<p>My nephew toured UCLA after he was admitted and crossed it out because</p>
<p>“Bad Food”</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>D was tempted to cross URochester off her list due to bad food!! Very poor vegetarian choices! But she loved the school otherwise - and is very keen on some of the programs they offer. So, she has agreed to give the school another chance!</p>
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<p>certainly kids at penn are out late all the time
and
I am sure that the area around penn has some crime issues</p>
<p>these things aren’t mutually exclusive—might even find an “intersection” in them…ha ha</p>
<p>Like U Chicago etc–some of these schools have areas that are sketchy</p>
<p>The area around Penn does have some crime issues. However, campus security is excellent. Campus police are highly visable on campus and even patrol the surrounding off campus area where many students live. Most Penn students will tell you that they feel comfortable walking around at night.</p>
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<p>It is rare that they go out BEFORE 9 pm!</p>
<p>There have been many threads about the safety of Penn and the surrounding area and I have been one of the most concerned parents, since my kid was a student there. There were definitely a number of incidents on and around campus while he was there, but the school should not be ruled out due to any safety concerns. The area has improved greatly in the last 10 years or so and the campus is lovely. It IS in a city, with all that means…</p>
<p>Bad food at UCLA??? In my experience, they have some of the best college food!</p>
<p>Daughter crossed off Northwestern. We visited on a hot day and they “shortened” the tour because of the heat (about 90). The resulting tour was very random and it was hard to get a feel for the campus. She felt bad for the people visiting from California, Texas and the East Coast. At least we are in driving distance and could have gone back. DD felt that if Northwestern were “smart” they would have handed out water bottles and popsicles (maybe umbrellas for shade if necessary) and taken everyone over by the beach! She was not impressed.</p>
<p>^Your report about NW is interesting, as my family visited on a very cold day in March. The tour guide stopped us at the pond and pointed out what was on the other side of campus. The cold itself didn’t bother me as much as the guide’s explanation of why there were many signs on the sidewalk, attached on all four sides with masking tape: because students walk with their faces down, huddled in their coats or sweatshirts, and putting the signs on the ground is the only way they’ll see them.</p>
<p>What prevents people form doing their own tour if the school tour is not enough?? Every school has a campus map for free and most buildings are open during the day. You just go in and walk around. Must everyone be spoonfed these days? I never took an official campus tour until last year and I have visited 100’s of schools. You just walk around and talk to people–not rocket science. See what you want to see–often places not on official tours. And no listening to loud talkers or dweebs with 100 questions.</p>
<p>^^ Actually that may not be true…</p>
<p>At Yale for example–the buildings are locked–and while there–we had gone up to the science hill on our own before the tour, hoping to see some of it–
no luck</p>
<p>Having been in New Haven prior to Phl, We were surrpised how the buildings at Penn were unlocked.</p>
<p>On every campus tour we have been on–except BU and Holy Cross, they did NOT include dorms in the tours–as those are closed to the public for safety. </p>
<p>I realize this varies from school to school. I think what people hope to get from a tour is a general lay of the land and some insight from a student who attends the school. Wandering with a map in hand is helpful too. It need not be mutually exclusive. While wandering MIT, we found ourselves coming into a building from a very lower floor–and in a back door…a custodian directed us to the public floor. ;)</p>
<p>I’m with Barrons…walk around, talk to people, get a feel for the vibe. There are way too many stories here of people who crossed schools off their list because they didn’t like someone giving a presentation or giving a tour.</p>
<p>My own take on the “instant cross-offs” is this:</p>
<p>For some kids, I think the instant cross-off is really a way of telling M&D that they never really were that interested in the place to begin with, but thought that M&D really wanted them to be interested in it …</p>
<p>For some kids, I think the instant cross-off is really a way of reducing an already too large list to a more manageable list …</p>
<p>In these cases, I don’t think “instant cross-off” is such a bad idea.</p>
<p>My daughter didn’t like the trampy little skirt and top the Georgetwon guide wore, but Georgetown had programs that were really well suited to my daughter, and it seemed as though that school kept bubbling to the top for lots of reasons. We live close, so I suggested that DD go talk to a professor. Her impression of the school changed; the professor, a department chair, talked to my daughter for more than 90 minutes and gave her all kinds of wonderful advice. It turned out that the price tag was just too high, but she did give it a second chance.</p>
<p>Well, that just says a little more about Yale than anything else–I ran into that too when I visited the place a couple years ago. Very security conscious–even many quads were locked to outsiders. Princeton and dartmouth are wide open. </p>
<p>Dorms are pretty much that way everywhere and that makes sense as people have their stuff lying around and often don’t lock the door if they step out.</p>
<p>“people have their stuff lying around and often don’t lock the door.” </p>
<p>I will refrain from again telling the anecdote about how I was wrestling with a guy on his bed when a tour guide we knew swung open the unlocked door to show a prospective student and his family a typical dorm room.</p>
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<p>I really think Mt Holyoke went lower on D’s list (such a shame! it would be perfect for her!) because of the handkerchief skirt the tour guide wore.</p>
<p>Stonehill(felt like a prep school), Macalester,Amherst(way too east coast for my midwestern dtr)…the tour guide is your first impression, and yes, although you’d like to be open minded enough to look further, sometimes it’s hard to get past a girl with a shaved head as your first impression…</p>
<p>Yet we adored our purple-haired Bryn Mawr tour guide.</p>
<p>I really did try not to say anything, but I really wish we could avoid calling women trampy, especially when really short skirts are in style. We don’t have to like them, but trampy brings a whole sexual double standard that I thought we’d slayed.</p>
<p>I don’t think the poster called the girl trampy, she called the skirt and top trampy. There may be a nicer way to describe this ensemble, but I think most of us got a pretty clear image of what was being described. There is a good deal of clothing some might describe as “in style” today that others find inappropriate and offensive.</p>
<p>The way students dress on campus definitely tells you a lot about the culture of the school and about whether it will be a good “fit” for a particular student.</p>