That blows my theory. Do you get mail from traditionally Jewish schools, like the ones in the thread for Jewish B students? My kids never did. Maybe those schools don’t recruit by mail?
S17 is looking at a couple of schools with football teams but has already announced that he will NEVER attend a game. I told him to never say never, though inwardly I was smiling.
I’m not sure if Skidmore has a football team. I predict DS will attend for four years and not go to a game, if they do have one.
One could argue that Yale didn’t have a football team, until this year’s The Game. Since many freshmen contributed to the upset, who knows?
On the Hispanic question: my kids can legally claim Hispanic status. Of 4 kids, only one was interested in doing so, as he feels that my childhood was strongly affected by anti-immigrant prejudice and that it influenced some of his upbringing. He is also the one who can read a letter in Spanish. His welcome letter was written in English. 
Fwiw, I don’t think that any of the kids’ college choices were affected by claiming or not claiming Hispanic status.
They do not.
One could argue the same about Columbia. Why travel 101 blocks to see this perennial losing team?
@Joan52 That could be my family! Athletically underdeveloped. Hilarious.
@techmom99 Which traditionally Jewish schools?
I got mail from Brandeis because I identified as Jewish, I think.
That football issue really belongs in the stupidest list! There are so many top academic tier schools that even have winning football teams. Plus- large schools have so many students there will always be plenty who don’t care about sports. It is a shame to avoid schools which could offer the best academics in one’s major based on that. Even football crazy schools can have a significant student population that couldn’t care less about any sport, not just football.
Kids…
@techmom99 and others. my S19 feels the same way. not schools with football teams, or actually no school where the football stadium is a part of the tour. This happened when D17 was looking at schools.
Football teams: D17 could easily – and more happily – live without them. I’d be delighted knowing that money that would otherwise go to support sports teams, pay coaches salaries, athletic scholarships, etc., etc. would go towards academics, arts, etc.
@wis75 -
My D really feels strongly about football. She is actually, however, the only one of my kids who played a sport in HS; she did field hockey. She decided that she didn’t want to be at a school with a football culture and, luckily, she found a school that met her needs and didn’t have a team. As I said earlier, Ivies and tippy top schools were not on her radar nor she on theirs so she didn’t have to make that choice. Her school had the program and EC’s she wanted, as well as other sports but she was okay with that; it’s just football that my family finds violent and difficult to understand.
None of us would ever campaign to stop football but we don’t watch it on TV, attend games or actively support it even at HS level.
D1 attends UMBC – no football. D2 has applied to three universities; two have a big football culture and one has no team. It gets points in the plus column from her for that. =))
Stupidest reason not to look at a college?
Some anonymous poster on the Internet said something disparaging about a school.
My son apparently cares about how well the sports team does. He has said a few times, they SxxK.
Why go someplace for the academics? Kids. Just crazy.
Thanks for the laugh out loud!
Vassar doesn’t have a football team either, at least when I was there. It was coed then.
That said, football is very easy to ignore at many (most?) colleges, if you want to.
My D seriously considered the school’s colors when we visited. She wanted something other than Red and White (her HS colors). So…she is going to Temple. It’s colors: Cherry & White! Big difference apparently!
BU and Northeastern do not have football teams.
Any school with “polytechnic” in the name were immediately rejected by my kid even though there is a strong interest in CS. "Sounds geeky’
I was posting in another thread and just remembered this incident. At the beginning of our search with D2, who is normally a very methodical kid, we drove through the campus of one school and she decided not to even visit, claiming that the kids looked snobby (strange, but whatever) and that the traffic patterns were “weird”. (What?)
UCSB sells t-shirts that say, “UCSB Football: Undefeated since 1992” because that was the year the student body voted to cancel the football team instead of raising student fees to support it.
“the traffic patterns were “weird””
That’s a new one! haha.