“By contrast Nassau Hall on Princeton’s campus was actually built in 1756.” Right, and its chapel was started in 1924 and most of the residential quads one pictures when they think of the place are of similar vintage. No one actually thinks all these places have been around for four hundred years. Also, a reddit thread with a picture of some worn steps doesn’t seem like actual evidence of much?
Anyway, if you’re telling us honestly that the campuses at WashU, UofC, Yale, Kenyon and Sewanee also don’t appeal to you, that’s cool, but it feels like you’re singling out Duke for some (not particularly) unknown reason I’m guessing College GameDay with the Duke Chapel as the backdrop this weekend is gonna look lovely and no one on the ESPN production crew is worried that it will come off as “faux olde.”
Leaving my thoughts on the issue there, though, since we’re back off-topic. Last word’s yours if you like.
Has everyone’s kids grown up in such carefully curated/architectural digest approved homes that the aesthetics of the campus ACTUALLY matter?
This baffles me. My kids grew up in a small, architecturally insignificant house built in the post- WW2 boom…on a block filled with the same.
How is it that all of a sudden kids care about master plans and historically significant balustrades and gargoyles? Is this a Tik tok phenomenon?
I get that some campuses are ugly (most people don’t love brutalist concrete buildings) but do parents actually encourage this level of naval gazing? School has the right academics, right price, the appropriate level of rigor/intensity based on what the kid wants and can handle, is in the right geography- you are going to eliminate a school based on red brick vs. weathered clapboard?
This area surprised me - outside patio behind the performing arts building. I don’t know what it’s used for and it had just stopped raining so no people around on a Sunday afternoon. Looks are not why D chose the school, but it’s a nice bonus having lots of pleasant places to relax. Across the lake are places where students from the Global dorms hang out.
“Dissected to death” was the problem. Parents were going on endlessly – over a thousand posts and counting – about this college or that, with methodology only occasionally discussed/debated. Even then, nothing cohesive that one could point a busy HS student towards (a student like malsandhuskies’ daughter, but I accidentally replied to OITB1 instead of them [sheepish emoji])
So mine was an attempt at creating a “one-stop shopping” post that anyone’s kid could be directed to if they were particularly concerned about USNWR. They could read my observations plus however much of the article, and potentially be done with the matter in minutes. Hopefully deciding that USNWR wasn’t relevant to their search and decision.
Happy to report D24 happily signed up for Coffee chat with Elon AO without any prompting on my part. I thought the article was helpful so thank you for posting!
If you want to continue this discussion start a new thread about campus architecture and I’ll be happy to weigh in there. As it is I’ve answered your question and don’t want to further derail this thread.
I think for some, college is a portal to a better and new experience from the everyday life a given set of parents have been able to help create for their kid. I agree with you 100% that it doens’t matter, but a lot of people idealize and romanticize college as “the better life”; once you have that, aesthetics takes on greater prominence.
To answer your question, yes, I think parents encourage this level of naval gazing. That level of parental (non-financial) investment in their children’s college experience arguably contributes north of 70% of the fuel that drives this very forum.
My daughter is a sophomore at Elon. Personally I don’t care for many of the newer buidings finding them dystopian in a way I can’t put my finger on. I appreciate that they carried the old brick aesthetic to the new buildings as I’ve been to colleges where everything is a mish-mash of styles. That said overall I think the campus is very pretty and often think how nice it must be to go to a school that’s pleasing to the senses like that (my own college was similar and I did appreciate it). Every time I go there, workers are keeping up the grounds. The campus is a recognized botanical garden. And I agree with whoever asked are parents really encouraging their kids to make decisions based on this - but I’ve read of kids making decisions on some really dumb things on this board and it’s no surprise that I know of way WAY more kids transferring these days that EVER happened when I was a college student.
I might have kicked off the aesthetic discussion by commenting how pleasantly surprised I was with our visit to Elon. And my reaction to the campus and pleasant experience of the environment was based on the attention and care given to that. The building, facilities and spaces are well cared for. I compared it to another campus that felt run down, unkept and “tired”’vs old/character. This was t because I think superficial curb appeal is more important than academics. It is because a school that maintains student spaces well, is caring about their students in other ways as well. Dorms with bathrooms in disrepair, student union spaces with limited eating options and no inviting spaces to socialize and work reflect priorities that may not be about the students.
In the Elon Today article about the USNews rankings, a school official was reported to say that they were (at that point) studying the new methodology to understand what changed. In my own reading, there were a lot of changes in the emphasis put on various factors … one of the biggest changes was no longer considering class size in the rankings (if I’m reading correctly, class size accounted for 8% of the overall score last year and 0% this year). Other changes included new consideration for faculty publications and first gen graduation data.
I’m guessing College GameDay with the Duke Chapel as the backdrop this weekend is gonna look lovely and no one on the ESPN production crew is worried that it will come off as “faux olde.”