<p>**<a href="Part%201">color=orange</a></p>
<p>These are my impressions please feel free to make additions, and/or correct me if I misremembered or omitted something![/color]</p>
<p>We got back late last night from Miami and here are my impressions of the weekend! I honestly wasnt expecting to love the U as much as everyone else who has visited has; I figured there had to be something wrong with this place that would reveal itself when we visited and realized, oh yeah, this place is great, if it wasnt for
But we never did run into a deal killer or even a negative. Ds other choice, Minnesota, has some drawbacks the weather being a big one, of course, the gen ed requirements are more stringent, its a huge public, and theres no priority registration for Honors students (our flagship even offers that perk but Minnesota only gives it to athletes).
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<p>We flew in on Thursday evening and checked into at the Courtyard Dadeland, one of the hotels served by the scholarship weekend shuttle providing transportation to and from the U. The next morning we headed off to Coral Gables Miracle Mile shopping/dining district and had lunch there. There were four bridal salons within two blocks so D had fun gazing at the gorgeous Vera Wang wedding dresses in the windows! Back to the hotel - initially we had planned to drive to the U for the campus tour and dinner, since D wasnt sure how long registration would take and didnt want to take a chance on being late for the tour late in her book meaning not half an hour early because she likes to be early everywhere she goes. </p>
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Then she decided that she didnt want to miss any socializing on the "party bus" I referred to in a previous post a while back and opted for that. We went down to the lobby at 345 for the 4 pm bus (since D said she had read somewhere that we were supposed to be down there 15 minutes early but again, thats just how she operates and she probably imagined it) and only saw two people sitting at a little table with an admissions rep. The ad rep greeted us and told us to have a seat in the lobby (lots of small tables were available) and we would board the buses shortly. Yes, buses, there were two huge charter buses which seemed like overkill for the six of us. We sat there quietly, hoping for a bigger turnout. After ten more minutes, more students arrived in the lobby with parents in tow. That was the only part of the weekend I didnt enjoy. Everyone sat quietly at their own little tables, with no interaction going on. Then we boarded the first bus and D and I immediately introduced ourselves to a nice mom and son from Ohio sitting nearby and chatted with them the rest of the trip. H was in the front row, ahead of us, sitting across from ad rep. We headed over to the Holiday Inn and picked up more people there, and then entered the U across the street. </p>
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At that point, I realized when Zinc had been talking about when he said he couldnt wait to see our faces when we drove through those rows of majestic palm trees the first time. I thought he meant in the city of Miami, where palm trees are everywhere we had taken a picture of D under one wearing blingy sunglasses that morning so she could immediately post it on her facebook wall (generating many jealous comments from her freezing friends up north along with demands for souvenirs:)<br>
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<p>Well the entrance was just gorgeous. Under the palms, there is a gatehouse at the entrance with its roof covered with some sort of lush vegetation that would never grow in Illinois, I am sure, especially on top of a roof, with big flowers accenting it. Then we walked through the campus to a building where we picked up our packets of nametags (not the kind you fill out with a marker - these people are ORGANIZED and had pre-printed nametags suspended on double cords to wear around your neck with your name and home town and they had them for both students and parents), a baseball tee shirt(D said, WOW THESE SHIRTS ARE REALLY EXPENSIVE- WE CANT GET THESE BASEBALL SHIRTS FOR CLUBS AT OUR SCHOOL BECAUSE THEY COST TOO MUCH!), a list of attendees broken into groups with an assigned mentor, etc. Then we were sent off in groups of 10 or 15 each on a 45 minute tour.
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<p>Our tour guide (dumbo11s D) was just superb; sweet and personable and knew her stuff cold. She led us all over the most beautiful campus Ive ever seen. This is some of what I remember: There are these unbelievably huge banyan trees that look like the big tree at Animal Kingdom (sans the animal carvings). Ive never seen these trees before so I had to google them to find out what they were. There are lots of them on campus providing huge amounts of shade under their enormous canopies of leaves. There are other huge trees that look as if they are made of tons of giant fans. The landscaping at the U is just breathtaking with lots of colorful bougainvillea flowers in planters. In describing the campus to another CCer, I said the place it reminded me of most is Club Med, not sure if they still have those!
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<p>There are canals running through the campus, a lake with a fountain in the middle, several other fountains and a big swimming pool too. There are these big wooden gliders that have two seating areas facing each other, covered with an awning, and mounted so that they glide gently back and forth as you sit. These are in different areas of the campus, with the largest concentration that I saw at the Rat(bar/restaurant). There are lots of round picnic tables with umbrellas shading them all over campus. There is wifi all over campus, so students were sitting outside at the tables and gliders with their laptops open, working away in this tropical paradise!
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<p>So thats the outside and thats what I remember best because it was so strikingly different from any college I have seen before. Of course there were buildings and classrooms and dorms and I vaguely remember going inside them, since I recall D saying the dorm room they showed us was much bigger than the rooms at U of I she had stayed in the two summers she went to Engineering camp there. I remember something about a buildings staircase being designed to resemble the DNA helix and D thought that was interesting. Everything we saw on campus was clean and in excellent condition. We ended our tour at the Fieldhouse where we then had a wonderful buffet dinner with tons of salads, entrees and a dessert tray on each table. The U orchestrated each buffet line we encountered with an organized precision dividing each line into two, and then two again by using two identical tables with access on both sides. </p>
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Everything seemed to follow this highly organized pattern; there were no glitches, no confusion about where to go or what to do, everything ran (as Princeton Review says) like butter. I forgot to say earlier that the U (I think maybe Cristi Busto?) had set up a Facebook group for the weekend a week or so in advance so that kids could ask questions and meet each other in advance, just another example of how organized the whole weekend was. The attention to detail was remarkable. The U went to great lengths to even include a variety of orange and green table decorations at all the meals we were served over the two days of events. The seating was open so you could choose wherever you liked to sit; the tables were big round ones for um.. I think ten people each. The evenings speakers were Dr. Green, Dr. Whitely and Cristi Busto (I think Im forgetting someone here) and a panel of four students who each talked a bit about themselves and then answered questions. Ok, Im falling asleep now since we flew home from Miami in the wee hours of this morning and Ill continue tomorrow with part 2. I wish I could put pictures in here-I have lots of pictures!</p>
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(And don’t forget to post it at [University</a> of Miami - Videos, Photos, and Visit Reports](<a href=“
which apparently is the ideal altitude for oceanographic data collection but which looked harrowing to me, and made me grateful that D is a stay on the solid ground bio major who wants a career researching teensy things on slides in a nice safe lab.