<p>Caltech.
Even my Indian parents thought it was too focused on academics.</p>
<p>321 Leashesā¦I wouldnāt mind architecture so much, but D is fixated on Barnes & Noble. Her school needs to be near a Barnes & Nobles with a coffee shop. Seriously, this is one of her top criteria.</p>
<p>UC irvine. i was planning on applying since last year. visited the dorms, and all my mom could say was āhell noā. it was the first dorm visit, so maybe we were too skeptical butā¦ heres what we saw</p>
<p>-communal bathroom. no changing area outside the bathtub, its right in the freakin center of the bathroom, so nothing is private. only one shower and one tub per floor???
-coed floors => no changing areas in the bathroom, this wuld be a problem
-filthy stairwells. looked like they had never been cleaned before
-dorm rooms were unbelievably tiny. i lived in a dorm in boarding school last year which was tiny and reasonable. but the closetā¦ OMG tiny.
-superbly crampedā¦ the tour guide told us it was filled max capacity last year, so they might force some ppl into quads </p>
<p>the campus on the other hand WAS GORGEOUS. academics are great for sure and i loved the idea of the campus being connected in a circle with a park in the middle. *oh well =[</p>
<p>
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<p>Most jobs donāt charge thousands of dollars to work there.</p>
<p>However, in the focus on architecture, one things students donāt consider, and unfortunately, I donāt even think they understand, is that the pedagogical styles do vary from school to school. One would think this would vary from professor to professor, and of course, this is true to some degree, but the philosophies of the schools vary a good bit.</p>
<p>This is obviously true if one compares, lets say Hampshire to Holy Cross, but itās also true across the board.</p>
<p>Not such a consideration at a large university, but a strong consideration at a LAC. A large university will have research and then a variety of pedagogies. But a LAC is often dedicated to a particular style of learning.</p>
<p>The college catalogues are better ways of assessing this than campus visits, actually. </p>
<p>If one chooses a department one is considering attending and compares the DESCRIPTIONS of the courses in it, this becomes evident.</p>
<p>One of my kids attended a school whose focus was very intellectual grad school type pedagogy. The focus on by-the-book research was intense and it culminated with a mandatory thesis.</p>
<p>The other attends a school at which interdisciplinary thinking is the more of a goal and the pedagogy is a bit looser. Ironically, the grading is even harder. No mandatory thesis. Four courses a semester, not five, but very difficult grading curve.</p>
<p>Each school fit the student who attended well. </p>
<p>Most kids donāt even know that these differences exist.</p>
<p>Wow, mythmom. You make an excellent, crucial point for students and their parents. Neither I nor my daughter fully investigated pedagogical differences when she was applying to college. </p>
<p>I agree. Many 17 year-olds probably have not noted this critical element differs from place to place, or even contemplated which pedagogy would be most suitable. Your children must have, or had the benefit of an exceptionally aware parent. Lucky kids either way :)</p>
<p>Pondering the differences could help clarify scholarly styles and goals as well. </p>
<p>Again, thank you for pointing out one of the most significant (and perhaps overlooked) distinctions to consider when comparing LACs.</p>
<p>I have to second what mythmom said. Reading the college catalogs was by far the most valuable part of our college search. That said, it is often hard to get hold of a paper copy without visiting the campus. (Even with visiting and calling and offering to pay, we were unable to procure a copy of Harvardās until the alumni interviewer intervened and requested one for us.)</p>
<p>But reading the college catalogs are nearly as much fun as reading this thread! :)</p>
<p>The catalogs are usually on-line, and not just for admitted students.</p>
<p>Iāll give a concrete example for folks who might not understand exactly what I mean.</p>
<p>At Vassar languages were required for a music major; at Williams they were not.</p>
<p>This was actually a tipping point for my S who is actually a language major now (Latin and Greek ā Classics) but he did not want to forced to study modern languages at this point in his academic career. It is a moot point now because he is no longer a music major. Although in general Williams is a slightly more challenging school academically, in that case the more āconservativeā approach of the department he was investigating made less a fit for him.</p>
<p>Vassar is not wrong; grad schools probably all do require that language requirement, but a student majoring in music may not want grad school or need that extra layer of academic rigor.</p>
<p>Another example: Your student wants to be a creative writing major. Does the school require an English major with a creative writing component or can the writer avoid the English major entirely (not a good strategy in my mind but if thatās what my kid wanted I would not interfere.)</p>
<p>True is sciences as well. How interdisciplinary are chem and physics? Bio and physics? Bio and chem? Are these separate fiefdoms or are interdepartmental collaborations encouraged beyond the requisite organic chem?</p>
<p>Most of these kinds of questions are answered by a college catalog.</p>
<p>And lest I come across as too brilliant, I didnāt realize this with my first. That was sheer luck. We did understand this by the time my second was applying.</p>
<p>^Another example, though I canāt quite articulate it, would be the difference between English at Bowdoin and English at Oberlin. Both have strong English departments, but the course descriptions are very different.</p>
<p>And on the creative writing front, donāt forget genre/āliterary.ā Thatās a difference rarely evident in public print, though; Iāve had to ask many individual, probing questions.</p>
<p>For my D, Haverford was the cross-off. Said sheād never seen such ugly, scruffy-looking students (esp. the guys) in her life. She said everybody she saw on campus looked depressed, stared at their shoes and never said a thing to anyone else as they walked by; she wondered how they managed to keep from running into each other. She swore the tour guide had two daysā beard and smelled.</p>
<p>I told her I thought she was exaggerating (didnāt go with her on that visit). Long story short, about a week later H. sends a gorgeous, full-color brochureāthe kind you know they spent mega-bucks on, made out of paper more substantial than the siding used for slums in third world countries. After marveling at the production values/cost, I couldnāt help but laughā¦if I didnāt know better, Iād have sworn they went OUT OF THEIR WAY to round up & photograph the homeliest, dirtiest-looking kids on campus.</p>
<p>I know pretty is as pretty does, but still. Theyāre spending all that $$ācouldnāt they round up some good-looking smart kids?</p>
<p>Haverford kids have always looked like that! I grew up near there. There are many exceptions, of course, and itās a wonderful school, but depressed and scruffy was the norm even āback in the dayā.</p>
<p>I live right near Haverford; If I had to go to college in that area, Iād be depressed too. I love my area, but as a college student it would be awful.</p>
<p>Iām not a parent, but a student applying this year.</p>
<p>Cross-off: Princeton. Small, insular town; nobody in sight on campus; an air of total silence as if the whole place was sleeping; a tour guide who didnāt really speak with clarity; dorms that look like little shanties/shacks. Justā¦ no.</p>
<p>Cross-off: Carleton college. We didnāt visit this one, but a few Carleton alumni came and made a presentation at a class I was attending. One of them made absolutely no sense while speaking; the other was inappropriately snippy, humourless, and very full of herself. The vibe we got in general was that Carleton was both ignorant and arrogant.</p>
<p>Meh: Columbia. Nice if small campus, passable tour. Justā¦ very bland, nothing to object to, nothing much to like.</p>
<p>Okay: Harvard. Humourous representative, excellent presentation. We didnāt get to see much of the campus - what I saw was a bit dingy, but everyone else assures me itās gorgeous, so I mustāve missed something. Itās a very nice school, and one Iād be more than happy with, if not for another school thatās captured me:</p>
<p>Love at first sight: Yale. Gorgeous campus, excellent tour. We encountered humourous and warm students, and the hum of activity, the mix of studiousness and fun, was extremely appealing. We went into the common room of one of the residential colleges and it was lovely. I spent an afternoon on campus and didnāt want to leave; it was my EA school, and unless something untoward happens, itās where Iāll be heading in September.</p>
<p>Princeton dorms like little shacks?</p>
<p>Columbia bland?</p>
<p>Glad you found Yale. A match made in heaven.</p>
<p>MoWC: I also grew up near Haverfordājust down the street on College Avenue. My elementary school had some teachers who were also Haverford professors. We did field trips on the Haverford campus (where the science teacher fed me wild-collected mushrooms and ants, both of which were actually yummy). In the early 60s, Haverford students wore ties to classes. Not scruffy, at least not in my memory. (I later took a chemistry class at Haverford; those boys looked good! but thenā¦ I went to an all-girlsā school at the time.)</p>
<p>You are right about the ties. I am thinking back to my college days (early 70s). Scruffy might not be the right word. Not hippy-ish either. Poetic intellectuals? The prep school had a different vibe (at least to me).</p>
<p>Haverford was the only school where my son decided not to apply after visiting. Nothing to do with scruffy students; the visit confirmed his pre-existing belief that Haverford is in the middle of nowhere, and not really <em>that</em> close to Philadelphia. After spending his first 18 years living in the suburbs, he simply didnāt want to go to college anyplace that wasnāt either in, or extremely close to, a major city.</p>
<p>After visiting Haverford, he decided that he didnāt even want to bother with Swarthmore, and canceled his scheduled interview. Despite my telling him that of all the schools I visited back when I was applying to college, Swarthmore (along with Princeton) had the most beautiful campus.</p>
<p>Yale: ugly, fake. Pretending to be a beautiful university, IMO. Also, when comparing to Oxford and Cambridge, the tour guide said ācam-bridgeā with the ācamā rhyming with ālambā rather than ācameā. I was genuinely disgusted. The kind of people whose scores are good but who are severely lacking in common sense - not my kind of people. Plus New Haven is horrible.</p>
<p>Brown: first of all, Providence = ew, so far from the train station! Also I didnāt like that there wasnāt a real campus feel - everything was separated by roads etc.</p>
<p>Northwestern: I liked it more than a lot of you are saying, but it was a bit of a concrete jungle - lots of flat concrete walls with few windows and little decoration. Not attractive. Hardly Harvardā¦</p>
<p>On the other hand, the second I walked on the UVA campus, I knew it was for me.</p>