@CUsucceed – Small clarification. Davidson doesn’t have traditional sororities with houses. About 70% of women belong to a non-residential eating house and there are a couple of small nationally-affiliated sororities that are also non-residential.
Sophomore and junior years most take between 8 to 10 meals a week at their eating house and have service and social functions. I’d call it ‘sorority-light’ b/c you don’t live together and because you can switch between eating houses if you want. Also, most seniors live in on-campus apartments with kitchens and many reduce to just eating 1 or 2 meals a week at the eating house.
About 25% of men belong to a fraternity and they too are non-residential.
Finally, there are no ‘closed’ parties on campus so everyone goes to (or doesn’t go to, as they choose) any party they want – you don’t have to be in a particular house.
The D1 sports at an LAC is a pretty unusual aspect of Davidson.
Weather sure has some degree of impact on one’s impression and vibes. I visited Northwestern once during winter and once during summer. I liked the campus during summer with balmy wind blowing across from Lake Michigan. During my winter visit, however, I thought I was in a bitter winter day in Siberia. The summer visit was with my sons and neither connected with the campus still.
Yeah, I wanted my D to visit again when the weather was nicer but we never got around to it. I have a friend who graduated from there who joked it felt like the coldest place on earth in winter. I’m sure it’s lovely in the summer when the weather is nice. We are from Wisconsin though and know how long the winters can be. I’m not sure weather would have helped a lot too. Like your kids, she just didn’t love it.
My D took Stanford off her list because she didn’t like the location and felt it was a school for computer science folks which was not her. Her brother loved it and most likely will apply when he is a senior. Fordham, St.John’s, Tufts, Yale, Cornell, UVA, Hampton because of location and Columbia because the core curriculum they offered wasn’t her thing. What she learned from visiting a ton of schools across the country that fit both academically and personally was at the top of her list. When she started the process she thought name brand top 20 was most important but in the end she found out visiting so many college campuses that where she felt like she could thrive was her top priority. This is why I feel so bad so many seniors are having to make that choice virtually without visiting.
Just started to sit through the UCONN virtual information session. In a word, terrible.
After 7 minutes my D21 said she saw enough.
I really feel for these colleges. This is bread and butter time and the virtual tours are not doing the trick.
@BmacNJ I did the in person UConn tour. They have 150+ student Gen Ed’s. Maybe you can supply us a list of your upcoming virtual tours so we can save you some time.
I feel very fortunate we toured so many schools very early during high school. If you look back in this thread, you’ll see my two girls saw a LOT of schools over the past three years, mainly because we travel a lot and they saw it as fun to see all these places (it was too early for them to stress much about whether or not they’d get in - these visits were like little interesting mini-trips for us and ways for them to imagine the life they might have once old enough to leave home). I only posted after initial visits, but we have now revisited favorites at least once and, if the college is fairly close to us, twice. There is only one college D21 did not get a chance to visit again - we had planned on a second visit but then COVID-19 happened, and that particular college is too far away to fit in a trip during the fall when school starts again.
FWIW, D21’s impressions never changed much. The colleges she really liked in 9th grade were the ones she still really liked when she visited again in 10th and/or 11th. Her first impressions really stuck and held. Which is why I also feel bad for seniors right now trying to make decisions without being able to visit the school in person first.
Had a different experience with UCONN in-person info session and tour - probably the best overall of schools we toured (UMASS Amherst, Providence, WPI, Mount Holyoke, and Brandeis.) Must have been the right combo of people from Admissions at the time. Capped off tour with ice cream at the dairy bar.
We had a decent tour as well, and the Dairy Bar visit was excellent. Our UMass tour was also fairly good. My son is a sophomore so we should be able to visit more schools in the next 18 months.
At any LAC with sports, there is a large number of athletes, either on varsity teams or club teams. Davidson has 25% of its students in varsity athletics. Williams? 35%. Gettysburg has 20 varsity sports while Davidson has 17.
@twoinanddone and @AlmostThere2018 you both make good points. Davidson is a fantastic school no doubt about it. It was high on my S20’s list of colleges. But, he was partially drawn to the school because there were no fraternities/sororities but the dinner clubs seemed to function very similar to fraternities/sororities. That is a plus for many students. But, it wasn’t for my son. Our tour guide was very excited about the parties associated with the dining clubs and/or sorority that she and her boyfriend enjoy. I really appreciate the candor of the tour guide. It did give us a picture of the environment that we didn’t pick up when researching the school on our own. It wasn’t what my son was looking for. But, I am sure many students do want that atmosphere.
Also, my S20 is an athlete and has been contacted by a few D1 schools. But, whether he plays or doesn’t play in college, he prefers D3 schools where according to NCAA the rules of admission are different. D1 schools are fantastic. And, to many going to a small LAC with D1 sports is unique and a plus. But, to my S20 it wasn’t. There is a different atmosphere with D1 sports. He prefers the LAC D3 schools. Even though Davidson wasn’t a good fit for my son doesn’t mean it isn’t a phenomenal school. Just reading about it and doing online research gave us a different impression than visiting. Thankfully there are many, many excellent colleges and all students should find at least one that is a good fit, if not many.
We visited UMass on a gorgeous fall day. While we liked the campus, the students were strangely silent, everywhere we went. Students walking from class to class were not talking at all, no one seemed to be talking to anyone in the halls or near the dorms. No one was sitting outside in the beautiful weather, hanging out, etc. All the inside study areas were totally packed and silent. Even our tour group was so quiet you could hear the tour guide’s pants swishing as we walked.
The only place we heard students talking was in the food court, which was incredibly loud.
My daughter decided the students there “were practically robots - SILENT ROBOTS,” and took it off her list. lol!
I think we were there around mid-October, so it could have been near midterms?
We live near Ohio State so she expected to see kids playing frisbee, sitting around together outside talking, etc. She doesn’t love a bigger school, generally, so you would think she would like a more sedate campus!
University of Oregon fell way down the list after our visit one-week before coronavirus closed down all colleges. My quirky non-sporty daughter was not at all impressed by the immense amount of money spent on athletics facilities, student amenities, and Nike-based branding juxtapositioned next to aging academic buildings that look unchanged since the 1960s. We live two hours away in Vancouver WA (Portland metro) but had never done a UO visit to Eugene before. She was also not impressed with the extremely white vibe in Eugene, which has to be one of the least diverse cities in the country.
Ok I will chime back in here, Never got to Uminn, Macalster or Xavier , and just to test the virtual tour thing, I took one for the college my daughter graduated from and after watching it I am almost sure she did not go to that school! U of Minn was tossed off the list as it was to far and no aid so the cost did not work, Mac was small and really we would have seen it only if we could have seen U of Minn at the same time, Xavier stayed on the list bc of their strong merit package but we have not seen the campus at all.
@NJdad07090 I hear ya! I think I’ve found a combo of google maps (including a walk with the little yellow dude) and the website “virtual tour” and random internet searches help to round out the full effect.
For anyone wondering, we did get to tour UT-Dallas. We loved the modern buildings and the program was top notch. The kids were self-described as very nerdy and they had a huge E-gaming room, but it didn’t seem like a lot of other stuff to do on campus and everyone was pretty okay with that. Some intramural sports and music groups. There are some pretty spots and a lot of concrete sidewalks. The tiered sitting area outside the student union near the fountain was quite nice, but everything else was almost a little too industrial.
It’s a very comfortable area in a well-off residential suburb. We went out about 10 miles away to a fun place called Legacy Food Hall - upscale shops and restaurants with music.
The campus is all self-contained which is something my D was looking for. Dallas is a very nice city and we felt quite comfortable walking around near the Museum of Art. We also drove around a bunch and I love the way the roads flow so seamlessly to help keep traffic jams at a minimum.
In reviewing the capital improvement plan, I think UTD is going be an amazing campus in 5 years. They are centralizing their buildings and adding a real grassy “quad” space and will have light rail access to downtown from right on campus. But their unofficial mascot is a enarc (which is crane spelled backwards because they are nerdy like that) and I think that says a lot. I suspect the next few years on campus will be a sea of construction and my D felt like she needed a little bit more of a social scene so she chose somewhere else.