My DD crossed UT Austin off her list after an informal visit. The campus is too large and urban for her tastes. She is looking for more of a suburban, green campus.
barrons, it apparently had a 100% impact on your live, you probably would not have written that comment if you befriended a few hispanics while at college.
Moved up:
UPenn- did not expect to like that the campus was in a city, but the bubble campus felt very exclusive. Students did not seem like try hards and all seemed confident (was denied ED unfortunately)
Lehigh- felt tightly knit. A professor from chemical engineering devoted an hour and a half exclusively to me. We drove to a teaching lab. He gave me a tour and showed me all of the equipment, and even demonstrated some of it. It made me feel like I was already attending the school. Was impressed by the campus.
Penn State- a safety, but I liked the campus. The school did not seem as big as I thought.
Moved down:
George Washington- too much in the city, no campus feel. Did not like that students obtained jobs and internships mostly with the government. The engineering building was very impressive though. Crossed off.
RIT- bricky. Full of very strange individuals. Crossed off.
Bucknell- too old. Too much of a party vibe. Biomedical Engineering department is ridiculously weak (only ~18 students per graduating class). Crossed off.
Yale- over all a very impressive visit. Campus is amazing and Yale is still near the top of my list. However, we realized how weak the biomedical engineering department is. The engineering tour guide was awful. Spoke quietly and in an annoying tone. Any time I asked a question, she would reply with “I’ll get to that later,” but usually ended up not answering the question. Also, New Haven itself seems very sketchy. Good thing the entire campus is gated!
Overall, toured we 12 schools, crossed off only 3. Is that normal, or should we have toured more schools?
@AnthonyZ , if you ended up with a solid, balanced list (which includes safeties ), you’re fine. I think it helps if there are at least 2 safeties – just to ensure that at the end of the day, if you have a terrible season, you don’t feel like you had to go to the only school that accepted you. Even schools that seemed fine lose their allure when they feel forced on you.
And just to be clear , selective schools should not be considered safeties . You’d think that would be common sense , but we see this mistake every year.
Colleges that my D wasn’t impressed with
Colgate- we live close so we went to visit twice. I wanted to fall in love , but just couldn’t and I don’t know why. Just a feeling. S applied RD because of proximity to home and was a match for his grades.
Bucknell - visited three times, I thought it was going to # 1 choice, but after meeting soon to be teammates and talk of partying my S crossed it off the list.
RIT- awful buildings
U of R beautiful campus, but heard professors difficult to understand and large class size.
Loved the following
Villanova (accepted EA) loved campus and kids super nice
Binghamton - (accepted EA) surprised how much we liked it
Cornell - liked but big
Hobart William Smith - gorgeous school and great tour
Union- moved up, nice feel.
BC- nice campus
Hamilton - beautiful campus
After reading this thread, wished we had looked at Skidmore.
I truly feel tour guides make or break the school.
And to clarify further, when @carolinamom2boys writes selective, that includes moderately selective, not just the high end that lots of people on CC mean when they say “selective”.
@Patsyclarkstown is the U of R you referenced the University of Richmond or Rochester?
@GnocchiB, University of Rochester. It’s a great school so many kids we know ho there.
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How big are the class sizes at Rochester? Thanks! @Patsyclarkstown
Crossed off list after visit - Wake Forest. Didn’t even apply.
Moved down - University of the Pacific - mostly because the tour guide said she chose UOP because it’s the only school that accepted her.
Moved up - Santa Clara - she was impressed with the internship opportunities. I thought my daughter wouldn’t like it all because she doesn’t want to be in a big city, but she loved it.
Moved up - Pepperdine - was already high on the list and notched up slightly. Excellent tour guides, beautiful campus, and a pretty good fit for everything that is important to her.
Moved up - Sonoma State - this was her California safety school, but she really liked it more than she expected to.
Moved up - Furman - like Pepperdine, it was already high on the list. But of all the tours, this was the one where she felt most comfortable, for whatever reason.
Stayed the same - Elon, High Point, Davidson. Her expectations of these were realistic, and she wasn’t disappointed.
Not sure where she’ll end up, but I’m happy with her options.
@jbsanderlin Just curious what happened with Wake Forest.
My CA daughter has applied and we have never visited.
I personally crossed Hofstra completely off my list after visiting. Didn’t even bother applying,
Tour guide quote o’ the day.
Excellent.
What is Hofstra like? @leafconeybearismart
See, this is where CC needs Facebook-style reaction emojis, rather than just emoji in replies.
(In this case the
@Winky1 just my opinion but I found it extremely gross. It was all gray and reminded me of a prison. Seriously, every single building was a big gray block and the surrounding town was the same. I found it very depressing.
Oh my @leafconeybearismart ! My D didn’t apply, we’ve never visited, but they sure did send her a ton of postal and electronic mail.
@Winky1 They send me a lot too, I almost feel bad not applying when they send me all that haha
I visited a friend at Hofstra many moons ago, and I thought it was very depressing too.
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