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[QUOTE=Grcxx3]
he considers the mascot to be “downright freaky!”
[/quote]
HAW! Now that you mention it, geek_son wasn’t too impressed with all the glossyware from TCU inviting him to become a Horned Toad. :D</p>
<p>So “refused to get out of the car” might not be bratty defiance, but simply a way of saving everyone’s time. If a kid really doesn’t want to go somewhere, he’s wasting his parents time if they tour the school any way. </p>
<p>Lafalum84, I agree, but our state flagship is the “financial safety” so I insisted mine go with the same “I don’t want too” feedback. Sometime there are choices and sometimes choices are made for you. I was thinking of the child that says “I want to go to see Bryn Mawr”, has her parents drive 4 hours and then sits in the car and says, “I don’t like it”. Different versions of that have happened and I could only imagine the sighs from the parents.</p>
<p>
How funny! I dragged DS to Big Flagship U’s Accepted Day or Honor Convocation (can’t remember which it was), and sat in a huge athletic hall with others where we were told over and over (and over and over) how EXCITING it was for us to be there and how excited we/he should be to be going to school at Big Flagship. I must have counted over 30 “exciteds”. The more often they said “excited” the more DS and I rolled our eyes, as the event and the prospect of attending was definitely not exciting for him. After about the 31st “excited” we looked at each other and made the “let’s split” sign, and we left… ;)</p>
<p>i won’t apply to any remotely religious school
i don’t care how good they are</p>
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<p>I think I might have done more than “sigh.” Have to work on my—what: graciousness? lobotomy? I don’t know—a bit more.</p>
<p>anxiousmom… How excited you must both have been to be leaving early. :D</p>
<p>My son wouldn’t apply to any school that would have the chance of having anyone he didn’t like from his High School going there. ugh.</p>
<p>To those how thought my S was just being a brat - first of all nobody asked for your opinion. But just so you know, after he said he didn’t want to get out of the car, we sat there for probably 45 minutes discussing why. A very revealing and worthwhile conversation - one of the first times he’d really opened up about college choices - time well spent. Then I told him he had to at least tell the admissions lady that he wouldn’t be taking the tour he had scheduled. He did that without question.</p>
<p>This thread is meant to be humorous. I tried to keep it to that. If we want to discuss how to communicate to our kids I suggest we start another thread.</p>
<p>My D turned down Emory because a boy from another high school in our area who asked her out to Prom was in the same admitted students session. She said that it was “sooooo awkward” to be in the same room because she turned him down for Prom. She couldn’t imagine going to school with him. Funny thing is, he also turned down Emory. They go to the same college!!! No, they are not dating.</p>
<p>D didn’t want me to even park the car at Mount Holyoke because just the drive to the campus showed it was waaaay too much in the boonies for her tastes (wound up 30 minutes down the road in hip Northampton). Got out of the car under protest and when TheMom asked the admissions clerk if there were any more tours that day it was one of the few times that D ever got upset with her instead of me during the whole process…thankfully, there were no more tours because I think D would have outright rebelled at being dragged along.</p>
<p>Bailed on the NYU tour after a very indifferent info session given by a grad student who didn’t know the undergrad stuff all that well and said “Umm” more than 20 times a minute…D started tallying.</p>
<p>My cousin said he liked U Minnesota because “there were a lot of people walking around.”</p>
<p>The only school he didn’t like was Macalester, but he didn’t give a reason why. I’m guess there weren’t a lot of people walking around when they visited.</p>
<p>D also didn’t want to apply to schools in any state that voted for Bush, which I thought was a bit much though it didn’t eliminate any of her top options. Funny thing is, she was one of the more culturally moderate to conservative students on the campus that she did go to but then we live in a very liberal area and she was used to being the moderate kid in that environment. I told her that schools like Duke & Vandy weren’t to be confused with Liberty U. but she wasn’t as concerned about the on-campus reality as not wanting to have the feeling of “swimming upstream” out in the surrounding community.</p>
<p>TheDad…
i was on a kick for a solid month that i wouldn’t go to school in a red state</p>
<p>Granted, now my list only includes one in a red state, but still…I would have eliminated my choice just based off taht</p>
<p>a bit off topic, but . . .</p>
<p>We live in Massachusetts. Told D that her cousin who lives in California was going to Berkeley. She said she didn’t know her cousin played music.</p>
<p>A week after D started at The Ohio State, she called up crying that the school was full of people from . . . Ohio.</p>
<p>^^LOL and I’ll make sure to warn my son about that!</p>
<p>Oh, and make sure to note that the UC schools are mostly populated by … students from CA! Oh, the horror! :D</p>
<p>While discussing pros/cons of a school we recently visited, D told me, “I don’t like the grass there.” It’s not that the grass was dead or that there were bare spots. She didn’t like the TYPE of grass on campus.</p>
<p>TheDad, I know the MoHo bit exactly. D said “its exactly like where we live and we live in the sticks”…ended up applying and being accepted but never really considered it. Pretty, though.</p>
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<p>“The sticks” is a relative term. 
Colgate, Hamilton, Dartmouth, etcetera are much more rural.</p>
<p>If MHC is visited before Amherst and Smith, coming from Hartford (Bradley airport) one nary sees a corn field. 
The drive takes you through Holyoke (no comments) and South Hadley Falls, which greatly changes the perspective of location.</p>
<p>From MHC it’s only 8.5 miles further on 116 to Amherst and then a short 15 miles to Northampton.</p>
<p>CD, there appeared to be one stoplight in the town and absolutely nil in terms of external cultural—arts, music, theater, restaurants, etc.—opportunities within walking distance. I think D said, “The boonies,” not “the sticks,” but the sentiment is the same. The distance to NoHo from MoHo could have been light years as far as she was concerned. She liked to be able to walk into town on short notice. As it was, the size of NoHo was one of her two biggest concerns before she committed and I think by the fourth year it was beginning to seem like a bubble, though after D.C. and Budapest (junior year) I think a lot of places would begin to seem like a bubble. She’s a city kid, through and through, and the time in NoHo was probably the most “small town” she’ll ever do.</p>
<p>===</p>
<p>LafA, at least your D was complaining about the grass walked upon, not the grass inhaled (or not).</p>