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

Parents Forum
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Now that 80 % of our visits are over, I hope. It was fun at first, but wears out after a while.
UP
Colby - Beautiful campus, diverse crowd, daughter wanted to drive by the next morning for one more look.

Middlebury - Even the ride there is beautiful, very beautiful campus. Daughter wants substance free option though and it doesn’t seem they have it except for 10 upperclassman in one house. More research needed.
Saint Michaels - They do a great job in their information session and tour. One of our best tour guides, many kids and even one professor said hi to him while we toured. Less competitive option.
Sarah Lawrence - In a nice neighborhood, very nice and unique dorms, tea house is cool. Not to competitive option.
Mount Holyoke - As I said before, beautiful campus, great tour guide. Daughter said she “got that feeling”. Secretly, I hope she gets in and goes there.

SAME -
Hofstra - Pretty nice looking campus, gated, near a bad neighborhood. Daughter interested in one major they have but probably wont apply after visit.
U-MASS - State school, financial safety. I went here and liked it, met my wife, had a Daughter that is now looking at colleges, yikes, that thought it is to big, but the new honors section is nice. She doesn’t have a choice, I am making her apply as a financial safety.
Bates - Nice looking campus, diverse crowd, very nice interactions with students after tour, Daughter just liked Colby better.

DOWN -
Connecticut College - Nice looking campus, daughter doesn’t seem to be considering it, I’m not sure why.
Yale - Just drove by and walked around, would be a pretty big reach school, but next to a sketchy part of town. Princeton would be better fit as a super reach school.
Bowdoin - Our worst tour, arrogant admissions. Daughter took it off her list. Stopped by LL Bean on way home, I did not know it was there, we found it by accident on our way up. LL Bean is about 10 miles south of Bowdoin.
Smith - Daughter thought it was crowded and didn’t like Northampton. I think Northampton along with Amherst are a great college area.
Amherst - Just drove by and walked around since we were close. Daughter thought it was very preppy. When I went to U-Mass we had an annual snowball fight the first snowfall with Amherst, and they would chant HO HO, HEY HEY, your going to work for us someday. I thought it was funny then and still do, it was all in good fun. Oh, and I was wearing Guess jeans, white bucks, and a polo shirt, 1986.

302

Reading the most recent posts reminded me of our tour guide at UChicago: “And you can always call to have someone make sure you don’t have to walk alone on campus late at night. Like, if it’s 3:00am on a Saturday night and you’re still at the library, just call and someone will walk you home or drive you home. I guess that would be true if you were at a party, too. But the library’s more likely. For me, anyway.” :slight_smile:

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I recall when my D visited UChicago we were impressed with the school. Then as we were walking thru the quad with our tour group, some students started making motions to us and mouthing, “Don’t go here!” We wrote it off as college humor even though we never experienced this on any other campus. However, the next day we met a senior from the business school at the Museum of Science where he was running a survey. When we asked how he liked the school, he very candidly and seriously said that it was the hardest four years of his life, that he was glad he did it, but that he wouldn’t do it again. From that point, my daughter’s interest waned and it gradually went from the top of her list to no application.

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Down:
JHU: Compared to Johns Hopkins. University of Chicago was positively a riot. As we walked around Johns Hopkins we all thought, “where are all the people”. And it was term time.
UCSD: When we finally visited, my D. was disappointed at its distance from the ocean. Not nearly as “California” as we had expected.
Mt Holyoke: The tour guide said something about bringing your favourite pillow. My D. was out of there after that comment.
Hampshire: We couldn’t help notice a similarity between Hampshire’s buildings and those of the Devens Federal Correctional Institution. Must have used the same architects. My D. called it “prison chic”. (Another parent speculated whether Hampshire was patterned after East Berlin. No kidding).

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@exlibris97 yikes, thanks for the update on Hampshire. It was on our radar but S is incredibly hung up on the buildings and that would be a deal killer.

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^^^^^^

Ha, yes. The buildings and trees are deal breakers for my son. If he doesn’t like the style of buildings around campus it stands no chance. If it’s enclosed by a lot of trees, forget it. It can have some trees, just not an abundance. There can’t be any farms nearby and there better not be an old run down mill town on the way to the school.

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307

Ha! D actually has a minimum tree coverage allowance. I don’t think there could be too many trees by her standards.

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LMAO about trees. Deciduous trees, good, ala Kenyon and Bates. Excessive evergreens bad, ala Bowdoin. Not that we visited any such campuses, but palm trees, very bad. In fact, intolerable. No self-respecting college has palm trees. :wink:

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^^ My daughter’s school has a botanical garden with over 100 TYPES of palm trees. That doesn’t even count the regular palms around campus.

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Lol! Palm trees are a definite deal killer. Massive evergreens are good. Lots of trees in general, good, in fact required. Mountains a plus. Rain, snow, wind all good or ok. Overall campus look very very important but could really care less about the dorm interior.

Sun bad. Beach bad unless it’s cold coastal and rocky. Dessert is intolerable.

I somehow raised a vampire.

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The running joke at my DS16s accepted college is " Who needs Ivy when you have Spanish Moss and Live Oaks?" I guess his choice would be knocked off quite a few lists as there are quite a few palm trees as well.

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I seriously left New England to go to college because my school had palm trees and nice fountain. Maybe there is more to this tree thing than we think, lol.

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I love palm trees!! But large oaks too. Pine trees – not so much.

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Pomona was right out for my D because there weren’t enough trees. As we live about an hour or two from there, I think it was her way of saying it was too close to home.

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@eandesmom Our kids must have been separated at birth! When 12 year old D16 was reviewing S12’s college junk mail, we heard her mutter “Oh that’s just wrong!” Turns out, she was reacting to some Southern California school’s claim that they have over 300 days of sun a year! We call them “mushroom children!”

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@PNWedwonk that’s hysterical. It was a strike against CU Boulder and CSU when we toured that they kept mentioning how many days of sunshine there were. SD14 was the polar opposite. If she never left SLO she’d be in heaven.

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@PNWedwonk Yup, Colorado has 300+ days of sun a year. So does Florida I believe.

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Except Colorado can also have 300 days of rain and snow, and often the day counts as a sunshine day and a snow day. The Monday before Easter it was 75 degrees and sunny. Shorts and flip flops. Wednesday we had 24 inches of snow. Snow boots and snow shovels. Easter was sunny with a few snow piles around the tulips.

My laundry is always a mixture of shorts and flannels.

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Wait, wait, wait. All the tree haters - especially @RightCoaster - what’s wrong with trees? I don’t understand! Are you (or your D/S) badly allergic or something?

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@HiToWaMom I love trees! Being from New England I liked the idea of going someplace warmer with different kind of trees than what we have around here.

I think my son associates too many trees with being in the boonies. Even though he loves nature ( snowboarding/cycling) I think he feels that studying in a more cosmopolitan place is more his thing. So if a school has more modern architecture located near a town or small city that’s more his thing. If it has old new england style buildings with traditional decor located in a rural setting he just thinks he might be bored and stuck in the woods for 4 years.
There are a lot of great options for him in regards to finding a great fit, but he’s limited his choices to only in New England so it’s a bit more difficult to find what he wants. He will figure it out and be fine.