<p>I am a Wolverine that talked down Buckeyes. I grudgingly allowed her to look at Sparty.</p>
<p>Bottom line was I didn’t actively discourage anything, but I think I got my point across!</p>
<p>;)</p>
<p>I’m not allowed to apply to Penn State because 10 of my twelve aunts and uncles went there. My mom thinks they are obnoxious about it and doesn’t want me "in the cult’</p>
<p>We did not recommend the University of Chicago to our son because of its south side neighborhood location. He is a distance runner, was only 16 and known to run wherever/whenever he wanted to regardless of our advice- we could picture him in bad neighborhoods at midnight. Now he is more mature (still knows everything and we know nothing, but he is improving) so grad school, if he could get in, would be okay.</p>
<p>My stupid reason: I didn’t want my kids to apply to schools with goofy names. I’ve always felt that place names are important, and I won’t live on a street with a goofy name either.</p>
<p>My goofy name list: Harvey Mudd, Colgate, Rice. Plus maybe some others that never came up.</p>
<p>D1 almost applied to Mudd. But I dodged that bullet when she ran out of steam toward the end of the process and never completed the app. D2 did apply to Rice and was accepted. In fact it was one of her top two finalist schools in making her choice. But I dodged that bullet when she chose the other finalist.</p>
<p>…both of which illustrate how little influence I had over where they applied.</p>
<p>U of Michigan grad here. No one is to apply to MSU. 2 for 2 so far, with 1 to go.</p>
<p>I like the one about goofy names. My goofy list includes:</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd (“My name is Mudd.”)
Brown (Yuck.)
Case Western Reserve (Sounds more like a ranch than a school.)
Ball State (Sounds like they only exist for sports.)
Simon’s Rock College of Bard (Self-important much?)</p>
<p>I went to Bowling Green, which my roommate thought was the stupidest name ever. (“You might as well call it Bowling Alley State University.”) Personally, I think it’s a cool name.</p>
<p>My parents think my reasons for not applying to Brown are silly. All the (2) people I know who go there are really mean and annoying. They say “It’s two people!” but I cannot get over it.</p>
<p>Actually, Simon’s Rock College of Bard is now Bard College at Simon’s Rock.</p>
<p>You caught me. I knew I was cheating on that one. :)</p>
<p>I prefer to keep Cornell off of our list of potential schools. We spent an odd day there which included an information session. During this session we were told that the school was just “ok”, the campus was dangerous and not all that attractive. Either the woman was hoping to be fired or we were on candid camera.</p>
<p>^Seriously? While the “ok” thing is subjective (I’d disagree with it being only “ok”), the campus is definitely not dangerous at all, as I haven’t heard about anyone getting attacked at all, the extent of crime at Cornell is at worst, petty theft. And as for attractive, anyone who walks over the footbridge near Balch can definitely attest to the fact that Ithaca is indeed gorges.</p>
<p>Those were not our opinions of Cornell, this is what we were told while at Cornell by a Cornell employee. My opinion was that Cornell was a GREAT university and the campus was very beautiful. She told us that she felt that the campus was dangerous since they received much snow and the students would ride sleds and could fall into the gorges. I repeat that this was a very odd information session at Cornell. I’m sure that this is far from their normal information sessions.</p>
<p>geek_mom, I don’t think your reason is stupid. You are thinking like a mom and a concerned member of a community, in the interests of supporting your local schools. Seventeen-year-olds don’t have that kind of insight :)</p>
<p>Leah321, a professor’s real job is not “teaching.” Professors do many things, but even at liberal arts colleges they are not hired solely on their teaching ability. Hiring for professors is done based on their research prowess; even at prestigious LACs, only the top researchers from top research universities are hired as professors, and the bulk of their time is committed to doing research. When tenure review comes up, the school doesn’t really care about their teaching portfolio; they are interested in their research portfolio.</p>
<p>It is erroneous to think that a professor’s “real job” is teaching (teaching is only part of what they do, and most go to get Ph.Ds and become professors because they want to do <em>research</em>) and it is even more erroneous to think that professors at non-research universities aren’t doing research. They are.</p>
<p>Besides, research is not “just another EC.” If your child has any designs on graduate school, research is the single most important factor to getting in. Even if he or she is planning to go to a professional school (like medical or law), research is an important activity that will set him or her apart from the other applicants without that experience.</p>
<p>
That’s perfectly logical, it’s just stupid the other way around :)</p>
<p>Goofy names: I was reminded of this tidbit from the Yale admissions office student outreach team facebook page - “We named the university after Elihu Yale because he was our largest donor back in the early 1700’s. It’s a good thing we didn’t name it after our second-largest donor, Jeremiah Dummer.”</p>
<p>My dad had some pretty weird reasons and was strangely adamant to the point of not paying application fees:</p>
<p>Harvard - rival to Yale, dad’s alma mater. Insisted on referring to it as “Hah-vahd” while emulating my limp-wristed mannerisms.
Princeton - “It’s not Yale.”
Stanford - he found the students “stupid and unmotivated” (!!!) and the administration “clumsy.”
UCLA - ditto to a greater degree. Also, “too many Asians.” I’m half Asian (not his half).
UC Berkeley - “Every time I hear Berkeley I think Berserkley.” Had no further comment.
Pomona - “They probably eat cacti.” May have been joking but refused to pay.
Oberlin - Point-blank refused to explain rationale.</p>
<p>To further situate this in the realm of the bizarre, dad is involved in academia at a highly selective, top-tier college that he also attempted to keep me from applying to (“You’re only applying because it’s an Ivy,” when it was the only Ivy on my list) and should at any rate know better. </p>
<p>I ultimately applied to three of the above and paid the fees myself.</p>
<p>bouda, nice job not caving in to your dad’s (irrational?) pressure. Is there any chance he was pushing your buttons to see how much you really cared about the schools on your list? Or was he just a bit loopy? :)</p>
<p>He had no interest in my college applications process other than to indicate his disapproval of almost every school I applied to (I haven’t named any safeties here, but he shot down those too), and he has a history of being totally insane, so I think just loopy. We’ve learned to live with it though! And I survived the college process and am going to one or the other of two schools he pooh-poohed, so it’s all good.</p>
<p>Well, I’ve killed off any interest in Purdue and Rice because I kept kidding with my kids that one should go to Purdue and the other should go to Rice and both stickers on the car would make a nice dinner combo ;)</p>
<p>And she won’t even consider Hendrix because when we 1st started getting their mailings I would tell her that she got something from Jimi Hendrix College. </p>
<p>And we can’t hear about Cornell now without snickering and thinking of Andy on “The Office.”</p>
<p>All kidding aside, I have discouraged DD from looking at schools that do not have a direct flight home; I’ve heard too many horror stories here on CC about trying to get home at Christmas break and missing connecting flights due to weather.</p>
<p>Ball State is referred to as Testicle Tech by its rivals.</p>
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<p>Word. It’s the reason I (Ohio State grad) never applied there and why none of my children ever will.</p>
<p>I once had an interesting trip moving SIL from apt at OSU where she had just finished her Ph.D. in Physics to Ann Arbor in the same day (straight up I23) to U SCUM apt for dental school. She had done her undergrad at Ohio University so that pretty much explains the entire trainwreck to me.</p>