@WalknOnEggShells, for what it’s worth, my daughter loved Fairfield. Nice campus, lots of new building and investment, and a small Honors Program. Great location between NYC, Boston, and near Hartford. They gave D a merit scholarship of about $22k (I think) that made the cost reasonable. It rocketed up to #2 or 3 on her list after her second visit.
Fun thread to release some stress.
Up
Barnard – loved the intimate focus on individual growth. Athena scholar program described and sounded attractive.
University of Richmond – beautifully kept campus. Tour guide was a dancer so DD got a great summary of the dance opportunities. Loads of financial support. Very professional and seems like would be good experience. Dining hall great, with Passover section clearly available.
William & Mary – another beautiful campus, but very different as it’s so historic. Impressive new science facilities. AO gave clear description of course requirements at W&M. Dance minor available. Lots of tradition.
Down
Columbia – AO talked 55 minutes about the core – totally turned off DD.
American – beautiful facilities, and great Communications center. Perfect for journalism or govt or IR majors, none of which applies to DD’s interest
Emory – Quite disappointed. But can’t place why. AO went on and on about Oxford College and Atlanta, and didn’t talk about Emory curriculum at all. No sense of the community. Construction everywhere. But DD saw bunheads which made her happy.
@WalknOnEggShells I noticed Loyola in Baltimore on your list and wanted to point out that it is also very generous with merit aid. D17 applied there. While she has a solid GPA, her SAT was average so I was surprised at how much she received. Several of her classmates with better scores got substantial aid from Loyola. I know many people who’ve gone to Loyola but didn’t know much about it until we visited. I was very impressed. Unfortunately, the downside to D17 is that we live only 45 minutes away and D17 wants to go further away to school. Her top choice was Fordham but the merit aid she got was not very significant and it was simply too expensive.
O M G @Hanna. I’ve done ~17 tours and I’m ready to hit myself in the head with a hammer.
@WalknOnEggShells My D is finishing her junior year at Loyola Maryland. She graduated top of her high school class and received significant merit aid there. She chose it over Lafayette and Villanova (the other two in her final three) due to the differences in costs. The Jesuits know how to do education. I have been surprised by the rigor of the curriculum and even as a STEM major she is receiving an incredibly well rounded education. PM me if you have questions about Loyola.
Crossed off: George Washington and Penn on account of not having enough of a separate campus from the surrounding cities
Chicago: beautiful campus but the “where fun goes to die” logo and myth(?) of grade deflation
Moved up: Tulane: great spring weather, fun NOLA vibe and a slurpy machine in cafeteria
Miami U: (Florida) Beautiful campus and weather, laid back vibe
Georgetown: warm and interesting other admitted candidates and warm reception of professors and admissions staff, beautiful campus only concern was how expensive restaurants etc are in the exclusive neighborhood
Yale: really interesting tour and quirky nerdy tour guide … didn’t love neighborhood
Moved down: Case: unsafe Cleveland neighborhood and stressed out looking students
@whatsally I would not worry too much about the expensive G’town neighbourhood. I used to live in DC for many years and there are some great, cheap restaurants not too far away in Arlington, VA and the Mt. Pleasant and Adams Morgan areas of DC. There are also some lower priced places in Georgetown and a couple of miles north in Glover Park. Most college students don’t have a lot of money anyway so eating out in Georgetown won’t be the norm.
Hanna- is visiting colleges part of your job?
@wis75 …you beat me to the ?. I visited campuses for a while as part of a job…but I didn’t take the tours.
We did Spring Break visits to four NMF schools in New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma.
MOVED UP
University of New Mexico - a charming Goldilocks school with a pretty campus, a good theatre program and excellent pre-med advising and opportunities. S could easily see himself living in / enjoying ABQ. This was his first choice on paper, and went up from there. NMF full ride covers tuition & fees, room & board, books plus several hundred left over.
MOVED WAY UP
Texas Tech - the dark horse candidate! We knew nothing about this school except it was in Texas and offered a full ride to NMFs. We’re very glad we went. The opportunities in biology, psychology, pre-med and the Honors College wowed my S. Came from nowhere and is currently tied with UNM for first place. The NMF full ride covers the full cost of attendance - tuition, fees, room & board, books, and stipends in excess of $4,000 for travel and incidentals.
S likes the campus, town, dorms, dining hall and theatre program better at UNM. He thinks Tech has the edge on academic, STEM and Honors College opportunities.
STAYED THE SAME
U of Oklahoma - gorgeous campus, great programs, happy, fresh-faced students, nice town. The pre-med info session was excellent. Hit all the right notes but S says it came in second in pretty much everything for him. It would have been my first choice, however, but I’m more of a humanities / social science type. The OOS NMF scholarship leaves out-of-pocket expenses of $7,800 for the first year and $9,000 for the successive year up to a total of five years. Outside scholarships stack, and many students told us their annual out-of-pocket is much less, sometimes zero, after they receive additional, smaller scholarships as upperclassmen.
Currently in third place but since S is auto-admit at the two above, he may not apply.
OFF THE LIST
UT Dallas - Had the best dorms (every student has their own, lockable bedroom) and dining hall in the group but moved off the list due to an off-putting vibe from both staff and students. Not all of them, of course, but enough that S felt it was a poor fit culturally for him. The NMF scholarship is approx. $900/year short of a full ride. Seemed to have excellent STEM programs so might be a great fit for others even though it didn’t work for my S.
Not as many PacNW responses as east coast, so I’ll play:
WENT WAY UP:
Willamette University: they absolutely know how to showcase their best assets and show prospective students why they’re worthy of their applications over better ‘name’ schools. And this was with an only so-so tour guide. The info session focused on the unique offerings at Willamette, such as their many 3-2 programs and strong ties to the state capitol building (if politics is your thing). Everyone on campus was really friendly and down to earth, food was good, and the only aspect we really didn’t like was the dorm life…dorms felt kind of tired and run-down. I can also attest to W’s hard work after acceptance; they went above and beyond to get DS17 back on campus for meetings with profs in his potential department, lunch with students, and more. He got more mail and phone calls from W (as well as more merit money) than anywhere else he was admitted. He ultimately chose to go elsewhere, but it was painful to decide.
WENT UP:
Lewis & Clark: We knew the campus would be pretty, but O-M-G. It’s hard not to let the beauty sway you. In addition, DS17 was most impressed by the other perspective students (and later) the admitted students at preview day. Everyone seems passionate and smart, and yes, liberal, but not to the degree we’d been expecting. L&C has far more ‘mainstream’ appearing kids than we’d thought (this is neither a plus or a minus to us, just something we noted). So in this case, it was the student body that went up in our estimation, not necessarily the facilities or campus.
University of Portland: For us, the academic offerings didn’t go up in our estimation, but UP definitely put on a good preview day. We loved that prospies could tour ALL the dorms in an open house type event, where current students acted as tour guides of their own common areas and rooms. Everyone was super friendly, and we got a better sense of student life/dorm life at UP than anywhere else we visited.
STAYED THE SAME:
University of Puget Sound: This is a good school, but for us, it just felt a bit vanilla. Kind of blah, even though its clean and pretty. We’re also not huge fans of Tacoma, though the area around the school has improved since I visited on my own campus tours decades ago. It was too preppy for our somewhat hippie son, though I’m sure he would have found much to like if he’d given it more of a chance.
Whitman: This is not to bash Whitman by any means…we had high expectations of this school, and those expectations were met. Wonderful campus, friendly students, and interestingly, IMO, more of a liberal/hippie/alternative vibe than even L&C. This may be due to spending most of our time on preview day with theater/art types…maybe we just didn’t really see the sportier types. I will say there was a big student protest over administrative policy of sexual assault cases on campus when we visited (basically, that the admin did little to support students reporting assault), and of course this is unfortunately a problem shared by many schools, but it was still a bit hard to ignore.
WENT DOWN/OFF THE LIST:
Oregon State University: I’ll start by saying DS17 was looking for LACs not big universities, so we’re biased in that regard, but wanted to give OSU a solid chance. It was NOT for him. Campus was ok visually, but the dorms our tour guide decided to show us were atrocious. Honestly, awful (and we’ve seen our share). We had an interview in the honors college, and after 10 minutes, it was clear that they were really only looking for (valuing) engineering/math types (at least our interviewing committee was). The honors college building was new and impressive, but somewhat cold and corporate-looking. The students there looked uncomfortable and stressed. In contrast, the students outside of honors looked either bored or like they couldn’t care less. Just not a good vibe. Sorry, Beavers.
Reed: I know it’s a great school, but for us, it went down the list (we were primarily looking for DS19, as DS17 already knew it was too big a reach for him). Vibe was just really stilted. Students looked at our kids like potential competition, not friends/potential fellow classmates. Even the tour guide took himself very, very seriously. Campus was pretty, though didn’t blow us away. Overall, a good school for some, but not the atmosphere for us.
WENT DOWN SO FAR WE BAILED ON THE TOUR:
Portland State University: Again, you know our bias, but PSU is so different than other Oregon publics that we wanted to give it a chance. It’s very urban, right in downtown Portland, which SHOULD be a plus, since it’s such a fantastic city for college-aged people, but there was no sense of community. The buildings were scattered among non-university buildings, and when we finally got to what passed for an actual quad, we were halfway through the tour and had crossed three city streets already. It was nice to have the Tri-Met line right there, but very few students actually live in the dorms (we were told) because cheaper housing can be found away from downtown. So it’s almost a commuter school (maybe I should just say it IS a commuter school). Felt like a fun vibe for grad students, but didn’t feel like an undergrad experience.
No Western Washington, @wrldpossibility?
Never got farther north than Tacoma, @doschicos . 
Husband lived in Bellingham for a while in the 90s, so we’re familiar with the area…beautiful but pretty isolated and cold in winter. Haven’t been on the campus in ages, though!
It’s been a long road with lots of school visits that evoked strong reactions…both positive and negative. Note that many of these schools were seen for the first time after she had applied, been accepted, and, in some cases, either offered merit or invited to compete in scholarship weekends.
MOVED DOWN:
Yale. D had applied and was accepted early action without having visited. On paper, in the classrooms and inside the residential colleges, Yale is perfect. New Haven is not. D did not like the urban feel of the campus nor the streets that intersected it; she found New Haven depressing.
Vanderbilt: D did not like the fact that the campus was so spread out and that you had to cross the medical center to get from the residential part to the academic part. She was underwhelmed by the class she sat in on (in fact, she disagreed with everything the professor was saying and thought his arguments were inane. The campus also felt too Greek (she could immediately spot the groups of (mostly white) fraternity and sorority types in the dining halls, and the non-Greek (mostly non-white) kids did not seem to intermingle much socially. CV scholarship was not enough make it a contender.
USCali: She thought it was a vibrant campus with great programs but that it would be a terrible fit for her (too big, too rah-rah, too much like her high school).
Grinnell: She liked it socially, but couldn’t wrap her head around being in the middle of a cornfield. Also, they are limited in the offerings in the subjects she is interested in.
Scripps: She liked the campus and the idea of being part of a consortium, but didn’t think the students were as sharp nor the classroom discussions as high-level as she would have liked.
Pomona: She wasn’t thrilled the overall vibe – she came away with the impression that they take themselves a bit too seriously and that try too hard to create an east coast feel. Didn’t apply.
Columbia - D has never a big fan of NYC and got the overall feeling that the Columbia experience was as much – if not more – about having NYC as its campus than creating a campus vibe. Didn’t apply.
MOVED UP:
Wash U. D loved the campus and the surrounding area (Forest Park). She likes the programs, the students, and the professors, but didn’t love the vibe (not as intellectual as she was seeking); it was a strong contender, esp. with its full tuition scholarship.
Rice: This was among the only schools D visited before applying. She loved the campus, the residential college system and the social scene, but thought that the humanities are not as valued and that the overall vibe is too STEM-focused.
Stanford. A very pleasant surprise. She loved the campus, the architecture, the art, the weather. She feared that the vibe would be too tech-y/entrepreneurial, but found that the humanities are highly valued there, the student population quirky, artsy, and irreverent, the professors brilliant, the administration supportive, and the overall intellectual and social vibe exactly what she was looking for. Quickly shot up to first place.
STAYED THE SAME:
Davidson. Liked the town, the campus, the administration and the kids she met; she felt that being Belk Scholar would afford tremendous benefits, but had some concerns about her field of interest, and ended up liking other schools better.
U. Chicago. Liked the campus and thought that the kids were very sharp. Not convinced about the overall quality of life or the winter weather.
“Hanna- is visiting colleges part of your job?”
Yes. Independent counselors typically do a lot of college tours. We want to know what our students will see if we tell them to visit. We also eat in dining halls, meet admissions officers, etc.
@LoveTheBard As I was reading your comment regarding each college, I kept on thinking “Stanford is the school she’s looking for.” And sure enough, at the end of your post, it looks like your daughter chose Stanford. My kid chose Stanford for the same reasons, but the big difference is he knew that from the beginning and applied to only Stanford among top 15 colleges. For us, the choice was among Stanford (dream school), Berkeley/UCLA or a good Honors College with good merit-based scholarship due to NMF status. Unless a top school was a very good fit for him, we would have rather saved money by attending a lower-ranked college.
For us, a very top school is worth the cost (fully pay or nearly full pay for us) only if the school is a very good fit for our kid. The prestige factor alone is not worth the money for us if he has to “suffer” through 4 years.
@websensation - Yes, I recall commenting on several threads in which you had posted when you were grappling with your choices in the wake of your son’s SCEA acceptance. If memory serves, you hadn’t anticipated that your kid would get into Stanford, and that told him could go full pay if he got in.
Like you, we hadn’t expected D’s Stanford acceptance (she applied SCEA and was admitted to Yale and didn’t think she stood a chance RD); we were even more surprised at her getting full tuition scholarships at several top 20 schools. It hasn’t been an easy choice, but we are thrilled with the opportunities she has had.
Stanford only became a dream school after she saw it, and then it was quite clear.
@WalknOnEggShells I would also highly recommend Loyola Maryland. It gave the highest merit scholarship to my daughter. It was the most beautiful campus as well!! It reminded me of Villanova with more hills and trees. The science lab equipment is of the highest caliber. Good luck!!
@momoffive How is the neighborhood around Loyola?
@citymama9 Most of Loyola falls within the Roland Park neighborhood, which is a very nice upscale neighborhood. The east side of campus runs up against York Road, which is where the neighborhood gets a bit sketchy. Loyola has its own police force which is very well supported by Baltimore PD. It is an urban area so of course students should always be aware of their surroundings, but overall I feel the neighborhood is safer than that around Johns Hopkins, which is only a mile and a half down Charles Street.