@soflodad Good point about
the Atl 10. The adcom mentioned this also as now the bball team plays every year in DC and NYC which is helping to raise the profile of the school.
@citymama9 You will probably
find that all of the popular SE and MidAtlantic Unis have heavy contingents of NY/NJ/CT students, including publics such as UVA and UMd. However, for the same reasons, these Unis also have large contingents of CA, Chicagoland and increasingly TX students
which provides a degree of diversity. My older son attends UMiami and it seems that all his friends are from Northern NJ, Manhattan or Long Island!
@Empireapple that is great to hear. DD should finish out with a high class rank (thinking 2nd out of about 425) and her ACT is a 33, so I have hopes that RPI may be willing to offer her some merit. Our high school rarely sends anyone outside of Texas/Oklahoma and when we do it is usually for sports. No one here has ever heard of Rensselaer, so I certainly appreciate the info!
I’ve been to the U of Denver many times. There is a wonderful performing arts center, because there is a wonderful music program. Business, international relations, and more recently engineering programs are strong. Sports facilities are top notch as they have won several national championships. Pool, climbing walls, two sheets of ice, gymnastics performing gym and practice gym. A lot of speakers and conferences are held on campus. It hosted one of the presidential debates in 2012.
Dorms are a little worn. Libraries are beautiful.
It is a campus, but bleeds into a neighborhood. Many of the upperclassmen live off campus, but some of the housing is becoming very expensive in that area. Some people don’t like that a major street borders on one side of the campus and another splits the campus (over street pedestrian cross-over). There is a light rail stop on campus that can get you downtown, to the airport, and to a lot of residential areas kids rarely go to.
@OhHey when your younger D is ready check out Kansas State and Colorado State too for animal sciences!
Oh and funny thing S’s dorm room is next door to the campus tour room! Makes for quiet neighbors at night. “Penthouse” of the dorm, great view, perfect tour area.
@OhHey I scored a 31 so I’m sure that a 33 can get in. If you can visit it will help with getting accepted. If you can’t visit I can tell you without a doubt, it’s a beautiful campus with buildings comfortable spaced around. High calibur curriculum and faculty with great job potential especially for NY City and California companies.
Off - Earlham (too small; Richmond IN was too depressing); Tufts (lack of on-campus housing; too strict distribution requirements, just not warm & fuzzy); BU (too big & impersonal & lack of campus feel); Alfred University (daughter was NOT impressed with student counselors at the summer pre-college program); Bryn Mawr (outdated science labs)
Moved up: Dickinson – what a great suprise! Wonderful visit; great students; engaged faculty. My daughter ended up spending all afternoon hanging out with physics faculty and students. Allegheny: A safety for my daughter, but we were more impressed than I had expected.
Others we’ve visited and liked (but no surprises up or down): Colgate; Swarthmore; Haverford; Vassar; Kenyon; Denison; Oberlin; Franklin & Marshall
@citymama9 - The Davidson eating houses is one of the things my daughter really liked at Davidson. Since they’re essentially an “informal” sorority, that appealed to her a lot.
Her hesitance at rushing was rooted in a resistance to the perceived cliquey-ness, snobbiness, and sometimes regimented requirements of sororities at some schools. We happened to be at Davidson the day the eating houses were selecting their new members. There was a lot of excitement among the students that day.
She also really liked the student union buildings at both Davidson and Richmond. I have to admit, at both schools, the student union buildings really felt that they were the “students buildings”.
We just visited Pitt, Case Western Reserve, and the U of Rochester. Pitt stayed about the same: an excellent “likely” school for my son and not really right for my daughter. Rochester fell for me, just because I didn’t like the campus setting (not integrated into the city at all; seems as though you have to drive everywhere rather than walk). The kids still liked it well enough. CWRU was the surprise. I thought my son would probably like it a lot, and he did. What was unexpected was that my daughter really fell in love with it. The environs are perfect - right in the middle of museums (for daughter) and hospitals (for son). Our tour guide was amazing, which didn’t hurt. We have never had as thorough and informative a tour. The students seem “nerdy in a good way,” according to my daughter. The academic offerings are broad, and Cleveland’s offerings are broader. For instance, we saw a sign outside Severance Hall saying that students could get a pass for unlimited Cleveland Orchestra concerts for $35! Really, there wasn’t anything to dislike other than the distance from our home.
@svcamom I don’t have any detailed insights into the engineering program at Nebraska but let me just say that I have lived on both coasts, & I’m aware that the prairie states (Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, & sometimes Oklahoma & the Dakotas) are often sneered at as being punchlines where the land and people are equally insignificant. But those who bother to get past stereotypes will find these states to be full of sincere people who are serious about education all the way from K-12 and into the universities. Their large state universities tend to be fairly easy to get into, but they deliver the goods academically in a wide range of subjects…all without the coastal attitude (and often with significant merit aid to out of staters).
My D17 had a 32 Act and not as high a ranking and got about $21000 merit from RPI. They are actively trying to get more girls on campus.
If you have not seen the campus I would strongly suggest you do. My daughter said she could make herself happy there but choose a school with a better fit.
Personally I did not like the school. It was very cold and austere.
Just back from moving our Sophomore into Pomona College, I took a tour of CMC, Harvey Mudd and Scripps. I have to say I was very impressed with Scripps. It has a beautiful campus with lovely dorms. The inspiring quote over the gateway arch is reminiscent of lots of ivys and Pomona College. The night we were there, a huge In-N-Out (famous burger) truck pulled up for Orientation to serve the freshman. It looked like fun. Harvey Mudd was all right looking, very engineery, with signs up boasting “We’re athletes (too).” Don’t know about that. CMC was too modern for me, but may be to someone’s liking who is into more Bauhaus aesthetics. But Scripps is really a gem.
Scripps was beautiful. And the Claremont Village is impressive – whoever dissed it here previously must not have been there for years. I wonder if the Scripps campus is really past the divisions created by the RA and Tour Guide strike and it’s root causes? Pomona seems to be dealing with social justice activism divisions as well.
@preppedparent I can attest that some kids at Harvey Mudd are, indeed, athletes. Without giving too many details for privacy’s sake, we know a kid who is a recruited athlete who absolutely fits the description. Competed at state-level in his/her sport. There is such thing as a bright math/sci/eng kid who’s an amazing athlete, too.
agree @1518mom My two students were 3 and 4 year Varsity athletes in high school, but it just seemed the geeky school which is celebrated in its own right was trying just a little too hard to advertise themselves as great athletes IMHO.
Moved up: Providence College. It went from being a safety to a strong contender. Students and staff were very friendly and welcoming and everything was well organized and focused. The building where the admissions office is located is beautiful and pristine. There are many indicators in the building that the school is Catholic (paintings, crosses, a chapel) but that wasn’t an issue for us since we’re Catholic. Later we saw that the brochures and viewbooks had photos of students who looked identifiably Sikh and Muslim, with turbans and hijabs. The guide said when we went to the chapel that the Sunday night Mass can be like a social gathering; 70% of students are Catholic but some non-Catholics attend because they like the singing, candlelight, fellowship with friends and inspiration.
As we waited in the admissions lounge with DS for his interview, a student came to greet us, offered us coffee / tea, and asked us if we had any questions she could answer. Another student was having a similar conversation with another family. It felt good to be welcomed.
The info session was well paced and included 2 speakers, a current student and an admissions officer who was a recent grad, and both were lively, funny and practical. They handled questions well and seemed genuinely interested in the attendees. I don’t remember another information session as good as this one; also the questions were pertinent and nobody asked anything that sounded dumb or pretentious (as happens on too many visits).
The tour went smoothly in spite of rain–plastic ponchos were available for anyone who wanted them. The guide was energetic and friendly and the campus didn’t feel too small or too spread out either. It felt like a good balance of emphasis on academics, residential life and sports.
Off the list: Tufts. Being alumnus was hoping they would knock it out of the park. Our family is more conservative than liberal. Admissions person giving presentation was more interested in talking about “joining the cause” than about education, jobs, overall experience. Attitude that Tufts is great and we really do not need to recruit. So the all American type kid, Eagle Scout, athlete go somewhere else.