@dfbdfb, good post.
@dfbdfb Word. Plus, I’m hoping no one else will base their own decisions on what others have written here. I, for one, thought this was just for fun.
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I forgot one that moved up: Albright. It was a safety, academically and financially, so it made the visit list. D and I were both pleasantly surprised with the city its in - Reading - which gets a lot of bad press but to us seemed really cool. Matching lovely row houses that appeared to be low income housing, but so well cared for and families out enjoying their porches and yards together. The campus was nice enough - public spaces great, dorms a little run down.
A return visit for honors students was convenient after acceptance, on the way elsewhere, so we planned that only to see it canceled for a big snowstorm. The college knew we we were coming from far away and arranged a private dinner for us and one other girl who’d also traveled. We sat with the dean of admissions and a prof for a dinner, on them, and another private tour. It made a great impression on us.
Expected to like but crossed off the list:
Carnegie Mellon - info session was over 90 minutes long. Too much info about each division (I think there are 6) and lots of comments about how hard it is to get in and once you are in one school, it is virtually impossible to change to another major. The tour was also bizarre. The only buildings we entered were the lobby of the theater building and the music building. No library, no engineering, business or computer science buildings. And if you want to see a dorm, you need to sign up for a separate tour. There was no central dining hall - just small eateries all over campus.
William & Mary - The facilities seemed cold and old. The tour guide didn’t seem to know very much (I asked her a question about her major that she could not answer and she was a senior). It was a freezing cold day and we were kept outside longer than necessary. Overall, the atmosphere was dull. I think S wanted to like it from all he had heard but it lacked a sense of fun and community. Just did not feel warm or welcoming.
Moved up:
University of Maryland - two tour guides - very friendly, down the earth and knowledgeable. Campus was bustling and kids seemed happy.
University of Richmond - Friendly professors and students, campus seemed active (on our second visit). The President not only gave a speech at the admitted student event, but came back at the end of the day and spoke one on one with the admits during an ice cream social. Very down to earth guy. True for the head of admissions as well. The feeling was that you would get to know professors and that the staff and professors care about the success of each individual student.
University of Rochester - students seem happy there.
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I grew up in Easton and it is very, very safe. For reference, I live in Baltimore now.
@myjanda, D is at Skidmore now and loves it. True, not pleasant to be around the smokers, but rest assured the campus should be going smoke-free very soon.
Right??!!? D crossed that one right off, and the info session was very negative. No we don’t meet financial need, the flyers in the admissions office touted low acceptance rates, the difficulty of switching was discussed. D said she didn’t like the way the campus was so architecturally diverse but i think that was just her way of saying it wasn’t for her.
We did, however, enjoy the heck out of Pittsburgh. Went up Mt Washington on the incline, had a great meal and walkaround.
Funny you should mention that! Most people haven’t heard of Albright. We toured there with my daughter and the tour, itself, was so awful that we literally crawled away on our hands and knees in order to get out of there without being seen.
Maybe it’s good we never had an official tour @zoosermom - we self toured the first time then got a private tour after acceptance!
I think you could be right! It seemed like everything went wrong when we toured, but I’m sure it wasn’t an actual reflection of the school, just one of those things.
@NixonDenier - I don’t know what qualifications you used for choose/reject colleges- but I am also not sure you deserve to call others shallow if we didn’t do it your way. Just saying. @dfbdfb - bravo 
Hands down our best tour was at one of D’s safety schools- Denison in OH. It was a private tour (which is what they do there I gather) and they took time to talk to D and find out about her interests so they could tailor the tour to what she would want to see - in her case, arts/theater facilities. In the end, it was a “safety” rather than “contender” b/c D was seeking a BFA program - but they couldn’t have been more welcoming and lovely.
@OHMomof2 My exposure to Albright was somewhat different - a friend of mine who taught there had died and I participated in her memorial service. My impression was that of a very tightly-knit community. There was a huge turnout of both faculty and students, not to mention the dean and the president. A professor hosted me in her home, sight unseen. It was clear that a lot of the professors collaborated across departments in team-taught innovative courses and projects. It seemed like a warm and kind place.
And I also was favorably impressed by Reading - it seemed both diverse and dynamic and in the process of revitalization.
Given that this site was primarily designed to provide beneficial and honest information to parents and students in the college selection process, I just see threads like this often to be counter-productive, especially to potentially pliable teenagers who already are inundated with glossy brochures and rumors that stop them from honestly evaluating schools with metrics that will benefit them. I’m sure many of us spend most of our time on this site trying to steer students in the right direction to analyze schools on factors that will affect their happiness at the school, their career success, etc. The tone of this thread does not seem to be supporting that endeavor.
I was by no means denigrating every post on this thread, just some of the shallow content (not people, I don’t know the posters and I’m not attacking them personally) I’m observing. If it was more than just a big hill on the campus that was off-putting to you then I think it helps to put that comment in perspective and say that, rather than to mislead or to have us infer. Of course many people (hopefully all) had more than just one reason to cross off the school, and I think the value of this thread is in that clarification of what other, substantial things, those were. Instead we are focusing on the straw that broke the camel’s back rather than all the weight that poor camel was already carrying (did that idiom survive the extension?). If this thread is primarily for fun, that’s fine, but we should clarify that. The problem is that I’m sure many teens are looking into this thread seriously, and I don’t find it beneficial if they are. Instead it seems to only perpetuate the very problems CC was designed to address (and again, yes, some posts here are helpful, e.g. discussions about students who all appeared glum or discussions on dated facilities). That’s all. I didn’t mean to offend anyone or to call all participation in this thread pointless or shallow. I just wanted to throw a cautionary perspective out there to all the readers (even if the posters do appreciate their own and other’s humorous undertones and the inferred information). Don’t forget that inference is a skill (the SATs and ACTs love to test on it) and that it is often one of the last skills developed regarding reading comprehension. I’m assuming most of the posters here are adults, not teenagers, who have a much better grasp of this skill. Let’s not do students a disservice by forcing them to read between the lines with such an important decision. CC was meant to be honest, helpful and to the point - let’s stick to that mantra.
This thread is like reading Yelp reviews of college tours – your mileage will vary, but it sure feels good when your impressions are confirmed by others.
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See, I’m thinking we’ve got a problem right there… 
We’ve had similar threads over the years. Dumbest reason your kid won’t look at a college, tours you snuck out on early, etc. It’s just fun, and I hope that any student reading this will understand that most of the things discussed will be somewhat superficial, as, in fact, tours and info sessions can often be.
So I say to students reading this: YMMV. Take it with a grain of salt. We are entertaining ourselves.
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There are SO many variables. D took a school off her list b/c the only coffee on campus was from dunkin donuts and she hate dunkin donuts. It’s a top 30 school. I suggested that I could SEND her preferred brand- no dice. So she applied to 4 other top 30 schools with other coffee instead- and that’s fine
I don’t see this as shallow, it’s amusing. At some point, the little things make a difference.
It’s fun to read this thread, and yes, it reminds me of our house-hunting with our then-5-year old. Once, hearing us discuss an open house we just visited, she offered her opinion, too “Yes, I didn’t like that house, either: the TV was too small”.
Seriously, though, there are some important issues being discussed here, i.e. how spread out the campus is, and I’m not sure there is a certain way to know that from the brochures. For example, Stanford is huge, but as a fuzzie (humanities/econ) undergrad, I could walk from dorms to classes with no problems (long story about biking). Disclaimer; I know it’s grown significantly in the past 20 years, but most of the growth was on the techie side. Bottom line, it would be great to have some metric/rating of accessibility (% students biking?) and compact-ness.
The same goes for the food options - though honestly don’t know how to quantify that.
So yes, I am reading this visit s threads three years early - might help eliminate a college before even visiting it.
Bucknell- too remote, UCONN- blizzard on first visit, poor presentation by engineering dept at open house event
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I’ve liked this threat. Some people think William and Mary seems old and outdated. That’s a surprise?