Driving tour campus impressions

Parent Cafe
1

<p>Just did about 3000 miles around the Northeast and hit a few campuses I had not seen in person:</p>

<ol>
<li>Penn State--nice town but pretty average state U campus</li>
<li>Syracuse U-better than expected city and not a bad campus--bit better than PSU</li>
<li>Colgate--town a bit larger than expected and cute enough--campus is among the nicest I have ever seen. A+. Security did follow us out as we drove through and stopped to take a few pix. Maybe a good thing? Not sure</li>
<li>Cornell--Ithaca more rundown than expected and campus is more state U looking than expected. Not as impressed as I expected.</li>
</ol>

2

<p>Ditto for us on Cornell.</p>

<p>Vassar was a letdown. Long weedy grass, construction/erosion fences everywhere, no curb appeal.</p>

<p>High Point had too much curb appeal, if that’s possible. A little creepy in a Stepford way. Sorry.</p>

3

<p>Brown, Princeton, Yale - all gorgeous.
Tufts - beautiful, and that hill is NOT as big as everyone says it is.
Boston U. - much more entrenched in the city than expected. No campus. The campus is a huge street with the train, the T, running down the middle of it.
Cornell - not as beautiful as expected. Kind of a disappointment.
Ithaca - The juxtaposition of extremely modernistic buildings (that one would expect in a city) was unappealing in a rural setting.
Boston College - not as attractive as expected at all.
Johns Hopkins - beautiful campus.
U. Rochester - another beautiful campus, great gem of a city - too bad the weather is so rough.
Carnegie Mellon - great campus feel in a city setting. Great medium sized city.
U. Pittsburgh - kind of unattractive.
U. Penn - beautiful campus, not great surrounding area, but great nearby city.</p>

4

<p>We’ve done tours of some of the colleges you mentioned, and this was our impression:</p>

<p>PSU - Haven’t been there since I looked at it many, many years ago and liked it, but it’s definitely a party school and very large.
Syracuse - It didn’t really thrill me all that much way back when I looked for me, and we didn’t bother touring this time. I didn’t think the city was all that great, so we skipped it.
Colgate - beautiful surroundings, but I didn’t think the campus was as wonderful as they said. Supposedly they were voted as having the most beautiful campus on some list - I don’t agree. The kids were definitely more preppy/athletic than DS wanted, but we really enjoyed the chipwich sandwiches after the tour!
Cornell - very big with a mish-mosh of different architectural styles, but we found the people there to be very friendly and helpful and were impressed with what they had to offer. We loved Ithaca (don’t know what part you were looking at) - they had a great shopping district downtown, and they had beautiful waterfalls. The shopping right next to the campus was not as nice. Overall we really liked it, and it’s #2 on DS’s college list.</p>

<p>We’ve seen just about every top college there is in the northeast area. Ask me about anything, and we’ve been there!</p>

5

<p>

That’s funny we saw Vassar in February just after seeing Bard, where apparently they didn’t believe in snow shovels and we spent a couple of hours dealing with treacherous walks, including seeing a student slip and land on her back. Vassar was immaculate. All the snow was off the walks. The only thing I didn’t like was the road going right through the center of campus. </p>

<p>I didn’t think the hill at Tufts was a big deal either.</p>

<p>Carnegie Mellon was the big surprise in my book - I loved the buildings, the setting, the city…</p>

<p>WPI has a surprisingly adorable campus, though it reminded me of my high school.</p>

6

<p>Thanks for all this information.</p>

7

<p>maggiedog - I just wanted to clarify a couple of things about the weather in Rochester. It’s not all that rough. We actually get less snow here than the neighboring cities of Buffalo and Syracuse. Sure, it snows a lot in the winter, but we don’t get a lot of those big storms that you get in, say, New England (I’ve lived in both places). Also, the school has an underground tunnel system that connects most of the academic buildings, so you don’t even have to venture outside that much.</p>

<p>You’re right that it’s a beautiful campus and great city. I went to college at the U of R and couldn’t bring myself to leave Rochester.</p>

8

<p>Benreb,</p>

<p>That’s useful info about the weather. We visited in April and it was snowing, so that was sort of a deterrent for my son. However…my feeling is that it’s college, not a Summer vacation, so deal with it! Really liked the city a lot, though. We also visited Eastman, and it was gorgeous.</p>

9

<p>You cannot really judge the weather by one day…my younger d graduated from the U of R and our April visit was a spectacular glorious spring day. My older d graduated from Brandeis, our early April visit was a snowstorm. Younger d’s graduation at the U of R was outside again on a spectacular day -this year’s graduation was chily and rainy. The year my older d applied to schools, including the U of R, I consistenly looked at the weather for all schools she was applying to-Dartmouth, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Brandeis, Skidmore, U of R and Skidmore in Saratoga Springs was consistently the coldest that particular winter.</p>

10

<p>It’s hard to avoid the fact that winter weather in New York State’s northern tier is pretty grim. You don’t even see a New England location on this list until number 20 and that’s in Maine. (source: city-data.com)</p>

<ol>
<li> Syracuse, NY (housing, pop. 140,658): 115.6 in </li>
<li> Clay, NY (housing, pop. 58,836): 115.6 in </li>
<li> Anchorage, AK (housing, pop. 278,700): 114.0 in </li>
<li> Utica, NY (housing, pop. 59,082): 108.2 in </li>
<li> Flagstaff, AZ (housing, pop. 58,213): 100.3 in </li>
<li> Coconino, AZ (housing, pop. 74,488): 100.3 in </li>
<li> Cheektowaga, NY (housing, pop. 79,988): 93.6 in </li>
<li> Amherst, NY (housing, pop. 116,773): 93.6 in </li>
<li> Buffalo, NY (housing, pop. 276,059): 93.6 in </li>
<li> Niagara Falls, NY (housing, pop. 52,326): 93.6 in </li>
<li> Rochester, NY (housing, pop. 208,123): 92.3 in </li>
<li> Irondequoit, NY (housing, pop. 52,354): 92.3 in </li>
<li> Erie, PA (housing, pop. 102,036): 88.8 in </li>
<li> Union, NY (housing, pop. 54,563): 81.8 in </li>
<li> Duluth, MN (housing, pop. 84,167): 80.7 in </li>
<li> Grand Rapids, MI (housing, pop. 193,083): 73.4 in </li>
<li> Wyoming, MI (housing, pop. 70,155): 73.4 in </li>
<li> South Bend, IN (housing, pop. 104,905): 70.8 in </li>
<li> Elkhart, IN (housing, pop. 52,748): 70.5 in </li>
<li> Portland, ME (housing, pop. 63,011): 70.4 in </li>
<li> Kalamazoo, MI (housing, pop. 72,161): 68.8 in </li>
<li> Worcester, MA (housing, pop. 175,454): 67.2 in </li>
<li> Schenectady, NY (housing, pop. 61,560): 63.9 in </li>
<li> Albany, NY (housing, pop. 93,963): 63.9 in </li>
<li> Manchester, NH (housing, pop. 109,497): 63.6 in</li>
</ol>

<p>Though I imagine one could win a nice bet on the crazy fact that Flagstaff, AZ is in the top 5 for annual snowfall!</p>

11

<p>Syracuse actually doesn’t get huge dumps of snow at once, it just snows every single day from Thanksgiving until Easter. It is also the second cloudiest city (Seattle is #1.) I lived there during high school and again for grad. school. </p>

<p>Saratoga/Albany much less snow and sunnier and our snow comes mainly from Nor’easters, not lake effect. But the wind in the Hudson Valley is brutal so it seems colder here than western NY. </p>

<p>I’ve been on Vassar campus several times and, imo, it’s not a very pretty campus. I find it very dark and much shabbier than Smiith or Bryn Mawr.</p>

12

<p>So interesting to read about Vassar! We were there a day after it snowed and thought the campus was a jewel! It literally seemed to glow! It’s amazing that these incredibly expensive decisions are being made based on what is basically a snapshot…</p>

13

<p>

</p>

<p>Grim for you and me, if we lived there.</p>

<p>But college students who live on campus or rent off-campus apartments within walking distance of the campus don’t have to shovel the snow or drive in it. So they don’t care as much, unless it gets in the way of travel to other locations – such as home for Winter Break or to another city for a job interview.</p>

14

<p>

It snows enough that they have ski resorts there and I’ve even skied at them. Flagstaff is at a high elevation (around 7,000 ft) and some of the mountains there are quite tall (around 12,000 ft) hence not what most people picture when they think of Arizona.</p>

15

<p>Megan12-we actually walked the entire Ithaca downtown retail strip. It was nearly deserted mid-day with one bum for every shopper. Students were few. Drove through the student retail area up the hill by campus and got the feeling most students don’t come downtown that much. Compared to downtown Madison, Boulder and Ann Arbor, Ithaca was very sad and lacked life.</p>

16

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</p>

<p>Interesting, hadn’t thought of it that way. For my S (and we’re in the northeast), it’s the constant wet underfoot and the lack of sunlight. And none of his choices are in the south or west, so he’s in for it, wherever he ends up, just gradations of the same…</p>

17

<p>Barrons, Cornell students don’t go to downtown Ithaca much, except maybe to go to the unusual restaurants there. There is a certain feeling that downtown belongs to other people – mostly Ithaca College students and the local aging-hippie population.</p>

<p>Cornell students tend to spend their time on campus or in Collegetown (the commercial area just south of the campus) or, if they have cars or have time for a bus ride, they might go to the area where Wegmans (a spectacularly good supermarket) and all the big box stores are located (which is kind of beyond downtown) or go in another direction to the mall (which has a multiplex movie theater attached and a couple of supermarkets nearby).</p>

<p>It’s important not to judge Ithaca by its downtown alone because downtown plays a very small role in the life of most Cornell students.</p>

18

<p>Barrons - of course it was deserted mid-day - the kids were at school! LOL!</p>

<p>We walked around and didn’t see any bums. We didn’t see that many students either, but it wasn’t close enough for them to go except after classes or on the weekends.</p>

<p>I have to admit, it was not like Brown or Ann Arbor that is swarming with college students, but I still thought it was nice. </p>

<p>Princeton has a great town too with a beautiful campus. </p>

<p>I didn’t see Tufts, but DS went with his dad, and they loved it. Again - a good town. Lehigh, same thing. Carnegie-Mellon - DS liked it, but I wasn’t all that impressed. I thought it could have used some updating, and the town was not all that great.</p>

<p>I could keep listing colleges all day…</p>

19

<p>I’m quite surprised by the negative Cornell comments. I do admit that I don’t get the wild variety in building style & period but you must walk the entire campus to see the whole picture. I really like the Commons area, although som e of the locals casn be sketchy. This video captures what our D loves about Cornell, a tribute by two graduating seniors:</p>

<p>[This</a> Is on Vimeo](<a href=“http://vimeo.com/23897683]This”>http://vimeo.com/23897683)</p>

20

<p>cs dad - I loved that video! Thanks for posting it.</p>