@travelfamily
Please report back after your visit to Stonehill. I would love to hear your impressions of the school!
@washugrad Wonder if we were at Wes the same day?! We had the same tour guide choice (plus two others). Also Jodie Foster was touring the same day with her kid. (She got her own tour…)
@Itisatruth we were there on Wednesday. If Jodie Foster was there I was totally oblivious!
Updating further - Vassar was a huge hit with both of us. Gorgeous campus, lovely facilities for STEM majors, loved the subtle reminders that it had been a women’s college (eg, the library window). Seemed to fit my kid’s quiet introvert nature more than Wes did. Moving on, today we visited U of Rochester. I think my youngest (current 9th grader and likely future engineer) should look here). D20 will keep it on the list but it’s a bit lower than Reed, Vassar, and NYU. Tomorrow is CWRU and then we are done for this round. D20 is saying her current plan is to ED1 to Reed and if that doesn’t work, ED2 to Vassar. I’m thinking revisit to Reed at least. Wondering if we should plan a visit to St Olaf and Carleton (and Grinnell? ) as well. But glad she has some schools she likes at least as well as some target/safety options (U of Oregon and maybe UCSC although we haven’t visited there yet and for comp sci it’s not really a safety).
Did a visit to Smith today for an admissions event. It was our second visit (but it’s close to home). They did workshops on financial aid, Q&A with students, how they read applications, interview and essay tips, meet and greets with professors, and tours. Our family used a divide and conquer strategy. Much of the information was applicable to applying to any school.
My daughter already had Smith high on her list and this visit just reinforced it. She met some nice prospective students and even bought a t shirt - yikes!
Things she really likes about Smith are that it’s all female as she is going into a male dominated major (physics) and likes the thought of not being in male dominated classes, the house structure for living, the open curriculum, the 5 college consortium, being adjacent to the town of Northampton, the beauty of the campus, and that it is a pretty politically charged atmosphere.
We also did a visit to Connecticut College in February which I had just forgotten to report on. She did like it and will most likely apply. We had a really nice tour guide and thought the campus was very pretty. She wasn’t over the moon about it, but she will go back this summer for an interview. I thought there were good possibilities there. It definitely checked a lot of her boxes.
More later this week on Mt. Holyoke, Stonehill and Wheaton (Ma).
@travelfamily My kid sat in on Professor Williams’ intro physics class when we visited in the fall, and she was so impressed with how physics is taught at Smith. There were ~17 women in the section she attended, with lecture and hands-on activities combined during one class period (rather than separate lecture and lab) and a lot of fun toys that demonstrated the physics principles. So different from how physics was taught when I was in college!
@allyphoe That is wonderful to know! Thank you!
Back home after the 5 schools/5 days tour (after the whirlwind choir trip in NYC that included singing in Carnegie Hall. What a treat for the kids and for us parents who got to go).
Our last school this time around was Case Western Reserve and as I predicted going in, it’s probably going to stay on the list but isn’t as high as some others.
Now that I have a little more time I’ll write them all up in a little more detail in case anyone is interested. For the record, my junior is a likely math and/or CS major who tests really well but doesn’t have a perfect GPA. ECs and outside interests are in music and foreign language so a school with strong STEM programs but either open curriculum or LAC type school rather than just going for a BS sort of program. Must be LGBT friendly. Too much hot weather is a negative. Small classes are a plus. Urban or proximity to a city is a plus. I was also looking at them with an eye on my youngest who is a 9th grader and thinking about Mechanical engineering (although this morning he mentioned CS) and didn’t come along on these visits.
So- NYU: I was waffling on whether it was worth visiting here but I’m glad we did. Yes it’s a huge school but the math and CS departments are both top-notch and you can’t really get much more LGBT friendly than New York City outside of where we live now (SF Bay Area). We were not able to chose our tour guide at this school and we were put with a theater major and at first I thought that would be a bummer that we’d get the ‘wrong’ perspective on the school (more weight on Tisch than anything else) but actually who better to give a lively presentation than someone with some stage training. I was put at ease that my kid could move to NYC at age 18 and find a community and friends and not just be lost in a huge city. It would be a very different undergrad experience socially than just about anywhere else but I think it would be a good fit for my kid who isn’t into sports or Greek life-type parties. We would still need to look a bit more into things like class sizes for math majors and how hard is it for CS majors to get the courses they want. We didn’t go look at Tandon separately (for my youngest).
Wesleyan - I think I mentioned before that we were running a little late. This was partially my fault (I misread an email and was tracking for 9:30 rather than 9, although I still planned extra time) and partially the campus map was really crappy (not oriented to north and that wasn’t obvious so it took us a little extra time to figure out where things were relative to each other). Anyway, I missed the first couple of minutes of the tour. My kid joined and I went in to the office to get a parking pass and check in and then caught up with the group. So my complaint might not be valid… BUT… I felt like there just wasn’t that much information about actual academics on this tour compared to some of the other tours we’ve been on. We definitely didn’t go inside any lecture halls, just the library as far as academic buildings go. The tour also doesn’t go in the main student center so the campus felt really empty (we went in there on our own later). Also the info session seemed to be repeating anecdotes we’d heard the day before at NYU.
Vassar - The campus is stunning. I was put onto Vassar by someone on College Confidential about 6 or 8 months ago when I asked for suggestions (I had some schools already for D20 but this one wasn’t on my radar). We had a tour first and then the info session. Our tour guide was a lovely bio major who was really well spoken and thoughtful. She was able to talk quite a lot about STEM majors at a LAC. The new science building (which seems to house mostly chemistry classes and faculty) is beautiful. The president of the college lives on campus and is accessible to students - our tour guide had been to her house for tea and cookies. The school still has some signs of its roots as a women’s college (although it’s been coed for 50 years) like a cool stained glass window in the library depicting the first woman to get her PhD with a horde of angry men surrounding her :-). The dorms were the only thing that weren’t all that impressive - I think they need some renovation. The main cafeteria was quite nice though. Also the Culinary Institute of America is located in the same city and they are about 1 1/2 hours from NYC by train.
U of Rochester - we had an info session, regular tour, and then engineering tour since CS is in the engineering school. I think I have to give their info session presenter props for either ‘most energetic’ or ‘most aware that we’ve all already been to at least 4 of these already this week’. She was able to tell us what she wanted us to most remember about Rochester which was a) it’s a class 1 research university but a smaller one so lots of opportunities for undergrads to get involved in research and b) how their open curriculum works. Then the regular tour -we got to chose our tour guides and there were lots of them. We went with the math major and she was great. And then the engineering tour - got to see lots of lab spaces and maker spaces. We were pretty tired after all that. Also got a free t-shirt - only place that did that of all the schools we’ve been to. We didn’t have time to see much of the city of Rochester and it was COLD and rainy (not a minus for my kid but not my thing at all). Bottom line - nice school, not the top choice for D20 but will stay on the list and I’m going to encourage S22 to have a look. Not sure I personally could live in such a dreary climate. I did like the maker spaces, the research options, the proximity to the medical center (if you are pre-med).
Finally - CWRU- they got bonus points from me because the rainstorm that we had in Rochester cleared up by the time we got to Cleveland and that thing where we tell our kids not to base their decisions on one bad tour guide or whatever… yeah, I totally don’t take that advice ;-). I’d never been to Cleveland before but I grew up in the midwest (Omaha) and I really liked the city. Plus it was sunny and 50 degrees rather than 33.
Okay, enough about the weather 
. CWRU does a Saturday morning info session and tour unlike a lot of places. The info session was kind of half video, half presenter (mixed). I wasn’t entirely impressed with the video quality… like it was trying a little too hard to be emotionally impactful rather than just informative and it didn’t work. Then we had the tour where we didn’t get to chose our guides. We got an econ major. He was a good guide but the campus is quite large and spread out and it kind of felt like we were just hiking around a big campus but not actually stopping to go inside anywhere (except one dorm room). Like U Rochester, also not going to be a top choice for D20 but will stay on the list and I will have S22 check it out. In comparison it felt a little more ‘Greek’, a little less LGBT friendly (maybe that was just at first glance, but for instance, Rochester had prominent brochures in their admissions office about being trans at Rochester and I didn’t see anything similar at CWRU) but maybe a little more integrated into the local city life as well. I think both schools would be worth looking at for pre-meds and engineers (both have large medical facilities adjacent as well as very good maker spaces and flexible curricula).
@washugrad thanks for the write up - very helpful! We’ll be hitting U Rochester and CWRU, plus a few others, the week of April 15 which is our Spring break, so it will be interesting to see if we have similar reactions.
Does anyone have any opinions on University of Illinois at Urbana Champagne vs. Indiana University? We have a full week of tours booked next week for our spring break, but we can only fit in one of these schools. I had originally booked UIUC because it seemed more of a match for S20, whereas IU seemed easier to get into. But S20 wants business and he’s heard IU has a better business school. Both are big, spirited schools that he would like, but both only have basketball and not football, so they’re not top choices at this point.
Any opinions would be welcome!
Thanks
IU and UIUC do have football. Perhaps you meant to say that both have “lousy football teams.” :-).
Indiana whipped Ohio State last year, however, which was nice. The Fighting Illini football team has been terrible for about a decade now. Still, Big Ten football will be on the menu at both schools.
These schools are so similar in many ways: Big Ten, classic college towns, etc. Why can’t both schools be visited? They’re fairly close? Are you from IL? If so, maybe go visit IU, since it might be less familiar to you. If you are OOS for both, that’s a tough call. IU’s Kelley is very prestigious, but if your son won’t be direct admit, he’ll need to do well from the get-go in order to gain admission into Kelley. Maybe that affects your choices as well? If your son has his heart set on business, maybe visit IU (though people go into business careers after attending all sorts of schools).
@NYC2018nyc : Both Illinois & Indiana have football teams which compete in the Big 10 Conference.
Both Indiana & Illinois have highly regarded business schools.
If I could visit only one, I would visit Indiana because it has a beautiful campus & is in a great college town = Bloomington.
Thank you @Hapworth
That was helpful. I’m not the football expert! S20 says he doesn’t care how good they are at football, he just wants 'Game day" lots of people going to the games, etc.
We are in NY, but have planned a spring break college tour which includes Michigan, Notre Dame, Ohio and Wisconsin and we only have one day left for one of these two!
@NYC2018nyc I am the parent of 2 Gies kids. My son will be graduating next month with a double major in Finance and Accounting and a minor in Technology and Management. He will be working post-graduation in Chicago at a financial consulting firm. My daughter, who graduated in 2017, majored in Finance and Supply Chain. She works at a Big 3 Consulting firm in Chicago.
As residents of Illinois we considered Illinois, Michigan and Indiana for undergraduate business degrees. All are fantastic schools. We considered Indiana a safety school, because of Kelley’s direct admit requirements. With the merit scholarships they offered it would have been slightly less than our in-state UIUC cost. However, after attending admitted student days at all 3 schools (full disclosure - my son was not a pre-admit to Ross, but got in via Engineering, with the intent of studying Industrial Engineering if he didn’t get into Ross as a sophomore), he chose Illinois.
Things to consider when comparing schools:
I’ll start with Kelley’s strength. If your son is a very strong student with Investment Banking ambition, I would visit Indiana. Their IB Workshop is excellent.
https://kelley.iu.edu/programs/undergrad/academics/workshops/investment-banking.cshtml
https://kelley.iu.edu/IBN/index.cfm
I included the second link because I personally found it interesting to look at the resumes.
However, my son was not interested in IB so it wasn’t really a factor in his decision. The thing that stood out the most to us was the difference in size between the colleges. Kelley has about 1600 freshman to Gies’ 634. My kids don’t shy away from large classes or lectures…that doesn’t bother them. But when you consider professional and personal growth opportunities on campus, be realistic about the competition for those high quality experiences. I believe some people miscalculate the importance of access to those selective opportunities in regard to their child. (To illustrate my point, Kelley’s IB workshop has around 70 students per grade level out of that 1600 or so. I don’t know how many students apply, but if the question section at admitted student day was any indication concerning interest, the number must be fairly large…lol.)
Then there’s post-graduation outcomes. My kids wanted a ‘good job’ in Chicago. Check out the job placement statistics.
https://kelley.iu.edu/recruiters-companies/undergrad/statistics/salary-statistics/index.cshtml
https://kelley.iu.edu/recruiters-companies/undergrad/statistics/class-profiles.cshtml
https://giesbusiness.illinois.edu/programs/undergraduate
https://m.box.com/shared_item/https%3A%2F%2Fuofi.box.com%2Fs%2Fxmq21r645v4n0c6x3qqrgczxyslzc8ti
Both of my kids also did a semester abroad. UIUC has a very large, well established study abroad program.
https://studyabroad.business.illinois.edu
https://kelley.iu.edu/programs/undergrad/academics/study-abroad/index.cshtml
I don’t have firsthand knowledge about Kelley’s undergraduate study abroad program, but from second-hand accounts it seems more competitive when it comes to placement.
Another thing to consider is AP credits. They can provide flexibility when it comes to completing graduation and/or CPA credit hour requirements. It’s helpful to know what you can expect.
https://admissions.illinois.edu/apply/freshman/college-credit-ap
https://admissions.indiana.edu/apply/freshman/ap-exam-credit.html
Lastly, a benefit of attending UIUC is the strong College of Engineering. It draws a lot of companies to campus for recruiting. Also for my kids, they were able to work collaboratively with some engineering students on projects through a consulting club and for my son through his Technology and Management classes. I think it’s good to know going in that a lot of these extra-curricular clubs are selective…application and interview based.
If you do choose to follow through with a visit to UIUC, be forewarned that there is a lot of construction going on. It will be wonderful as projects are completed, but it’s definitely construction season right now…lol.
Wow thanks so much @88jm19 ! So much information, I really appreciate it!
We have our college tour week next week! UNC Chapel Hill on Monday, Duke on Tuesday, and Tennessee (Knoxville) on Thursday! Anyone else same days/schools?
I know where everyone is coming from. But aren’t any parents of sons and perhaps wonderful young guys turned off when we use “lax bro guide” —it’s just as intolerant as other descriptions would be viewed.
A hour long tour doesn’t give us any insight to his underlying values or back story. And if anyone said here on CC that it was seemed like a nice school but “unfortunately” we got the “quirky lgbtq theatre major” instead of the athlete. I think some heads would roll. And rightly so
Young men don’t choose their sex any more than anyone else. And it’s easy to be pidgeon holed.
You are right, @privatebanker , I’m sorry I phrased it that way. He was a nice kid and a decent tour guide, he just emphasized things about the school that had no interest to my kid and I wondered if we would have had a different impression with the other guide. I’m torn personally between wanting the school to let us choose our own guides so we can end up with someone that has experience in the major or extracurriculars our kids want to do, or just putting us with someone experienced. (also - is lax bro a pejorative? I only heard that term on a thread here on CC. Thought it was just descriptive. We don’t really have lacrosse players where I live…)
Also on a completely different note - I wanted to add that every school we’ve toured so far has been on the semester system and for the most part, every school sticks to the apparent standard of 4 classes per semester. Back when I went to Wash U I always took 5 classes/semester so when I first started touring schools with my oldest I was surprised to hear that 4 a semester (or 3 per quarter on a quarter system) was more normal. Anyway, at CWRU both our tour guide and our family friend that we had lunch with said that they actually take 5 classes per semester and they think that most of the kids they know do as well (that said, this wasn’t from the official admissions person).
It wasn’t you @washugrad. You’re a lovely person here on CC. It’s just thrown around a lot. Lax Bro is loosely defined as a white, entitled frat dude who promotes a rape culture. And labeling can hurt even if it is toward someone with perceived privilege when we don’t know who they are in reality.
I’m sure there are some of those out there. But then there are some kids on work study from Appalachia and the first one ever to go to college. And they respect women and yes maybe wear a golf shirt because that’s what they think everyone else wears. And don’t know any better. He could really be into ballet too. Who knows. But generally super entitled guys like that aren’t doing the campus tours. Lol.
They are much too busy at the secret man meeting planning world domination. ?
And please back to your regularly scheduled programming. And these great tour updates. I love them. Keep ‘em coming!