<p>@Ranks: </p>
<p>seriously?? hahah!!</p>
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<p>Womenās colleges can often be the last to be added to a target-college list because theyāre a foreign concept to many high school girls these days. When I was in high school, 40+ years ago, that was not so because, back then, there were many more single-sex schools, both all-male (e.g., Yale, Princeton, Williams, Amherst, Dartmouth) as well as all-female (Vassar, Skidmore, Connecticut, Smith, Wellesley ā¦) </p>
<p>When I worked at Smith years later, āI never thought Iād end up at a womenās collegeā was a familiar refrain. Barnard, of course, has the proximity of not only NYC but also Columbia, so itās a very āhotā school right now. Yet, even so, there are still lots of high school girls who immediately dismiss it when they see the āall-womenā asterisk next to its name on assorted college rosters. </p>
<p>Thanks again for your insights, A Persona.</p>
<p>My D picked her school becuase her BFF, a year older, goes to another school in the same small college town. I am not crazy about her being back with BFF, but it is a great school, with programs great fro her.</p>
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<p>A deciding factor may/may not have been which sweatshirt I liked best. And if you thought that I took into consideration how comfy the chairs in classrooms wereā¦ well youād just be wrong.</p>
<p>@Prism (#77).</p>
<p>Not a bad reason (or not totally unheard of). My D would not apply to any in-state major university because she didnāt want to find herself sitting in class next to kids from her high school.</p>
<p>In a similar vein, when my S was at his orientation, and waiting in one of those lines for something or other, two first-year women were standing in that line and surveying everyone else in the room. Evidently they were friends from high school. After looking around, one of them turned to the other and exclaimed: āIsnāt it wonderful? Nobody knows us here!!!ā</p>
<p>I got accepted at Pitt and Penn State in 1983. I based my decision on who had the best football team that year. PSU won the national championship. Go PSU!!!</p>
<p>Also @ Prism: Taking food into consideration really isnāt a silly thing at all, though when I applied I certainly ignored it as a factor. If youāre going to be living on campus, having inadequate dining options is absolute hell. In my year at a residential school, I ended up often eating almost nothing at certain meals because I went to the dining hall and most of my options were rendered inedible by excessive heat lamp time or mispreparation. I also got mild food poisoning twice.</p>
<p>Toward the middle of the year, I went to donate blood. I have always had relatively high blood iron, probably having to do with being the daughter of a meat cutter, so never I had I once even come close to not making the donor cutoff. Much to my surprise, my blood iron had dropped from being never below 13 to 11.9 in a semester. </p>
<p>The moral of the story is that as much as you think you can tolerate it, bad campus food is a big deal.</p>
<p>As for silly reasons I applied to a school: It was a really good, affordable school in my area, but did not offer my major or anything close to it. Ironically, Iām now transferring to this school because it offers my new choice of major and my old school doesnāt. :)</p>
<p>I wanted to apply to Clark only because my guidance counsellor had a poster with the pea pod on his wall that says āCategorizing people isnāt something we do at Clarkā. Whenever I met with him I would look at it.</p>
<p>The cute boy to not-so-cute boy ratio may be altering the list quite a bit. . .</p>
<p>Iām originally from Brooklyn, but currently live in Virginia. Iām only applying to colleges East of Virginia.</p>
<p>California = Earthquakesā¦ donāt like them
South = Too southern. lol.
Everywhere else = meh</p>
<p>This is beyond silly and, frankly, pathetic. I started looking at a college all because of a boy.</p>
<p>The boy I had a crush on for a while is a year older than me (a senior this year, while I am a junior). Earlier this year, I heard what his first choice school was. I immediately started doing research. The boy was accepted and will be attending in the fall. Through my research, I became more infatuated with the school than with the guy himself. Now, Iāve gotten over my crush, but his school is still one of my top choices. Iāll be applying this year.</p>
<p>i wouldnāt apply anywhere that had school colors I really hated. I had no intention of spending the rest of my life wearing orange. And I tried to avoid schools that were LI-centric. I applied everywhere that sent me a free application.</p>
<p>My D looked through all the mail, read through the brochures, and carefully ignored any suggestions from the parent. I left her alone and she started investigating things on-line. Pretty soon I started hearing about this school that had a library built like a Gothic cathedral - a shrine to books. She liked that a lot. Then she found out that the campus is a national arboretum, another plus. We went to visit this school, and the tour guide (our personal guide as we visited in the middle of January when no one else presumably wanted to brave the weather), well, she admitted as we passed a green, that this was where the quidditch games were played. That was the final straw - D applied to several schools, but when the decision had to be made between utilizing that National Merit Finalist scholarship or not, she went with the Gothic cathedral full of books, a campus full of trees, and a quidditch team. And as a parent, the more I find out about this school, I see that it is a good choice: great reputation, great academics, a decidedly liberal bent (which amuses me: I wonder if she will change or will change others), a wonderfully generous financial aid package, and the happier I am that my D made her own decision.</p>
<p>Cathedral-libraryāthat would be Yale, right? If thereās another school with a shrine to books, do tell!</p>
<p>Someone said earlier that they judge colleges based on the mail they send, and I must say I do the same. There were a few schools that were otherwise exactly what I would be looking for, but their mail bugged me. They either sent too much or the messages were annoying.</p>
<p>Gothic library, national arboretum, quidditch - gotta be Vanderbilt! Whatever the reason that led her there, she ended up with a great choice. Hope sheās happy there.</p>
<p>I have to admit that how much a school looked like Hogwarts was one of my criteria.</p>
<p>Iām sure I wasnāt the first to do this, but I just couldnāt apply to Northern Illinois University b/c my parents went (and met) there. My younger brother didnāt seem to have a problem with that, though - he happily went there. I also remember applying to Western Illinois University b/c I wanted to be far away from an ex-boyfriend!</p>
<p>My son liked how beat up the ping pong table was in the dorm. The female tour guide apologized for its condition, saying it had to do with the fierce competition among the freshman guys on the floor. More than anything else, that battered table signaled to my son that he would fit in, have friends, and be alright at that college.</p>
<p>Thatās a great anecdote, smbsmom! I love the fact that your son was observant enough to hone in on that battered ping-pong table and to realize its significance for him. It shows how crticial a campus visit can be, too. Granted, your son probably only visited that campus in the first place because heād already identified other aspects of the college (location? majors? size? etc.) that seemed like a good fit for him. But sometimes it can be the seemingly little things, like that ping-pong table, that can make a real difference. Your story shows that itās important to be open to them as you tour each school.</p>