<p>I have so enjoyed reading these posts. We are from Ohio and my D1 looked at a few schools here but ended up going out of state. We thought it was funny that my husband is from the Pittsburgh area ended up at the University of Dayton and then settled in Columbus and our D1 is from Ohio and is going to school in Pennsylvania. She did cheer camp for several years at Dennison and just did not like the school. I know that is much different than actually attending the university but she said the food was horrible and the hills made walking very arduous. Her friend really wanted to go to Dennison but the did not come up with enough FA for her to be able to go there and will be at OSU this fall.</p>
<p>My D1 has been at Slippery Rock for a week now and simply loves it. She is on the shy side but they did such an incredible job for what they call Weekend of Welcome, involving the new students and making them feel comfortable. It really has gotten the school year off to a really good start. I have never seen anything more organized and complete. The campus is gorgeous, can’t wait to see it in the fall.</p>
<p>^ The hills at Denison do take getting used to. While most students have a freshman 10 (additional pounds) DD1 had a freshman -5 just from walking uphill all the time.</p>
<p>Just got back - really long day. We decided to stop by Wooster at the last minute since we were going right by it. And it was 100 degrees!</p>
<p>So… Kenyon… none of us liked it very much :(</p>
<p>The school is absolutely beautiful, and we even had lunch in ‘Hogwarts’ hall, but after Denison it was a big let down. I have to say I may have screwed up by asking for the science tour rather than the general tour. 2 seniors took me, my S and his friend (both planning to major in science) on a tour of the 4 science buildings, and I felt like I didn’t really get to see the campus - but there was no way I was getting the boys to agree to another tour in the heat. Plus neither of them were thrilled with their interviews (done by seniors, not admission people).</p>
<p>The students were definitely different than Denison. ALL the girls were wearing dresses and most of the boys had khaki shorts. No one talked to us at lunch even though we sat at a table with some kids. The tour guides were really intense. When I asked what the did for fun, they jokingly said they never leave the science buildings (but were they really joking?)</p>
<p>I am sure it is the right college for some kids, but definitely not my S (or his friend).</p>
<p>At the last minute I convinced them we should drive by Wooster, but on the way there remembered Wooster cares about interest, so in the end we did a tour. What a pleasant surprise!! Loved it! Even though I wasn’t impressed with the outside of the buildings, the inside of every building was gorgeous - from the labs to the classrooms to the general lounge areas (all filled with kids) to the dorm rooms - they were all very impressive. Definitely adding Wooster to the list.</p>
<p>We may be done with tours now - only possibility is a PA tour of Bucknell/Lehigh/Lafayette - but I am so happy he has a couple of really great safeties that he would be happy to attend. Definitely a successful trip.</p>
<p>lammb66:Your post made me giggle, we are from Ohio and my daughter has also attended cheer camp at Denison since 7th grade (she is a hs senior -2012 now) and she is turned off by Denison because of camp! I thought it was kind of silly but if it gives her bad vibes then I guess she doesn’t need to consider it. We even went on a visit and that still didn’t persuade her to apply. </p>
<p>Loved reading this thread! Out of all the colleges we visited, Wooster was the most friendly. And Wittenberg was a close 2nd. My heart belongs to Wooster but it is only 20 miles away and that is a huge turn off for my daughter. Very sad… I am still holding out hope though. We keep telling her college is as far away as she wants to make it and Wooster has so many out of state students that she would make many new friends from all over the place. </p>
<p>It will be an interesting journey, these next few months!</p>
<p>mspearl, we also live about 20 minutes away from Wooster, and really wanted our son to consider it. He wouldn’t even take a tour - said he sees it so often, it felt like he was looking at his own high school. He is now at one of the state schools, which has been okay, but I really think he is more of a smaller LAC kind of kid and that would have suited him better. Both of our kids attended multiple sports camps and other academic-related activities at many of the local universities - and wouldn’t give them one look when it came time to start searching. <em>sigh</em></p>
<p>Good luck with your search! We are fortunate to have so many good schools, both public and private, nearby. I have a nephew at Witt and know several others who go there, btw, and they love it.</p>
<p>Just going to toss another Ohio college in the mix…John Carroll University in University Heights (Cleveland). Honors program, Leadership Scholars program and a Arrupe program (social justice) are all neat programs. Bright, fun-loving, passionate, community service minded DD is loving it four weeks into her freshman year. She was just saying last night how she has enjoyed hanging/studying with a bunch of like minded kids. It is a college that is overlooked in Ohio but one that certainly caught both our hearts when we visited. We visited Hiram, Dennison, Case, Dayton, Allegheny plus a score of others…and this one felt like home to her the first and every time we visited. Just going to toss it out there.</p>
<p>Casey1, John Carroll is high on my DD’s list, but she’d have to get a lot of scholarship money to be able to attend. We are also going to visit Dennison.</p>
<p>Linnylu, JCU was actually one of the more affordable schools for us. (Disclaimer here: we are strictly merit based aid.) It was cheaper than Allegheny, Clark, Dayton by boatloads. Hiram was close. We visited Dennison also…JCU and Dennison had very different “feels” for my DD. If you have any questions I can help you out with in regards to JCU…let me know.</p>
<p>I haven’t heard much discussion of University of Dayton. For those looking at JCU, Dayton might be good to add to the list. The school has a reputation as a wonderful place to go and for being generous with merit money.</p>
<p>Wittenberg is also very generous with merit money and is only about half an hour from Dayton, so both could be visited on the same day quite easily.</p>
<p>If I recall correctly, we looked at Earlham on the same day as Wittenberg. I mentioned this earlier in the thread, but thought I’d repost this for anyone who might have missed that and is interested in Earlham.</p>
<p>Thank you posters! This was great reading. My D is a junior and we will take the college tour during her spring break in April. I was trying to decide between the Va/NC route, the PA route, or the northeast urban route (NY, Boston, etc)… but after reading all these posts I am thinking that the Ohio route may be a good way to see a variety of schools. She wants to go to a large school but we are pretty sure that would be a mistake so we would like her to see some smaller LACs where NONE of her friends from HS attend…we are lucky to live in virginia that , like Ohio, has a wide variety of great schools but D really wants to get away from home and all of our top universities/colleges will have lots of friends from the school and county. The descriptions of these ohio schools have been helpful and perhaps we will make time to also see one of the larger public universities so she can compare environments.</p>
<p>I have to chime in again, especially now that I have some definite reports from my D1 who is a freshman at Slippery Rock University. I did not have this school on my radar at all but a recruiter at a college fair convinced my D1 to look at it. She has only been there a couple of weeks and really loves it. It is right over the PA border from Ohio. And, if you can keep a 3.0 it is cheaper than most of the Ohio in-state schools. She is fairly shy and so I was extremely surprised when we went last weekend to family weekend and so many people stopped her and said hello while we went around campus. It is an enrollment of about 8800, freshman class had 2100 this year. As for the University of Dayton and Wittenberg, I am a UD grad and my D1’s boyfriend is a sophomore at Witt. UD is an amazing school, the athletic program has won national awards for the service they provide the community. They bring in underprivleged kids all the time to show them the college and have math days and fun days with them. The engineering school is topnotch and are most of their other programs. They also give a good amount of aid. Witt is much smaller but they have a tight-knit community. The sophomore loves it but doesn’t find there is a lot to do on weekends, it is a small school. However, the individualized attention I have seen there over the year has been really terrific. It is a pretty little campus too.</p>
<p>Both UD and Wittenberg entirely different kinds of schools but both are good schools. UD is around 9,000 students, campus adjacent to urban area, large Catholic student body. A good reputation as a second tier catholic national university along the lines of DePaul and Duquesne. Wittenberg has about 2,000 students, Lutheran-affiliated but not particularly religious except for a small minority of students. Campus is set between an urban downtown fringe and a wealthier suburban area to the north of campus. Like Dayton, Wittenberg enjoys a national reputation as a good, solid school, with good, intellectually curious students, comparable to Ohio Wesleyan. Wittenberg draws heavily from the affluent suburbs of Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati, as well as midwest cities like Indianapolis, and suburban Detroit. Wittenberg is more midwest in terms of student body than its peer schools like Denison, OWU and Wooster, but still has a healthy east coast contingent. Dayton’s campus is relatively compact, with some unique Victorian era brick architecture in the center of campus. Wittenberg’s is likewise compact, and has a unique mix of historic buildings, the first one built in 1850. Like many of Ohio’s LAC’s, Wittenberg’s campus is beautiful, especiually in the fall.</p>
<p>MapQuest shows Susquehanna and Muhlenberg as being a bit more than two hours apart by car. “Touring” means different things to different people. But just do the math. Wake up after driving from Baltimore the day before; have breakfast. Get to Muhlenberg by 9 a.m. Spend three hours on campus poking around. Start toward Susquehanna at noon (no time to eat lunch; grab fast food?). You’re on the Susquehanna campus between 2 and 2:30 p.m.</p>
<p>But what does this have to do with planning a trip in Ohio? You can start a new thread, you know.</p>
<p>Heavylidded, it depends on your situation. Will you want to interview? Sit in on classes? I found that flexibility is key when taking a chunk of time to visit. S visited Muhlenberg and couldn’t wait to high tail it out of there. Your child may be different. Or if these are safeties and not high on the list and you are pushing it timewise, you can do two in a day. I found that the days we took our time and hung around campus, even during the evenings, gave us a better feel for the school and students. </p>
<p>But time is a luxury. Where else will you be going? Please ask us anything you’d like, if visits are a new thing. There is a lot to learn! :)</p>
<p>Sorry to have delivered my useful information with a dose of snark. I was just all set to offer tidbits of experience on going to Ohio schools when I saw that the thread had meandered east. My closing comment is that Mapquest should be every college tour planner’s best friend. There’s a wealth of information, especially when “street views” are available. As I love a road trip, I’m always overambitious, so I use Mapquest (or Google Maps) as a reality check.</p>
- only possibility is a PA tour of Bucknell/Lehigh/Lafayette - but I am so happy he has a couple of really great safeties that he would be happy to attend. Definitely a successful trip.</p>