Ultimate is a great sport and a unique culture. It requires great athleticism to play well but in many ways revolving around its unique culture, Ultimate strikes me as the “anti-sport” sport if that makes any sense - the “flair”, the playfulness, the self-refereeing.
@doschicos Haverford on the list!
I actually really disagree with this:
"Jock school, preppy school, crunchy school, sporty school, lefty school, righty school, party school, geek school, greek school.
I hope our children have the ability to bring a little more analysis to bear on their college choices…"
I think it is important to feel like you fit in. That you will find your people. Probably the most important aspect for my D in my opinion. We only look at schools that are academically a fit whether it be reach, safety etc. I think most doing college tours are in the same spot. The list has already been narrowed to some degree by size type academic strength etc. Our kids do the research on schools with our parameters on what we as parents can pay etc etc. The rest is about feeling like they will find their place in their new home for four years. We all have our comfort zones even as adults. I can walk into a party where I know nobody and pretty determine who my people are. I don’t think kids are any different.
A little insight on my kiddo-She loved that the football field at Reed was overgrown. I had to laugh.
I won’t turn this into an Ultimate conversation but I think the sport takes the lacrosse, tennis, xc, soccer kids who have been playing their sport for years and want to do something different and fun, but still uses their athleticism. S19 played tennis competitively but burned out by age 14 and now runs xc. The combination of hand/eye coordination and quickness makes the sport perfect for him.
Any other schools out there that have a lot of love for their ultimate team? I’ll be hunting them down. 
The STEM focus did not. The size was the bigger surprise.
@homerdog There are a lot of schools where the Ultimate team is really good. I don’t think it’s as central to most school’s self-image as it is at Carleton (where a couple years ago, every freshman was given a frisbee at orientation - don’t know if they’re still doing that), but lots of schools with strong Ultimate teams are out there. For men’s Ultimate, since you’re talking about your son, you could start with these rankings:
My son was not making his choices based on Ultimate, but since he intends to play in college, it factors in somewhat, and most of the schools he’s applying to are in the top 50 of these rankings.
D1 College Nationals this year: http://play.usaultimate.org/events/2017-USA-Ultimate-College-Championships/
@homerdog for DIII colleges with strong Ultimate teams, look here:
http://play.usaultimate.org/events/USA-Ultimate-D-III-College-Championships-2017/
Note that these are not NCAA D1 and D3 teams. Carleton is a D3 team for NCAA, so the volleyball and XC teams are D3. Frisbee is not an NCAA sport, so whoever is organizing the frisbee competition can categorize the teams any way they want, but the NCAA teams at Carleton are and will be D3 in all NCAA sports. If Ultimate Frisbee becomes an NCAA spot, Carlton will compete in D3 only.
That’s right. This is how they are categorized by USA Ultimate (USAU).
Ursinus went up. It was very nice, but the Wawa down the street was the clincher.
Up on the list: Lafayette. We went yesterday for a tour. There were no info sessions available due to the holiday, I’m guessing. We saw the school over a year ago just to casually look around and thought it was pretty. We knew a real tour was needed. So, D really liked it. She thought the tour guide was very good, but was disappointed that there seemed to be a lot of focus on science and engineering, two areas she has no interest in. She also felt they weren’t shown enough buildings. Despite that she thought it was a great campus, liked the look of the students and liked hearing about the small class sizes and the active social scene. She wants to go back at some point and sit in on a class in the humanities or social sciences. Oh, also my D thought it reminded her of Bucknell, but I didn’t really see that other than lots of sporty looking students.
My impression: I liked it in terms of the lovely campus and the laid back vibe. It seemed much less preppy and “perfect” than U of Richmond and Elon. I saw real diversity and a wide range of kids. Many seemed nerdy and jockish. It looked like a comfortable place to be a student. It’s also only 1 and 1/2 hrs from home. There are no other colleges of interest that are this close to us.
We need to just find out more about what it’s like for non-stem students. As of yesterday, D wants to apply next year. Elon is still her favorite, but Lafayette is tied with Bucknell and Richmond. We still have lots more to see this year.
I forgot to mention a couple of things: We thought the town of Easton was really cute. I’m talking about the section near campus with the shops and restaurants. Also, I liked that despite Lafayette being a smallish school, population-wise, there were lots of people out and about on a cold day, and the campus had a good energy. One thing I didn’t really like was the Student Union building. I am always on the lookout for the perfect union bldg, but this one disappointed. It just seemed dated.
Fordham went way up the list. My kid was ready to apply ED at William & Mary (prestige, great business school, hours away from home) but the Fordham open house made him rethink. He liked the combination of the green, scenic Rose Hill campus with the easy access to NYC and advantages of a big city. He was impressed that many students had internships with Big 4 accounting firms. The football team, talk by the energetic and funny University president and the friendly students and staff were all pluses. The fact that it’s only 45 minutes away from home was a minus (and one reason it wasn’t high on the list to begin with) but we told him that we wouldn’t expect him to come home all the time.
University of Delaware came off the list. I’m not sure why, lots of kids in our area love it, but something about the town or school rubbed my son the wrong way and he refuses to apply. He won’t really say what it is and I don’t even know if he has a real reason articulated in his head. Maybe it was the one-way streets (we got a bit lost at one point) or the feeling that the town was just the college & nothing else. We couldn’t schedule a tour, just walked in to the admissions office, picked up their self-guided tour brochure, talked with an admissions staffer, looked in at the Honors College office and the business school building. I thought it looked like quite an acceptable option but he didn’t. I asked whether he didn’t like it because we didn’t get to meet any students and he said no, that wasn’t it, he just didn’t like it.
University of Virginia went way up after a visit this week. As the alma mater of both parents, it was emphatically OFF the list until early action came into play. (If applying SCEA to Princeton, you aren’t allowed to apply EA to any private colleges, but you can apply EA to a public school.)
“OK, you can apply there, but you have to visit,” I insisted.
We were blessed with a gorgeous fall day and an enthusiastic guide who did NOT walk backward. Rather, the guide halted in strategic spots of the beautiful grounds, to discuss aspects of the university such as student life, academics, and so on.
Guides at UVa are not employees of the admission office. They are well-trained volunteers, and it is prestigious and competitive to be a guide. They also do history tours for visitors to the area.
Our guide was frank about the recent upsetting events (the neo-nazis marching through the central grounds) and discussed the university’s response. She clearly loves the school and did a good job of communicating why, with many helpful stories and examples. She also discussed areas where she believes UVa could use some improvement, and the steps that have already been taken in that direction.
U.Va. still isn’t at the top of my kid’s college list, but I consider it a huge win to get “I liked it a lot more than I thought I would.”
None of the schools we visited went down the list, even though our guide at Chicago was less than ideal. Sort of an Reese Witherspoon on a Speed/helium jag. I was a bit bemused, but my wife took me aside after two minutes and said, “This girl has an ego problem.” My boys were already rolling their eyes before she went into endless descriptions of courses she was taking and course options for students. This after the Admissions officer had described course loads and options during our long introductory session, and made a point of saying that she didn’t want to mention things that we would be shown on the guided tour.
We finally left the tour near the end. She was too much. Besides her hyper, self involved personality, we didn’t go into one building. Not a residence, not a hall, library, or fitness area…nothing! At some other schools we were given free meal tickets to the dining hall. She gave us vague directions to a coffee shop.
So, not the greatest tour, but there is no way that one student guide is going to turn us off from a great school like U of C. We already have family on the faculty, and the impression the buildings leave, especially the older ones, can’t be denied. Dad(moi) was also impressed with the Robie house.
We snuck into the Booth building and wife took a ton of the glossy folders, as is her wont. Someone had a SERIOUS cookout going on the patio. We contemplated sneaking into that, too, as it looked to be free for the Booth students, but didn’t want to end our visit led away in handcuffs by the vaunted University of Chicago Police.
Isn’t Amherst ground zero for Ultimate?
Yeah. The game sort of started there in the mid 60s (or 50s, with trays?!). The club teams are still very popular.
@57special You have relatives on the faculty? Heck, I would have asked them for a private tour if I were you.
@57special I think we had that same tour guide at Chicago last summer. She was too much. I wanted to jump out of that tour and join another but our S19 was too embarrassed to do that.
citymama9- well, at the time we did the tour U of C wasn’t, we thought, a realistic option for S1, but we thought we’d do it since we were in town. Turns out that Chicago became an option after the tour.
Relatives are somewhat distant, but if nothing else we should have said hi, as they are good people. If S1 goes there I’m sure we will see more of them.