<p>If the student is an athlete, the school color thing is not that stupid of a reason because not only will s/he have to wear the uniform regularly, but also all the practice clothes and free gear in those colors. My D often has to go right from practice to a class or section, and I can tell you she wouldn’t want to be wearing, for example, purple and orange every day. And while she could and did in the end overlook a silly mascot, it simply couldn’t represent the anthithesis of the goal of her sport. So as a runner, D wasn’t keen on crawling or plodding animals like turtles (Aesop’s fable aside) or bears, or lazy-sounding things like banana slugs.</p>
<p>Well a local tier2 state school recently sent out brochures to the junior HS students. Horror and shock and disgust that there is a picture of a group of smiling kids from D’s highschool and all are still HS students. I think that pretty much killed that school for everyone who knows about this. I wonder if parents of those kids are going to protest or even sue to get their kids off of the brochure. Actually,…good reason to reject a school. Bad reason…“I am tired of places named after presidents”…George Washington U, Washington and Jefferson College, Washington and Lee U are effectively nixed. Fine since they are all private…</p>
<p>Mascots and school colors are important to our daughter and, yes, it’s as good as any other reason. Daughter also won’t look at any school in Iowa, we forced her to once and all she kept saying is, “But it’s in Iowa!”</p>
<p>amtc, my DD was accepted to most of the Big 10 schools, U of Iowa gave her a very nice scholarship but she said she wouldn’t even look at that school because it was in Iowa. My question to her was, then why did you apply to a school in Iowa? </p>
<p>Because of the scholarship I told her that she couldn’t just throw away money without a solid reason, especially since she hadn’t chosen a school at that point. I made her look at U of Iowa and she fell in love with the school about a half hour into walking around on campus. She even asked me to put her deposit down that day! </p>
<p>Kids have perceptions about schools, cities, and states based upon what they may have heard from their friends or what they may have read. I think that sometimes they do themselves a great disservice when they don’t keep an open mind, especially when they haven’t even visited a school. </p>
<p>My daughter has thanked me many times for forcing her to look at Iowa, she’s a sophomore this year and loves it more now than she did last year.</p>
<p>So a 17 year old’s perception of a state or city they’ve never been to is a GOOD reason to not pick a school?</p>
<p>And not liking the schools colors or mascot is also a good reason?</p>
<p>… what?</p>
<p>Sometimes something apparently superficial is a signal of something more pervasive and important. My S got good merit aid at OSU and told me he just hated the way they spell out OSU wherever they are. I thought this was a stupid reason to dislike a school so I made every effort to give him another perspective. We didn’t visit but did speak to alumni and reps and emails with profs and…basically, S always felt the conversation was about school spirit and football and how great the alumni connections are and how you are proud to be OSU grad after graduation…no one could talk about intellectual interactions, internships, multi disciplinary interactions …I know these things exist at OSU but it seemed so secondary for the people we spoke to that it was nixed.</p>
<p>PurpleDuckMan- “stupidest” reason you/child crossed a college off the list.</p>
<p>Actually, the murder rate and temperature are pretty reasonable factors. For example, I’m a little apprehensive about visiting Temple because I’ve heard it’s a hole, and I wouldn’t apply south of the Mason Dixon line because I hate hot weather. 
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<p>But other than that, let’s hear it for irrational teenagers!!!</p>
<p>PurpleDuckMan - There are thousands of colleges in the US and at least 50 are perfect for each kid, who cares how you whittle down the choices?</p>
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YES…caps necessary here because I am yelling in agreement (not at people).</p>
<p>The silly reasons students give are very, very often simply what they articulate when something is just off and they don’t feel right about a university. Now, you can sit down and really dig to find out what that is, or you can accept they aren’t a fan and they have 10 other schools to look at (three of which are strong viable options) so it’s best to move on. There is almost always a reasonable answer but their teenage brain is throwing out what comes easiest. It’s not so different from having an argument…very often the first bomb that is thrown has very little to do with what is really bothering the person. In interpersonal relationships it is worth finding out what’s really at the root of the problem…With a long list of colleges? It’s not worth the effort most times.</p>
<p>I have some pretty irrational reasoning when it comes to colleges. Maybe you’d like to see inside an applicant’s head. Yes, even CC students are weirdos. </p>
<p>Cornish - I can’t imagine going to a school that sounds like a hen.
Skidmore - Reminds me of Little Shop of Horror’s “Skid Row”
Carleton - It’s in MN… and reminds me of a crouton for some reason.
UPenn - I can’t go to a school that sounds like a state school.
Case Western Reserve - It sounds like some nature preserve for animals.
Stanford - Looks like I’m in a Spanish country. (architecture)
Bates - It reminds me of Norman Bates
Columbia - Too much Gossip Girl has destroyed the school’s credibility with me.
William & Mary - I can only stand one name in a school’s title
Johns Hopkins - The missing apostrophe in Johns just looks weird, even if it’s not supposed to be there.
Vanderbilt - sounds too royal
anything in the south - I don’t want hot weather or any more accents.</p>
<p>Friend and her D went to visit Seton Hall (from CA) and on their way into town, they were saw the following sign: “Congratulations South Orange…14 days with no murders!!” or something like that (it was one of those signs with the light up numbers that change) . That kind of put a damper on the visit (the school was the D’s first choice, at least on paper, before this visit!)</p>
<p>popcharlie93 – In the South, YOU are the one with the accent. :)</p>
<p>momochan: I went to Seton Hall for 2 years back in the day. South Orange used to be a very upscale community (my mom was a nanny there to Dr’s families in the 50’s) but the neighborhoods around it were dicey. Didn’t realize that South Orange itself had changed enough to warrant that “murder” sign. </p>
<p>D2 just crossed Columbia off her list after going to their “Exploring Educational Excellence” seminar along with Rice, Brown, Chicago and Cornell. Reason: the buildings they showed on the powerpoint had ugly green roofs. She thought all the photos of the campus were unappealing but the ugly green roofs did it in.</p>
<p>Student here - would it be wrong to not apply to Tufts because the visiting admissions officer seemed a little stuck-up/entitled? I haven’t visited the campus, just went to an info session.</p>
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<p>Aunt lived there from 1970’s to 1990’s, was a frequent visitor and part time resident there. The town splited then between the poor and the affluent by Seton Hall U. But the danger zone had extended beyond that line, the housing slump had reached the pound and the park. As a result, my aunt did not get too much for her 6 bed room home up in the hills.</p>
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<p>I’ll bet she didn’t know that the “ugly green roofs” were probably made of copper which had an aged verdigris patina (very expensive and considered quite desirable). Honestly, the more silly reasons I hear from high school students for chosing for or against colleges, the more I think they’d do just as well/better if their parents chose a school for them.</p>
<p>Not that that’s ever going to happen, lol!</p>
<p>S informed me that he won’t attend a school that does not have a Chick-fil-A within a mile of campus. But, he also deemed the last college we visited (which had a Chick-fil-A in the campus food court) was “too white.” Not PC, I know, but at least he’s narrowing his options. Also doesn’t want “too brainy”, “too preppy” or “too hip”.</p>
<p>My D has a laundry list of disqualifiers, including “too hippie-dippy” “too preppy” “too jocky” “too small” “too large” “too rural”. So we are looking for a plain vanilla, personality-less, not urban but not rural" school that doesn’t stand out “too much” in one way or another–it’s gonna be a long process.</p>
<p>My son crossed off his early #1 choice - Santa Clara U - due to an interaction with one of the admissions people at a college fair. With the other colleges, he would bring up why he was talking to them as a conversation starter. When he mentioned to them that 3 generations of our family had gone to SCU, the guy says, “I don’t care who you are or who you know, it doesn’t mean SQUAT to me.”</p>
<p>My son started laughing and put the brochure back on the table. He figures if that is as good as they can do for admissions then the campus has to have a culture of pervasive jerkitude he would find unbearable.</p>