re U Wisconsin. Very definitely a campus. You need to get into the campus and not just the fringes- it is a world onto itself despite incursions into adjacent areas. Perhaps the many one way lanes of University Ave got to you? Students rule it.
@wis75, we took the tour, walked up Bascom Hill, and checked out the Lakeside dorms. But it still had an overwhelmingly urban vibe (and it is quite possible University Ave, with its zipping cars, had an impact). Also didn’t help that it was 10 degrees out and snowing on our tour day. I am not knocking the school at all, it just wasn’t what we expected, and not the right fit.
We have toured just about every State school in New Jersey. Also toured University of Rhode Island and Udel. For us, The standouts were Rowan, Rutgers New Brunswick, and Udel.
Rowan: There was so much progress and new facilities. It was a great campus and tour and impressed us. A lot of activities and the new dorms are beautiful. Great scholarship and opportunity.
Udel: Our D loved it, great campus large but not overwhelming. Facilities and programs were impressive. Decent scholarship but oos tuition is high.
Rutgers: Very large campus, but each campus is unique and provides options. Great programs and facilities. Overall the most impressive and best bang for the buck. Excellent tour guide who was honest and not robotic. No scholarship but felt it was my d best option for growth and educational opportunities.
Off- Fordham. Tour guide great but hated the vibe on campus. Really can’t pin point what it was
Down-villanova. Worse tour ever! No dorms, classrooms or sports facilities everything he pointed out was “a $10,000,000 renovation” The Tour guide didn’t even know where theater or eng dept was. Too much construction. Only took us to business building, where no one on tour has interest.
Up loyola university md. Nice feel
@sahmkc Such a bad experience, but to be honest that person did you a big favor. FIT is neither selective nor competitive. It boasts one of Florida’s ugliest, most depressing college campuses. It seems to rely on foreign students to keep operating (~33% of the student body). I would recommend every Florida public that offers engineering over FIT.
@Ladreams Your Villanova experience reminds me of our Rutgers tour. I had all three kids with us even though it was a tour for the oldest and sadly it tainted all three. I think we will get through all three and have none apply to a single college in our home state of NJ. We’ve now toured at least 25+ colleges between the oldest two and Rutgers was the worse tour of all of those. Some of that was unavoidable – none of us liked the way the college is spread out over 5 mini-campuses separated by a highway, river, downtown, etc. It’s the only tour that was almost exclusively conducted in a moving Coach bus instead of walking (except a brief field trip into a dorm)…
But what really turned us off was the tour guide. As others have said, school’s carefully pick these people to represent the college so you would expect them to know the school. But this guy knew only two things about the school: sports and frats. His lack of knowledge about anything else was embarrassing. At one point someone on the bus asked what a certain very large building was and he made up an answer. One of the dad’s on the bus was a Rutgers alum and just shook his head and told us what it really was – different name, different function, etc. Any questions asked about academic programs was a black hole. And you could tell the guide was seriously bummed that no one in our group cared about the sports programs or their sports facilities, of which we spent a 1/3 of the tour driving by. Rutgers was always going to be a safety school, though not being on the Common App was a major turn off. But after the tour the kids concluded, rightly or wrongly, that it wasn’t a school for people serious about academics.
@shortnuke Glad we didn’t have to waste a day touring! I felt like the AR was trying to make the University out to be much more than it was. My DD is looking for a cooperative school, not a competitive school. After being in a highly competitive environment for HS, she wants to enjoy college. She loved Rollins in Winter Park, FL because it was all about the cooperation and being a part of a community.
I hope to have more to report about after our Spring Break tour of Christopher Newport, Elon, High Point & Furman.
@sahmkc Rollins is a great school, with a beautiful campus in a really great part of Orlando. Definitely a good choice if your D is looking for a small LAC.
@sahmkc we visited Elon, Furman and High Point. High Point, IMO,is not worth stopping to see. The school caters to kids way to much. Prime steakhouse and concierge on campus for the students. Over the top for me.
We’ve been next to the High Point campus many times, but only because my aunt and uncle live there.
@sahmkc Don’t miss the The Morse Museum (Tiffany Glass Museum) and story of how it got there, in Winter Park, FL. Its a stunning museum, and was created when a former Rollins College President saved most of the glass at the Tiffany Mansion in NYC after a fire almost destroyed everything. They even recreated the daffodile porch area, and other amazing rooms in the mansion, inside the Morse Museum.
Rollins College has a tight alumni group. My husband graduated there, and still keeps in touch.
The school is strong in sciences and popular for premeds, but
even the small physics department is outstanding. Equally good for
business or prelaw, and history is also a strong department.
Rollins College campus is like a miniature Stanford, with the Spanish architecture and palm trees.
Its only 45 min to the Atlantic side beaches. Orlando area has a lot more than theme parks.
Its a great place for SE Asian cuisine, sailing, waterskiing on Lake Virginia, and a bigger downtown
area in Orlando. UCF is on the east side of Orlando, is a big commuter university. Rollins is
more residential.
@Coloradomama “Rollins College has a tight alumni group. My husband graduated there, and still keeps in touch.
The school is strong in sciences and popular for premeds, but even the small physics department is outstanding. Equally good for business or prelaw, and history is also a strong department.”
Thanks for that information! We really loved our tour and will definitely be taking a second trip to see Rollins as our first was a very quick trip. DD is Premed and we were impressed by the 91% admittance rate into med school for those that finish the pre-med track. We ran into a physics professor on our tour and she really made an impression on us as she tried to convince D & another Premed student that they want to switch to physics because it was so much more fun. LOL We also noticed a student and professor meeting for office hours and they were really engaged. So my DD says it’s the one to beat.
@sahmkc There were only 4 physics students my husband’s year, at Rollins College, so it was a very personal education. This was back in the 1980s, so this is dated information. He did a science semester at Oak Ridge National Labs from Rollins to get more lab experiences. REUs are another way to get lab experiences. Two of the Rollins physics majors his year, got into PhD programs and two got into MD programs from physics. Apparently math and physics are the most desired majors today for medical schools, because medicine is more and more quantitative. Rollins has a big Greek life, and a lot of athletes for a small college. It certainly used to have its share of rich northeastern students, but not sure about that now.
@sahmkc The premeds we knew at Rollins went to Emory for an MD/PHD, that was a chemistry major. The other two physics/premeds went to U of Utah school of Medicine and U of Minnesota. The Rollins student who went to Emory is now a top oncologist at Baylor/MD Anderson in Houston Texas. Rollins students do very well, from our day. Glad to hear that the entrance rate is so high. Case Western Reserve U is another good premed choice.
It is one of the most expensive colleges in Florida. Yes, many outside $$ coming to the state. I love the school, but it is very expensive.
It’s always a good day when I get to report on another college. Yesterday, I took my son and two of his freinds to visit U Mass Amherst. I am struggling to find positive things to say about the campus itself, but I can report that within a minute of driving into the campus, my son said “I’m not going here.” It’s not attractive in any way at all, and my son definitely wants a nice-looking campus.
However, we all agreed that it wasn’t a bad school. I felt very positive about it as our tour progressed. The guide was really knowledgeable and talked at length about the many fantastic features in the DuBois library, including a popular tutoring center and free use of recording studios! He also spoke convincingly about athletics, majors, the Honors program, clubs, and the like. He definitely made us all apprecaite what the college had to offer. I got the impression that students are challenged and studious, but not at the expense of having a good time.
We then had a good conversation with another guide who was really passionate about the school. He had transferred from McGill. He was a great salesman and almost made me want to apply! It’s quite amazing how effective a good guide and enthusiasm are.
The town of Amherst was cute. We all agreed it seems like a good college town. We drove by Amherst College a couple of times, and I am biased, but from what I saw of it, it’s not nearly as pretty as a certain LAC in Lewiston, Maine:-) We also drove by Hampshire, and I thought it looked pretty cool.
My son probably won’t apply to U Mass Amherst. He did say that the college was a lot better once you were inside the buildings, but an attractive campus is important to him.
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@memmom2018 There are plenty of reasons to not visit/attend High Point but an on campus steakhouse is certainly NOT one of them. There are plenty of universities that have specialty high end dining spaces where students can spend their dining dollars/food plan; Auburn, Clemson, Kent State, Drexel, Baldwin Wallace are just a few that come to mind immediately.
I had no idea that campuses now have high end dining. Clearly didn’t run across those with my oldest son. As long as his Tim Horton’s card is filled he is happy. 
@Lindagaf We are in a suburban Boston HS that sends 20-30 kids to UMass each year. You are correct, it is kind of an odd, ugly campus overall but there is enough college type of shops/eats in Amherst to keep a kid happy. Kids seem to like it overall. Definitely a good school but still a party school for many (thought not the Zoo Mass of yesteryear). Interesting that the tour guide transferred from McGill. My S17 is a U0 at McGill and my S19 has it as his number one school. The two schools could not be more different (location, rigor, diversity).
5C college kids sometimes intentionally take a class at UMass Amherst near lunchtime, because doing so gets them a voucher to eat there…and they have sushi and stuff 
The dining options at U Mass were a dream come true. Amazing!