<p>Threads: 35
Posts: 166 I’m curious – how many have kids who had an immediately negative first impression of a school (for whatever reason), yet eventually applied to, or even attended the school? </p>
<p>My kid did. Actually wasn’t going to apply to the school and at the last minute her brother said, “Why aren’t you applying to such and such?” She got in and had some tough choices to make deciding where to go. The local meeting of admitees, the admit days and so forth persuaded her. Sometimes you just have an off tour. Sometimes, you’ve seen so many schools in a trip or so many presentations that you are too burned out to appreciate another one. I’m glad she went ahead and applied because it’s been a good place for her to be.</p>
<p>I too am one for trusting your gut, but also one for at least getting out of the car and walking around and checking a place out</p>
<p>This is not like we are walking down a dark alley, or jumping out of a plane, we are walking around taking a tour of a campus, which is an amazing lucky thing to do</p>
<p>If my kid didn’t want to get out of the car, well, unless we were walking onto something that looked like three-mile island, they would give me te courtesy of at least walking around and at minimum, learning what is turning them off and what works</p>
<p>Me too!!! With S1 - who is more quiet and reserved - the trips gave me some “one on one” time with him (H and S2 didn’t go). We plugged his iPod into the car stereo and sang the songs together (he also has some of my favs on it cuz he also likes some “oldies”). </p>
<p>On the road, we discussed religion, politics and whatever! He shared some of his fears/concerns with me. Those were memories that I’ll never forget.</p>
<p>We “hung out” at some of the off-campus hang outs after dark so that he could get a “feel” for the atmosphere.</p>
<p>When I set up a college visit to an unfamiliar campus, I ask which is the better (prettier) way to enter. (Should anyone be surprised that most colleges have a side that isn’t so pretty - and it may just be the side that a lot of construction is going on).</p>
<p>When I ask, sometimes I’m told that this is the first time anyone has asked, and sometimes I’m told that others have asked the same question.</p>
<p>About previewing online with the photos and virtual tours: There were at least two schools on S’s list that looked like a good fit online. They had a completely differently feel when we went on the tour. I guess that means they had great web designers.</p>
<p>jlauer - I did the college visits alone with my S, too, no brothers, no husband. It was really some of the best times my son and I have had together since he was a little boy. I will remember the trips fondly and am looking forward to a road trip or two with S2 next year.</p>
<p>Wesleyan wasn’t built in a day; it doesn’t owe its existence (or name) to one particular robber baron. So, it has a mix of styles reflecting different architectural eras. Put it this way, no one’s ever gotten lost at Wesleyan because they couldn’t tell the library from the student center.</p>
<p>My then 8th grader came along on the first three college visits. Amusingly while the older son thought they were all “fine” even though the campuses were quite different, (urban Berkeley, tiny suburban Caltech, big suburban Stanford), my younger son had very strong opinions. He loved Caltech (but unfortunately hates science), and loathed Stanford - too big, too country club. Berkeley he had mixed feelings about, but also thought was too big. It will be interesting to see what he ends up gravitating towards when we start looking for him.</p>
<p>My daughter and I took a trip to visit a school that she was interested in and hated it so much when we got there and started the tour that we crawled out behind a wall so no one would see us. We then stopped to walk around another school on the way home on a lark. She applied and was accepted to that “lark” school and is now happily there.</p>
<p>My S wouldn’t get out of the car at Hampshire because he said it looks like a suburban corporate office park. Funny, because the place isn’t exactly crawling with future corporate types. (It was okay, because Hampshire was only intended to be a drive-by.)</p>
<p>At another school, he shouted with joy and nearly startled me off the road when he saw (are you ready?) many bikes parked in front of a dorm. For some reason he was absolutely overjoyed that a bike could be a campus mode of transportation.</p>
<p>Libraries? Sports facilities? Classroom buildings? Nobel prize winners on the faculty? Not an issue. Just give him a serious food court and tangible evidence of his political views. Mac-friendly is a real selling point. I guess this is what they call “fit.”</p>
<p>They’re cute, aren’t they? My kid has loved just about every college visit because he’s simply dying to be in college–which is a thrilling and romantic notion to him, thank goodness. I hope he holds on to that feeling when he’s crammed into a dorm room with a stranger a year from now. :)</p>
<p>We visited the Ivies, from way out west, last March. By the end of the week my head was spinning and my feet were frozen. My D was thrilled and delighted anew with each stop. She’s a runner so had to test the outdoor track at each school. She gleefully put on her shoes and raced around in sleet, hail and sun, alike. I hope she matches somewhere out there, because she’s in love. The rest of us are confused.</p>
<p>This is a fun thread. My daughter and I did the big trip to the East Coast, and there were 2 schools where we either didn’t take the tour or skipped out early - BU and Columbia. As soon as we walked onto the BU campus she disliked it, and I was very happy to cross it off our list because there are so many schools of engineering in Calif. that cost less and are just as good or better, so why pay more? At Columbia she hated the core curriculum. Plus the AD told us that 1/3 of the engineering grads go on to Wall St. jobs. Yuck! We ducked out of the tour and went shopping instead.</p>
<p>My son told me the minute we got onto the UCSD campus that he didn’t like it, but we were with another family, so we went ahead and took the tour. It didn’t change his mind at all. Not such a bad thing to go with your first impressions. You’re going to be surrounded by that architecture for 4 years…</p>
<p>jlauer95: Your description of singing in the car with S made me want to comment on how much love, fun and overall good feeling is expressed on this thread. We love our kids. We love to be with them. We love to contemplate their futures and their potentials. And we are the luckiest parents in the world to be able to do this instead of worrying about whether they will be killed by a landmine or not enough food or a massive epidemic.</p>
<p>I loved this time with my kids; it’s interesting because it’s so intense, and then they leave. </p>
<p>I’d be feeling more blue, but it’s just a week away from S’s 18th birthday, and H and I are both taking off from work to drive to school, take him to dinner, watch the HOUSE season premiere with him and hotel room, take him back to school and stay over. And the great thing is that he wants us to come, though he made it clear he wants to eat lunch with his friends and, good boy that he is, attend his choir practice. </p>
<p>PS He loves his school and knew from the first minute on campus that it was his school.</p>
<p>There were no schools he refused to look at except all the schools he refused to look at. Haha! He never refused to get out of the car but he nixed many of the schools and wouldn’t even go look. (I had to go see Swarthmore and Haverford on my own because the suspense was killing me.)</p>
<p>My DD had the same reaction at BU. ALthough she knew it was a “city” school, she didn’t realize how immersed in the city it was until she was walking along the busy street, imagining going to classes.</p>
<p>Although my DS liked Brown and always planned to apply, he had his hopes set on Yale (SCEA). His Yale overnight made it his clear cut 1st choice - but he was deferred. On the day the Brown app was due, he “reluctantly” agreed to submit his Brown PLME (combined med school pgm) app. By Jan, he was burnt out and figured he had no chance so he didn’t want to do the additional med school app. He quickly wrote his PLME essays and submitted his app just before the deadline. Yup, 5 months later, he was thrilled to do PLME and he had no regrets turning down Yale (even though EVERYONE told him to go with the more prestigious school).</p>
<p>It’s interesting how schools that were on the top of the list based on web visits can fall off the list with a real visit. The whole family did a three college tour through Pittsburgh to Ann Arbor in the spring of my S’s Jr. Year. Maybe it was being the third school, but U Mich went from being on the top to just dropping off the list. None of us liked it, and my S, who never voluntarily attended a HS football game, said: This is just a big football school." He and I made the trip to Pasadena to check out Cal Tech the next summer. We both wanted to like it, the place was gorgeous, looked like a resort. But when we got off campus for lunch, he shook his head, bad vibes. And I agreed.</p>
<p>LOL. My sil did graduate work at U. of Michigan. She’s an English major and baseball fan, but kind of got sucked into the football thing. It’s pretty hard to avoid! She TA’d the freshman writing course and had to read a lot of essays about football… Caltech is definitely a love it or hate it place. My kid would have fit in really well. He liked the honor code, the pranks, the serious academics and the fact that it was okay to be an in your face geek. Oh and if you’d eaten on campus you could have had one of the best pizzas my kids have ever had!</p>
<p>My parents had to drag me kicking and screaming to visit the University of Maryland after I was accepted. I sulked for the 2 1/2 drive – I did not want to go anywhere in-state. (Applied for a safety.) Plus, I had just gotten my acceptance letter from NYU, my dream school.</p>
<p>As soon as we turned into the campus, I perked up, and by the end of the day, I asked if we could stop at the campus bookstore and pick up a UMD t-shirt. The next day, I declined my NYU admission offer and accepted my Maryland one.</p>
<p>Three and a half years later, I’m a senior at the school I originally put up a fight to go look at, and I’ve loved every minute of it. Thank goodness for my parents forcing me to come visit!! :)</p>
<p>I don’t know how anyone could possibly look at a place from the car and know they’re not going there. The sheer thought of making that quick a judgment call on that kind of information makes my head feel like it’s going to explode.</p>
<p>It depends on what you see. My daughter looked out the window from the parking lot and saw cows. She didn’t want a school that had cows on campus. Needless to say, I looove cows, so I was a bit heartbroken, but at least I could see her point.</p>
<p>(The campus she turned down because of cows was not my alma mater. She did dutifully tour the campus. We both noted the students all looked very dour. Perhaps the cows weren’t as fun as I remembered…)</p>