<p>The two colleges that went off the list after visiting were Princeton and Harvard. At Princeton it was a combination of things. </p>
<p>At Harvard it was, and this is such a cliche, but it was the parents in the information session. More specifically it was the fathers who would not stop asking the same question in slight different formats (what, exactly, does my child have to do to get into Harvard?) </p>
<p>But it shows the weakness of these visits in that I’ve had so many people tell me that the parents at their Harvard visit were laid back. </p>
<p>That same day we visited Harvard we visited Northeastern with very little idea of what to expect there but by the end of that visit Northeastern shot way up on his list and now he’s chosen it to attend! Funny how life works sometimes.</p>
<p>My son hated Cornell and Colgate, too rural. Dartmouth was great but the area was too isolated. Wesleyan and Connecticut proved to him he didn’t like small LAC’s. He like Penn initially but when he went back for his athletic recruitment overnight he decided against it.</p>
<p>Texas Tech. We drove through Lubbock and decided not to exit the highway. Lubbock was just too rural for her. Close to the mountains and all, but it was just not ‘pretty enough’ for her.</p>
<p>How things change. I THOUGHT S had pretty much written off Northwestern U after the tour. He said he was “meh” about it compared to other schools he’d seen the previous days. (I should have taken into consideration it was the 4th school in as many days, we’d been hoping from place to place by plane and bus, and it was raining throughout the touring mid-July.)</p>
<p>Fast forward to today. I asked S if he was any closer to making a decision. He said yes, since he’s telling friends he’d likely go to … Northwestern U! Apparently his “meh” reaction was just tour fatigue. He (obviously) applied to NU after all, still thinking there were other places (a couple of Ivies) he’d prefer … which came back as WL and R. </p>
<p>So then it got narrowed to USC (hometown) or Northwestern, attractive because it’s NOT hometown. What may ice it in NU’s favor is his acceptance to their honors Integrated Science Program, which has about 120 students. It’s designed to track for a double major in four years. They have their own little house on campus (not a residence) with it’s own computer lab, mail room, lounge, classrooms. Each ISP student gets a key to the house so it’s “theirs.” And yet, the ISP takes other classes on the rest of the campus, can live in a facility with other majors, hang out with others doing outside activities. My H, a math prof, found out that the NU math profs like to sign up and teach the ISP classes because the classes are different and the ISP students high caliber.</p>
<p>The things that can happen and be discovered in nine months!</p>
<p>Not sure about the validity of her assessments, but after visiting my D quickly ruled out:</p>
<p>Brown - too arrogant and discouraging in their Admissions rap (“We don’t need to convince people to apply to Brown.”)
Vassar - too intense
Conn College - too preppy and cliquey
Providence College - too overtly Catholic
Fairfield - too “country club”</p>
<p>Daughter took one peak inside the gloomy Social Sciences building at San Diego State University, saw the burned out lights, missing ceiling panes, peeling paint and cheap plywood doors and decided that it was not for her. Visiting the musty film department and dark dorms sealed the deal. The fact that it was rainy and the students were gloomy on their first day back from spring break did not help. Off her list it went. Funny thing is that Chapman which she would not even consider before but only visited with pressure from me went to the top of her list after our visit. It shows how important visit are.</p>
<p>To each their own, but it surprises me that someone would cross off a school because of the behavior of other parents at the info session. Even if the boorish dad’s kid gets in and decides to enroll, the dad is not going to be there. It’s not like choosing an elementary school, where parents are likely to have a lot of interaction with fellow parents.</p>
<p>Findaplace - the ISP program at NU is <em>outstanding.</em> That is a great honor for your son.</p>
<p>The only schools my kids wrote off so far were:
George Washington U - just didn’t care for the super-urban campus (which was a learning in itself). Their Mt Vernon campus solves some of the issues, but it’s isolated.
Case Western Reserve - ditto.</p>
<p>Nothing against those schools, however; they are certainly fine options, but just not my kids’ tastes.</p>
<p>Oklahoma City University. I think it was just too rural for her. The campus is in a not-so-good area, although it is a beautiful campus. Very conservative. Very big on students and alumni who have participated in or won the Miss America pagaent. She pretty much gave it a no the minute she got off of the plane.</p>
<p>Cornell was temporarily off of our list after our last, very odd visit. That was 3 years ago. My high school senior applied, was accepted and is looking forward to a visit in the near future. We will be visiting with open minds and high expectations.</p>
<p>I think the impact of information gleaned on visits is partly dependent on the impression the student had going in. People probably pay the most attention to data which solidly confirms their expectations or radically contradicts them. So if going into the visit your concept of Harvard students was simply that they are accomplished and brilliant and then you encountered those annoying parents, you might have simply said to yourself “What annoying people they were” and shrugged it off. However, if you had your doubts about Harvard going in, suspecting that Harvard students were ultra ambitious, gonna-step-on-whoever’s-in-my-way types, then that encounter would be perceived much more negatively. </p>
<p>I think my kids and I carried around mental checklists on these visits, comparing the visit to our prior expectations. No doubt that gave us some bias. For example, at Harvard, I expected stuffy and nerdy. The adcom was indeed stuffy. Check. One of the tour guides was blonde, busty, had a cutesy name, and seemed a bit airheaded. That really caught my attention since it was the exact opposite of what I had expected. No check.</p>
<p>only one we really ruled out based on the visit was Syracuse. The weather (but similar weather was not a deterrent at UR,RPI, or Cornell) The overall impression of the area right around the univ- reminded my wife of Brooklyn College. The stadium, which is a positive for some, was a neg for my DD - gave the impression of being too football focused a campus.</p>
<p>"George Washington U - just didn’t care for the super-urban campus (which was a learning in itself). Their Mt Vernon campus solves some of the issues, but it’s isolated.
Case Western Reserve - ditto."</p>
<p>Interesting, we liked Case. We were mentally prepared for a slum (which we did find when we made a wrong turn on the way back downtown) and found University Circle more pleasant than expected. </p>
<p>As for GW - we live in NoVa, and I didn’t even know they had a Mount Vernon campus. My impression is that the center of life there for undergrads is definitely Foggy Bottom.</p>
<p>Yes; my son liked the Mt Vernon campus (they bought a woman’s college and converted it so that x% of students live on that campus) but my feeling was … the center of life is definitely Foggy Bottom, and you’d be isolated on that campus. And I didn’t want S thinking that it was a “solution” to not liking an urban campus since he’d still have to spend the majority of his day on such a campus. But, of course, that’s personal preference and others may feel differently. I actually like urban campuses a lot more than the rest of my family does, LOL.</p>
<p>We’re just back from an eastern LAC tour. Pretty much every school on last spring’s tour is off her list, either right away (Skidmore too remote, BU too big/urban, Drew too small/like high school, Brandeis too modern/ugly a campus and as for Boston College, she thought it was pretentious and thought the (female) adcom was sexist) or upon much reflection thought that while very good, a school wasn’t right for her-- in this case Emerson, which she adored at first but has since decided is too focused/specific and not a strong enough broad-based liberal arts school. Clark was the only school from that trip that she’ll probably apply to.</p>
<p>So this trip was much more focused on exactly what she wants. We saw 7 schools, and two are off the list: Vassar (too intimidating) and SUNY New Paltz (everyone in the tour, including the guide, looked at us like we were Martians when we said we were from California). </p>
<p>The surprise hit was Dickinson-- we thought it might be too preppy and stiff for her, but she loved every inch of it, except for that huge dining hall an earlier poster mentioned-- but I’m presuming they’ll improve that in a couple of years, and if not, it’s not a big deal. The other two are her top-three list are Connecticut (what a great school) and American (lively, engaged and the only school that comes close to having the diversity she’s used to). In-betweens are Muhlenberg (lovely place, good school, nice people, but Allentown is strip-mall hell, and the theatre program is so intense that getting roles is very hard) and Bard (obviously a great education, interesting and intellectual students, many wonderful things, but remote and probably too serious for her-- she loves musicals, and Bard would no more stage a musical than it would hold a Republican rally).</p>