<p>Virginia Tech - too big and not-so-friendly admission staff
Wake Forest - feels just like my high school</p>
<p>I just remembered:</p>
<p>D1 - Hated Princeton - We were in the student union in the middle of the day. No one was there - not in the student union, not walking around the grounds, no where. We asked at information where everyone was. The guy we spoke with said âin classâ. Everyone in class at the same time? Too creepy and not enough life. Also, in the Student Union were huge (6 feet high each) painted letters that spelled WILLIAM FRIST STUDENT UNION. This was right when he was in the news. I was appalled at the self promotion and crossed Princeton off my list!</p>
<p>Fairfield. Daughter hated the cafeteria set-up and decided not to apply, lest she have to work that hard to get food.</p>
<p>Agree this isnât a thread where people should object or get defensive. The thread does validate that the kids have strong feelings one way or the other even if seemingly random decisions get made. After some of the reactions my kids had I could never send them off to a college they hadnât visited.</p>
<p>I absolutely hated Quinnipiac walking onto campus. M thought it was fantastic/beautiful but I just got a bad vibe. Not to mention the terrible dorms, or as they were referred to by everyone on the tour âAlcatrazâ</p>
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<p>My friendâs D crossed Quinnipiac off the list after a visit because students were throwing stuff out the windows at the tourees.</p>
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<p>I think it would be amusing to compare the essays by some of these kids with how they choose where to invest 4 years of their lives and $250,000 of their parentsâ money. For example:</p>
<p>Essay: âI want to help help build a better, more diverse and tolerant worldâ Visit: âI canât go hereâthey wear Patagonia!â</p>
<p>Essay: âI love to spend extra time to immerse myself in the origins of what I am studying, even if it is not on the testâ Visit: âThis Yale place has pretentious fake Gothic architecture! Are they pretending they are like 300 years old or something?â</p>
<p>Essay: âI look forward to living the life of the mind; learning from great thinkers and exploring the universe of ideas.â Visit: âI wonât even get out the car! Amherst just doesnât look good!â</p>
<p>Smith â D didnât like it . . . didnât say why.</p>
<p>yabeyabe-- LOL. So true. âI want to study with other engaged learners in a beach community which offers surfing and no classes on Fridays. I would prefer a place where people do not wear too much purple.â Sincerely, Student B.</p>
<p>I am surprised Johns Hopkins was 't liked by many in this thread. It was beautiful. We liked that it was âenclosedâ i.e. closed from traffic, and you could walk around the paths everywhere without having to cross a street. We attended a class and the professor stopped and said hello to us, very cheerful, helpfull and kind. The admissions presentation and the office were also excellent. The dorms were crummy, though.</p>
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<p>Yes, WilliamsdadâAND the point seems to be that thereâs no accounting for the tastes of the incoming first years. :)</p>
<p>Kenyon - the town just got its first gas station.
Richmond - for a city school, it felt really isolated. One of the prettiest campuses ever.
Colgate - the other very pretty campus. Great tour guide but it felt very isolated, with little evident diversity.
Amherst - tour guide ditzy.
Williams - isolated and cold. Admissions presentation was poor.
Oberlin - the town was a complete turnoff. The campus and its fearless mantra were pluses, but the isolation factor was pretty high.
Wesleyan - started out as the top choice, but dropped off the list completely as the tour guides kept emphasizing the athletics over everything else.
Princeton - left the tour early rather than keep listening to the guide</p>
<p>Maryland - the tour actually featured Cole Field House. They took us inside and wanted us to picture the basketball games that used to be played there. That was the selling point. Really. Iâm assuming there is a tree or two on campus, but if there is we didnât see it.</p>
<p>On the plus side:
Brown, in the pouring rain, with great guides.
William & Mary, with a very engaging guide
Delaware
Dickinson</p>
<p>What you will find is that each college has its identity, and that identity can usually be summed up in three words or fewer. For Maryland, theyâd harp on Location (get internships in DC); for Oberlin, itâs Fearless. The key is to find the school whose descriptive identity matches what you are looking for, and hope that comes through when the tour guides start their backward walks.</p>
<p>âWilliam & Mary, with a very engaging guideâ</p>
<p>They do a great job picking their tour guides. We visited and toured twice and both times the tour guides were fantastic - funny, charming, filled with entertaining trivia etcâŠ</p>
<p>Itâs dâs first choice, based on those terrific tours.</p>
<p>Poetgrl:
Yep. My Mom always said âThereâs no accounting for taste-or the lack of it.â I think she was quoting Mark Twain.</p>
<p>The joke around here is that S2âs list of rejected schools makes a perfectly wonderful
college list, complete with reaches, targets and likeliesâŠ</p>
<p>Brown â did not like educational philosophy
Swat â little too intense
Dart â liked, but didnât love
JHU â too competitive
NYU â too urban (and he likes cities)
Haverford â not intense enough
Brandeis â too institutional, felt UMD was better for less $$
Colby â Watertown was too depressing
Grinnell â couldnât get past the isolation
Reed â too socially liberal, even for him
GWU â too close to home, too urban and preppy
Boston U â too institutional, felt UMD was better for less $$
Syracuse â too institutional, felt UMD was better for less $$
American â too close to home, too institutional, felt UMD was better for less $$
St. Maryâs/MD â too rural</p>
<p>Suffice it to say there a couple of ^^^ these I wish HAD made the listâŠ</p>
<p>S1âs list â
Princeton â not his people, not his place
Berkeley â didnât want to fight the administration for four years just to take a class
Reed â loved the school, needed more math and CS
Stanford â left him cold, but kept it on the list for a while</p>
<p>
I prefer to frame it as a synthesis of intellection and intuition.</p>
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<p>I know Northwesternâs compus is a little âeclectic?â but I still think itâs beautiful, with the lake and the beach right next to it. I didnât like the University of Chicago because of the neighborhood itâs in and because the buildings we entered looked old and run-down. My S, however, loved both.</p>
<p>Hearing the words âWesleyanâ and âtoo much athleticsâ in the same sentence is odd, to say the least. A couple times we went for Parents weekend/Homecoming, which tends to be the Wes/Williams game. As far as I could see, the only people actually watching the game were the Williams fans.</p>
<p>D3 is a person who is very attuned to âplaceâ so campus visits have been an essential part of the selection process for her. </p>
<p>One thing thatâs been offputting for her is arriving on campus to find out that the beautiful photos theyâve been sending us have either been taken with a very wide angle lens, making the teeny tiny courtyard look enormous or have been enhanced in some way to make an ordinary building look extraordinary. She figures theyâll be less-than-honest in some other way if she enrolls.</p>
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<p>
</p>
<p>Ah those immature 17 year olds, theyâll cross off colleges from their list for the silliest reasons!</p>