Just wanted to give a heads up to anyone attending to book your hotel reservations now as things are starting to fill up. We are attending the session on 3/8 and there are no hotel rooms in the are for the night of 3/8 and rooms for 3/7 are filling up quickly.
Which hotel are you referencing? We need a room for 2/21 and 2/22 and I think The Marcum (I guess that’s a college owned hotel?) was booked one of those nights. We booked a room at the Comfort Inn. I’m sure not quite as nice, but I’m sure it’ll do.
For the night of 3/8 all of these hotels are sold out: Marcum, Elms, Hampton Inn, Best Western, Comfort Suites, Baymont and Budget Inn.
We booked the Hampton Inn for the night of 3/7 (The Elms and Marcum were sold out).
Sororities start with Mom’s weekends in March so may be why hotels are filling up in Oxford.
Enjoy Make it Miami!!! I’m a mom of a sophomore and we attended two years ago. You will love it. My Advice: if you arrive the night before, drive around the Campus as well as Uptown . Park Uptown and eat a late night sandwich at Bagel and Deli.
On the morning of Make it Miami, if you’re an early riser, go to kofenya uptown. Otherwise, there’s a coffee shop in Armstrong. Have fun. Ask questions. Take a tour. Pay your deposit.
Robert Frost said of Miami University, “It’s the most beautiful place that ever there was.” I know you will agree.
@materof2 good info, thanks. We are heading to Miami Thursday for the program on Friday. We probably won’t get in until after 10 on Thursday, but we are saying in Oxford Friday night as well. We were going to have Dinner Friday night at Steinkellers. Is there a better option? I also saw that Patterson’s Cafe has a well reviewed breakfast. Would we be better off going to Kofenya or is that more of a coffee shop than a restaurant? We’ll have to squeeze bagel & deli in there too somewhere I guess.
We stayed at the comfort inn. It was great!! Room was huge and clean. Beds were so comfortable. Staff very friendly. Took only a few minutes to get into campus. We got a great rate on orbitz. We had dinner at Mac and Joes - great pub food.
We did not get there for make it miami - we just did the prospective student tours. The video and the info session one of the best I’ve ever seen. The shops were also fabulous. Lots of gear but we didn’t see many people wearing it on campus. And it’s game day !?!? The rest of the day left us very underwhelmed. We had lunch at the garden commons. It wasn’t great. The kid who took our money did not speak very good English so was not very helpful. We figured it out but my son was not impressed with the food selections. The business school session was also blah. It was all about the stats and not much about the substance of the program compared to the other schools we have visited. Our tour guide walked us through the building. We were with him for about 30 minutres - he didn’t have too much to say that convinced us this was the place to be. Really wanted to leave loving it. On our way out the parking garage attendant was rude and sarcastic to me. I pulled up to the window to make sure I was doing things right and he insulted me for clearly not reading the instructions. So Miami did not make the best impression on us. We did love the campus and the small town feel. But we missed the school spirit we encountered at Purdue. Miami dropped down his list. We did get Graeters ice cream on the way out and we are very happy we made the trip.
We made it back to NY today after a very long day of travel and cancelled flights…to a different airport. We literally took every mode of transportation today–shuttle bus, plane, bus, train, walk and finally car. Had to go to the point of origin airport to pick my car up after we got home!
All that to say–we loved Miami! He loved Miami, it’s either no. 1 or no. 2 on his list now. We just need to make sure the financials work! They were spot on with their presentations. We went on the CEC tour with two Comp Sci students. They both spoke well of the programs and even gave their recommendations of classes for kids with AP credit (i.e. if you are taking Calc AB, start over with Calc 1 so you have the foundation, if you are taking AP Comp Sci and get a 5–that counts for 2 classes, but take the credit for the first one and take the 2nd one (Object Oriented Programming?). We then went to an overview of the program by Dr. Kirk and a Q&A of students currently in the program (different majors). I was impressed and my son was impressed–they encourage double majors or major with minors and look to get it done in 4 years. The focus is on the student!
After that, we wanted to go to a few of the brief seminars on housing, financial aid, etc. Since he was invited to the Presidential Reception, we opted to tour a dorm room. We saw an unrenovated room, would have perferred to see both, but within the next few years they will all be renovated. I think they said only 6 more need to be renovated? Then we went back to the student center and went on a tour. There was only one other student on the tour so that allowed us ample time to ask questions. The ice rink building and rec building are both beautiful. We ended the day by catching the Presidential Reception and had a chance to say hello to President Crawford and Dr. Kirk and Ivy!
All in all, a great visit.
We hit Bagel & Deli on the way out of town…had a 3.5 hour drive to another school to visit my nephew on Tuesday.
And as for the comment about it being overly preppy or preppy in general…I saw one person who struck me as preppy (at least what i would term preppy) and he was sophomore engineering major with an izod sweater (pink). LOL!
We were at Make It Miami on Friday and had a great visit. The campus is beautiful. Much nicer than every other campus that we’ve looked at for D2. The Armstrong Student Center is an incredibly impressive building. Love how all of the buildings look the same and the layout of the campus is great, with lots of open green areas. Everything well very well kept. The admissions department always seems to go all out and they had one of the acapella groups singing and a band playing as we walked in. They also moved people around in a very organized fashion. They did send us to a dining hall that probably wasn’t the greatest, but it was fine. We saw Anderson dorm, which has been renovated. The large lounge area downstairs was great and there were smaller lounges on each floor. The rooms we saw were definitely better than most dorms that we’ve seen.
Also, Oxford is a great college town. Clearly the students use the town as it was very vibrant with activity. Also, off-campus housing seems plentiful and close by. It’s cute how all of the houses have names (mostly revolving around drinking though).
My wife and I were thoroughly impressed with the entire package. It looks like it would be a wonderful place to spend 4 years.
We are probably down to Miami and one other university at this point. Miami COA is significantly less and seems like it would provide way more. Being from NY though, our daughter is very apprehensive about the distance and just the difference of being in the midwest. I think she did get over the hurdle of the people “fit” though and did feel that she would fit in that way. It would be a much easier/safer decision for her to decide elsewhere and it seems as if she’s strongly leaning that way that this point.
@lexluthor5 where in NY are you? We’re on L. Island.
@01kids03 LI as well.
@DCnative14 looking forward to hearing about your visit this weekend.
After quite a bit of thought, our daughter has Made it Miami and we are all excited about that.
And if you think hotels for Make it Miami are tough, try booking family weekend when jumping aboard this late. I think we are a half hour away. Anything closer was over $500/night. Hopefully next year, if we book early, it’ll be possible to get to stay in Oxford.
@lexluthor5 Better start looking now for hotels in August for move-in if you know the dates.
@dcnatfan Already booked. That I have in Oxford, but it’s certainly not the optimal place. It’ll probably only be 1 night, thought I’m not sure yet and have 2 booked. Flights for Thanksgiving were also not pretty. I think other breaks will be easier though as airfare is usually cheap to CVG.
@lexluthor5 I was just told today that the hotels in Oxford have a lottery system for family weekend. That’s why they all appear booked already looking online. I talked to the Marcum and was told that you have an entry for each night of your previous stay. We stayed there for Make It Miami and were offered two lottery tickets. Not sure how the other hotels work.
@SFareamom that’s interesting. Maybe I’ll call up a couple of the hotels and confirm. We didn’t stay at the Marcum for our visit. I think I did see rooms at The Elms, but for $500/night.
We are waiting on approval to the various facebook parents’ forums so we should be able to learn more once we get in those.
Another place to check is the Heuston Woods Lodge and Conference Center. It is about 15 minutes from campus and is a beautiful park. I can’t help but figure it would be much cheaper than $500 per night. They also have cabins if your looking for a longer stay.
We are back from our Make it Miami day yesterday. We had a really great trip. We flew from DC to Cincy and then made hour or so drive on Thursday. We had some time to drive around campus and explore the town on our own a bit. We had a great dinner at the Steinkeller.
Our day on Friday was really informative and felt welcomed everywhere we went. The only downside was the program D19 is interested, the teacher was not there for the lunch with the students. It was cold a bit snowy, which I thought was a good thing so she can get a feel for what it is like in the winter. Other than the cold she couldn’t come up with anything she didn’t like. Definitely, did not have the preppy feel that we heard and read about.
I think it has risen to the top of the list but she says she still wants to see VT, which is not until April 6, so the process will continue for another few weeks at a minimum.
@dcnatfan sounds like it was very similar to our experience, down to dinner at Steinkeller. Armstrong student union building was amazing, wasn’t it? Did you see a renovated dorm?
The student fit and distance were probably the biggest hurdles for us. Distance can’t be fixed, but it was never a deal-killer. Student fit seemed much better than expected during our visit and since on social media. Once those issues were cleared, the beautiful campus (layout, great student union, nice buildings and nice renovated dorms), town, excellent education, support from the admission stuff, the very helpful head of our daughter’s program as well as by far the lowest COA (of the schools she’d realistically look at) made the decision.
I don’t envy this dragging out another month for your family. Will be interested to see how your UVM visit goes. Burlington sounds like an ideal college city. I think UVM was going to be too outdoorsy/too liberal for our daughter.