Colleges you/child crossed off the list after visiting

<p>Re: Posts #591 & 592—Bowdoin’s Polar Bear mascot:</p>

<p>The polar bear mascot comes from Bowdoin’s connection to arctic exploration:
“…Admiral Robert E. Peary, class of 1877, and Donald B. MacMillan, class of 1898. Peary led the first successful expedition to the North Pole in 1908, and MacMillan, a member of Peary’s crew, became famous in his own right as he explored Greenland, Baffin Island and Labrador in the schooner Bowdoin between 1908 and 1954. Bowdoin’s Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum [10] honors the two explorers, and the College’s mascot, the Polar Bear, was chosen after in 1913 to honor MacMillan, who donated a particularly large specimen to his alma mater in 1917, Peary, and Thomas Hubbard class of 1857.”</p>

<p>I am sure fogfog is going to get a lot of comments on her family’s preferences, but I think that the “in your face” dyanamic of any lifestyle that a kid finds uncomfortable is going to lead to an immediate sense of “wrong college” for that student. For example, I absolutely hated the greek scene that dominated the college where I grew up. When I applied to schools, when I toured a campus and saw wave after wave of tridelt or sigma X sweatshirts I felt that the greek stuff was too “in my face” and rejected it. In the end, I went to a school with greek system (20% student body) but no off campus greek housing and no sorority housing at all. Guess what…my roomate rushed and was summarily ditched because she was stocky in build and didn’t fit the sorority mold. She was devastated and it was hell watching her and my other friends go through a system that I (oh so wise at 17) condemmed outright as socially corrosive and morally questionable. </p>

<p>I moved off campus as soon as I could but social life at U still revolved around the greek system. The end result was that I also learned to became more tolerant of the greek system and did go to parties and socials and lots of friends in the greek system although I did not join and expanded my social connections with the non-greeks and the townies. I had a great 4 years. The moral of the story is that even if the lifestyle is “not in your face” when you visit, your son may discover that his school of choice still will bring about “in your face” encounters and he will either have to flee and isolate himself or become more comfortable with it–which does not mean joining, endorsing or embracing that lifestyle…just dealing and accepting. He should be prepared to find out that schools that don’t have housing for gay and lesbian students may still have gay and lesbian students expressing affection in public, hosting social events, running the school government, etc. He may even have a gay roomate (happened to my son at a pre-college program)–that was a moment for us to check our hypocrit monitors see if we were as tolerant as we believed we were. I think that only by going to a school that is publically intolerant of gay lifestyles is going to be able to “guarantee” that he won’t have to deal with them…there are several christian schools that come to mind . Similarly, if I had wanted to avoid greek life I could have searched for schools with no greek system but it would have limited my choices and there probably would have been an underground greek-type social system anyway. Just send your son of to college with a sense that a school visit is not going to really tell you the whole story, life is an adventure, and you can’t isolate yourself from a lot of “in your face” challenges to your beliefs and moral codes.</p>

<p>Excellent points fineartsmajormom!!! </p>

<p>I truly believe that one of the reasons that we send our kids off to school is to learn from experiences and to deal with those that may be different. You raise an excellent point about the difference between dealing & accepting vs joining/endorsing.</p>

<p>I for one want my children to not only get an “Academic” education, but also an education in making choices(hopefully the right ones) and learning to be tolerant, accepting and most importantly how to deal with all kinds of people in the world including those that you may not agree with or even want to associate with. Education is so much deeper than the mere courses that one takes while away from home.</p>

<p>Dartmouth. After attending the information session, daughter was so turned off by other prospective students gushing about their prep schools that she had no desire to even tour the campus. Plus, she thought it was in the middle of nowhere.</p>

<p>You are so right Fineartsmajormom…
and we know that no visit/overnight etc will truly flesh out the university in its totality.</p>

<p>Our son has had quite a bit of life experience–We’ve lived overseas, where he has traveled and lived in parts of the world closed or unknown to most Americans, and spent large amounts of time in places few Americans see…places where race, religion, culture, values, status of women/children etc differ greatly from our own…In fact by the end of middle school, he had more time abroad then stateside.</p>

<p>Lets face it…university life is NOT real life…it’s a bubble of self selected individuals who choose the same school (after all the acceptance letters are culled) looking for many things including academics, change in geography, what have you…
Some of these teens have extensive broader world experiences, many more do not.
A lot of “real life” and “education” we think our students get outside the classroom at many colleges and universities is in reality some of the seedier behavior that one doesn’t put on their resume, nor does one want it on the front page of the paper above the fold as they say.</p>

<p>I am glad that our son knows that for him, places like Weslyan for example, would be a bad fit due to its campus culture, and that since he’s committed to being substance free- he’ll look for schools where being smart and sober is cool. kwim</p>

<p>Well you had a very different impression of Tufts than we did. I never saw Rainbow House on the tour and it was never mentioned while we were there. I personally am not a big fan of theme dorms, but I would probably not eliminate a college I liked otherwise just because a few kids choose to self segregate.</p>

<p>What an intriguing thread. We have a discussion of (i) schools that didn’t make the cut after a tour and (ii) school mascots totally intertwined.</p>

<p>Very cool thread - keep it going!</p>

<p>BTW - I am so proud that the Michigan Wolverines do not have a mascot parading around the stadium.</p>

<p>S is sophomore in college, D is a freshman. Between them, we visited quite a few schools.</p>

<p>Those that didn’t make the cut after the visit:
-RPI: awful dorms
-Princeton: too entitled
-Gettysburg: awful info session, too much talk of “summering,” work displayed outside classrooms seemed too much like high school, “Hate the brown grass” (per my D, during summer drought)
-Lehigh:too athletic, too fratty
-Tufts:the worst info session, learned absolutely nothing about the school (but heard lots about how presenter chose to go there to follow his dream girl), school seemed to have no personality
-Amherst: D turned off when athletic recruit was escorted privately around campus while the rest of us schlepped around in groups
-Hamilton: too preppy–designer flip-flops</p>

<p>Those that moved higher on the list after the visit:
-Columbia: not pretentious, beautiful campus, amazing computer lab, decent dorms
-Case Western Reserve: co-op, access to music instruction, gorgeous dorms, Dexter the robotic car, a surprisingly attractive campus, nice library, down-to-earth kids<br>
-Olin: “these are my people” said my S–geek heaven
-Yale: everything here seemed to say imagine the possibilities
-U Rochester: access to music instruction, pretty campus, very good info session, clusters of study across disciplines, great study abroad options
-Swarthmore:another beautiful campus, students were friendly, approachable, and really seemed to be engaged in their studies</p>

<p>Those that stayed on the list despite the visit:
Carnegie Mellon
Johns Hopkins
Harvard
WPI
Rutgers</p>

<p>Columbia - every square inch of grass was fenced in as if it was a zoo - look, don’t touch.</p>

<p>Last weekend my HS senior daughter and I visited Pomona College - my daughter wants a small school with individual attention, and even though they only have 1500 students it felt “too big” for her. The tour guide went on and on about how small the class sizes were but took us past 4 classes in session - all of them had 30-45 students and were lecture-based with bored looking students. Also, not one person greeted the tour guide as we walked by and some students even laughed and made fun of the tour guide. This made Pomona go from the top of the list completely off of it. </p>

<p>We then went to Claremont McKenna. The man running the info session talked about how competitive it is in every class - he told the students that before they came there they should be prepared to defend every opinion they have, and told them that they would have at least 10 people fight with them in every class to show them how their opinions were wrong. She then went on the interview where the interviewer was rude and rushed and when my daughter asked a question the interviewer snapped “I don’t know. You should have asked that during the info session”. Despite that it is still on the list, hanging by a thread.</p>

<p>I have to say the dorm we saw at U of Rochester nauseated me. It really reminded me of a dungeon with long narrow cinderblock hallways that could just fit two people widthwise, seemed dimly lit (don’t know if true), and just so dreary. It’s staying on the list for the rest of it, but it’s waaaay down in my book.</p>

<p>Hmmm…S2 said the dorm room they were shown at URoch was pretty big! They have also opened up new apartment-style dorms for upperclassmen just across the river.</p>

<p>mathmom, S2 did not recall hearing about Rainbow House at Tufts, either. We assume every campus is filled with students finding their identities and searching out their own moral values, and if our kids don’t want to hang out with the partiers, they’ll find those folks, one way or another.</p>

<p>fogfog – have you looked at Hillsdale? A friend has had two kids attend and says it is socially conservative with very rigorous academics. They have been quite happy with their experiences there.</p>

<p>DD is a freshman at U of Rochester and loves it! School we crossed off the list after visiting were William and Mary (D didn’t want liberal arts, I insisted we visit), Duke (distance from freshman dorms to main campus), Wake-Forest (greek life plus distance from town), Syracuse (too sports oriented) and RIT (weak foreign language program).</p>

<p>Student perspective, matching those of my parents:</p>

<p>Penn – Too ugly and loud (i.e. urban), too pre-professional, too big, Wharton felt entitled and separated from the rest of the university (would have applied there).</p>

<p>St. John’s College (NM) – Beautiful campus, but too many students were smokers, the student body was nonconformist (read: weird), work/play balance skewed surprisingly far toward work</p>

<p>UChicago – Father went to grad school, but nothing about it stood out and the tour guide basically acknowledged that fun went to die there. Not reassuring. Food was excellent though.</p>

<p>MIT – This was a total disaster on many levels. First, it was ugly and the weather was horrible. Second, there were many students asleep in a relatively small class I visited, which was true no where else I’ve been. Third, students seemed cold/unfriendly (i.e. in lunchroom people were on laptops instead of talking), no one in infinite corridor was smiling/talking. No way.</p>

<p>Harvard – stayed on list despite annoying rep who repeated the same two or three talking points at everything I’ve seen her at (she is our regional rep), tour guide very good but overall graduate focus seemed implied and student admitted competition between students, even for activities over breaks. </p>

<p>I was admitted to Stanford and Princeton.</p>

<p>Stanford – Visit felt incredibly fake and insubstantial. The campus was a huge disappointment and reminiscent of a famous Mexican fast-food chain. Felt like a city when I wanted a smaller, cohesive campus. Students I met seemed innovative but not particularly intellectual in the classical sense; departmental strengths clearly did not reflect my interests. No time during weekend to seriously visit classes, which I interpreted as school not placing a high importance on them. I sneaked into a math course taught by a TA, not impressed. Student body 40% Californian and very stereotypically so, students seemed to lack refinement, for lack of a better word. However, large international student presence was a plus. I was utterly at a loss as to why I thought applying early would make sense. I feel bad for taking up the spot of a student at my HS that would have really wanted to go (Stanford has a quota from my school, so…).</p>

<p>Princeton (clearly my destination) – Beautiful gothic/neogothic campus. Students in general were preppy (which I don’t mind, but the stereotypes hold some merit), but also very culturally and politically aware and are generally very urbane. This was a huge plus. The undergraduate focus came out at almost every moment. I was indifferent toward eating clubs, I now like them more than when I applied. Social scene exists outside of them (truly), and work/play balance was very good. I visited some math classes and they were taught my professors/researchers at the school as opposed to grad students. All were small. The main thing that I was worried about was East Coast culture (I am from Washington State) and simply not fitting in socially. Both fears have been alleviated.</p>

<p>I hope this has been useful. Of course, these are only my opinions. It is interesting that to each member of my family, Princeton was either considered the best fit before the visit or soared to the top of the list after visiting. The choice seemed obvious, but I was worried that I was forsaking international prestige in favor of fit by choosing Princeton. It was the correct decision and the school has exceeded my expectations.</p>

<p>After we had finished the campus visits, our daughter formed a list of schools to which she would apply. As I contemplated whether to make a case for three schools that did not make her final cut, I decided not to get involved. My reasoning had nothing to do with granting autonomy; rather, it was because each of these schools had a cheerleader on CC who was insufferable. It was just one poster for each school, but I could not get past the idea that if the alumni or parents were like that, perhaps she would not enjoy being there.</p>

<p>
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Tufts-- info session was great–tour guide told us how bad things are for him as an engineering student (see our review)…and our son didn’t want to be on a campus with Rainbow House

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</p>

<p>this is very depressing. i asked a friend at tufts about the rainbow house, and she has heard of it but says it is hardly a presence on campus.</p>

<p>
[quote=]
…he/we are conservative and he just doesn’t want ones private life so that “in your face”

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</p>

<p>i’m assuming that goes for everyone’s private lives?..bc as a male, it is going to be hard to avoid hearing about his straight male friends’ sexual exploits. that imaginary dorm of white christian males would hardly be free of talk about its inhabitants’ ‘private’ lives.</p>

<p>ps those white male christian dorms do exist…they’re called fraternities that live on campus.</p>

<p>edit: i am not trying to argue that your son should apply to or go to tufts. i’m just responding to the offensive “hidden text” of your post.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>This is utterly false. I have not heard anything about sexual exploits from anyone, straight or gay. It is simply not discussed within my rather large group of friends.</p>

<p>Then again, perhaps the poster to whom you were responding and her son would do well at a university where there is an active religious scene/abstinence group if such issues are actually important. Even if the son is not religious/abstinent, I’m sure he will find students with similar values and interests there.</p>

<p>I, too, was disturbed about the upset over Rainbow House. Sounds awesome to me.</p>

<p>But it’s a reminder to be tolerant of those who favor a conservative life style. Would I think a dorm devoted to abstinence upsetting? I doubt it. Friend’s son is in a substance free dorm at Colby and is very happy.</p>

<p>I tend to feel as mathmom does – theme housing isn’t my favorite way or organizing a campus, but some really like it, and who am I to judge?</p>

<p>I think most gay folks think the heterosexual life style is “in their face” every minute of their lives. </p>

<p>A Jewish colleague complained that in a memo I wrote about collecting money for our secretaries XMas presents I wrote: please help Santa honor our secretaries.</p>

<p>I got a two page, single-spaced reply. I think it included Nazi somewhere in there. He thought Christianity was too much in his face. I didn’t especially think Santa a religious symbol. And I am Jewish and it didn’t offend me, and never thought it would offend someone else.</p>

<p>I think posters are reacting because Tufts is not an “in your face” campus the way Wesleyan and Smith actually are. (BTW: for me this is a compliment, Wessies and Smithies._)</p>

<p>I had a rather un-pc reaction to the posts about not wanting to be on a campus with a Rainbow House.</p>

<p>It brought me back to another poster’s comment long, long ago–that she had no problem with a greek scene on campus because all of the students who wanted to binge drink/party ended up segregating themselves in that way, so that the students who did not drink were not being bothered by them (I think I am paraphrasing this rather poorly).</p>

<p>Perhaps the OP’s son would be more comfortable thinking about Rainbow House in the same way? If he is so uncomfortable with gays and their “lifestyle” wouldn’t he rather the gays isolate themselves in Rainbow House, rather than have gays living in all the dorms? After all, what if OP’s son was assigned a gay roomie? Horrors!!!</p>

<p>In the 42 pages of this discussion, kids had all kinds of reasons for rejecting colleges. Some truly bizarre and completely irrational to the casual observer. Why isn’t fog’s kid entitled to his own impressions without the pc police coming after the family?</p>