eh hem. I had a curfew in my dorm 2am to 9 am, opposite sexes not allowed on the floor. We were girls on 2 floors, boys on 2 floors. I’m young enough to have children in college now.
Basically, if they were in your room at 2, they stayed until 9!
Edited to add, the curfew didn’t mean you had to be in your room, just no opposite sexed visitors.
“Cue the guy in the towel. Roll camera. Action!”
…guy snaps his towel at female tour guide exposing himself. All girls on the tour eyeball the guy, and all boys on the tour eyeball the tour guide. One mom follows guy into shower area waving goodbye to her child…the tour encounters an all-night party where several tipsy students grab some of them for makeout sessions. Parents congregate at the keg reminiscing about their misspent youth. Tour guide passes out.
@Tgirlfriend The tour at Texas A&M was great due to the Chemistry professor who looked like Hagrid and blew things up in the presentation then poured bubbles all over the floor. He made ME want to take chemistry. lol Texas Tech really looks after their students and the meeting we had with one of the heads of the financial planning departments was great. They were the first college to accept my older son and they called him on the phone and it really encouraged him during his senior year even though he ended up somewhere else.
… rest of the tours … see comment #593 for intro to list
MIT: tour only. He thought it would be great for grad school. Didn’t apply. (Didn’t go down Mass Ave to tour Harvard. He was familiar with the campus & wasn’t interested in becoming a “ha-arvard man”)
Oberlin: tour only. The visit confirmed he should apply, which he did. (saw Wooster en route to Oberlin & had an excellent tour, very personal attention by student guide & Adm Rep.)
Princeton: was never on his list bec of the dining clubs. However, walked around campus when there to see an art exhibit. Altho’ could have gone on a tour, chose not to bec didn’t like the “attitude” of staff in the reception area for admissions… Best part of visit was a fantastic ice cream parlor next to campus.
Wesleyan (in CT): 3 visits-regular tour, interview, & science tour. All were excellent, primarily bec of unexpected contact with students. Interview was with a student who unexpectedly was familiar with his high school. Bec of mix-up with science tour, prof arranged an individual tour with student, who talked about his research & was staying on for tuition-free extra year to do a masters. Applied.
Williams: Multiple visits. While vacationing, did a self-guided tour. Fall of senior year did regular tour. Feb of senior year did an overnight to have a better sense of what it would be like when Williams is the coldest & could feel the most isolated. He’s been a very happy Eph!
I hope this helps others. Good luck as you tour & definitely enjoy your travels. Bon Voyage!
paveyourpath- I sent you a PM bec I think you were asking about something different but related to city vs rural
as far as city kid adjusting to rural area -
At the time my son was at Williams, the college had weekend transport to NYC & Boston most of the weekends in the academic year. I believe this bus service still exists, but not as frequently. And, there’s definitely bus service at the beginning and end of the semesters. The cost is less than the Greyhound equivalent, which has a bus stop on campus, & takes less time. As I recall, he only came to the city a few times mid-semester.
Great thread and I enjoyed reading everyone’s comments. I’ll add our west coast perspective.
Down:
UC Berkeley - Admin in charge of tours were unorganized and abrupt. Long line to check in and then herded like cattle to front of Sproul Plaza to wait for directions. Lots of yelling and trying to figure out how to organize tour groups on the fly. My kids commented that they felt like a nuisance to the school and wondered if it would be any different if they actually enrolled. Students walking around campus were very solitary (walking with earbuds or looking at phone - no looking up, smiling or acknowledging someone walking past them). Even at coffee houses and pizza places, students were sitting by themselves on electronic devices rather than engaging with others. Seemed very anonymous.
UC Merced - The campus is beautiful and modern with a lot of ongoing construction. You would think the Univ of CA would take some of their property surrounding the campus and add some social life for the kids - pizza places, movie theaters, hang out spots, apartments for college kids. Unfortunately, after 10 years, the college community around the school hasn’t developed.
UC Santa Cruz - Too bohemian and dirty. The room where they did the presentation had cobwebs and lots of dirt/dust on the ground. The bathrooms were filthy at 8 am. Tour guide was not knowledgeable. She was young and should have been partnered with someone who knew more. She walked us from site to site and read her script but wasn’t able to answer any additional questions. At the end they left us at the student store and gave us directions on how to catch a bus back to our car. There was no real “hub” or center of campus. Beautiful environment but just not our cup of tea.
Chapman - Lacks diversity and kids didn’t feel as if there was a cohesive college community around the campus.
Up:
UC San Diego - Beautiful campus but just too spread out. Great tour guides - one was new and one was experience. It was nice having both perspectives.
UC Davis - Very organized presentation and tour. Kids on campus seemed happy, respectful and social. Nice central grass area near restaurants and coffee house on campus. Nice surrounding college community.
Stanford - Had to visit because we were in the area, not that my kids will apply. The presentation before was informative and practical. Tour guide was phenomenal and campus is beautiful and clean. Really impressive, especially after just visiting the very unorganized UC Berkeley.
University of San Diego - Beautiful campus and facilities. I’m not sure if it was just our tour guide’s perspective but it is probably too religious for our family. One annoying piece is that tour guide kept stating that they were ranked high in this or that (ie. #3 business school in the nation) without citing the source for the rankings.
No Change:
Cal Poly SLO - Beautiful community. Campus is a little dirty. Dorm tour was unorganized and dorms are old and dark. Department tour (College of Math and Science) was great! General tour guide was very good but guide was from No Cal kept putting down So Cal (re: drought) which was annoying. Most importantly, students seemed very happy, healthy and engaged.
UC Santa Barbara - Beautiful campus setting and the area outside new library looks like a great spot for students to congregate. Admissions presentation was very informative and the presenter was hilarious. Tour guide was enthusiastic. Students seemed happy and social. Unfortunately the party reputation was confirmed which is a downside.
The description of the UC Santa Cruz tour guide above reminded me of another reason my family got a bad vibe on the Rutgers tour. Our tour guide was a senior and knew absolutely nothing about the school except frats, sports and the social scene. It was insane. He gets on the bus they use to drive you around the 5 disconnected campuses and the first thing he asks is “are their any sports fans here!?” Very enthusiast and he’s asking a question as if it’s rhetorical to get everyone excited and no one raises their hand or says anything. He looked so dejected. Despite that he proceeds to go on-and-on about their athletics and teams and greek system. At one point we’re driving past a large building on campus – and not a new one --and someone asks what the name of it is and what departments are there. He seems to think for a minute then names a Hall. Then one of the parents who apparently is an alum of the school chimes in and says, “no, it’s actually ___ Hall.” The guide then sheepishly says “Oh, my bad, I’m not really up on this part of campus” or something to that effect. Similarly with any question about the honors program, academic requirements, etc., he has no clue. And you really didn’t get any of that covered in their info session either (which was in a nice dedicated building) because they had to use the time to explain the differences between the various colleges and schools within Rutgers that you have to apply to individually. It really left a strong impression that the school didn’t care about academics at all. I’m sure that’s not true but it was for this official representative for the school…
@lkg4answers Thanks for the informative post. You didn’t get a chance to visit Santa Clara University, did you? I am curious as to what people think of that campus.
@lkg4answers yes thanks for that informative post. One of my old boyfriends, a UCSC alumn said that UCSC was designed to not have a central place to congregate in reaction to the student action at Berkeley around the time UCSC was being built.
I’d also like to hear about Santa Clara if you went there (or know someone who did). And Occidental.
Just did UCSB and SLO last two days. SLO moved up, UCSB moved down. Guide was a party sorority girl who giggled a lot.
@Dustyfeathers I know a few kids currently at Santa Clara and several of my D’s friends will be freshmen there. I’ve only heard positive things- beautiful campus, great internship opportunities, great academics and socially, a fun school.
We toured Occidental. We had a lovely tour guide, one of the best of all our tours. She had very positive things to say about the academics and social justice opportunities. She did say that a car was beneficial because there’s not much going on on campus so they go into LA a lot. Campus is gorgeous. Many movies and tv shows are filmed there. In the end D took it off her list. She had several LAC’s colleges she liked more and Occidental has about 5 supplemental essays. Short and interesting if I’m remembering correctly, but I think she didn’t want to write them for a school that was far down on her list.
Re: Santa Clara: I haven’t taken the official tour but have been on campus several times and know kids who have toured there. The campus is just lovely, especially if you like Spanish style architecture, and having a Mission on campus is cool. It’s usually pretty vibrant, lots of students around. The one drawback I heard from students who toured is that it seemed a little homogeneous - suburban SF Bay Area vibe in the student population. Because these students were all from the area, they felt like it might be a little too much like high school.
@Marcie123 and @oneofthosemoms thank you so, so much. If I could just get my lovely child out there to look at Oxy and Santa C, I think they would both be high on our lists.
@Dolemite My Dutch grandfather hated those roundabouts too - he called them “die verdomde rotonde” (meaning “the d***** roundabouts,” but it has a much better ring in Dutch). 
@ManhattanBoro I am curious about the CMU “long sloped corridor in hall the length of the quad’s longest side”–how do I find a picture?
@choirsandandstages - https://www.cmu.edu/epp/news/images/baker-hall.jpg
UCSB has seven bike roundabouts- how do you feel aobut those? 
In MA we call them a Rotary, not a Roundabout. Not sure why we have to be different, but imagine how much fun it is to run into one of these with the crazy drivers here!!
@VickiSoCal I actually am fine with roundabouts… lol. I despise four-way stops, so if a roundabout replaces one of those, I’m all for it! Bike roundabouts also sound like a good idea–I got hit by a bike at UT as a pedestrian when I was crossing inner campus drive on a crosswalk … I don’t know whose fault it was, but luckily we both escaped unscathed.
Thanks for the photo @OHMomof2 – Looks pretty cool, but I assume it may be even more impressive in person.
I love roundabouts but I hate drivers that don’t understand the rules. Yield going in, once in you have the right of way. Not hard!
You gotta be like a jockey leading Seabiscuit through the nasty first turn and the final turn when you are in a rotary. But can’t use your whip so it’s better to give it the gas to gallop past other vehicles. I always hug the rail like a veteran jockey until it is my turn to exit.
My passengers know they have to roll their window down and point to our exit with their outstretched hand if they want to get off. Then I signal and turn my head backwards to gauge where my steed must go. After saying a prayer or two, I leave the inside rail and head to the off ramp. Suddenly the traffic parts and some jockey their vehicles to my vacant spot along the rail, and others simply brake or swerve to the right.
When I’ve missed the turn on occasion I simply rein my nag around for another whirl at it. Each passenger is assigned a vehicle to shadow. We shout out suggestions and then head for the exit ramp earlier if possible.
47 years ago I got my drivers license and two days later was baptized in a rotary in Cape Cod. A woman driver side swiped me and claimed she never saw me. She wasn’t wearing blinders but I believed her.
