@wisteria100 my DS really liked BC (I just posted about how he disliked GT). The panel is the point at which he knew he could see himself there. Yes, there was something very refreshing about those kids and their candid discussions. Nothing was rehearsed or canned. It was just a thoughtful discussion about their experiences. My son is having a fabulous experience in a Jesuit high school now, and this place felt like home to him!
@moosiechica88 Villanova–when did you visit? We went in April, and much of the construction was finishing up, except the beautiful new housing across the street (which will be completed in 2019). They just built a beautiful Venice like bridge over the main road to connect the housing and the campus without having to cross. Too bad you didn’t give it a chance, because the kids there are great. This one definitely moved up for us.
@wisteria100 I think my rising senior would love BC, but I’m not sure if she can get in. I’m on the fence about taking her to visit a reach school.
@COSpgsparent now I’m down a rabbit hole looking at dorm tours on YouTube. Wow, there are a LOT!
@CAtransplant - I can’t tell you how many hours my daughter and I spent on youtube watching dorm videos ; )
@momofsenior1 I had forgotten that I watched a couple of videos of one girl in particular who did them of her dorm room at U of Oregon once my older daughter either had decided to go there or was thinking about it. It fascinated me that she took the time to show every little thing in her room and tell where she got it, etc. and she had a lot of followers! She also did one of her packing up and leaving home and first moving into the dorm. Now that I’m doing round two of looking at schools with my second daughter, I’m starting to look at various schools a little earlier. It’s interesting!
@CAtransplant I hear you! I’m also looking at the student vlogs (not as many of those) to get a feel for some schools. The schools themselves are producing a lot of videos (which is helpful to a degree), but for the schools where there are kids making them just for fun, I think it provides an interesting perspective.
@COSpgsparent I agree, interesting to see the kids’ thoughts - what they like and don’t like or what they highlight.
Up: Lawrence U, Appleton WI.
We visited for the spring open house, a full day of organized activities, then stayed another day to get a less scripted view.
- Kid loved the sample class. Rather than sending the horde of visitors into random classes, they broke them up into small groups and did a prospect-only version of their Freshman Studies class, which all students take in their first two trimesters. They read and discussed a poem from Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey, one of the books included in this year's course. Kid hates poetry as taught in her high school, and loved the class discussion here.
- She loved the professors. At lunch you got to sit with the professor who taught the subject of your choice. She initially chose psychology, but when that professor and another student who had some psych background started talking about things she didn't understand, she jumped to the physics table, where she and another kid with similar physics backgrounds were enthralled by the prof's explanation of how he's using physics to get better images of cell division, complete with a little model built out of cutlery and condiments. Kid left the lunch as a prospective physics major!
- Note that if she went to my Ivy alma mater, or either of our state flagships, I do not think there is any chance she would major in anything science related. I looked at the Lawrence intro CS syllabus, and she would be 100% fine there if that was the route she wanted to take. Academically, I think this would be an excellent school for the kid she is right now: one who wants to learn about everything but isn't willing to fight for anything.
- She loved the campus, which is small (88 acres) and was green and blooming in mid-May.
- She felt that the kids were friendlier and happier than the kids at University of Tulsa.
- It is really easy to get to. Six miles straight down College from airport to school.
- High acceptance rates, plentiful merit money, test-optional. An extremely lovable safety.
- Locals who heard that she was considering Lawrence all talked about how much the community likes the university - they go to LU sporting events, to musical performance and art exhibitions, to eat on campus. The school likewise likes its city; rather than offering many organized classes at the wellness center, they give students membership at the Y, which already had a wide range of classes. Health services is pretty pared down, because they have good relationships with the two hospitals in town, each a mile away. Campus security isn't police-like, because they work with the city police for anything that needs policing. The main road through town, in front of the campus, was full of families playing Pokemon Go down wide sidewalks Saturday afternoon. Cars seemed unfrustrated by having to constantly stop for pedestrians; pedestrians used crosswalks.
- The food was excellent, both at the organized activities and in the cafeteria and cafe on Saturday.
- We had amazing ramen (and spouse a really yummy local beer) at one of the probably thirty restaurants in the two-thirds of a mile between the hotel and the school. Other options included burgers, pizza, Thai, Mexican, Chinese, Afghani, and a million sports bars and coffee shops.
+/- One of the school’s selling points is that they are very nurturing / hand-holding. I went to one of the wellness sessions, and the person leading it basically said that if someone wanted something, odds were that it could be accomplished. They don’t have a recreational swim group, but there might be master’s swim at the Y - oh, but one of the personal trainers was on the swim team, so our kid could just work with her one-on-one. Yes, one of the things that helps for the long dark winter is just getting used to it, but they also have five MindSpa rooms on campus, which you can book by the half hour or hour, which have broad-spectrum SAD lights, nature views, and programmable massage chairs or bean bag chairs. The dean of the conservatory talked about a student who came to him with a plan for a $30k senior project - and found $18k of funding and produced something so impressive it was released commercially a year later. I suspect our kid could have gotten a spot in the physics prof’s research lab just by expressing an interest.
- Standard course load is 3 classes per trimester, so taking a new foreign language, for instance, would use up an enormous percentage of your classes. They strongly discourage overload, and unless you're taking music classes, four scheduled classes is the effective upper limit permitted, even with special permission. OTOH, you can work with professors for as much or as little credit as you want, even no credit or 1/6th of a class.
- The open house kids were the whitest, clingiest, kids with the helicopteriest parents ever. OMG. Our state is pretty white. Open House was way more white. Friday night on College Ave was incredibly white. The plan had been that our kid would take one tour and we would go with a different guide, but there were literally no other kids not glued to a parent, so she asked us to come with her group (and then didn't stand with us). I think we were the only parents separated from our kid at lunch; she said the parent of the other kid at her table asked a lot of questions about how Lawrence would get her kid into med school. The parent session run simultaneously with the kids' sample class was obviously intended to keep parents from sitting in on the class, or pressing their noses to the window of the class. All of their questions could be accurately paraphrased as, "you will handhold my kid through every hardship, both real and perceived, right?"
- Spouse and I were able to spend some one-on-one time with an admin of color, who gave us insight into some unsettling race and gender issues. Campus is fine, town is fine, the bars along College attract people from the surrounding area who are sometimes spoiling for a fight with anyone who's visibly different. Lawrence is the most white (~67%) school on the current visit list. Our kid, who had previously expressed no particular interest in diversity, has much more interest in that now.
- Both campus and town looked much more diverse Saturday afternoon. The trolley tour took us through some residential neighborhoods adjacent to campus, where we saw lots of people of color. College on a Saturday afternoon had far more people of color than it did on a Friday night.
+/- There are apparently no transients in Appleton, which felt odd to me, who is used to seeing them anywhere big enough to feel like a city. So odd that I had to look it up, and there are apparently only ~25 unsheltered homeless people in the area.
- Kid was bothered by how prevalent smoking and drinking seemed to be; I think it was pretty typical for walking through an area with a lot of bars on a Friday night.
Kid liked it well enough that she came home with a Lawrence hoodie, in addition to the T-shirt they gave her.
Disliked Case Western (but applied because it was free) and UVa (didn’t apply)
Purdue and Virginia Tech moved to the top after visits
Engineering was the intended major.
@RichInPitt Can you say what you liked about Purdue and Virginia Tech?
Does this thread also for MS and PhD universities?
@NASA2014 , it’s really meant for undergraduates. But if you really need to unload and can do it with humor aND style, I suspect nobody would hold it against you.
@citymama9 I sent you a private message about our Purdue experience
@WineLover We went in early August of 2016. It was brutally hot and humid, and we had just spent four hours at UPenn. I think if it had been a cooler day or if we weren’t tired from another tour, we might have liked it more. He has friends going there and it looks beautiful! I just think when a school isn’t the right fit, you can find all sorts of flaws, and vice versa. Often times, I thought “How on earth does he like THIS school???” but he would be blind to some of the flaws I would pick up… it’s just kind of like chemistry, I guess. You “click” with some schools and not with others, and there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for it 
@NASA2014 I’d stay away from grad schools here and put any information on those visits on the grad schools threads. Most grad schools are highly specialized programs and may not reflect the undergrad experience at a college/university so it could be confusing.
There are a lot of the same schools mentioned on this thread, so I will throw out a new name of school that moved up on my list: Austin College (TX).
Went to two day-long visits a year apart. After first visit, while many of the same attributes were mentioned - plentiful study abroad, field work and research opportunities, ability to get to know your professors, small and united campus - I felt “medium” about it. The second visit somehow surprised me. Maybe because it was the second visit (and admitted students day), and I took a deeper look at the above-stated opportunities, it moved way up in my eyes.
@citymama9 "Can you say what you liked about Purdue and Virginia Tech? "
It’s hard to explain, but they just felt like students, administrators, professors, etc., who really cared about undergraduates. I think much of it was the fact that they focused on the education, what they thought was important, the resources available to help students succeed, etc. Other places felt more like “look at our beautiful campus, we have really high SAT averages, our researches have won XYZ awards, etc.”
Purdue/VT just felt more like a discussion on educating our kids than an advertisement for their awesome school.
Virginia Tech- “awesome school” nonetheless with great academics and positive atmosphere. Sounds like Purdue is too!
Yes, no doubt both are very good schools.