<p>matthames … whether that’s true or not, it’s still funny to hear how they are making choices to mass exclude groups of colleges. :)</p>
<p>“My son just eliminated an entire state, claiming “it’s too redneck”.”</p>
<p>My son eliminated the entire south because he can’t stand southern accents. He also refused to look at any school in Ohio for no apparent reason and also declared he would not go to college in Maine, which, of course, is where he ended up.</p>
<p>D would not consider going to college where her brother goes, and she likes her brother - I think.</p>
<p>OK - since this is a lighthearted, comical thread, I’ll post my query here. I’ve been wondering but too afraid to ask on a serious thread the following thing: Is there anything wrong with a kid having regional or other criteria for places they just won’t go? This comes up fairly often RE my DD and others from the PNW who refuse to go look at UAB, Ole Miss, or other southern schools which offer large merit for OOS higher stats students. Assuming equal academics for the moment and that these places are perfectly fine and beloved by many - why isn’t it PC on CC for a kid to just refuse to go to the deep south. For some it’s “flyover” states, for some it’s tornado alley, for some it’s handbags, humidity for others. I was castigated for saying that Alabama might be like “another planet” for a kid from the Greater Seattle area. If people watch “Portlandia” because it is like another planet why can’t it go both ways?
If this is too serious for this thread, I’ll drop it, but just wondering.</p>
<p>Saintfan - I don’t understand why people get so serious about some stuff. It’s true that the PNW is totally different than the deep south, not better, not worse, just different. </p>
<p>Heck, neither of my son’s would consider a school where kids wore sweats, pajama pants or graphic tees to class or anywhere for that matter. Nor would they look at a school they perceived as too “hipster” - whatever that means. They wanted the blue-blazer, preppy, “fratty” crowd - not exactly a crowd that gets a good rap here on CC!!</p>
<p>saintfan-my kid eliminated the entire East Coast partially on the accents on Car Talk. He didn’t apply to a single East Coast school. I don’t really see it as a huge problem, since he applied to a ton of schools anyway. We have to eliminate places after all. I think it is perfectly fine to know the boundaries of a kid’s comfort zone, and that can include prejudices related to geography and culture. Its not like just the act of going to college isn’t going to throw all our kids a set of surprises. I still believe that karma demands that he fall in love with a Bostonian and has to move to Philadelphia or Newark for work.</p>
<p>Kids don’t like to feel like they are a fish out of water.</p>
<p>^^ for sure - I just wonder why some terrestrial creatures get their hackles up when fish seek out water and refuse to consider 4 years in the figurative desert.</p>
<p>^ even if you paid them</p>
<p>Many students want diversity…as long as everyone else is just like they are.</p>
<p>Ok, not the kids, but when we pull up websites for various colleges I always think in the back of my mind “but if they went there I would have to wear a sweatshirt in those colors” :).</p>
<p>^^</p>
<p>Haha, I considered (as a parent) that the black and orange at Princeton was a definite negative.</p>
<p>My D won’t consider Rice because there’s a kid at school whose last name is Rice and she can’t stand him.</p>
<p>Several years ago, my S refused to consider Harvey Mudd because they forgot an end parenthesis in one of their brochures. I told him I was going to post this in a thread, and he asked me to point out that it was actually a very reasonable decision, because it showed a lack of attention to detail.</p>
<p>He ended up at U Chicago, which I presume had better grammar in their recruitment materials.</p>
<p>^^</p>
<p>That kind of thing would irk my son as well.</p>
<p>My Ds was knocking colleges off the list if he had been accepted already and they were still sending invitations or reminders to apply. That really irked him…until his top choice did it. Suddenly, that was not a deal breaker.</p>
<p>“saintfan-my kid eliminated the entire East Coast partially on the accents on Car Talk. He didn’t apply to a single East Coast school.”</p>
<p>That’s hilarious. I’ve lived on the East Coast my whole life and live in Boston now, and vast majority of people I know don’t talk like the guys on Car Talk. But I’m sure you know that. :)</p>
<p>^eirann-1/2 his relatives live on the East coast, from Maryland to New York to even Boston, so he knows it rationally, but on trips to Boston, DC and New York, I could see his shoulders raise in a hidden shudder many times with even a slight accent.
Surprisingly, a southern accent doesn’t bother him, nor does the nasal Chicago he is around now.</p>
<p>My D eliminated all schools in the south because the humidity made her hair frizz.</p>
<p>My uber-geek son’s uber-geeky friend: no Mudd because they’re all like [GeekSon], who was his best friend, and friend is [under the delusion that he’s] way cooler.</p>
<p>Good reason - the assigned student guide (more than a tourguide, for an admitted student) encouraged him to skip class; on further questioning, a lot of the students skip a lot of the classes. This had been one of his top choices.</p>
<p>Dumb reason - in the same city as federal death row, and he’s against the death penalty. Has he so much as signed an online petition against it?</p>
<p>No Williams because it’s too mean - the catalog said that if you don’t graduate in four years, you can’t come back for a fifth but have to take classes elsewhere and transfer them in to graduate.</p>
<p>No MIT - his English teacher had heard bad things about it.</p>
<p>I thought the reaon someone posted ages ago about not wanting to go to a school with the same name as a HS student who had been particularly awful to her was perfectly valid.</p>
<p>
EXCELLENT!! I think this one wins Best Of Thread for me.</p>
<p>
Horrors! I’m glad my son didn’t see that; he’s thrilled at Mudd! Actually, he’s quite irked by one of the application essays because it is logically broken and it isn’t even fixed in the subsequent year, but I’m glad he managed to get past his justified indignation.</p>