The track is several miles northwest of JHU. There are numerous stores located on St. Paul Street.
Track and field athletes walk to the track; it is one mile east on 33rd. The facility (which is quite nice) opened in 2009. That said, some of the area around the track is sketchy. Right around the main campus itself is just fine. Just north is some of the most expensive real estate (and the private schools to match) in the entire Baltimore region.
There are a handful of stores on two blocks of St. Paul off campus. Again, phenomenal school and a good fit for many kids. My son was simply looking for something different.
We visited UVA yesterday. Kiddo hadn’t really been interested before (we only visited because we were in Charlottesville anyway for turkey day) and kiddo lost most of the interest that he had had. The campus was nice, the buildings were beautiful, but everyone we met was in town for the football game and kiddo hates football.
OFF:
Tufts - Biggest tour group EVER, never heard the guide. Not even sure who was leading tour
BU - Info session heavily scripted; had everything but a laugh track. Tour degenerated into our counting number of kids wearing $800 Canada Goose jackets
Berkeley - warnings from engineering kids: “Watch out for students who will RIP PAGES OUT OF YOUR TEXTBOOK SO YOU CAN’T DO PROBLEM SETS”. “I’ve only had a FEW classes with 500 people in them.” “I’m switching majors because I can’t get into classes I need.”
Colorado College - most welcoming Adm Office, but clueless (“We have a 3/2 program, where you finish your engineering degree at a partner school.” “Which ones?” “Um, well, one is, um”)
RPI - “I think we should lock the car doors”
UPS:
Cal Poly SLO - odd Beach Boys-meets-rodeo vibe, but students enthusiastic, able to cite specific opportunities
CO School of Mines - great campus, lots of outdoor activity, students agree the work is hard but strong sense of community. “And we have a minor in EXPLOSIVES!”
Cooper Union - amazing facilities, small student body. Downside, tour guide’s Christian proselytizing (not opposed to faith, but on a college tour of a non-Christian college?)
Northeastern - yeah, it’s right down the road from BU, but a world away in culture
Quote o’ the day. Priceless. Excellent first post, welcome. 
UP:
Juniata College, notwithstanding the surrounding town which is admittedly odd (instantly greeted by a maximum security penitentiary with shiny barbed wire)
Otterbein, it’s all about that surrounding area. Columbus OH is actually fun.
OFF:
Saint Vincent College. I wish I could draw a picture here but imagine a cliff. Draw dorms on top. At the foot of the cliff, put the practice field for the Pittsburgh Steelers. So, a big football field. Next, draw a hill. Put the rest of the school here. Not across from the dorms mind you…dorms at one end on the cliff, school…a mile? Two? away after walking down the cliff, across the field and up the hill. Add snow. LOTS OF SNOW
They clean the bathrooms and empty trash in rooms. My S goes there. They have huge closets in all the rooms I have seen, and many have balconies.
Our visit to Syracuse U. for our S this year made it drop off the list. We sat in on the Business school info session and it was good. Provides useful info, a tour and even snacks and swag. Toured the campus and even caught a women’s basketball game. The surrounding areas were iffy.
UCLA is almost the same. Dorms up on a hill, walk a half mile past athletic facilities, then up another (small) hill to the academic buildings.
@PAclgmom My D would agree with you about St. Vincent. She wasn’t crazy about the student center or the dining hall either. She also didn’t like that the airport was almost next door to campus.
D didn’t mention it but she really likes lots of trees and it did seem sort of bare. I wouldn’t be surprised if that influenced her perception.
I only saw the freshman dorms and it didn’t seem like such a long walk to the academic buildings, but my uni experience is limited to Rutgers and U of Michigan where size is on a very different scale.
The dorms and classrooms I saw were decent, and the basilica was lovely. The tour guides seemed genuine, not like they were putting on a show, and I also liked that the other parents I met there were so friendly and down-to-earth.
I can’t really say it went up or down for me. I wasn’t wowed by it looks, but otherwise it was okay. I’d like to go back in a sunny day in spring.
4 more to report on - one in each category
Moved off - Vassar - not because it wasn’t wonderful, but because it wasn’t the right vibe for my sporty, stem kid. And I have to say that even though advice on CC is often informative, you do have to sometimes take it with a huge grain of salt. I had read on CC that Vassar was ‘dreary’, ‘full of smokers’ and that Poughkeepsie was a dump. Didn’t find that at all. Even on a grey, rainy day, Vassar was far from ‘dreary’. Campus was quite pretty, with very nice landscaping and architecture. Insides of some buildings could use a sprucing up, but dreary is not a word that applies to this school. Didn’t see a single smoker. And as for Poughkeepsie, with some many LACS being in remote locations or not in walking distance to anything, I thought it was a plus that there were shops and eateries just steps off campus. Plus the train station makes it accessible to nyc, and even though it is a 2 hr ride, which I normally wouldn’t call close, it seemed like students really do travel into nyc and nyc travels to Vassar for various programming. Artsy, theatre vibe, maybe a tad too PC for being PC sake, but all in all a great place. We went on open house day so I would have expected the info session to have had more content than just 1 admissions guy talking, but both the tour and the info session were above average.
Moved down - way down - on life support clinging to a place on the list - Tufts, Before visiting heard so many contrasting things about the place and now I know why - I think the school is in sort of an identity crisis. Is it a LAC or research uni? An engineering school or an arts school? A close knit community or lots of students doing their own thing? I can;t answer that and the school didn’t do a good job of answering either. Didn’t help that you enter through a parking garage and into a reception area that was cold, uncomfortable, with little reading material on hand, and staffed by unfriendly, non eye contact making students. On to the info session where the admissions person jumped right into 45 minutes of personal anecdotes and minutiae, without giving a broader view of the school. Spent so much time talking largely about herself, that she ran out of time to cover the admissions basics. Tour guide was the highlight, though it was a huge tour and since registration was required, they should have had more guides. Our guide was personable and entertaining, though we saw the insides of very few buildings. Campus was nice enough, the best part was the view of Boston from a hilly viewing spot, though I kept envisioning Tufts students standing there lamenting that if they had just taken 1 more AP class in high school they could be studying at that school down there (MIT). I would characterize the vibe as extremely low energy. Perhaps because so many kids live off campus, there was just no hustle and bustle. To be fair, the engineering piece sounded strong. Lots of women in engineering, and it seems like there is a focus not just on getting a high paying job after graduating, but on trying to do things to make the world a better place. But the 6 required semesters of foreign language seems onerous.
Stayed the same. Boston College - had seen it before with older daughter, so we knew it was a place we would like.
Lovely campus, in a really lovely neighborhood, in a great location. Though, to be fair, it really should be called Chestnut Hill University, because it is neither a college nor in Boston. Very friendly, well mannered kids (holding doors open, asking if we needed directions etc) with a happy, upbeat vibe. Info session was pretty good and had 4 students on a panel answering questions and speaking to their experiences. Lots of community service going on and proximity to Boston is key for internships and research. Tour guide not the best, made a remark that BC was a commuter school with budget problems back in the 80’s, and then Doug Flutie threw his hail Mary pass and with that the fortunes of the school changed. I can see why so many like this school, because it has a liberal arts flavor but with a larger student body. Still, I left feeling that even though we liked it a lot, that it was missing that special something, something. Like if the location wasn’t so good, would it be as desired as it is? Would the academics hold up without the location? (also did not like the main dining hall - ugly and depressing - hard to envision eating 3 meals a day there for 4 years - and lack of housing is a potential issue) Unlike the previous poster who was counting the Canada Goose jackets on her BU tour, at BC, we counted the number of students who said they were from NJ! And for those of you who say that BC is secular and not really Catholic, try telling that to the cute little nun who greeted us in the admissions office and had BC bookmarks with religious iconography to hand out. Or the fun fact we learned on tour, that BC has more Jesuits per square foot than any place but the Vatican!
Up, Up, Up - Brown - was not expecting to like it so much, but wow! Vibrant, friendly, buzzing with activity, lots of students interacting with each other. Before coming, didn’t think much of the open curriculum or the grading system, but after hearing it explained, seems like it leads to students really pushing their boundaries and taking risks. Tour guide, despite not taking us into buildings and overusing the words, ‘yeah’, ‘cool’, ‘and like’ ‘and so’ ‘weird’ ‘yeah’ yeah’ ‘cool, ‘cool’, yeah’, was so enthusiastic and seemed to know everyone on campus that he passed. Info session was very good. Two articulate, intelligent, students talking about academics and course work, and then an admission guy came in and did a short talk, but it was the best one I have seen. He was well spoken but genuine, not the type who was there to put on a show or do his own stand up comic routine, but to impart some really useful info about the school and the process. And I know it’s a liberal place, but from what we saw, it didn’t seem over the top. Wish we didn’t love it so much - but we did!
@wisteria100 That’s a shame about Tufts. I’m a junior and as of right now, it is my top choice. I’ve heard lots of mixed things about Tufts, but hopefully a visit will help me decide.
@PureShores Don’t forget the ol’ saying, “Someone else’s trash is someone else’s treasure” or something like that. You may love it. YMMV.
Most of us on here have kids at a college that someone else doesn’t like, but luckily there are many to choose from in the good ol’ USA to find the right one for you.
@PureShores For every kid that hated it (like my own son) I can show you six that love it. Like the earlier poster, my son was turned off by a horrible Admissions presentation. I never have seen so many kids fall asleep and so many adults doing work email during a presentation. Even though my son didn’t like it, several of his close friends have ended up there and just think the world of it. It’s a good location with nice facilities, top notch academics, and lots of interesting and well rounded students.
AH yes, the tour grand finale! I took a photo of Boston…zoomed way way in…we still giggle about it.
@pkchamp89 What made Syracuse drop off the list? Was it just the neighborhood or other things? Thanks:)
@citymama9 I think it was partially the neighborhood and how far it was from home. He really wanted Syracuse to be the perfect fit but it just wasn’t. It had the academics and sports aspect all on paper but when we visited it just didn’t click.
@PureShores, @CADreamin is right. You may love Tufts. Try to make your visit a long and varied one to get a good sense of the place, its culture and academics. If possible, visit a couple of times. For what it’s worth, my son is a freshman at Tufts and is ridiculously happy.
Take this site – particularly threads like these, where (mostly) parents share their subjective experiences – with a huge grain of salt. Have faith in your own instincts during this process. Good luck!
@wisteria100 , Tufts is usually pretty high energy but otherwise, I think you read it right. Except that there’s no identity crisis – all those seemingly at-odds things are pretty much what the school has always been and is happy to be. Lots of students like it for just that reason. At so many schools, there is a dominant culture that’s easy to define. At Tufts, less so. Maybe it’s the size or location. In any case, for some it’s ideal. For others, far from it. But I don’t think you missed the vibe. Sounds like you got it perfectly! @PureShores, definitely visit! It may be exactly what you’re looking for! I know lots of students who have loved it.
I was thinking the same thing, @gardenstategal I don’t think Tufts has an identity crisis as much as the best of both worlds: a small research university with somewhat of a LAC feel. And I love the fact that it is a school strong in both STEM and arts. I understand some people prefer clearly-delineated messages when visiting, however; a student who wants an easily digested snapshot of a school will probably not particularly like Tufts after a visit.
And yes, the student who is thinking that it would have taken just one more AP to get into MIT (and would pine on the hill ever after) should save the application $ by not applying to Tufts; I am not convinced Tufts is interested in that kind of student anyway (and neither is MIT, for that matter). It is a funny image, though!