This thread is fun, so I’ll do my part to keep it going. We live near Allegheny College and our S23 has attended classes there as part of his public high school’s gifted program. That experience has shaped his perception of what college should feel like, so he is mainly looking at LACs. He loves the small classroom give-and-take with professors and thrives in that environment. Also, he would like to play soccer in college and his best chance for doing so is at the D3 level. His grade average is 100 UW/103.9W. He is ranked 1/165 and has a 1500 SAT. Probably will major in International Studies and wants to study in another country at some point. He likes Allegheny a lot but doesn’t want to go there. Big shocker – too close to home.
Moved Down:
Kenyon – We visited Kenyon last summer at the end of June. We were on a six day trans-Ohio bicycle trip (from Cincinnati back to our home) and the bike trail goes right by the campus so we planned in advance to stay at the Kenyon Inn. We arranged a tour for the next morning before we rode on. We toured the athletic facility first with one tour guide, and the rest of the campus with a separate guide after that. The athletic facility was first-rate – a beautiful building. Really, the whole campus was beautiful in a bucolic sort of way. Both tour guides were personable and handled their jobs well. I think the campus was just too remote for my S23. The nearest town, Mount Vernon, is about nine miles away. We already live in a pretty rural area so he doesn’t want to do that again for college. My take: There was no “community” independent from the college. Someone else on this thread accurately described Kenyon as a campus with a small village in the middle of it. Very true. Everyone you saw was either a student or employee of the college, it seemed. Also, the admission staff did not really interact with us at all. The impression I got was that they receive plenty of applications and didn’t need to wine and dine us much. We biked away and decided he won’t apply.
Stayed the same
College of Wooster – We visited in August as part of an organized group tour event. They fed us a light brunch of fruit, muffins, bagels, etc., and then an AO gave a cheerful presentation to the group in an auditorium. After that we broke off for small group tours. Both of us expected to like Wooster and they didn’t disappoint. However, we would have liked to have gone into more buildings rather than just seeing the outsides. We saw only the common areas of a dorm and a few classrooms in some other buildings. We did not tour the athletic facility, dining hall, student center, or library, although I think the student center/dining hall was undergoing renovations at the time. He will probably apply there.
Moved up
Pitt – Pitt is our in-state financial safety school. We told him he should apply because, even though it is not an LAC, it is a strong school and we can afford to send him there even if they don’t give him any merit aid. We toured it in October. The AO who gave the group presentation was phenomenal – perkiest woman on the planet, but in a good way. We decided that if we ever need to receive any bad news the rest of our lives, we want her to be the one to break it to us. Unfortunately, our student tour guide was disappointing. Nice kid, but he talked WAY too fast. We walked close to him to increase our chances of understanding what he was saying and could still only understand about a third of his sentences. At one point a woman in the group gently suggested that he might consider talking a little slower, but he didn’t catch the hint. Despite that, my S23 really liked the “urban but not too urban” location, the Chipotle within close walking distance, and the “mini Quads” scattered around to give it a more “campus” feel. He decided that if he ends up going to a “big” school he wants it to be Pitt.
Ohio Wesleyan – We visited 4/28. We got there early and had lunch at one of the main dining halls. The food was good and there was plenty of variety, so we got off to a good start. We met with the assistant director of admissions for a half-hour and then toured the campus one-on-one with a student. It helped that the day was beautiful and the flowering trees on campus were in full bloom, but my S23 was impressed with OWU. He liked that it was adjacent to the business district of Delaware and was also close to Columbus. He also liked that students can use their campus meal plan to eat at several off-campus local restaurants within walking distance. The campus has a bit of an odd shape. All the residential buildings are on one end, all the academic buildings and athletic facilities on the other, with a connecting pathway between that has the campus center, library and admissions office adjacent to it. OWU has a newly renovated freshman dorm, and it’s terrific. Very modern looking, with a dining hall, fitness room, and gaming room on the ground floor. The mock dorm room they showed us seemed a little narrower than most I’ve seen, but was otherwise fine. There is also a brand new building containing senior apartments. My S23 also liked how much they emphasize study abroad and support students who want to do that. Overall, we were both very impressed.
Denison – We visited the day after we went to OWU and it became S23’s new front-runner. The town of Granville is very quaint and upscale and sits at the bottom of the hill right below campus. We ate dinner at the Pub downtown the night before our visit and drove around campus afterwards to get our bearings. We showed up early the next day and ate brunch at Curtis Hall courtesy of DU. That was a great experience. There were a lot of students around so we could see the school’s diversity. Some were eating in groups at large tables; others were sitting alone studying while they ate. I had never had mint chocolate chip cookies before that day and I think I want to pay $280K just to duplicate that experience (I jest!). Our small group presentation was pretty standard, and our tours were both good, too, but nothing extraordinary. The athletic facility is every bit as nice as Kenyon’s. Again, it helped that the weather was perfect – upper 60s and sunny with the trees in full bloom – but the place just resonated with S23. He loved the campus layout and the views of the surrounding hills. The dorm we were shown was also “better than most” (Tiger Woods reference for you golf fans). It was square rather than rectangular and felt more spacious because of it. We played nine holes at Denison Golf Club after the tour. The course is terrific and he would have discounted access to it if he ends up there – another plus. They will probably need to offer him big $$ to make it feasible in the end, but his stats are pretty solid so we’ll see.
We also plan to visit Kalamazoo, Hobart, and Dickinson in the coming months, so stay tuned.