won’t get into Amherst BUT I could be happy at any of those schools.” You know what? Kiddo was right. Amherst WAS everything wanted and, a few months later, there was a rejection letter in the mail. But kiddo got into every other school on that list (and some others that we didn’t visit that weekend) and, while none was perfect, kiddo actually had a very, very hard time deciding which offer to accept. </p>
<p>People just make decisions differently.</p>
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<p>How about the mascot? I think Arkansas would be a good fit for my D but once I told her what a Razorback is…</p>
<p>To 2collegewego: Where did your son decide to attend - Skidmore, Vassar, or one of the others? I have often felt that the student may think they’re meant for their “dream school” but once rejected they wind up where there supposed to be. Years ago, back in the early 70’s my brother-in-law was rejected by HYP because those schools took the two students ranked ahead of him, then an athlete, and then a minority. So that was it. He graduated from Cornell and loved it. About ten years later, he’s in Boston with his wife who’s attending Harvard Law, and he could not stand Harvard or Boston. </p>
<p>You also mentioned Lafayette in a previous post. I live in a neighboring city. Lafayette is in Easton which is the smallest of the three cities which are the Lehigh Valley. I have heard good things academically about Lafayette but that it is quite the party school.</p>
<p>applicannot: I think you will have a much harder time finding places without co-ed bathrooms than with. Don’t believe the hype (about voting and suchlike). There are co-ed bathrooms most places. Maybe not for freshmen, but for most other students.</p>
<p>Apart from very specific personal issues, it would be a big mistake for anyone to choose a college based on bathroom configuration. Human beings are more adaptable than that!</p>
<p>epiphany: I respect your story, but I am not certain in the end it is any more rational than a drive-by to check out what the kids are wearing. None of these colleges has a monolithic personality at all.</p>
<p>Vassar is a great case in point. (And I have no dog in this hunt at all. My best friend in law school and my most unpleasant sister-in-law both went there, as did my high school prom date. My kids didn’t apply.) Each of my kids has a good friend there; each of these friends is loving it (or did through graduation). Neither is a “soft” personality at all, and both are essentially urban hipsters. (In my sister-in-law’s day, Vassar was chock full of urban hipsters.)</p>
<p>Or the University of Chicago, where my kids go or went. It has a reputation as a great place for the ultra-geeky, Asperger’s-spectrum types, or hard-core free-market economics jocks. And it is, and it probably has slightly more kids like that than, say, Brown. But it also has my kids – both social joiners, “leader” types, one a hipster English major who barely spoke to economics people (but that hardly made a dent in her social life), and the other a total BWRK (athlete, theater participant, interested in everything, too many girls). The same university is great for them, too. They don’t use it in the same way as the ultra-geeks or the Objectivists, but they all share it perfectly well.</p>
<p>Or Wesleyan. My neighbor who goes there is a big, jocky athletic recruit, whose presentation is total frat boy. (And not without reason – he IS a total frat boy.) He doesn’t have strong political convictions in any direction (although most of his teammates are definitely conservative). He is not arty-fartsy in the least. He is straight to a fault, and likes his women just as the media serves them. In short, he has nothing in common with anyone’s idea of the typical Wesleyan student. And he loves it there, just loves it.</p>