I’ve lived in MN and Boston for close to a decade each. I worked just down the street from Macalester. If the viewbook had said that the winter was no worse, then I could agree with that. But it is way colder in MN than on the east coast It frequently got to 10 or 20 or 30 below in MN whereas in MA it rarely got below 20 above.
Isn’t Miami a major city on the East coast?
More in response to this thread’s original topic than the above points, but here’s a good one. I’m applying to UChicago despite it, but this was certainly a highlight of my tour for all the wrong reasons.
You know how tour guides like to walk backwards while talking to a group, and make some joke about trying not to trip and end up head over heels? Our guide did.
Not a complaint because I quite see why it’s this way, but when you tour more than one of the Claremont colleges, you get to hear from each tour guide the story of the founding of the colleges (they were all founded at different times in history, not all at once, so it’s a kind of decades-spanning epic like Citizen Kane).
Yes on hearing about the opportunities to do research with professors, the interlibrary loans (don’t students do all their research online these days anyway?), the gym amenities, etc.
I personally would like it if colleges offered a tour especially for families who have already been on several tours. “Are you willing to just take our word for it that we have a gym building, a library, dining halls, etc.? Come on the Seen It All tour and we’ll just go look at the things that actually are unique to our school (and also the dorms because you do want to see those in person).”
We toured Harvey Mudd recently, and there was no mention of the founding of any of the colleges including Mudd. I guess as with many humanities courses, you need to go elsewhere to get history at Mudd.
There was mention that there is an app to find out the current menus at all the dining halls in the consortium. (I got a private tour of the other campuses from an friend who works at Pitzer, and she also mentioned the menu app.)
One tour guide we had said, “Me and math don’t get along” about a dozen times during the tour. I kept thinking, “Apparently, you and English don’t get along either!”
@Ynotgo: yep, all the students use that.
I’m happy to tell the story if you like! Gather round, children, and listen to the tale of why all the streets are named after Ivy League colleges . . .
UT Austin: LAH info session was amazing. Personal greeting, intimate environment where it was easy to ask questions, and students/faculty who you could tell genuinely love the school. General tour was meh, and our tour guide was actually a transfer who hadn’t been at the school for very long.
Rice: Hands down the best tour/info session. I was completely apathetic toward Rice before, but after it felt like home. Tour guide was witty, knowledgable, friendly (a little quirky), and convinced me that Rice cared about its students.
Brown: Oh, Brown. I get that it’s an Ivy, but it was perhaps one of the weirdest sessions I’ve ever been to. The info session started off with an admissions counselor fielding dozens of questions about GPA, SATs, and simple information that could have been found with a quick Google search. A few even tried to get the kind woman to judge their stats. The tour that followed was full of kids and parents who knew they belonged at an Ivy. Common conversations I heard were, “I’m only touring here because my mom didn’t want to take me to Yale,” and, “So what’s your GPA?” Tour guide definitely personified the quirky tag Brown often gets stuck with. She spent the entire tour turned around, talking about Harry Potter, or barely speaking loud enough for anyone to hear her. At one point, she literally said " I’m not going to talk while we go through this part so try to keep up with me." I could only laugh. Oh, also, toward the beginning of the tour, a drop of water from a tree fell in her eye and she loudly exclaimed for all parents to hear, “Oh, sh*t!” The silence that followed was unbearable.
A lot of the kids on the tour were very entitled/generally unpleasant to talk to. At one point I was so upset by the neverending snark that when a kid said, “Of course I’m going to come here, I went to school down the street from Harvard,” I promptly followed with, “Oh, that’s cool. I went to school down the street from a liquor store.” Shut him right up.
Oh that is funny about the Macalester quote about the weather! I have lived 18 years in St. Paul and 22 in Boston and it is definitely noticeably colder in St. Paul! One time I arrived back there and they could not open the door of the plane because it was frozen shut. I would not let that stop me from attending Macalester, though. Great school in a great location. (My son just toured last weekend.)
When we toured Syracuse, one parent INSISTED that we actually tour the bathroom in the residence hall. So the whole group of 20+ some odd people had to traipse through the bathroom. The tour guide was very accommodating, but the rest of the group was rolling their eyes.
Fortunately, it was in the summer and was very clean and there weren’t any students in it. But still.
When I asked our D whether she had any head-scratching moments during tours, she offered up one. The tour group had just left the admission office when the grounds crew passed by. Unfortunately, a lawnmower fired a small branch toward the tour group, striking a woman on the leg. It drew blood, but did not require medical attention. Still, the woman was shaken, so D indicated that she would return to the admissions office to get help. That was a bad idea, apparently. The woman’s son was back in the office waiting for his interview, and she was worried how he would react if he find out.
I will admit that I chuckled when D told me the lesson she took from the woman’s reaction: “This is why everyone should play a contact sport.” Alas, blood, fractures and surgeries are commonplace for those who do.
One of my older stepdaughters goes to UW-La Crosse, so my D has spent a lot of time there with her and knows the campus and the general vibe pretty well, otherwise she would not be as fond of the school as she is based off the tour we had.
The tour guide was new, and certainly very sweet and I think she knew a lot about the school but had difficulty phrasing her answers or understanding some of the questions that were asked. However she was not the issue at all.
One parent could not stress enough that her older son had gone to Madison and she was only touring UWL as a safety school for her daughter, because she would of course get into Madison. All she did was talk about how La Crosse is ranked second to Madison and about how she wished her daughter would want to go there like her son. The poor girl looked so uncomfortable and so was everyone else on the tour! All the mother did was ask about how La Crosse compared to Madison. “Madison has this accreditation, does La Crosse have that too?” Or “Madison had a great study abroad program for my son, who went to Germany, does La Crosse have that too? How does their program compare to Madison’s?” Of course the tour guide had no idea and it was very awkward and off-putting for everyone involved.
Poor girl. Probably felt 2 inches tall.
I guess our head scratching moment was at Northeastern. Our tour guide was a sweet young lady and a journalism major but relied too much on “like” and “You know”. The women guides at WPI were much more articulate.
But what really took the cake was that most of the buildings were inaccessible to us because it was admitted students day so we did not see the dorms or any class rooms.
When I called admissions to complain they told be I have to file my complaint with the Department of Public Relations!
Couple this with the blatant money grab that is NUin (my DD questioned this right away) and the really slick professional marketing presentations turned us all off.
In reference to a question about whether the bluelight security phones are still needed, I believe they are. This is because most robbers of students are seeking their smart phones, so a student needs a way to call for help after their phone has been stolen.
@smokinact It sounds like you started the Northeastern tour with a negative view of the school.
Nope, not at all. How would you feel if you were on a tour and you couldn’t see any of the buildings?
^^^ Sounds like our first tour of DePaul. Actually both visits to DePaul. Never did see a residence hall or the inside of the school of interest (the first time due to renovations, the second time was the “we don’t take walk-ins” response that I’ve never quite forgotten, even though in both cases we had registered for the Loop Campus tour).
Some interesting tour experiences:
Columbia - a good tour, but was pretty huge and felt very impersonal.
Barnard - Really amazing, my dad and I had a tour to ourselves with a really kind student who couldn’t have been nicer.
Williams - tour guide was a friend of mine from my high school!
Davidson - same as Williams!
NYU - the worst on the list. In the information session, they kept stressing their global aspect, but the whole thing seemed dubious and kind of shady, almost like they were for-profit.
Smith - this was also really amazing! I was matched with a really nice student who took me to eat in the cafeteria and told me all about NoHo and college life.
Wellesley - I wasn’t wild about this one at all. The tour guide was super unenthusiastic, dragged her feet everywhere, and had a permanent grimace. I was scheduled to visit a class right after the tour, and I asked her how to get there, but she gave vague instructions. Finally, I found the building, only to find that the class had apparently been cancelled. Giving up hope, I tried to ask several students, who rudely brushed me off, saying they “didn’t know”. I later found out that the class was just moved to another location, but no one had told me. I missed it entirely, but did get to spend an hour freezing my behind off exploring the beautiful campus.