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

Parents Forum
4102

Move Up:
University of Virginia. My son was reluctant to visit and was blown away by the grounds, academics, traditions and vibe of the campus. The place is very impressive. We spent time going to the shops and restaurants nearby and downtown Charlottesville. We met a lot of students and professors and they were all impressive. A lot of school pride.

Colgate. We didn’t even expect to visit but had some extra time. The information session was personalized and by far the best we’ve ever had. We had a one on one tour guide that gave us a real feel for the school. The students were all very friendly, intellectual and welcoming.

Neutral:
Georgetown. The air noise during the tour was a huge distraction. We liked the presentation and the campus. The students all seemed to keep to themselves and it felt a little cold. This may be due to the fact that it was mid terms week.

Cornell. We had moments that we loved Cornell and moments that it didn’t feel right. We spent the whole day there and went to multiple information sessions. It got old hearing “Unlike Wharton” or “Unlike the other Ivys.” They just seemed insecure in comparison to other schools. The place felt very competitive. The campus was beautiful and we happened to be there on a glorious day. Can’t imagine climbing some of those hills in several feet of snow. Although we were there the whole day, we ended up with less clarity.

Rochester. The campus surprised us and was much nicer than we had anticipated. We had a one on one tour and the place felt not too big, not too small and the academics were very flexible.

Move down:
George Washington. My son wanted to leave as soon as we arrived on the campus. The vibe was not him at all. They have the program he liked but couldn’t see himself there at all. The campus was way too urban and didn’t have a college feel.

Syracuse. The campus felt gritty and a lot of the kids were smoking and vaping. The administrators went out of their way to be friendly but the students didn’t seem that serious. The town nearby seemed very dirty.

4103

I forgot to mention that Cornell doesn’t have international relations as an available major. This surprised us. With an institution that size to not have international relations. We asked multiple professors and admissions officers just to confirm.

4104

@kanfly Cornell has an International Relations minor and then a lot of majors that are dedicated to regions of the world
(like “Latin American Studies”) but not a broad “international” major.

I think you raise a good point…sometimes we assume schools have majors that they don’t have. Georgetown (where my daughter goes and absolutely loves it…the people are indeed very warm and friendly, by the way) doesn’t have a political science major. They have a “government” major.

4105

@collegemomjam Thank you for the feedback. I think we need to dig deeper into Cornell’s offerings. And I was reluctant to say anything negative about Georgetown since we were there on a rainy Monday morning during mid-terms. It goes to show that sometimes first impressions are not accurate!

4106

@kanfly feel free to private message me about Georgetown if and when you have questions if you dig deeper.

4107

Cornell is a very cold place. One reason I am in CA now. Lol

4108

@kanfly my nephews and my kids all took visits to Georgetown. We all came away less than excited and none applied. Sounds corny, but I really believe you can feel it when you’ve picked the right place. The campus just kind of speaks to you.

4109

Cornell is hanging onto my S19’s list by a thread. We haven’t been able to visit so it’s helpful to hear others’ thoughts. S is much less open to visiting schools than D17 was. The only ones on his list that’s he’s visited are: GaTech, Emory and U. Richmond (has two safeties as well). But the list is long, so researching and reading various opinions is what we’ve done so far. I hoping there will be some accepted students’ visits in his future.

4110

My D did a summer program at UConn. She immediately dropped it from any consideration because it was too remote, smelled like a farm (it is, I think?), and the dorms were meh. She liked the ice cream though! ?

4111

The best ice cream is often accompanied by poop smells.

4112

@elena13 – We visited Cornell and I thought the town was really nice. We were there at end of March and there was still a little snow. It was gray and damp outside – so a realistic late winter day. Campus is and feels very big – things are spread out with a couple different sections. We had a decent visit but it was not ‘not your socks off.’ Highlights included a really cool old athletic fieldhouse, finding our way through the underground tunnels, and my D liked the bio class she sat in on. Kids seems pretty serious and we met with a D of a family friend who said it’s academically intense for sure. My D did apply but b4 decisions came back she found out she’d been accepted to the honors program at our very good state flagship which is the same size, and, at almost 1/3 the cost, we thought was as a better value proposition if she went for a big school. (She ended up WL at Cornell anyway so good thing she didn’t have heart set on it!). In the end, she ended up choosing a small college that offered just enough $$ to put it in our price range. Took her all app season to realize she wanted small.

4113

@OCDaddy wins today!

4114

We just got back from visiting three CA schools: USC, LMU, and USD:

U of Southern California:

We all liked it more than I thought we would. The campus is pretty and bustling, which I like. Even though it’s spread out and has grass and pretty fountains everywhere, it still had an urban feel to it (in a good way, in that there was just a lot going on!). Very diverse and the kids all seem to mesh well, from what we could tell at least. We were impressed by the academic flexibility between schools. I will be honest, I was expecting to get the feeling the school was full of entitled rich sorority/fraternity kids and it didn’t feel that way at all. My husband had been concerned about the surrounding area (LA riots?) and from what we saw, the neighborhood seemed OK. Everyone was very nice and down to earth. My only concern (despite the 8:1 student/faculty ratio) is that it’s large (19K undergrad, I think?) and my son may benefit from a smaller school. I also don’t like that everyone moves off campus, possibly as early as sophomore year, but that is the same at many schools. And this is a total reach, 13% admissions rate and they don’t play the ED game so that’s a real admit rate. So USC moved up.

Loyola Marymount:

We weren’t sure what to expect but this school fit my son’s requests which are nice climate, good business school. So LMU had all of that. The campus is prettier and more modern than I expected. Everyone seemed very nice. I didn’t really get a strong feel for how the career placement is which was a bit disappointing, but overall I really don’t have anything bad to say about LMU. It may come off the list though because my son liked USD a lot better and they are kind of comparable.

USD (U of San Diego…not UCSD. USD is a smaller (6K ish) private school).

So we knew we would probably like the school, especially since my husband is an alum, but we were blown away even more once there. Not only by the beauty of the campus, but by the enthusiasm of the student body (two amazing tour guides, one in training). There seems to be a lot of academic flexibility and they make it easy to change majors if you need to. I get the sense the academic quality of the school has gone up quite a bit for both the business school and especially for their relatively new engineering school which is already ranked pretty high. The vibe on campus was very collaborative. They kind of made you feel like the fact that the campus is so beautiful and the environment so pleasant that this made everyone perform at their best levels…not sure if that makes sense. I like that students have to live on campus for 2 years and then if they want to stay on campus they can, or there are plenty of good off campus locations. Seems like career placement is strong in CA…we are from the east coast so I’m not sure there is great recruiting for out here, but chances are my son would never want to leave San Diego. What a nice, manageable city. USD is definitely in his top 5 now.

4115

Over the past 2 years, we’ve spent a lot of time in the mini-van. We attended campus tours or visitation days at over 20 schools. The list was based on schools that meet most/all demonstrated need, have automatic scholarships for test scores/GPA, or were near one of them. Really, if the NPC said less than a certain $$ amount, it was in the running. The ones I can remember visiting as I am typing this are Tulane, William and Mary, Vanderbilt, Ole Miss, Emory, Wake Forrest, Duke, UNC, UVA, Northwestern, Georgetown, Haverford, Brown, Tufts, Penn, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Brandeis, Boston College, Cornell, and Columbia. I think I am missing a few.

Here are the ones that rose to the top for DS:

  • Brown, Tufts, Penn, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Georgetown
  • It’s funny what makes DS see the potential in a school. Brown, Tufts, & Northwestern sparked right away with open/mostly open curriculum. Faculty/Heads of departments at Tufts, Penn, Vanderbilt, & Georgetown made time for (scheduled) one-on-one meetings. It’s possible that every school could have met his weird double/triple major goals, but hearing someone talk about how they would make it work for him really made a difference. – Every school where the staff made time for these sessions will probably get an application. The Tufts dining hall was fantastic. All the talk of cut-throat competition at Penn actually made him want to attend more. He also became attracted to schools in urban areas.

The list of schools that fell off is longer, but here are some highlights (lowlights?):

  • Columbia – You may have heard of the Core Curriculum before, but it is hard to really understand the scale of it until you have it detailed for you. Wow.
  • Duke – The guide was just really aloof, annoyed, disengaged. It felt like if you attended Duke, this guy definitely wouldn’t sit with you in the cafeteria. That ended it before it had a chance.
  • W&M, UVA, UNC – The financial aid and admissions pages on their websites don’t convey the heavy (HEAVY) preference for in-state applicants. I understand that they are state schools, but after everything is said and done, OOS applicants almost have a better chance at an Ivy, and the Ivy would have more aid options.
  • Harvard – Soo many tourists. It would be like taking classes at a zoo… and you’re the one in the cage.

I could write about the highs and lows for days. DS chose Brown ED, with Tufts on tap for ED2. Penn, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Georgetown and Ole Miss round out his planned RD options. Ole Miss seems out of place here, but the campus is beautiful, the automatic scholarships make it a steal, the Croft Institute and the language flagships are legit, and he’d be a 4th semester student walking in with all of the AP/DE credit he would bring with him. “Two-and-a-half-years and done” is hard to argue.

4116

@professionaldad that is an impressive visit history…and seems like it was very worth while.

Regarding W&M, UVA, and UNC…I find the ridiculously harder standards for OOS students to get in to be a bit of a turnoff, as well. The schools have the right to spend their taxpayers money they way they see fit, but it is hard to swallow sometimes how much more difficult it is, especially at UNC.

I watch the boards a lot during acceptance periods and I don’t think there is a school out there with a bigger gap in stats for the IS vs. OOS kids than UNC. IS kids with 28s getting in and OOS kids with 35s not. My daughter was valedictorian with a 1540 OLD SAT and was the only kid from our NJ public high school to get in a few years ago and she didn’t even get direct admit to the b school (she is at Georgetown which was her first choice anyway). The salutatorian her year had a 35 and was denied. He is very happy at Wash U. The gap at UVA between IS and OOS is narrower. I don’t know much about W&M. But I think this is good info to have if these schools are on your list. I thought I read UNC OOS admission rate was 13% and IS was 40% this past year. That’s nuts.

4117

Me, too—but that’s presumably exactly the way they want it, so it’s kind of a win-win, you know?

4118

I can see the win for NC, but the OOS kid there had to do more to get in and pay a lot more to attend. Don’t get me wrong, UNC is a great school. Maybe the OOS kids will shine more because they are stronger students?

4119

I met a student from our high school who graduated from UNC (OOS) recently. I asked her how she liked it since there are so few OOS kids there. She said she always got the same reaction from the in-state kids - “oh you’re one of the smart kids!” Apparently that the rap on the OOS kids. They are the “smart” ones.

4120

Our NJ school has had 54 kids apply to UNC in the last three years. Only one has been accepted, but they were a highly recruited athlete of a legacy professional athlete. As for UVA, we’re 7/76.

4121

@professionaldad I hear you on Columbia’s core curriculum. When D first heard about it she thought it was fine and the school was her top choice. But when she visited a second time and they presented a more detailed explanation of the core, she couldn’t wait to get out of there. A most dramatic turnaround from an extremely undramatic kid.