<p>Dan IS a hoot. I saw him when he came to talk at S2’s HS this fall (he did a presentation for parents). Also a really good guy. Has spent a lot of time with S2 discussing his options.</p>
<p>SDmomof3,
S2 had similar impressions of CMC. He felt it was way, way too pre-CEO for him, right down to the way the tour guide described relationships with the housekeeping staff, whether cooking facilities were in the dorms and what kinds of on-campus jobs were available for students.</p>
<p>rodney: yes and that is what we are exploring in this thread</p>
<p>I crossed Williams College off the list after visiting because it was so small and isolated. Now I wish I had applied because it now seems so intimate and cozy.</p>
<p>Older s crossed off Amherst because the receptioninst in the admissions office barely looked up from her knitting and the tourguide was a total dingbat who said the only reason she was there was b/c she was a 3rd generation legacy. She didnt show us the library, claiming shed never been in there. She did take us into the science bldg at our request (though also had never been in it either) and oogled from a window that she could see her bf’s temporary housing from that window.</p>
<p>A lot of kids and families (ours included) have been turned off by just one or two things - like a lousy info session or tour guide. While people need to remind themselves not to let those one or two things completely color their opinion of a school, it’s still a shame. It makes me wonder if colleges ever check up on the guides to see how they’re doing. Who knows - maybe they do. It might also be a good idea to leave suggestion boxes in admissions or something…</p>
<p>there is no shame in feeling cozy in one place and not so in another. that is why we have choices. D. does not like urban locations and considering it while applying to Grad. School. Unfortunately, her UG with very pretty campus that was attractive part of her original choice of UG, does not have Med. School. I understand her, she wants to do her best and if attractive non-urbun location helps, so be it. One of the UG that she has visited for UG is not being considered now just for that. It is MSU, which is not bad choice at all, but if she does not feel comfy there (she does not know why), there are plenty others. And I am sure that MSU might be a very fine choice for somebody else.</p>
<p>My niece took Northwestern off her list after attending admitted students day. She did not feel she woulld fit in at all with the vibe, current and admitted students among other reasons. She wanted to like it but couldn’t. It will be Boston College or Wake Forest, both which she liked but preferred BC for its size, location, people she met, pre-med program (now has an 83% acceptance rate) and more, what she quotes as “normal” vibe to it.</p>
<p>Back to tour guides and staff–
Last week I took a lunchtime walk through the campus of a local college, and for the heck of it decided to stop in the admissions office. I asked the secretary how many undergrad students there were and she had absolutely no idea. Said she would have look it up. Am hoping she was a temp or something…</p>
<p>“It makes me wonder if colleges ever check up on the guides to see how they’re doing.”</p>
<p>When I was a guide, letters to the admissions office commenting on a guide’s performance, good or bad, were taken seriously and discussed with the guide in question.</p>
<p>Crossed off JHU - was turned off by the lack of a business district near campus. We asked the guide and he said they take the bus to the mall if they need to buy something. Son wants an urban campus - one mention of mall and it was over.</p>
<p>Not sure yet if it will be nixed, but it will be memorable - s was stung by a bee while leaving Syracuse. First time he’d ever been stung.</p>
<p>NYU: the person conducting the info session said “Umm” more than 80 times in 20 minutes and was more familiar with graduate programs than undergraduate. Also, many more parents than students asked questions, a large proportion of which were about prospects for jobs after graduation…one of the most vocal parents was next to a son who sat silent, arms crossed, almost clenched. D declined to even go on the tour…wasn’t wild about the urban non-campus campus…in contrast, she had liked GW, so go figure.</p>
<p>American: horrible info session with minimal attention to academics as opposed to safety, drug use. Ickiest dorms we saw of all the trips. Student vibe wasn’t impressive, contributing to a super-sized high-school feel. The one school where all three of us had a universal unalloyed “Yuck” reaction to.</p>
<p>Mount Holyoke: you say “pastoral,” we say “bucolic.” Gave the impression that for entertainment the locals watched puddles dry up. Was hard to pry D out of the car and afterwards we didn’t plea for her to keep an open mind. May have suffered in comparison with Smith, which we had just seen and which had knocked our collective socks off.</p>
<p>We had a recent tour at Bryant University and the tour guide managed to negate most of what we had just heard from their admissions people in the information session. Admissions said that the career services starts freshman year by helping students focus on a major and internship direction. Our tour guide (sophomore) said he thought he had been to career services once. While taking the tour students at three different dorms yelled out to our group. The best line was, “No more dudes!” The school is apparently 70:30 guys to girls. No problem!</p>
<p>Bryant University?</p>
<p>Yes… Sounded like a great college on paper and I’m sure it is for many people but before we hit the parking lot it was off the list.</p>
<p>What paper was that?</p>
<p>What in the world is your point objective? Do you have something to contribute to this thread or do you just want to pick apart my post?</p>
<p>Do you need a clarification of “the list” too?</p>
<p>Kathiep, I don’t think Objective789 is a parent. I think he’s a kid, and apparently he wants to pick at Bryant University for not being elite enough, or whatever.</p>
<p>Princeton went off the list from their tour pretty quickly. I felt that the campus was way too large for the student body, and the building our tour guide laughed at for being the “ugliest building on campus” was the only bit of architecture I like, and he spent too much time talking about taking trains to places for fun. I’m in a military family, I’m not going to college so I can move around more! ;)</p>
<p>The whole ivy-on-brick thing just isn’t my aesthetic, for whatever reason.</p>