Colleges your child crossed off the list after visiting, schools that moved up on the list. Why?

Parents Forum
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@wisteria100, as the mom of a tufts senior and a 2015 brown grad, I agree with the two comments above. Brown and tufts are in many ways alike: two campuses that feel traditional, but have city streets crossing through them; both attract social justice types; neither is socially dominated by frats; both excel at STEM and the humanities/arts; both are mid-sized universities with a LAC feel bc they focus on undergrads. Where they differ is in curriculum, one open and the other with distribution requirements. But frankly, a lot of brown kids–my son and his friends included–are the types who love and are interested in both humanities and stem, and continue to take classes broadly in college (my son concentrated in neuroscience but took a slew of English, creative writing, history, classics classes. His younger brother at tufts is an English major, Econ minor who has taken physics, stats, psych courses.)

Regarding the language requirement: you can either place out of some of the six credits, or in the case of my son who began a new language in college (Italian), you can configure your courses such that you take 3 actual language classes and then 3 culture classes. In his case, that was a Roman history class, a classic class on roman and Greek literature, and a lit class focused on Dante and Boccaccio taught in English. He loved all these classes and thought the one in the classics dept was one of his best classes at tufts.

Like brown isn’t for everyone, neither is tufts, but I’m not surprised that these schools have many overlapping applications bc they attract a similar student.

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Excellent reviews, @wisteria100 . I’ve been reading this thread since day 1, and I think Tufts might be the most loved or hated school on this thread. Those darn hills don’t help, haha! Personally, my daughter and I really liked Tufts, and I agree with @RenaissanceMom that Brown and Tufts attract similar students. My kid applied to both. Brown is fantastic and is the ultimate dream school, IMO. I agree with you about Vassar, gorgeous campus, great school, ok town.

I’m always very interested at how many people are influenced by a neighborhood around a school. I find that I am almost never bothered by a neighborhood. (I have to say though, I positively did not like the neighborhood around BC. Far too posh and pristine. Felt sanitized. I guess I like a bit of grit in my neighborhoods.) I reckon that liking or disliking a neighborhood is a reflection of how people feel about a college. My kid goes to Bates and a lot of people on CC think Lewiston is sketchy, but I do not agree. Run down in parts and not wealthy, yes, but not sketchy. But there will be plenty of people who will take it off their list because of the town. I think if a kid really loves a school, they are willing to overlook a not-beautiful town.

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As a Brown alum with a daughter who is happily enrolled at Tufts, I agree about the overlap between those two schools. At our high school there was a fair share of the top students who applied to and really liked both. For many, Brown was their first choice and Tufts their second. For my daughter, ironically (as she was a Brown legacy), Tufts was her first choice and she was only going to apply to Brown if she didn’t get in ED to Tufts (which she did). So yes, in our area they seem to attract the same types of kids. My personal take is that they attract kids who want more power to define their own experience. But that’s just my opinion.

Now I took my second daughter, D18, to Brown last spring and about 15-20 minutes into the tour (hadn’t done the info session yet), she whispered, “It’s too large.” Now this was at the point in the tour when we were standing in Sayles Hall (for those familiar with Brown) and the tour guide had just mentioned that the organ there was the largest one of its kind in existence. So I looked at her quizzically and replied, “What, the organ?” (She’s a little quirky and known to make odd, random comments). No, she said, the school. I had told her that if we were visiting a school and she quickly knew it wasn’t for her, to please let me know asap so we didn’t waste precious time. But never meant this to happen at MY alma mater :wink: She generously offered to continue on the tour if I wanted to do so for nostalgia’s sake, but it seemed pointless. She then allowed me to go shop at the bookstore for Brown paraphernalia to my heart’s content, commenting, “It’s going to be a long time before you get back here” (her younger sister is only 11).

She didn’t like Brown not only because of its size (she’s applying to almost all small LACs), but because of how, according to her, the campus sort of “bled” into the city streets, with no clear demarcation. I grew up in NYC and liked that. She hated that (then again, she’s a suburban girl who hates NYC, sigh).

On the other hand, she really liked Vassar. It was a lovely campus that seemed very self-contained, and we had a wonderful tour guide on our first visit. It really appealed to her as a STEM kid with far ranging interests (including history, anthro and poetry). However, on our second visit (when she was trying to narrow down choices for an ED decision), we had an info session that was populated by over 50% NYC students, to the point that the Admissions Officer leading the session was taken aback and asked if they had all come together (they hadn’t). I think this turned her off a little bit, fair or unfair. Vassar is still a top choice for her, but didn’t make first choice ranking.

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@wisteria100 @RenaissanceMom Thanks for the analysis of Tufts and Brown. Super helpful. Our S19 has been really looking exclusively at LACs but, if he wants an LAC experience within a university, I think both of these schools could fit the bill. We haven’t visited either and I hesitate to do so since they are reaches and I don’t want him to fall in love. Seems like they would be an awesome fit for him as an undecided, bright, interested-in-everything kind of student. He’s been comfortable with schools “in the middle of nowhere” and really like Kenyon, Carleton, and Grinnell. Lately, though, he’s been saying it would be great for those schools to be located near a city. Says that would be the best case scenario, but not a deal breaker since he really liked them. I feel like we need to show him some schools just a bit bigger and near cities that still have that liberal arts feel. His stats put him at the 75th percentile for both schools but, obviously, they both have low acceptance rates. Tufts cares about demonstrated interest so he went to the meeting with the Tufts rep at our high school and signed up for their mailing list.

A good friend of mine has a D18 who just applied early to Tufts. They’ve visited three times and loved it. They agree with the analysis that there are all different kinds of kids interested in different subjects. I’m used to that having gone to Northwestern and living among talented actors, musicians, and journalists, as well as engineers and liberal arts kids. I thought it made my experience so much more interesting.

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One school that shot WAY up in my D18’s rankings after visiting was Beloit. Being from the NE, we don’t hear much about Beloit around here (like, nothing). But we have a lot of midwestern family, and one, who is in the college advising business, told me that she could really see my D18 at Beloit. Based on that, and the fact that it looked like a fairly good fit as a “safe” school for my high stats daughter, we visited last summer (after seeing the randomness of the college admissions process for my older daughter’s friends, it was of primary importance to me that we find a “safety” that my daughter not only liked, but really really liked, and would be very happy at, with the potential of merit money being an added bonus).

Beloit surpassed all expectations. It set the tone when we pulled up to visitor parking and found, to our delight, that a parking spot had been reserved for my daughter by name (took a pic of her with her parking spot). Everyone at admissions was warm and informative, and the tour guide was just so enthused about the school and everything it had to offer. She had an interview with an Admissions Officer who then invited me into the interview to ask questions (is that normal?). It was a really nice campus that offered everything academically that she was interested in. And a HUGE plus for it was due to her interest in Anthropology (she is very STEM oriented but also deeply interested in Anthro). It has an entire museum on campus devoted to Anthropology, and is highly regarded in this area. My daughter, who can be fairly intense, left campus smiling and visibly relaxed, announcing that she thought she would rather go to Beloit than Amherst (!). That’s how much she liked it (and she liked Amherst, which is on her application list). I really wish more northeasterners knew about Beloit, it seems like a great place for the right kind of kid.

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The first two colleges I took my D18 to visit were Swarthmore and Haverford, as I thought they were some of the best “fits” for her out there. Actually, I thought Swarthmore fit her to a T (I had seriously considered it back in my day), and being that Haverford was so close by, it made for a good second tour for the day. Wrong. She left the Swarthmore info session commenting to me, “They are bizarrely competitive about how ‘non-competitive’ they are.” Perhaps that’s a confusing comment to some, but I had to agree that they spent quite a lot of time insisting that they weren’t as intense an environment as their reputation led people to believe. Given my tour experience back in the way old days, I understood her concerns. I recall touring during the winter when there was lots of snow on the ground and the tour guide proudly pointing out that students at some colleges made snowmen when it snowed. Not Swarthmore. They crafted the different stages of cell mitosis in the snow (and indeed they had). Great environment for some, not so for others :wink:

Haverford, on the other hand, immediately appealed to her. She loved the small size, loved the whole independent Honor-Code-driven feel, and the campus was appealing and self-contained to her (she’s the child who wants a well-defined campus). When we returned this past fall to size it up again to see if it would prevail as “top choice,” I told her she had to think long and hard about the type of student this school would attract - a student who wasn’t put off by its really small size and the fact that the majority of students get singles. Her reply was “like me.” The consortium was an added bonus, and we toured Bryn Mawr just because if she went to Haverford she would likely end up taking classes there (bad Bryn Mawr info session and tour, but that’s another tale). My intense daughter was smiling and relaxed (like she was at Beloit, see above) at Haverford. Good fit. Also helped that our recent tour guide shared our family’s deeply dry and sarcastic sense of humor.

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My D16 applied to both Brown and Tufts. By far, the best tour guide we’ve ever had was at Tufts. He told my favorite tour story- he was an art history major who had just learned something that excited him beyond belief. He returned to his dorm wanting to share it with someone. The only person around was a neighbor who was a computer science major. They talked and each decided to take a class in the other’s major to broaden their horizons. The CS kid ended up minoring in art history. I think that tour really sold the liberal arts education to my D.

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@homerdog one nice thing about Grinnell is that, even though it’s remote, it’s only about 45 minutes from Iowa City, which is a great college town.

@Momtothreegirls my d15 had a similar visit to Beloit and ending up choosing it over Grinnell, Oberlin, and others. She’s now a happy junior. They do a nice job with admissions and give out lots of merit money.

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@Momtothreegirls : Love the Beloit review. It was on my kid’s list as well, but we never got around to a visit because other options materialized that had the edge for other reasons, and it would have been a schlep for us, but I’m glad it was in the mix, and your review confirms it was a good choice.

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@KAMmom Thanks for the feedback. Beloit really really impressed us. It shot WAY up on my daughter’s list after visiting. It’s no longer a “safety,” but a school my daughter would be really really happy to attend, and would highly likely choose over more conventionally prestigious places. My daughter is much more concerned about finding a “good fit” for her than name recognition. Whether my daughter attends there or not, I am on a mission to publicize how wonderful a school it is in my area. My daughter is also applying to Grinnell, and is thinking of Oberlin too. Lots of overlaps among these schools.

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@Momtothreegirls Yep, we went expecting it to be a safety too and had the same reaction. Definitely lots of overlaps.

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@wisteria100 “Still, I left feeling that even though we liked it a lot, that it was missing that special something, something.”

I agree with you on BC. We visited it twice, once in Oct ‘13 (DS was a HS sophomore and DD a freshman) and it was our first college tour. We were looking for schools that ticked a lot of boxes (academics, location, transport logistics, campus atmosphere/student experience) and BC seemed to tick a lot of boxes so we cam away with a very positive impression so both kids applied. We visited again this past April as DD was accepted to BC’s A&S honors program so we went to Admitted Student Day. (We also visited admitted students days at Tuft, Georgetown and UVA in a two week period). Compared to those schools BC did seem to be lacking something on the academic side. The presentations were not as good, the school just seemed to be a bit less academic (although still good), the students and professors that we spoke to were less switched on than at the other schools. For example, they had one of the adcoms and a student speak about some sort of new interdisciplinary seminar programme that we could not figure out what the features or benefits of the programme. This was followed by clarifying that less than half of the freshmen would take it anyway as they did not have enough space. In addition, the whole day was just poorly organised. My DD said that BC just seemed to be a notch lower all around compared to the other schools on the list. Also, we took the T train back downtown after the session and it took over an hour to get back to Boston Common. My daughter who has spent the past 18 years on the London Underground felt that the T was like riding a bus. Tufts’ location definitely beats BC hands down as at Tufts you can easily get into Cambridge as well as Boston.

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We are a 90 minute drive from Beloit and it was the second school we toured this summer (after Chicago since that is also an easy trip). S19 liked Beloit. It was summer, though, so there weren’t many students around. The admissions staff was lovely and S19 got a private tour of the science building. He declared that the professor he met was awesome. Since then, though, it’s fallen down (or probably off) his list. After seeing Grinnell and Carleton, he felt the facilities at Beloit seemed outdated. I know there’s a new sports facility being built so I reminded him about that, but I do have to agree that Grinnell especially seemed to have state of the art everything.

We also met a student who chose Beloit over Grinnell on that trip to Beloit. For Beloit to move back on the list, I think we would have to revisit while school is in session.

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@londondad That must be the core renewal at BC. They talked about it a bit and while it is new, it seems to be off to a good start. It is indeed an interdisciplinary approach and addresses various world and community problems in a more liberal artsy style. They said it has been very popular so far, but does seem like they are working out the kinks. They made it seem like it was a return to their core values and a more liberal arts style of teaching.
I don’t think it would ordinarily take 1 hr to get from BC to Boston. You may have hit that on a bad commuting day.

And gosh - didn’t mean to start a firestorm on Tufts! I never said I didn’t like its location. Thought the location was great. But probably due to the fact that we saw it right after Brown, the contrast between all the activity there and the lack of activity we saw at Tufts (for those particular 3 hrs) was stark. I do have several friends with kids at Tufts. One who also has a kid at one of the tippy-top NESCACs, prefers Tufts and thought my D would like it. The other told me she couldn’t see my D at Tufts. go figure.
as for the Brown/Tufts overlap - I can see that based on size and locale. But the core vs open curriculum is quite different. Though I think a lot of kids, mine included, don’t have such a big preference for one over the other. They know they can find lots of great classes to take in either environment.

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On BC, points of clarification: the Boston city limit includes lower campus. While Newton surrounds middle and upper, off-campus adventures virtually always involve Boston or the urban portion of Brookline via the T up Comm Ave or Beacon St.

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“It is indeed an interdisciplinary approach and addresses various world and community problems in a more liberal artsy style. They said it has been very popular so far, but does seem like they are working out the kinks.”

Thanks. We could not decide whether is was an interdisciplinary liberal arts seminar or a community service project. It seemed to us like they had borrowed the concept from some other school and tried to shoehorn it into the BC curriculum. I am sure that it is a good programme, but they did not explain it very well.

Regarding the T, it was on a Sunday so we (I seem to remember) a perfect storm of a long wait for a train, a local that stopped at every station and there were some enroute delays I think caused by some sort of track maintenance.

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@Momtothreegirls My D had the same comment on yours regarding the nature of competitiveness at Swarthmore. Beautiful campus, great location, love the Honors program, but wasn’t the right fit/vibe for my kid. Her gc then suggested Haverford and spoke about the consortium as a plus. My D said, well if I know I don’t like Swat, why would I want to consort with them? lol

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Haha :slight_smile: Clever child.
I do think Swarthmore doesn’t “consort” as much as, say, Haverford does with Bryn Mawr due to the distance. My daughter reacted completely differently to those two campuses. And I had pegged her for a Swarthmore fan.

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When D was a junior in high school, we toured Brown and Tufts back-to-back. While they are very different in how they approach the idea of “core” curriculum, I did see them as similar schools in terms of “vibe”. It didn’t help that our tour guides were very similar in terms of looks and personality and both included a group of football players who must have been making their northeast college tours the same time we were. I called it the “Groundhog Day” tour experience.

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So fascinating reading how different people view the same coin. @wisteria100 with the exception of BC my D toured all the same schools and will apply to all three. Her favorite of the three hands down was Vassar. That said my D is an artsy kid so the vibe was perfect her. When we were touring Tufts I was thinking ‘best of both worlds’ in terms of size. Larger than a small LAC but not huge.
We had a couple of friends who toured Vassar and Skidmore just before us. They both hated Vassar and loved Skidmore. We loved Vassar and then eagerly awaited Skidmore. Couldn’t have been more disappointed. It fell off the list completely. We still wonder what those friends saw in it that we missed.
But as I’ve said before to my D it’s a good thing that different schools ‘speak’ to different people. What a mess if everyone wanted the same ones