<p>I thought this might make for an interesting thread. We all know that kids have silly reasons for applying, or not applying, to certain schools. But what about your own reasons?</p>
<p>Mine would have to be Tulsa. We visited there, and although it was a lovely campus with great facilities and really nice people, one thing sticks in my mind: the fact that the only place to eat off-campus appeared to be Arby's. The campus takes up one city block, and we drove around it twice because I couldn't believe that Arby's was the only food within sight of the campus. In spite of all the nice things about Tulsa, this has left me feeling that my son shouldn't apply there. Silly, I know, but some of my fondest memories from college involve walking to pizza places, burger joints, bars, etc., and I want my kid to have that experience, too.</p>
<p>(Actually, even if there were more places, I'm not sure I'd want my kid walking to them in that neighborhood.)</p>
<p>I talked S into NOT applying to the (state flagship, OOS) school that was my alma mater’s arch rival, just because of the rivalry, even though it was on par with other schools he applied to. He will be attending another OOS state flagship which is frequently compared to the vetoed school. I have slight twinges of guilt that I dismissed the other school so quickly, but with 14 acceptances, he really didn’t need one more in the mix to choose from.</p>
<p>Not that this is stupid, but my H is steering S away from one of the state publics because he knows faculty there and believes the politics are bad enough it might affect the academic program.</p>
<p>This is definitely stupid. I kinda wanted my son to apply to a few more merit-eligible safeties and big-name colleges, just so his high school could brag about more admissions and scholarship money. The school is very small and pretty new, and hasn’t yet sent very many students beyond in-state universities.</p>
<p>He applied ED to his first-choice college and refused to fill out any more applications (aside from the two rolling-deadline safeties) before receiving that decision. And then he was done. Much time and stress saved, of course. My reason was stupid. :o</p>
<p>Because L.A. was too * dangerous*
:o
but now that she has traveled around India with another girl ( that I have never met)- through UAE and the UK- by herself, L.A. is almost like home.</p>
<p>Funny topic, because it reminds me of the post I just made in another forum.</p>
<p>I won’t let any of my kids apply to research universities. Reason is I feel research is just another EC for the kid and takes too much away from what I believe is a professor’s real job: teaching.</p>
<p>Our daughter loves NYU and she’s going to apply, but we feel like she should at least have four years in her life to live on a traditional college campus. When else does one ever get the chance to live on a college campus? She can spend the rest of her life in NYC.</p>
<p>But I, personally, don’t think that one’s stupid. My father doesn’t want her to apply to one particular school because every kid from his HS (in 1956) who went there were “rich jerks who just wanted to get drunk.” Funnily enough, she hated it when we visited there anyway.</p>
<p>As heyalb said, that’s not stupid. But in my opinion, it’s still wrong.</p>
<p>The hard-to-achieve ideal is a healthy balance between teaching and research. Research excellence is your assurance that a professor with wonderful classroom presence not only knows what he or she is talking about, but is helping to advance the state of knowledge in his or her field. The fact that a professor is active in research and publication is your assurance that he or she is familiar with important new ideas, and that his or her own ideas are being subjected to peer review. The fact that a good researcher also teaches undergraduates is the school’s assurance that his or her ideas are being exposed to intelligent non-experts.</p>
<p>A university’s academic mission is both to create knowledge and to disseminate it. Creating knowledge requires research. Teaching is one way to disseminate it; publication is another.</p>
<p>There is only one school that I would not let my child apply to. It is a large OOS (nearby state) school with a rep. as a party school. I know many students who transferred out due to the party scene being so prevalent. Thankfully, D had no interest in that school anyway.</p>
<p>I didn’t want either of my boys to apply to a very good LAC b/c a very well-to-do condescending neighbor graduated from there and one of the major buildings on campus is named after him.</p>
<p>There are schools where profs don’t do research??? They certainly did at the LAC my D went to. At most (all?) schools, they are required to for tenure and promotions. It’s part of keeping up with the field.</p>
<p>There was one engineering school that I would have vetoed had it shown up on either kid’s list. Too many people I know crashed and burned there.</p>
<p>Wow. We are really short of actual stupid reasons here. (It’s hard to characterize a Wolverine’s reluctance to see her kids at Ohio State as stupid.)</p>
<p>We had one. My wife told my children that they were forbidden to consider Vassar. One of her older sisters had gone there, in the first co-ed class (which was an especially wild one), and had been introduced to several behaviors that complicated her life for decades after. It didn’t matter that one of my best friends from law school had also gone there at the same time, a completely calm, conservative man who heads the corporate practice at a major law firm, or that our kids knew several smart, successful students who went there, or that one of my aunts had been a lifelong member of her local Vassar club, or that pink and grey are GREAT college colors. My wife couldn’t handle the thought of anyone else from her family at Vassar. I think she even acknowledged it was stupid.</p>
<p>(Actually, if she thought she could get away with it, my wife would have told my kids that they were not allowed to apply to any LACs at all. Notwithstanding Laura’s reasoning – which I think is wrong, but not “stupid” – we are both strong fans of the educational model of research universities. We didn’t have to impose that rule, however; our kids generally agreed with us – what a surprise! My daughter did apply to Barnard, which doesn’t count, and to one semi-safety LAC just in case she panicked in April and decided she wanted that kind of environment; my son looked at a few before deciding not to apply.)</p>
<p>I refuse to apply to Harvard because it’s Harvard. My parents want me to “try” (so that if I get in, they can brag / subtly pressure me to attend) but my mind is like, irrationally, NO. Harvard represents to me a long tradition of both Asian prestige-diggers and distant research universities.</p>
<p>My parents don’t want me to apply to Rice because it’s in Texas, and Texas is conservative, and they’re scared that I’ll be corrupted by that or something. The fact that Houston, as a large city, is less conservative than most of Texas, and that Rice itself leans liberal, means nothing. I don’t care enough about Rice to fight it, so I’m not applying there this fall.</p>
<p>I don’t want my youngest D to apply to the schools that rejected the oldest D, because it ticks me off that they rejected my obviously wonderful child. But she’s only in 8th grade now, so I may change my mind should she decide she wants to go to one of them.</p>