Happy 2017, and don’t let the door hit ya on the way out, 2016!
New Years QOTD: Most surprising thing you learned on a college visit?
Over multiple college visits, I learned that what I liked to see on a campus doesn’t correlate positively with what my D17 likes to see, and that what I like in a college tour guide, she could care less about. So, after a few pointed looks and eye rolls from my kid, I also, surprisingly, learned to keep my mouth shut!
@JenJenJenJen interesting topic! I was most surprised that my S and his friend were both very influenced by the tour agenda and personality of the tour guide - good tour guide, interesting agenda - positive feeling about the college and vice versa regardless of programs and personal touring before and after scheduled tours. My son’s top two picks prior to visiting - Penn St. and Syracuse - were quickly dismissed from the applications list and the biggest factor upon request? - the tour. Penn State - felt rushed and didn’t feel as though he got to see enough of the inside of the buildings/dorms and didn’t like the personality of the tour guide. Syracuse, very similar - didn’t get to tour the inside of the athletic facility and only saw one of the dorms and the guide was very dry and soft spoken, didn’t address athletics, clubs etc., made us stand in the sun (92 degrees and humid) during presentations (until a parent spoke up to suggest we move 15 feet over into a shady, grassy area) - really turned him off to the school. UNH was not even on his radar and we agreed to visit with his friend and he loved the tour - was impressed with the organization of the agenda and the ability to go inside many different classroom structures, various dining facilities, athletic venues and multiple dorm buildings and also, the personality of our tour guide(s) - yes, multiple - were bubbly and interactive with the prospective students and really went out of their way to make them feel very involved and in tune with the campus. He left feeling very comfortable and impressed and added the school to the top of his list!
@CA1543 - Thanks for the kind thoughts and right back atcha!
@what???!! Welcome and I share those very same thoughts!
For the QOTD, I already answered that one - The most surprising thing I learned (which wasn’t actually a surprise) is how incredibly excruciating dislocating one’s shoulder can be and how good the ER was at the local hospital was.
Welcome back @“What???!!” I’m right there with you :x =(( :x
I’m laughing since no one has properly tagged you and another user, What, is being tagged :))
To tag someone with special characters in name, add quotes, do @ " What???!! " Drop the spaces.
QOTD: the most surprising thing I learned on a campus tour was that my own DD has more opinions about campuses than I thought she would. (I talked with her and suggested we tour UC Davis next week, when they’ll be back in session but she’s not back at school yet. She likes that idea a lot better than going on the tour on President’s Day weekend. Success!)
@dustypig your posts about tours are very timely in my house. My D HATES going on tours. She claims that her opinion has never been changed about a school by going on one. The schools she thought she didn’t like much she still didn’t like much by the end of tour and the schools she liked before she still liked after. But I have seen subtle changes where she learned some info or got a vibe from being there that is not the same as looking at a school online or doing a virtual tour. So funny you mention UC Davis as that’s the same school I was just arguing with her about going to visit Davis and she doesn’t want to until she sees where she’s admitted. Even though it’s not more than a few hours’ drive for us either. I probably won’t push it, she has toured a lot of schools so we will probably just look at a virtual tour of it and wait and see how things play out and where she’s admitted before deciding where else to go visit.
@xaviermom2017 I do agree that when the tour guide is good and funny and so on, it does make us like the school better. There was one time where they had the info session first and then tour, and we heard the tour guides speak a bit before they broke us into groups and told us which guide to go with based on where we were sitting in the room. I admit that we both looked at each other and said let’s not go with the one assigned to us, let’s go join this other group because we both liked the guide better!
@dustypig Same with my son, he’s gotten more out of tours than I’d expect.
Davis is one of the schools my son applied to but we won’t visit unless he gets in. It wouldn’t have been too hard to have seen it last week, but there would have been no official tours and therefore not very useful. So it would probably be admit day, if it happens.
I guess my surprise has been how much he has gotten out of the tours. And how quickly he has made up his mind. (He hatted Lewis & Clark practically on site, knew he loved UCSC almost immediately.) He was dragged on tours for his sister and was uninterested. But I took him to see SLO summer between junior & senior year and it really helped get an idea of what he liked in a school. It was very different seeing a school that was a good fit for him, than when he was 12.
Interesting that your son hated Lewis & Clark but loved UCSC – those are two campuses I would have said were pretty similar.
QOTD: I learned that Vineyard VInes were a thing, I D17 generally did not like campuses where they were worn. 
I also learned not to go to the ‘big event’ weekends that some schools do over the (typically) holiday weekends like Presidents Day.
I also learned that many of the college criteria that were given in the beginning of the search really didn’t matter as much by the time apps were being submitted.
QOTD: D17 went on a tour of Massachusetts colleges with her dad and grandfather (who is from New Hampshire, I grew up outside of Boston, H has been to MA exactly 2x in his life and hated it both times).
D LOVED Boston, and even H had to admit that the weather gods were really doing it right that day. In July it was mid 70s, breezy with puffy white clouds in the sky. They hit four colleges-MIT, NEU, Olin, and WPI. Her grandfather was deeply impressed that each offered a different “take” on colleges, and had no idea that school could be so differentiated. For D (who kept all the of the schools she visited on her list and eventually applied to them all), she could see herself being happy at all of them (except maybe WPI, because it was very empty that time of year).
I called it the Rationals Tour, because all three of them share the same quiet temperament, so there was no drama during the trip and D really got to enjoy the area. She made a Snapchat story so I could follow along.
Other surprises-when D and I road tripped over to Alabama, we did not expect to love it at all. I told her she either had to do it or apply to UGA (in-state tuition). Grudgingly, she agreed, although she grumped the entire 4 hour drive over. Long story short, she loved it. I was really impressed-honestly I was expecting something like a cross between Deliverance and UGA, and it was nothing like that. If anything, it was much more modern and diverse than UGA (sorry uga!). The girl she interviewed with was from North Dakota.
So, in other news, I asked D to apply to Georgia Tech on New Year’s Eve, and she did. My reasoning for this is that I suspect it will come down to one school being affordable for her (she does not want to take on much debt for undergrad), and I didn’t want UA to be the only school that was that for her in case UMD doesn’t give her anything. She doesn’t want to go to Tech, we don’t want her to go to Tech (not a good fit), but at least she can say “yeah I got into Tech, but I chose X”. My super rational husband thinks this is totally silly. I said that doesn’t make it any less valid when it comes to feelings.
I need to go make a 2018 3.0-3.4 thread. It was on my to-do list yesterday, but I decided to nap all day instead <:-P Our friends had a “bubbly bar” at their NYE party http://blovelyevents.com/2013/12/30/bubbly-bar/ and while it was awesome, it was VERY hard to tell how much alcohol you were imbibing because you were eyeballing champagne, hard liquor, and mixers into the glasses versus measuring them. I ended up feeling very meh yesterday while it worked its way out of my system. Luckily they live 5 doors down so we knew we wouldn’t be driving, and since H doesn’t like “fu fu” drinks, he and most of the guys just had beer. We played card games all night like Joking Hazard and Voting, which didn’t require a lot of brainpower. I don’t think I’ve laughed so hard in a LONG time (although that might have been the bubbly bar, lol).
I start my last semester of school next week, and I’m very excited for it. I’m not thrilled about having classes every day, but it is what it is. Hopefully my car will not mind having massive miles put on it again this semester. The upside is it’s ALL studios and no academic classes (yay!)
@MACncheez --our girls are a lot alike. D hates VV and can sniff it out in a room or on a campus.
@MotherOfDragons --SAME exact scenario with D and are our two flagships. I had her apply so she could say she got in.
@MotherOfDragons @carachel2 We are waiting for Jan 14’s GIT EA results. Our neighbor’s S15 is at GIT and he loves it. He also got some merit money (I am guessing maybe the provost). D is concerned about fit and we have not visited. Can you elaborate regarding ‘Fit’? Thanks!
@whataboutcollege --I should have clarified. Our state flagships are UT and A&M. Good luck to both of you with GT…I hear it’s crazy hard!!
@whataboutcollege Tech is VERY grindy, and there are some issues with the teachers not speaking english well and/or being not very concerned with their undergrads. Since we live in Atlanta (and have for decades) we have a lot of input both positive and negative about GT.
There was also the issue with Tech being known as “the place where HOPE goes to die” because it was impossible to keep the GPA required to maintain scholarship eligibility. That was changed to a a 3.3 this year from (I believe) a 3.5.
Additionally, our younger daughter was on campus over the summer at GT for nerd camp, and her dorm room (and all the rooms on her floor) were robbed the first day of camp. Her wallet was stolen, and some of the other kids lost laptops, as well. There is a lot of crime in the area, and while the local police are super pro-active about it, having been directly affected by crime on that campus affects how we feel about having a daughter there.
To balance this, D17 has female friends that are there now and they love it, and I have a friend whose daughter graduated from there and loved every minute of it. In both cases the girls were in sororities on campus, and I think that might be a vital part of success there, because the girls appear to have had very strong academic support systems from their houses.
And, when you graduate, you have people fighting for you for jobs, and having the GT diploma is a benny for employers offering you more, especially in the southeast.
So, yeah. That’s our take on Tech.
@carachel2 @MotherOfDragons Thank you very much, this is very helpful!!! ^:)^
@whataboutcollege --wait, i thought your daughter was going U of Michigan??
@MotherOfDragons a fellow atlantian! D did apply to Tech but to the Ivan Allen Liberal arts school for internationship studies. Its the only in state she would apply to. She hated UGA and doubts she could get in , and even GA tech but she says that a 1 in 100 shot is better than a 1 in 0 shot. She is already “in” at Ga state doing MOWR. My husband is concerned about the on campus crime.
QOTD. Last spring break we toured 5 schools (Elon Univ of Mary, GW, American, CofC. ). Up until then, D had lost her motivation for school. After falling in love with GW, she got it back. Interestingly, it was very cold in April in DC, which did not affect things much, but the 2nd day it rained during the American tour, and was hard to try to take that out of the equation. The biggest surprise was how much D did not like Maryland. She thought it was the big school thing, but then in Sept when we toured indiana and purdue, she loved Indiana. So the tours have made a difference. We loved the CofC method of doing things, where each guide told something about themselves and you picked the once you wanted. The one we got for Elon was not a major D was interested in.
Now S19 came on some of these tours, and by the last one just said, no , i will sit and wait. Its going to be like pulling teeth to get him to do tours. He says he doesnt want any schools that are football Centric, which might be an issue since he has the scores already to get the tuition deal at Bama. He also wants the colder weather, so I have a feeling that Northeast USA, here we come.
@carachel2 uMich is sitting high on her list right now. She is very excited for the upcoming leadership weekend. The scholarship at uMich is extremely competitive. There are several EA results coming up, GIT, UVA and UMD, with lottery level scholarships possibilities. Rutgers scholarship/honor college notification should also be in Jan (but we really hope for good OOS). Then we have several march results from the privates (some with potential and competitive scholarships as well). We hope to have some good options when April comes around.
@whataboutcollege – what is the leadership w/e at Michigan?
Clearly the fact that I have to ask implies that my son has not been invited!
@CT1417 It is for the CoE students. Did your DS apply to engineering?
The invitation came via a post card. The ELW is for students who are chosen by the CoE based on their involvement with school/community activities. Limit to 70 students. The transportation and lodging is provided by the CoE for a weekend on campus. I also heard there is supposed to be a TopScholar weekend also (a different weekend) with 40 students. These are all CoE programs started several years ago.