Northeastern did not offer freshman admission to Boston except for that one incidence that you mentioned. I chose long ago to avoid her thread,
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This is the kind of wisdom which, if a kid can internalize, makes all the difference in the world in the process.
For ours, it came on a tour of a school, in a place, of a type, which they’d not only not considered, but thought was not right for them across the board. They loved it. It changed everything for them in approach and really de-stressed the process. (Of course, ask me on any combination of 12/15 and 4/1 how that’s all going!)
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that makes more sense - self-imposed pressure seems like it would be common in any hyper-selective institution.
I read “pressure cooker” and I think of profs over-loading kids (for no good reason) and a lot of between-student competition and no cooperation… that is an entirely different thing.
Also I would always hesitate to extrapolate from 1 tour guides description too much. They can have wildly different backgrounds and experiences…etc.
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Community colleges with housing and guaranteed articulation agreements are an excellent opportunity for students, really. I wish they would get more love not just in places with a lean toward archcompetitiveness like College Confidential, but at least more generally.
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The hills at Lehigh aren’t that bad in the winter. I have first hand experience, and my kid has been there for five years now.
@Publisher, did you attend Lehigh?
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No, but I wrestled at the prep school national tournament at Lehigh for 4 straight years during high school. The tournament was held during the cold weather months.
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The hills on Lehigh University’s campus can be difficult to handle due to ice during several months of the school year.
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I went to a school on a very hilly campus in the NE. My experience is that schools plow/salt/sand like crazy and that it’s perfectly safe to be walking around campus at all times of year. I can’t imagine that it’s any different at Lehigh.
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It was. The tournament was held at the end of February.
The National Prep Wrestling Tournament is returning to Lehigh University in 2024.
Experienced similar issue at Cornell University.
Somehow kids make do, just like I did when it was 104 degrees in Austin during school. There are accessories you can put on your shoes to help with traction. I use them here.
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Yeah, I live in a hilly area in a northern climate. There are maybe a handful of mornings every winter with sufficiently icy conditions that people may not make it into work right away, schools may declare a delayed start, or so on.
But it is only a handful, and usually only a delay, precisely because this happens every year and there is a whole system in place to deal with it. So often by the time people are moving in the morning it is already being handled, and it is only when icy conditions temporarily get out ahead of the system that there is any sort of issue.
But, I do believe in hilly areas in such climates, you should put decent winter tires on your car in the cold months, and also have good shoes and boots. Many people make do with All Season tires, but icy patches can form suddenly. And even with good road conditions, the special rubber compounds in winter tires make a huge difference–once you use them, you are unlikely to go back.
Same deal with footwear–you will sometimes hit an unexpected icy patch (including sometimes under a cover of snow), so why not be prepared just in case?
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My experience was indeed at Cornell. I lived on West campus for three years (at the bottom of the slope) and never had any issue getting to class. Maybe it’s a matter of perspective ; )
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I chuckle when my family in Texas calls us after seeing news reports of big storms up here. “Are you OK??” “Uh, yeah, just got back from the grocery store…”
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Or maybe it varies by time of day and whether or not school was in session.
Know lots of former Cornell students who complained, but I do not know where they lived while attending Cornell.
I grew up in the Upper Midwest/Great Lakes, but spent a few years living in DC. People in DC would FREAK OUT if there was like half an inch of snow. I always found it highly amusing.
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I do think there is an issue where kids from all over come to these “national” schools in cold areas, and just don’t know some of the basics.
Like, I went to law school in a cold city, and inevitably when it started to get cold, a bunch of the warm-weather kids would buy these really thick, really warm coats. And us cold-weather kids tried to warn them that you have to dress in layers instead, that if you use coats like that but are going in and out of heated buildings, or the temperature varies during the day, or you soak up some sun, or so on, what is going to happen is you will sweat, and then that will make you way colder.
Oh well, it was sort of a rite of passage for them. And most seemed to figure it out eventually, although I did know a few people who pretty much never stopped complaining about the cold.
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We visited lehigh and cornell on the same trip and found the hills at lehigh more problematic, but neither deal breakers. D25 loved cornell, and did not love lehigh - so interesting to see what resonates.
Yes, the NE pretty much has it down to a science. D19 went to school in Louisville and he says the have no idea what to do when there’s freezing rain or snow. His campus is very hilly and it’s a steep climb to some of the dorms. He said he would be trying to walk and just slide back down. LOL (He grew up in NW Indiana, so we are well prepared for snow here as well.
Once I got an alert on my phone that the campus was closing at noon due to the snow. I looked at their instagram later that day and you could see more grass than snow. 
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My daughter’s biggest complaint about her NYC college was, that there was no reason to ever have “snow days”, as she was used from her NE high-school. There “always” was class. 
But then she got a chuckle 4 years later when (somewhat) major rain was forecasted for Atlanta, and her University peers were worried that she would be safe driving home in the rain, to her neighborhood 20 minutes away.
So - yes, sometimes the “worst” areas are “best” prepared out of necessity - while the “moderate” areas seem more easily caught off guard by the various states of water.
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A frequent poster’s DC once cited Wesleyan’s Foss Hill as their main reason for crossing it off their list. In actuality, it barely registers as a hillock that overlooks the main quad, but you’d think it was Mt. Everest, judging from the kid’s reaction.