@MotherOfDragons I see your point, but it’s one thing to find a campus unattractive or not your thing in some way, but “scary” is a little over the top, imho, plus it was clear they hadn’t REALLY looked around. I felt it important to offer a different (OK, opposing) perspective promptly lest folks be automatically turned off. No question it’s in a tiny town on a flat prairie about an hour away from the nearest city though, so if that’s a turn-off, so be it.
@porcupine98 but it’s good to have context, right? We would know not to recommend GA Tech to her if she thought Grinnell was scary. People have different tolerances. When I visited Yale back in the late 80’s New Haven scared the crap out of me. Given, I was a super sheltered kid, but to this day when people say Yale I get the willies a bit 
LOL. Vaguely familiar with late-eighties New Haven. Its charms were not always obvious to the casual observer.
What’s scary to one isn’t to others so basically scary isn’t a useful descriptor. Might be better off using urban, secluded, suburban, run-down, etc. My Spouse has lived in a large city her entire life so when we visit people out in the middle of nowhere that is scary to her. See gets anxious if the modern conveniences aren’t within walking distance. Car infested, suburban strip mall land is scary to me.
Yes! That makes sense!
Maybe some people read, “In Cold Blood” so in the middle of no where is “horrifying”. Idk
D had a similar reaction to UCB. And it WAS sort of scary on the morning we visited. The disheveled homeless people panhandling as we walked to the campus info session did not make a good impression. Neither did the “bro” who was our tour guide. She was very disappointed because she really wanted to like Cal. 
The purpose of this thread is for people to share their personal experiences and perceptions of schools , and how it affected their school list. Not every school is going to appeal to everyone in the same way. I’ve not seen one post on here that tells anyone not to go to a particular school because of their experience. It’s up to the student to read the info and to determine if they are interested in further investigating a school . If someone doesn’t have the same impression as another, it is not a personal attack on a school or the people who choose to attend that school.
On Grinnell, beauty is in the eye of the beholder – we found campus beautiful, from the striking Admissions building, which is a contemporary take on Prairie style, to the new dorms across campus in a similar style, to the older brick dorms, with the loggia covering the exterior path. Athletic facility and student center are striking, inside and out, and academic buildings range from stately brick/stone to mid century modern to new. Town is a fairly typical midwest small town, with two and three story brick storefronts through the main part of town and commercial on the outskirts. In town, there is an excellent supermarket, with organic and gourmet style foods as well as the regular assortment of ordinary foods. A great bike shop, great doughnut shop/bakery, movie theater etc. It isn’t an east coast Gothic architecture style campus (a la Bryn Mawr), but we found it lovely and distinctive.
I think her top choices right now are SLU and College of Charleston. SLU and CofC both have great campuses in lively parts of their respective cities. SLU may have the upper hand thanks to it’s campus in Madrid. D is 16, so I’m sure a lot will change during her Junior year.
My two daughters each had the same reactions after college visits… they crossed-off the lists Penn and Columbia after visiting, due mainly to campus feel & the urban areas where the schools are located. Duke moved down the list after visiting, due mainly due the surrounding area. Schools that were moved-up on the list after visiting were Brown, Princeton and USC. My older D eventually picked USC, and that college has emerged as D2’s top-choice so far. She is a current hs senior who is now applying.
Lol–This is a thread to share what turned us off to certain colleges, right? I really wanted to like Grinnell–I was expecting it to be beautiful and parklike. I even told my family this as an excuse to get off the road. (They mocked me when they saw the place!) Visit it yourself and see what you think. I am a midwesterner and used to small towns, so being out in the corn fields wasn’t what I found scary. I guess it was the mix of modern architecture that I found so unappealing.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. My family visited Grinnell (my daughter visited twice) and we all thought the campus was quite nice. I would never describe it as depressing or scary (and I found the town of Grinnell kind of charming). But we looked at a lot of small LACs in remote locations, so maybe that’s the difference.
Recent visits:
Denison - nice campus, beautiful athletics, charming small village, very well run admissions department. But too isolated and too much like hometown for daughter.
Kenyon - beautiful campus but disappointing town. Again, too much like home
Smith - lots of construction which somewhat limited the tour. Nice campus but more cottage like than grand. Northampton is nice except for lots of homeless panhandlers. Seemed a bit (way) too out there politically. 5 college consortium seems overblown due to distances.
Bryn Mawr - gorgeous, manicured, impressive student guides, good presentation, good train access to Philadelphia. True consortium with Haverford and therefore less of a cloistered women’s college.
Haverford - same as Bryn Mawr except co-ed. A bit thick on the honor code
Mount Holyoke - much better than expected. Gorgeous campus, good student presentation, nice dorms, new student center under construction, nice little town. Consortium seems more of a social construct than academic due to distances.
Wellesley - campus is expansive and a bit spread thin but stunning. Seems like the Biltmore as much as a campus. Right next to a ritzy small town but the campus is ~500 acres so all the walking is hiking. A bike would help a lot.
Duke - gorgeous. Kind of a Disney World of a campus with different theme parks. Medical center, botanical gardens, art museum, freshmen campus, gothic upper classmen campus. Freshmen are segregated for better or worse. Adjacent area is not Manhattan but is a nice collegiate atmosphere.
Overall, we were impressed with every school - my daughter most impressed with Duke and Wellesley, me with Haverford and Bryn Mawr, and my wife with Mount Holyoke and Wellesley. We’ll see if she gets in.
I chuckled when I read that the first time.
I should have phrased that better! No doubt my male bias exposed.
@WWWard - Interesting the Duke was taken off the list because of surrounding area, but USC stayed on the list. Are you talking about Univ of Southern California?
For USC they might have considered LA County as the surrounding area rather than South Central.
Every such descriptor is at least somewhat subjective—upthread one poster remarked that their child crossed Muhlenberg off their list because it was so unbearably rural and far away from any city anywhere, to which I replied that my child found its proximity to big cities appealing. The big difference? One child would be coming from New York City, the other from Alaska.
But both of our children, of course, were correct—for themselves. Yes, Muhlenberg is an incredibly isolated, rural campus—for some. It’s also an incredibly close-to-everything campus—for some.
And similarly the scary or [whatever the opposite of scary is] nature of Grinnell.
@WWWard I had heard that USC was beautiful, but the surrounding LA neighborhood was sketchy, for lack of a better word. How did you find the neighborhood compared to Phily and upper Manhattan? Did it feel safer to you? Thanks.