It was our first college visit ever. I liked the school but my son has pretty much ruled it out. While we were eating lunch in the cafeteria, a college kid came over and said, “here David, I made you a sandwich” and plopped a really gross looking sandwich on the table in front of us. My son was still wearing his name tag which I’m assuming is how he knew the name. The sandwich had a variety of different items in it, one of which was peanut butter. So happens, my son is allergic to peanut butter. It didn’t cause him any reactions just being in front of him, but the incident did leave a bad taste his mouth (pun intended). He said, “See, that’s what I was talking about. I’m definitely not coming here, the people are weird.”
Sounds like a very immature student. If that incident is an indication of the social scene at that college, my son would also not want to be there. You were given a warning sign about that college - heed it.
Very immature and ridiculous. A definite red flag about the social culture at the school. Your son is correct. I would not want to go there either. Unfortunately, a college can only make one first impression and that one was terrible. Cross that school off his list.
^^^^ Not that Admissions will necessarily be able to do anything to counter act immature enrolled students, but if I was Admissions Director, I’d want to know about the incident. Perhaps they need to re-think the visits with “labelled” visiting students. (Not suggesting that your son did anything but go along with their program. Totally disgusting experience. Good for him for being more mature than the college student.)
I did let an admissions counselor know about the incident as I was handing in our evaluation. She apologized, but like another poster said, the damage to the college’s first impression had already been done.
Many colleges have thousands of students, some tens of thousands. If it were me, I wouldn’t assume that the actions of one of those thousands of students represents the social/scene culture at the college. If you look at the crime reports for any college, you’ll find much worse behavior occurs on a regular basis at any large college. That said, the prank was no doubt inappropriate, and if the college knew about it, they would likely take steps to prevent similar actions from happening in the future.
While I haven’t experienced anything like this, I’ve seen plenty of behavior that would turn off some prospective visiting students to a similar degree. For example, a Stanford frat used to host their Exotic Erotic party on the prospective admit visit weekend – a party that sets a low max limit on clothing and involves a lot of “unique” outfits. After some incidents with prospective freshman, the university became involved and got the frat the dates.
I agree that it was icky, creepy, and immature, and I don’t blame you and DS for being totally turned off.
I do think your headline is a little misleading. When you say “students,” plural, it sounds like it was something organized, or a gang or a frat prank. But what you describe seems to me like one lone jerk. Please correct me if I’m wrong. Or maybe a mod could just take off the “s” from students.
It probably doesn’t matter about the headline, as you didn’t name the college.
I said students because I’m under the assumption that the lone jerk who dropped the sandwich wouldn’t have even bothered if he didn’t have a group of friends watching from a distance. I mean who cares right? But we didn’t turn around to confirm our suspicions.
That sounds like a middle school! I can’t imagine and no we’ve never had anything like that happen on visits. Please assure your son that college isn’t like that. Sheesh, what’s wrong with people?
Way too many colleges in the country to choose from. There are many reasons for eliminating a college from a list and this kind of crap would be one of them. Remove it and move on.
We had awkward interactions at two colleges - at one some random students told my daughter to go elsewhere for college, at another a bunch of students did the stupid “Happy (fake) Birthday” thing repeatedly to the tour guide. Neither were appreciated or funny. Since we had plenty of other schools on the list and neither school was at the top of the list in other ways, it was easy to just right them and their awkward students off.
You can bet it was a group idea of fun, and wow, so incredibly cruel and inappropriate. I would write the college president a letter – seriously, I would. The behavior is inexcusable, and whether they can do anything about admitting jackwagons is their problem. Write the admissions director too. And mention that you asked here, and nobody had a similar experience or thought it was okay. I don’t care if it was a frat Pledge or not – that makes it no better. The time where lousy behavior is ignored is coming to an end.
So we were on a tour of UMASS (affectionately known as ZooMass) in a group of about 50 people when a car with a bunch a guys rode by and one standing through the sunroof yelled out “Send us your daughters!”. We thought it was funny, but not everybody did.
I think future freshmen touring are a target. On the flip side, years ago my son and I were sitting on a bench waiting for an appointment with Admissions and I carload of kids drove by and yelled out the window “come here!!” After hearing “don’t come here” off and on during tours…that single car load of kids kept that college on the final list.
Ha ha, I was also on a tour of UMASS last year and a group of cars were passing with the boys shouting from open windows “come to umass”, “come to umass.”
In the beginning I thought they were shouting insults (ha ha) and I was guarded but then it was actually kind of cute. My kid still thought it was too much…
I never experienced what the OP did and we did a fair amount of visit to all kind of schools. That’s weird and I don’t trust what certain adult in my family would have done in response…
On S’s Yale tour, several guys suddenly converged on our tour guide, picked him up, and carried him into the library, in front of which we were standing. He emerged a moment later, none the worse for wear. He and the kidnappers were laughing the whole time. We thought it was funny.
The thing with the sandwich was bullying and nasty, IMHO. The point of that is to humiliate a hapless kid. Not funny in the least.