<p>Stradmom – oh, I didn’t even count S1 visiting multiple times and multiple kids visiting the same school! It really does add up…</p>
<p>Chuckledoodle, you are absolutely right about the summer feeling quite different vs. during the year – especially if there is no summer school in session.</p>
<p>I want to go back to something a number of people said at the beginning of the thread – that Brown had a distinct personality. Everyone seemed to agree, but no one said exactly what that personality was.</p>
<p>When I visited there with my daughter, five years ago now, I was surprised NOT to have that impression at all. The admissions people at the information session were laid-back and a little hippie-ish, but most of the non-standard content was a spirited defense of Brown’s no-requirements curriculum that emphasized how little practical difference there was between it and anyone else’s system. Our tour guide was an outgoing, attractive, energetic sorority girl who would have fit in fine on any campus I’ve ever seen (and who would have been giving tours there, too). My daughter developed an irrational contempt for her, based on a certain lack of intellectualism that she was not wrong to notice, but I suspect that the average IR major anywhere is going to resemble a politician more than Stephen Hawking or Susan Sontag. We also talked with some students there whom my daughter and her friend had known in high school, and they were still the same smart, interesting, but fairly different kids they had been a year or two before.</p>
<p>My daughter insists that there IS a Brown personality, and that it centers around ambivalence for academics and intellectualism. We have pretty much exactly the same data set, and I don’t see it (with the possible exception of a couple of recruited athletes, what did you expect?), but she knows those students much better than I do. (And on the other hand I don’t feel any need to justify my decision not to apply there, and she may.) In any event, I don’t know how anyone could possibly have reached that conclusion on the basis of a five-hour visit like the one we had there.</p>
<p>So . . . what did you all mean?</p>
<p>I so don’t want to offend anyone who attended Brown, whose child attends Brown or who is affiliated in any way, shape or form with Brown, but our feeling after visiting was that all of the kids we met subscribe to the belief that they are the “quirky Ivy” and do everything in their power to reinforce that concept. We just felt that people were trying very hard to say: “Oh, look at me and how <em>different</em> I am!” </p>
<p>And yes, that was based on a visit of a few hours and may be a totally erroneous perception - we are cognizant of that.</p>
<p>The only person I know IRL who goes/will go to Brown is a WASP classics major pre-med who got in with a 2000 SAT and no hooks. Go figure.</p>
<p>I had a hard time getting my son to even consider Brown. “Too many hippies,” he maintained. I did persuade him to visit and, lo and behold, we saw no kids sitting in friendship circles smoking weed. The science department tour, in particular, knocked his socks off. The leaders were two of the smartest, most engaging student guides we encountered on any campus. (One of them is a CC regular poster.) Son got to get a close look at the science opportunities, which were impressive. We don’t live in an area where kids get into Ivies in droves (though many apply) but the three kids we know who have gone to Brown over the last few years have most definitely not been anti-intellectual. My son wound up choosing another school, but Brown was near the top of his list.</p>
<p>I found a bit of a schizoid personality at Brown – hippie and elite.</p>
<p>My D spent a summer there, and the administrator of the program actually told the kids that they were la creme de la creme.</p>
<p>I had to bite my tongue not to laugh out loud. </p>
<p>I really didn’t want my kid to have elitist attitudes like that. Barnard, where she ultimately attended, was grittier, which I was grateful for.</p>
<p>Not sure what the Brown personality is supposed to be, and I don’t know anything about the school, but this discussion reminds me of our college visits and the one school that absolutely sent out a vibe - Bard. I know it’s a great school and I’m sure it’s filled with great kids, but the moment we stepped on campus, my son was bucking to get out - fast. We did drag him on a tour, but the “alternative, hippy” thing stuck in his craw. </p>
<p>No other school elicited such a visceral reaction from either of my kids.</p>
<p>Our first college shopping tour was the summer before my daughter’s junior year. She was in Washington DC, and we drove her home. We visited three colleges in DC, and on the way home we visited/drove by four others. </p>
<p>We got to Bryn Mawr. The campus was deserted. My daughter took one look and said “keep driving.” She could tell just by looking at it that it wasn’t for her. (I was disappointed, but couldn’t argue with her – I pointed out the nearby train station to Philly, but that didn’t change her mind.) We then drove by Haverford, which she didn’t react to quite as negatively, but was not interested.</p>
<p>Then we got to University of Pennsylvania. When she got out of the car, there was a bounce to her step and her eyes lit up. She was energized. The sun was setting and there weren’t many people around, but this intuitively felt to her like a place she could live and be happy. </p>
<p>We learned a lot about her preferences from those three college visits. It would have been easier for her to fly home from DC, but making the extra effort to drive home and visit colleges was worth every extra minute – even though it was in the summer. </p>
<p>As for Brown’s personality – when I was there 30+ years ago, some students were quirky and eclectic (although there were plenty of jocks and preppies and JAPs). I find that to be not as much the case today. Many of the students today seem much more focused on their studies, much more earnest and less flaky. There are a lot of creative types – artists, actors, film/media studies – and students who may dress a little hippiesh, which may suggest that quirky personality.</p>
<p>Our feelings after visiting Brown mere weeks ago were more along the lines of wjb in post #65. We also did the physical sciences our.</p>
<p>IRL, we know a young woman attending Brown who will be a junior in the fall. She’s the daughter of the USC math department chair and is majoring in chemistry (she’s also a double legacy.) Although she came from a highly rated public HS in the South Bay section of LA County, she told us she’s much more comfortable at Brown because she always seemed to care more about her studies in HS that many students and now feels in her element and not a fish out of water because there are so many like her at Brown.</p>
<p>So yes, we believe that a campus can have its own vibe and personality and Brown certainly has one. USC does as well, nigh impossible to escape the vibe of the “Trojan Family” on the tour.</p>
<p>Take away athletics and USC’s self-image implodes like a bad souffle.
Shrug.</p>
<p>Based on the foregoing, people’s impressions of Brown’s personality are different enough to suggest caution in thinking that anyone has identified that personality in a short visit.</p>
<p>Bard – that’s a different kettle of fish. I wouldn’t say that DadofB&G got that wrong.</p>
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<p>Oh, man … I drive through Bryn Mawr and I as a parent think “Where do I sign up? For me? Oh yeah, my daughter can come too!” It’s interesting how different we all are! (I love Penn, too, but it’s a different feel for me.) </p>
<p>I visited Brandeis recently while in that area for business and even though it’s not the most aesthetically pleasing campus, there was something about it where I thought, “I could see S here.” I can’t put my finger on it, though.</p>
<p>In the “you can never tell…” category – S2 and DH both took a visceral dislike to Brandeis. Felt way too insititutional to them both. I had hoped S2 would like it, as it was a good target and has some of the things he’s interested in studying. Oh well.</p>
<p>S2 thought Brown was too unstructured for him and he didn’t like the pedagogy. At least he has been able to articulate what he doesn’t like, which has helped in developing other options.</p>
<p>Goes to show you what I know!!</p>
<p>I fully agree. I definitely picked up on each of the different vibes from each of the schools I visited.</p>
<p>Harvard was snotty and cliquey. No doubt about that.</p>
<p>Brown was more laid-back. Everyone seemed happy.</p>
<p>Northeastern was sort of a “lost in the numbers” kind of feel. Even after visiting, I e-mailed the admission rep with a simple question, and more than a month later, have yet to hear back.</p>
<p>I loved the local business school I visited. Everything had an officey and businessy feel to it. Everyone I met was incredibly nice as well- the guards welcomed us at the gates, the receptionist was extremely friendly and gave us a private tour guide because we were 10 minutes late for the tour, the guide held every door open for my mom and me, and I even received a personalized text message from the school thanking me for my visit. My favorite environment I’ve visited so far by far. :)</p>
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<p>The USC environment is not conducive to all, but then we could say that about just about any school.</p>
<p>I will say I know a bit more about USC, since H has been on the faculty of the math dept there since 1986. In that time to now, it’s gone through a fair amount of “campus culture” change that, in my mind, was to the positive. Less emphasis on the Greek life for the social atmosphere. True, many love the sports teams but I expect that would be the same on many campuses that had that kind of tradition. The academics emphasis has also increased during this time. It’s a much more competitive place to get admitted to. The film school attracts many top students. USC is very big on interdisciplinary studies and well as double majors, etc. This is a big attraction to some students. </p>
<p>The students like the sports teams for the fun. It doesn’t appear to have a over sized role on the self-image of the average student and how they feel about USC, though.</p>
<p>I didn’t think Bard looked nearly as alternative and hippy as I expected, but my kid still didn’t like it. </p>
<p>My older son didn’t find Harvard snotty and cliquey at all when he went for accepted students weekend. He’d had a lot of preconceptions and was pleasantly surprised to find a collection of nerdy kids who liked to play board games and read sci fi. However he still chose to go elsewhere. :)</p>
<p>I think Brandeis suffers from looking like an office park, but the people there didn’t seem institutional at all.</p>
<p>While I agree that schools certainly have personalities and would add that I think they don’t change very quickly over the years I think larger schools have a less uniform personality. For example, I think you can find all kinds of students at Brown or Harvard, though all are likely to be very focused or they wouldn’t be there, there will be more less diversity (in the sense we are discussing) at smaller LAC’s.</p>
<p>As a Bard and Vassar parent I found the comments on Bard quite amusing. I agree it is not as alternative (I am told hipster is the term I should be using for Bard students) as one might think going in but it is more so than Vassar for example. My S did comment part way through a Hampshire tour that “this place is too far out there even for me…” so if you want more alternative than Bard check out Hampshire. I liked all three myself. </p>
<p>Also thought the intensity of the students came through most at Swarthmore and Chicago compared to the other 23 schools toured, which included Harvard, Brown, and Princeton of the Ivies.</p>
<p>Hampshire was the nearest comp in my mind for Bard as well. And Chicago and Swat have often been paired in conversations too, especially with respect to the intensity.</p>
<p>I’ve been to Bard many times and to Hampshire several times, and I didn’t find them that similar. And D was interviewed at Hampshire and found the students to be completely different at the two schools.</p>
<p>Bard is very academic and traditional in its pedagogy, whereas Hampshire is quite project oriented.</p>
<p>Hampshire is more similar to Bennington and Marlboro, I think.</p>