<p>There's a thread for colleges that were crossed out after visiting, I would love to hear about some more successful college visits!</p>
<p>I guess I’ll start, my best and most impressive visits were at Olin, Carnegie Mellon, and RPI. MIT was nice too</p>
<p>I was in awe over the University of Virginia. That was 35 years ago.</p>
<p>Bates, Hampshire, Bard, Ithaca College, Bennington College, Union, Clark - all had great tours and/or open houses. We voted the Bard tour guide the best. She wore heels and walked backwards with a PURSE gracefully. The Hampshire tour also was excellent. I loved the tour at Bates - they separated kids and parents for tours which I thought was brilliant.</p>
<p>We’ve enjoyed all our visits so far. The best student tour guide we had was at UVA, very accessible guy, outgoing, a great storyteller, and extremely knowledgable (especially since he had just finished his Freshman year). My son really enjoyed the tour and by the end, was up front asking questions. UVA does a great job selling their history. The tour was so nice after a boring hour listening to the admissions person drone on and on. </p>
<p>William & Mary had a great tour as well. The guide seemed to know every student we passed and also did a great job talking about history and tradition. She wasn’t as polished as the UVA guy, but that didn’t seem to bother my son. He loved W&M. The admissions presentation was lively as well.</p>
<p>Univ. of Richmond - we weren’t sure what to expect because we didn’t know as much about this school. The campus is beautiful and very “collegiate” looking. The tour guide was nice and personable and worked hard to connect with each person in her group, pointing out buildings housing their majors, etc. the tour was long, but comprehensive. The admissions speech was fine and given by a student intern. The tour stopped in the dining hall for cookies and each student was given a card that allowed them to apply for free. After the tour we walked campus on our own and meet a very friendly biology professor who approached us and introduced herself. She silent time telling my son about their program and her research. </p>
<p>These are the leaders so far. We’re planning to visit other schools this coming Spring Break. Probably Wake Forest, Elon, and Va. Tech and maybe Duke and UNC.</p>
<p>Our best tour was at Cornell. Our tour guide was incredible, and of course a champ at walking backwards. The school came alive with her.</p>
<p>I Started a thread on this a while ago - I can’t link anything, but it was called colleges you surprisingly loved after visiting :)</p>
<p>University of South Carolina. We went just because we were in the area and wanted DD to see a large public university. She (and we) loved this school. It ended up being a very close second to where DD eventually matriculated. The tour was a LONG one and the tour guide wove an info session into the tour. Of the 28 colleges we visited with our two kids, he was the BEST student ambassador of all.</p>
<p>University of Chicago and Hampshire (top two for me). Runners up: Hendrix, University of Minnesota, Knox, University of Iowa.</p>
<p>I didn’t apply to Yale, but I visited there 4 or so years ago because my cousin was attending grad school there. Our visit was fantastic. Our tour guide was friendly and knowledgeable, the admissions video was hysterical, and all of the students we met were so amicable and helpful. Wish I had had a high enough high school GPA to actually apply there! Oh well, at least I’ll graduate from Case Western debt-free in two years because of their fantastic merit aid, so no regrets :)</p>
<p>@oldmom4896 Oh yeah I forgot Cornell! My tour guide was great at walking backwards too. I actually ditched that tour and snooped around their engineering buildings and met some very friendly administrative ladies who introduced me to some grad students, and then the grad students showed me a couple labs. Great experience!</p>
<p>We visited LOTS of schools on college searches for all three boys.</p>
<p>Schools that we didn’t expect to like but really really did:
Dickinson
Lafayette
American
Emory
University of Denver
Michigan State </p>
<p>Schools we expected to like, but didn’t:
Tufts
George Washington
Cornell
University of Michigan</p>
<p>Bryn Mawr wasn’t even on one D’s radar when we went to visit Haverford and Swarthmore for her, but we did the whole info/tour/interview at all the tri-co schools just bc we were there, and both Ds who were there unexpectedly loved Bryn Mawr. Swarthmore is spectacular in every way and the tour was fantastic.There’s a terrible woman in the admissions office at Swarthmore but we ignored her as everything else was wonderful. Haverford fell off the list after that visit.</p>
<p>Visiting some of the 5 college consortium in MA, Smith was a surprising gem - not sure why we weren’t prepared to love it, but the whole family came away feeling that Smith trumped Amherst on that visit. D3 who was looking at colleges later did a fly-in at Amherst and her estimation of that college was bumped up after a few days on campus, but Smith remained a happy discovery.
My last D (of 4), a current junior, is keeping in mind the women’s colleges, BMC and Smith, that we ‘discovered’ while visiting other colleges in their consortia. </p>
<p>I’d be interested in hearing about the Ohio and other midwest LACs - Oberlin, Kenyon, Grinnell, Carleton…if anyone has visited recently…</p>
<p>William and Mary. If you are a series student not interested in a “party school”, William and Mary is highly underrated.</p>
<p>I guess I don’t need to say that our Yale visit was incredible in every way. Standing inside one of the courtyards while the bells of Harkness Tower began to ring gave us all chill bumps. Our tour guide was a charismatic African freshman who made attending Yale seem more like constantly feasting at a glorious banquet than going to college! We stayed overnight and so spent two days on campus, really seeing everything…younger D and I loved the proximity of campus and city, but D who was looking (x-country runner and nature lover) eventually preferred Williams’ mountain setting to New Haven…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>We toured Grinnell. Expected to love it and didn’t. Since this is a thread about “great impressions,” perhaps I shouldn’t say any more. :(</p>
<p>Visited Michigan State with my family as an after-thought because we had some free time after seeing U of Mich. I was really impressed! Can’t speak about a tour, because we just walked around ourselves, but EVERY student was friendly and knowledgeable and welcoming!</p>
<p>Smith was a wonderful surprise. Neither D ended up applying there, for different reasons, but we all really loved the school after our tour.</p>
<p>Schools I visited within the past two years and really liked:
Georgetown University
Boston University
University of Maryland (also watched a great soccer game)
Johns Hopkins University
Wake Forest University
Duke University</p>
<p>Good tours, but not great:
University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill
University of Virginia
Virginia Tech</p>
<p>I liked our Bard tourguide, but the info session was so bad it pretty much canceled the tour out. It also didn’t help that the paths were so icy that we got to see a student fall spectacularly on them. </p>
<p>But you asked for the good visits…</p>
<p>Carnegie Mellon specifically the School of Computer Science. I loved the neighborhood, loved the campus, loved SCS. My son ended up attending.</p>
<p>U of Chicago - just gorgeous in April. I’m a total sucker for collegiate gothic. Also liked the neighborhood and downtown Chicago. </p>
<p>Caltech - my older son felt right at home. My kids raved for weeks about the brick oven pizza they had for lunch while I had a cooked to order grilled salmon that was fabulous. I’ve always thought the campus (designed by Bertram Goodhue) is one of the nicest - both in the way it’s set up and the architecture of the original buildings. Nice arcades. Landscaping of jacaranda, iris, wisteria is just gorgeous. Loved the dorms which feature wildly painted walls that date back generations. The common areas are full of ratty comfortable furniture. It’s got a great nerd vibe. Polar opposite of Stanford that feels like a fancy hotel or golf club.</p>