Also, would people not consider UChicago since the pronunciation of their school mascot/color name is exactly how Bugs Bunny pronounces ‘moron?’
@momofsenior1 did your daughter diss the cute Scottie dog mascot? Inquiring minds want to know!
@Hamurtle got in to WashU but would have been deferred at SCU? Please explain?
Could not agree more. Calling all Tufts tour guides: enough with the Jumbo!
Yes she did @Hamurtle. Again, I thought it was precious.
Other mocked mascots:
Bucky the Bison at Bucknell
Lehigh’s “mountain hawk” and also not a fan of brown.
Maryland’s “terrapin” - I believe the quote was “A turtle? Really? How intimidating.” Insert snarky teen eye roll.
(That said, she did apply to both Lehigh and Maryland so it wasn’t soooo bad that she didn’t apply).
Personally I think the most ridiculous mascot are the Buckeyes. Who has a tree/nut as their mascot? But, DD grew up in OH so it felt normal to her. Go figure since mascots were probably what she mocked the most ; )
@socaldad2002 SCU would have been a ‘backup’ in his case and they would have deferred him had he applied EA. And the CC SCU threads have examples of high stat kids getting deferred from SCU. Back in my day it was the backup school for kids rejected from Stanford.
Does anyone think that the JHU mascot looks like Mordechai from The Regular Show and not want to apply there for that reason?
A mascot named Brutus is expected to be fierce, but agree that the mascot is odd (not to mention it kind of looks like the main character from ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid.’
There are some lame mascot names out there. Brandeis has the Judges, Penn has the Quakers, and enough with the Maroons, Crimson, Big Red, and Cardinal…all could be reasons for kids not considering schools. Although there are too many variations of bears and eagles out there.
My D17 hated the architecture of University of San Diego (the private Catholic one, not UCSD). She thought it looked like a Mexican prison.
@CAtransplant, our entire family was turned off by USD’s architecture, although most people on CC seem to love it. The vibe we got was ‘Hollywood upscale version of a mission’ rather than Mexican prison. They do get points for referring to the Jenny Craig Pavilion athletic facility as the ‘Slim Gym’.
Ha @oneofthosemoms hadn’t heard that about the gym - yeah I’ll give them points for that but it was a no go for my D17. Not even taking my D20 to see it.
Our friend took his son on a college tour and he (the dad) was excited thinking it was a good fit, great school, etc. On their way out, he was dumbfounded when his son exclaimed he could never go there – saying “Did you see what kind of shoes all the kids were wearing??” Guess finding a good fit is very important! 
“There was nothing going on at that school.”
The school was on spring break.
After he worked so hard for school grades, tests, ECs, my DS decided his most important criterion is for a school to require no or maximum 1 writing supplement.
He refused to look at 2 schools because he was getting too much mail from them.
He didn’t like some schools because the classes are small and therefore the professors will know his name and every move, and others because the classes are big, and the teachers may not be approachable.
@Sue22 both my kids said things like that. That’s why we tried to visit when school was in session, but it was hard to do, sometimes visiting over spring or winter break was all we had time for!
My D didn’t want to go to a certain school because a girl from high school that she didn’t like was going there…
The school is a flagship State U that has about 32,000 students. I think it would’ve been easy for her to avoid that girl, they also have little in common…but oh well, it was her choice and the money didn’t work out anyway.
I went to the same college as a couple of kids from my high school class and I maybe saw them once or twice in passing freshman year…we weren’t friends so we didn’t seek each other out.
“Colgate University?! Since when did toothpaste become a university?”
Mine automatically crossed off any school that required SAT Subject Tests, but I think that’s a case of knowing yourself more than being stupidly arbitrary.
College mail has started big time for D21. We will not be considering any schools in TN since that’s where the KKK began. SC is off, too, because they succeeded first!
^Yikes! So if Vanderbilt is a candidate, then it’s out even though it’s a top school? Although I wonder if the Nathan Bedford Forest statue is still there in Nashville. Didn’t dissuade my former co-worker (African American female) from attending.
By that criteria, Princeton should be out as well as Woodrow Wilson was very sympathetic to the Klan and supposedly ‘Birth of a Nation’ had its premiere in the White House. And he was a governor of New Jersey.
And Stanford is out as well. Leland Stanford was a well known racist and anti-Chinese. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1881 was primary his doing.
These are “stupid” reasons, @Hamurtle, not rational ones. That’s what makes this thread so fun. 
In Hamurtle’s defense, many of the “stupid” reasons in this thread are in fact “rational”. They may seem trivial at first glance, but can certainly have legitimate merit. With that said, birth state of the KKK and first state to secede don’t really pass the “rational” test.