Colleges you/child crossed off the list after visiting

Parents Forum
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Huh? Haverford has sports? Other than pickup cricket on weekends? (OK, I know it does have sports, but I also know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it does not have anything resembling sports EMPHASIS. This may take the prize as the single most irrational response ever. But it probably reflects Haverford’s efforts to convince kids that they shouldn’t reject it out of hand just because they like sports.) </p>

<p>I think we should all acknowledge that, while there are undoubtedly bad tour guides out there, and good tour guides who have bad days, no tour guide is going to bat 1.000. My daughter’s own irrational reaction at Brown is a case in point. Our tour guide there was an absolute paragon of American young womanhood – articulate, friendly, extremely pretty, enthusiastic, tall, sporty. Had my son been there, he would have been wrapped around her finger and his tongue would have been hanging out of his mouth, and he doesn’t even usually like blondes that much. </p>

<p>Now, all those qualities may well have been threatening to my cynical, hipster daughter, except that in real life there are several women like that whom she counts among her friends. But she KNOWS those women. This one, she couldn’t forgive for being too shiny, for mentioning the mall and a frat without sneering, and for not having any interest in the fabulous sculptures that dot the campus. She couldn’t even really claim that she thought the tour guide was representative of women at Brown, since after the tour she spent a couple of hours with a friend there who is short, brown-haired, unathletic, and academically intense. It didn’t matter.</p>

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<p>A couple of years ago we were on vacation in Boston and I decided we should walk around Harvard…doubtful that any of my kids are Harvard material, but I thought it might inspire them. All three were terribly unimpressed.</p>

<p>Two years ago, Son toured a tiny LAC and announced that it was The One.</p>

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<p>I think it is too hard to go by other people’s opinions. D hated Tufts, students didnt look happy, and the admissions oficer was obnoxious but she has two friends who go and LOVE it. excellent school. Hated Wake Forest didnt like the enclosed feeling on paper it was perfect for her. The school she went to was TOTALLY different than what we thought, sure she would go to a small LAC ended up in urban school LOVES IT! She is pretty open minded and adaptable. If your kid is not then you should look at their personality and go from there. A good fit is important.</p>

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<p>I don’t think you understand.Most of us are reporting the reasons cited by our 17 or 18 yr old kids for eliminating perfectly good schools after a campus visit. </p>

<p>It’s not supposed to be a serious evaluation of the institution, for Pete’s sake.</p>

<p>The D of a friend of mine refused to apply to Middlebury, much to my friend’s amazement, because " Mo-om, I could NEVER go here. EVERYONE is wearing Patagonia!"</p>

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<p>I haven’t heard this mentioned, but I think it’s true: A big part of being happy at a college is that you chose it yourself. Even if your primary reason for being interested initially was the school colors, or the cadence of the name, or something else equally irrelevant to education, the mere fact that you, and no one else, decided to like it means that you go there with a great attitude, and that turns into a great experience.</p>

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<p>consolation: Exactly–both the schools my kids went to have taken it on the chin here, but that’s okay. I know it’s supposed to be an irrational list. And how many of the decisions we make are, in the end!</p>

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<p>One of the things that’s fascinating about the college selection process–at least the way we did it–is the way it swings between extremes of rationality and irrationality. On the one hand, months of research, painstakingly poring over websites, creating dauntingly complicated spreadsheets, listing criteria…on the other, a few days traipsing around in the car, sleeping at bad motels and listening to some kids walking backwards and talking a mile a minute. </p>

<p>You have to hope the rational part of the process has been done so well that no matter how the irrational part goes, the schools you end up with are schools that will work.</p>

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<p>Brown - D did an overnight there, and didn’t like anything about it.</p>

<p>Boston College - Arrived at what appeared to be a passing period. Students were pouring past us - all seemed to be dressed alike and no one seemed to be talking to each other. Considering 100s of students were trudging past us, it was eerily quiet! It was quite a contrast to D’s electrifying day in Cambridge.</p>

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<p>D was very upset when WE (h and I) would use the word WE to include her. As in, “I thought that WE really enjoyed that tour. WE thought it was a great fit.” I had to remind myself over and over again that though I was footing the bill, I can not expect to include
her in the WE equation. She found great schools with plenty of scholarship money using her own seemingly bizarre criteria.</p>

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<p>JHS - My tour guide at Haverford was part of the 30% of students who DIDN’T play sports. There is a special afternoon time slot on weekdays set aside for sports practices / club meetings–no classes offered. I think the emphasis is much more on club/intramural than varsity, though.</p>

<p>It’s interesting to note how affecting tour guides and info sessions can be. While I’ve visited 20+ schools and had tours/info sessions at more than half, with better/worse preferences, my gut reactions were hardly ever based on how the admissions office presented itself. I figure that if I enroll as a student, I’ll have minimal contact with Admissions anyway, so what does it matter if they’re amazing or inept?</p>

<p>My friend knows some very preppy women at Bryn Mawr. I took her with me on an unofficial tour with my friend at Bryn Mawr, who is deathly pale, favors all-black, and has purple hair. Didn’t change her first impression much.</p>

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111

<p>Son visited and crossed off:</p>

<p>Williams (too isolated)
Brown (too urban)
Pomona (seemed too much like high school)</p>

<p>Daughter visited and crossed off:</p>

<p>Eckerd (falling apart; in bad shape financially)
Whittier (didn’t like anything about it)
U of San Diego (crosses on every building)</p>

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<p>Pitt-Kids did not look like me…a lot coffee-house types or super dressed up. I was really surprised because it was my second choice until I visited. Too city for me. </p>

<p>DeSales-Too small, at lunch they had a slide show and all of us at our table knew people in the slides! Sort of close to home, maybe not such a good thing. Laid-back and friendly. </p>

<p>Penn State-Perfect in every way. lol
Mom’s alma mater, have visited for years, big but not brassy, gorgeous campus, great tour and admissions presentation, want to be part of the Penn State family. Fingers crossed.</p>

<p>Bloomsburg-Really nice campus. Good size.</p>

<p>Muhlenberg-Nice campus, too small.</p>

<p>Elizabethtown-Same. </p>

<p>Lebanon Valley-Fantastic people in athletic department, if I were to continue with sports, I would go there. Very small, but no one around at 2:30 on Friday.</p>

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<p>Well my kid’s school has taken it on the chin, too, which is cute, funny. Not threatening. I agree, that the kid making the choice feels empowered by being able to make a choice.</p>

<p>Therefore, cast the net wide so the kiddo (whoever kept saying that – its cute.)</p>

<p>My kid’s school is so reviled here that it is the poster child for what we don’t want: “How is this not Williams?” Haha.</p>

<p>And although my kiddo was accepted to and adored U of Chicago, he didn’t want to go. Who knows why? Only the shadow.</p>

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<p>D attends NYU and loves it but I can completely understand why it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.</p>

<p>I am surprised to hear so many negative comments regarding Northwestern. It was D’s strong second choice. H, S and I all fell in love with it.</p>

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<p>@87:</p>

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<p>Exactly!!! People who object to this thread should not be so defensive. So what if someone hates your favorite college?</p>

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<p>Initially, I thought the tour guides provided the ‘make it or break it’ impression for the campuses. Those that were boring seemed to infuse the campus with a boring feel, the vibrant or articulate ones seemed to trigger a more positive feel. For those campuses that just didn’t seem to ‘click’ with our kids, I’d fuss silently ‘if we’d just had that other tour guide . . . .’</p>

<p>However, the more campuses we visited and the more tour guides we experienced, I realized that it really wasn’t the individual tour guide that was the issue. I’ve decided that, in fact, those tour guides are reflective of the students at the college. They are selected as representatives and it most probably wouldn’t matter one whit which tour guide we followed around. I did learn to be a little more proactive in self-selecting which tour guide’s group we joined. I’d look for one more outgoing, relaxed, or self-confident. In the end, even a positive, expressive tour guide didn’t change Kiddo’s first impression of the tour/info sessions.</p>

<p>My favorite comparative experiences are the differences in two colleges we toured on the same day for Kiddo’s older sister. The first was Dominican University in San Rafael, Ca. A very restful, peaceful, lush campus that can be covered walking in about 5 minutes. Kiddo’s sister was very interested in the dance program, but had lived in major urban areas for the last several years. Kiddo remarked that she couldn’t imagine her sister living on this campus–after all, one could actually hear birds singing! The tour guide was pretty doofy and spent quite a bit of time detailing the existence and actual location of the dining hall’s burrito bar. He was quite disappointed that he couldn’t get into the cafeteria to actually show the bar to the touring students/parents. As parents, we were unconvinced that the academics at the school were up to par, but the dance program was perfect for Sister. We wrote the tour guide off as a bum deal, a fluke.</p>

<p>That afternoon, we toured Berkeley. It was Kiddo who really wanted to tour it, but we saw it as an opportunity for Sister to see a better academic fit. The tour guide was very clever and entertaining. He had some really clever and amusing comment about how only Nobel Laureates had parking places on campus and teased about ‘that little school down south’. Kiddo didn’t see much she liked, but Sister really felt it was a possibility for academics—but not for her dance. The juxtaposition that day between the emphasis on the burrito bar at one school and the Nobel Laureates remains a good joke amongst us.</p>

<p>Sister did enroll in the dance program and loves it. But she found the campus too small, the student body too immature, and the academics much less challenging that she would hope for or craves. Within six weeks, she’d moved back to the city and is happier being an off-campus student. Turns out that doofy tour guide was quite representative of the student body (at least as Sister experiences it). . . .</p>

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<p>Colleges that fell off of my D’s list (2 years ago) and the silly reasons:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Occidental - we visited, she seemed to be OK, but she was put off by their “leftovers” menu at the cafe. Go figure, I frequently serve leftovers at home, but there’s something about college food leftovers that did not resonate well with her. :)</p></li>
<li><p>Pitzer - while doing an overnighter at another Claremont college, she saw some Pitzer kids who were too high and proud of it. Ditto for CMC - the guy at the campus store could not figure out the correct change when she paid for her purchase (“Mom, and they say this is where future money mangers come from!”)</p></li>
</ol>

<p>I’m sure the college she chose to attend got some flack on this thread :)</p>

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<p>Boston College ( no specific reason, gut feeling)</p>

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<p>U of Rochester - Everyone there was SO nice on our visit, but it was a lovely spring day and there were hardly any students on the quad. They said it was because of midterms. We thought everyone would be outside after a tough winter! Also, the campus is cut off by a river on one side and a cemetary on another -so there is no campus town area of restaurants/stores within walking distance that we could find.</p>

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<p>Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as is the perfect college.</p>

<p>My friend and I were planning to be in the Boston area at the same time. Since we both had high school seniors, we decided to bring them along and all take a tour of Tufts together. </p>

<p>My son really didn’t like it at all. He conceded that the cafeteria food was good, but he thought the admissions officers were pretentious, he didn’t like the dorms, the student body wasn’t his cup of tea, etc. There was no end to what he didn’t like about it, and he crossed it off his list immediately.</p>

<p>My friend’s daughter was at the very same information session and tour, and yet thought it was a great place. She found Tufts to be intellectually stimulating, in a good location, with a talented student body, and she happily applied!</p>

<p>So, to each his own.</p>