@homerdog - Agree on Grinnell. There are certainly students that fit the “hippie” description – met a few (and, on the other end of the spectrum, students that are full-on preppy), but overall? Easygoing casual with a range of styles. It’s one of the things I like about it … there’s no one single vibe to fit into or not fit into.
Also, agree totally on the matter of visiting schools your kid doesn’t like … that’s a very useful piece of figuring out what they DO like. Pretty sure I’ve said this before, but in our case, visiting a school our kid absolutely loathed (not expected) helped put more shine on subsequent visits to other schools. It’s all good/educational.
From the Fiske Guide regarding Wash U “The freshman FOCUS program helps balance the preprofessional bent of some of Wash U’s best programs with the school’s desire to provide a broad and deep educational experience and a smaller class size. The program lets first-year students work closely with professors and sample offerings from various departments.” And “the atmosphere is very collaborative and laid-back.” And “it’s a place to grow and learn while having an unbelievably fun time.”
The Wash U presentation showed us an uptight finance major who did not connect to the high school juniors and seniors in the audience. He certainly looked like no fun. There was so much talk about jobs and much less about learning. I know a decent sized group of kids who went to this presentation and they all say that they wouldn’t want to go to school with this student. In fact, it’s kind of a joke around here. Any time anyone shows interest in Wash U, someone up and says, “Really? Did you go to that presentation? That kid was a real piece of work with his Armani suit and Rolex.”
I keep thinking I should shoot a quick email to Wash U to tell them they turned off a giant group of bright kids.
@Maryjay60 It’s great to hear your impression since you’re a local. I still feel like I don’t have a good grasp on the school but it won’t matter to us for S19 anyway. He’s pretty bent on an LAC at this point.
Once my D16 discovered the Claremonts, she knew that’s where she wanted to be and needed to find the right fit for her. She was planning on applying ED to CMC and also had Scripps on her list. We had toured both but then also went to a local 5C fair. The CMC speaker was very businesslike and emphasized the pre-professional vibe. The Scripps speaker talked about collaboration and the nurturing environment. She leaned over during the presentation and said, “I think I might be more a Scripps person than a CMC person.”
@homerdog We looked at Wash U twice, but it has been a while. When my DD was in high school, she received a book award from Wash U and we went to a reception at that time. She did not feel particularly welcomed and that bothered her, since it was a very specific event. We looked at it again for law school, because it is obviously an excellent, top-tier law school. My DD was very high stats, accepted at every law school to which she applied, and received substantial scholarship money from all (including Wash U). When she visited in-depth, the law students proudly told her how “competitive” the law school students were - using as an example a class that cited a particular case which was available in one obscure text in the law library where one of the “competitive” students used a razor to remove those pages to give himself/herself an “edge.”
@odannyboySF Ahhh. Contemplative Kenyon. Love that. We thought the same thing when we visited this summer. Interesting that it has the same vibe with kids on campus.
re Wash U. A couple of inlaw side relatives went there, now in medical school. I looked at ratings for some STEM subjects and am so glad our son went to a much better public U, not at all interested in medicine with two physician parents. Wash U was likely better than their flagship, but agree with the premed aspect. The kids got a fine education but they were premed with majors, not hard core want to be what their majors were. I was hard core in my major but changed my direction in college- medical instead of grad school.
Of the 8 colleges we’ve visited so far, only one stood out in a bad way. I’m not going to name it since I don’t feel it’s fair to trash someone/an organization without giving them a chance to reply and I want to be brutally honest - and maybe even a little snarky - here.
We recently visited a USNWR top 20 university with a wonderful reputation; I’ll call it XU. The info session was hosted by an AO and also a student. The AO had some brief, appropriate talking points and then would solicit further information from the student. No idea how or why the AO chose this particular student, but the student appeared to have the emotional maturity of a 12 year old. She had to have been smart - engineering major at a top 20 uni - but she talked like a middle schooler hanging out at the mall; all of her stories about the school were about how immature she was and how the school provides all sorts of resources to help clueless people like her. Overall, of all the colleges we’ve seen, this was by far the least impressive info session.
After the info session, there was no organized way that groups were divided between the guides which meant it took a long time for the groups to form and there was a lot of waiting while they redistributed people from large to smaller groups. Although the campus was beautiful, unfortunately our tour guide was a girl who made the 12 year old at the info session look like a polished, wise scholar. Very, very nice, but very little actual info given in the tour - mostly breathless, giggly stories about how fun it is to do campus activities and how easy it is to study abroad. Least informative and least impressive tour of all the colleges we’ve seen.
It’s probably just an unfortunate coincidence that the two students represented in the official info session and tour were both unimpressive. Heck, this is a top school, I’m sure that’s not the norm. But it did leave a bad impression, especially combined with the lack of organization compared to how the other colleges ran the tours. My older son is one of those “born old”, uptight types and was completely turned off by it.
It is funny how these things can really make or break a decision. You are kind not to name school. Those mass visit days are really tricky too. Probably hard to organize and a lot at stake. In same week we attended two different ones. Both great schools with great reputations. One school did a poor job and the other a great job. Guess which school stayed on list?
Loyola New Orleans went up. We had toured Tulane in the AM (great presentation, high on the list still) ate lunch, and then on a whim toured Loyola next door. Presentation was adequate and unremarkable. Tour was good–small campus meant it was not overlong. What impressed us was 1. Friendliness of everyone we met. 2. Real sense of community. 3. Students looked “normal”–Levis and T-shirts, no designer purses or ostentatious labels. 4. Cool/relaxed about being next door to flashier and larger Tulane. 5. Seemed more New Orleans than Tulane which had an almost N.E. feel to it. Drawbacks: 1. Dorms. 2. Not strong in my child’s program.
“If you don’t name the school, it doesn’t help anyone. It’s just a story.”
Honestly, how would it even help anyone if it WAS named? Folks shouldn’t base their own college list decisions on one bad experience/one bad tour guide from one poster on an anonymous internet forum. It’s not “Oh, look! A bad visit. Gotta cross that one off our radar. Scratch, scratch.”
I got the impression this thread was started as a fun lark - stories - rather than as something that should be used to guide anyone through the process of formulating a list.
I can name schools that folks here rave about that left us underwhelmed and the opposite as well. Nothing to hang one’s hat on. Everyone should go kick the tires themselves as we don’t know each other in real life and, therefore, can’t weight one opinion more than another.
Actually I did name a school in a previous post and a parent sent me a direct message. It was a very helpful description of same school with lots of information. Her student with similar interests had a great experience there. I was happy to get the additional information. It made for a good discussion with D about second looks and reading between the lines.
@doschicos - agree 100% (for what that’s worth), but there are cases where some can’t “kick the tires”, and are left with what feels like endless choices and no way to sift out the signal from the noise.
This string is so long only because it gives folks a chance to bash the schools they decided not to apply to or didn’t get it. The only thing this string really confirms is that University Presidents should stop wasting their time raising money, and should instead give the tours and information sessions.
@Maryjay60 , how unfortunate that students would think stealing an important source document was somehow clever or positive. The tour guide at the law school I attended told an opposite anecdote on my accepted student tour (something about how students leave all hot topic items in a particular study carrel instead of checking them out so everyone could have access to the materials). It turned out that really was reflective of the attitude at my law school. It has a high bar pass rate and is well respected. Not all lawyers (or future lawyers) have that unfortunate attitude!!
"University Presidents should stop wasting their time raising money, and should instead give the tours and information sessions.
"
Or how about the schools spending more time on tour guide training. Bottom line, some schools aren’t good at the marketing. Some are too slick in the other direction for my taste. Some tour guides have bad days. Sometimes you just don’t click with a tour guide and it’s luck of the draw.
If you can’t tour yourself, build your list on tangibles and hopefully you can attend accepted student visits. Don’t build your list because a poster’s self-described “born old” son didn’t like giggly, youngish students. He might have clicked with another tour guide that was more of an old soul that turned someone else off as too serious, too dry. There’s nothing wrong with the story - in my opinion, that is what this thread is about, but not because it should be viewed as “helpful”.
I think that’s different than a parent giving another poster advice that the school administration is unresponsive, it’s hard to get the classes you want, the xyz department has too much turnover, etc. etc. Just my opinion…
It’s difficult to overcome a very bad first impression. And unfortunately sometimes there are coincidences that make things appear much worse than they actually are. I own a business and have had the frustrating experience where we only had three production errors in the entire last two years, but unfortunately all those products went to one client. As the owner, I have enough information to know this was just a bad coincidence, but I’m sure to that one client we appeared to be idiots.
As I mentioned in my post, the college where we had the bad info session and tour is a top 20 college, so it’s highly unlikely that the majority of their students are clueless, drooling, giggling 12 year olds. We just happened to luck into being put into first an info session and then a tour with two of them, which created a bad impression.
While this “story” might not allow someone to cross a college off their list, I’m hoping that the AO at some colleges read the thread and find information they can use to improve their offerings and refine their process. No need to trash any particular school (and by association their students and graduates) to do that.
This is not the thread about silly reason. The OP asked which schools moved up or down on the list, and why.
One post about a school not being a fit might be passed over, but if the same school appears 5 times, and it’s a reason you or your child really care about? Might be enough to ‘scratch scratch’, as you put it.
Most of us don’t have time to look at 3000 colleges, or even 30. If someone says Kenyon moved up because it is so small and classes only have 5 people in them, I know it isn’t right for me. I’ve never been to Lehigh, but I know about the big hill. That might be a deal breaker for some. There is nothing wrong with a core curriculum, but some don’t want it. In another thread going on right now, a parent asked which schools charge by the credit rather than ‘full time’ for 12-18 credits. That is important to her and might make the difference in her visiting school A or school B.
And yes, some have so many choices they can reject a school because there are no singles for freshmen or the only ice cream flavor offered on Wednesdays is strawberry. How will we know which school that is unless someone names it?
I think you made my point though. Small classes, core curriculum, tuition policies are all concrete, objective criteria and worth noting to come up with a list. A mismatch on tour guides with an application’s personality, isn’t, IMO.