<p>Wake Forest has the yellowy brick. William & Mary has a unique alternating pattern of purplish and reddish brick! Hard to keep all these distinguising brick styles separate!</p>
<p>Univ. of Michigan. Apparently I'm the only person who doesn't see Ann Arbor's charm.</p>
<p>We were surprised that DD (and we) liked U of South Carolina (a lot), and also liked Davidson. We really didn't care for Elon (folks here in the NE talk about it and it just didn't meet our expectations) or U of Richmond (seemed very conservative). DD wouldn't even get out of the car at Wake Forest. Go figure.</p>
<p>ezduzzit: carleton is quirky, I have a quirky relative who went there!
Can you explain more about your wustl feel? And what'd the kids seem like at Tulane as compared to Wustl? they're both on my junior's very short list of colleges...</p>
<p>Yes, please elaborate about Tulane. We're making reservations for their Honors Program weekend tonight!</p>
<p>ezduzzit, your intuition may be right about WUSTL, (which S really did like) . . .he told me that his tour guide told him a parent has paid $10,000,000 for the rights to name a dorm after the child, a present student. Reportedly, said student got wind of this and wouldn't let the parents do it until after he graduated.</p>
<p>For the technical/engineering side, I was quite disapointed with Purdue. In an interview with the Computer Graphics Technology department (us interviewing them), the program - at least the first two years - seemed more like a community college program: very basic. I guess some students might start from scratch, but it seems like most kids going into such a field would have a prior interest and some starting knowledge. My son (and I'm sure many others like him) could literally have started the junior-level classes and done just fine, but the dept seemed reluctant to allow a student to skip any of the early required courses. Not good.</p>
<p>Thanks, ID, for the brick clarification!</p>
<p>I think my comments about Tulane said more about us than about the school. Girls were very dressed up, fashion-y...the campus is kinda cramped, and there was lots of construction going on. They are building a new student union, so will be without that central gathering place for a while. The tour guide waved at the front of the beautiful new rec center--didn't even take us in, though...she acted like it was the last place on campus she would be caught! (Yes, I know, she was just one kid...)</p>
<p>Wustl seemed very pre-prof to me, despite the artsy events we attended. It doesn't feel midwestern to me at all, surprisingly. It is goofy, but I just didn't sense from all my overheard conversations that there was a lot of self-examination going on, or any struggle. I think college should be a little messy. The kids seemed to be used to the best. Also, lots of out of shape young men--not that you have to be buff, but it doesn't appear to be a super active-type campus.</p>
<p>Now I feel like a hag. It is a great school, I'm sure. Just not for us.</p>
<p>Count me as another shamefully unable to find Stanford anything to get excited about. We live 20 min. away, the climate is perfect, it's a great looking campus, and supposedly academics are fine, but it seems so dead and superficial to me. Nothing about it grabs me or says, "This is the place to be!" The students seem to have an air of privilege and smugness to them and it seems much more lightweight than I imagine it should be. (But I know a few students there and they aren't slackers in the least, and they're nice kids.) It feels like the Harvard of the West to me, in many ways... and I'm not at all taken in a positive way by Harvard, either. (BTW, my S did apply to Stanford anyway, sigh.)</p>
<p>So there's my guilty little admission for the afternoon (as I now slink back into my sickbed...)</p>
<p>I'm with Cangel...wanted to abandon the family and attend either Swarthmore or Yale! As I've posted before...loved Smith...but D made the call and it worked out for her. She's happy, we're happy.</p>
<p>Schools that are a better fit for me than for my child:</p>
<p>UNC Chapel Hill: I loved it. It was gorgeous. The city was the perfect college town, and flowed into the campus. I loved the outdoor theater, the students whom we talked to. I loved the campus' museums, the blooming spring flowers. I visualized myself having a wonderful time visiting S there.</p>
<p>S, unfortunately, noted that our tour guide, a junior, said that she had never had a professor teach any of her classes. He noted the large classes. He reminded me that beauty doesn't make a wonderful college academic experience particularly for him, a lover of small classes and close relationships with faculty....</p>
<p>I still think of Chapel Hill with a wi****l sigh.</p>
<p>I'm with you, Northstarmom. Now that Tulane has offered my son big money (and they do have his major undergrad while UNC-CH does not), he's almost ignoring the idea that Chapel Hill still hasn't sent his packet. I can't imagine why he wants to sweat all the time, and I also think Chapel Hill is gorgeous. (And the students walk around SMILING!) After all those years at Enormous U., I'd love it there.</p>
<p>I have to admit that while I hated the cement buildings @ Evergreen I loved that the dorms were mostly apartment style with their own bathrooms and kitchens, and I loved the green campus and that they have their own organic garden.
The first public place Nirvana ever played and Sleater-Kinney got their name from a nearby road.
Loved the longhouse and the way it feels secluded.
Of course comparing the price of instate Evergreen isn't bad either!</p>
<p>comments about Bryn Mawr anyone?</p>
<p>This is coming from a student's perspective, but I really wish I liked UPenn and Johns Hopkins. Penn was ... a little too urban and sprawled out. I think I was thrown off by JHU because there was construction going on, but the students there didn't seem too happy or friendly. I tried to like them but I just couldn't.</p>
<p>ezduzzit, that was helpful, thanks.</p>
<p>Have to go along with Wash U. Great facilities, great library, great academics, great endowment, but not a lot of character. Everybody was nice and bright, but I prefer a student body with more edge, more curiosity. Just my impression.</p>
<p>Penn didn't do it for me either.....maybe because it is the local big-name school and I went expecting to love it. My husband got his graduate degree at Penn, I attended the school and we lived and worked in the neighborhood 25 years ago.</p>
<p>It is a great school academically but the current student body feels too monied to me. Just my opinion. The upscale stores and restaurants near the campus are a little too slick. Not for the typical student budget (but a great place to visit as an adult). That being said, my daughter certainly would have applied there had she not gotten into Columbia....Penn met her academic search criteria.</p>
<p>When my daughter's high school friends that go to Penn come to visit her in New York they tell her that Columbia students come across as too "intellectual". Different strokes.</p>
<p>If my daughter were answering the OP's question she would say Princeton. People had been telling her for years that she was a perfect fit. We all know how fabulous a school it is but she walked on the campus and just couldn't see how anyone could imagine her there. Her feeling was that even the free thinking-alternative kids would eventually be beaten down and start wearing J.Crew.</p>
<p>TheDad, how funny! I was just thinking about that the other day, when my parents asked my opinions about potential schools for my sister. The truth is that they are worried that my sister might follow the same narrow path as I did by excluding many fine institutions. Right now, she doesn't even want to look at any schools East of Texas or North of the Carolinas. One difference is that I visited a few schools in the NE before reaching the conclusions that I would not enjoy being there for four years. </p>
<p>Talking about schools that I wished I liked better ... it was the whole Boston thing. I visited a couple of the local "great" schools, one time in the summer and one time in the spring. I simply could not get excited about much at all. I did not really dislike the Boston schools, as much they were simply major disappointments. One part might have been that my "companions" on the trip were all blue-blooded northeasterners who raved about the elitism of the schools. Not liking them might have much to do with confirming my first impressions! On tne other hand, I expected not to like the NYC schools and Penn, and the schools even surpassed my worst hesitations. </p>
<p>Now, I'd like to add something onto TheDad's original comment about Wellesley. For some reason, I view Wellesley as the icon for that very popular and smart girl from high school. You know the one I am talking about, the gorgeous one with the nice car who only has eyes for the starting quarterback. She represents the impossible dream, well at least, until you get a bit too close, and find, under the layers of make-up, a frightening hollowness.</p>