<p>When I was in college last century, I spent a summer cleaning house for the most obnoxious human being in the world, a neurosurgeon with undergraduate and medical degrees from Vanderbilt. </p>
<p>My children were not born until my late 30s, but I still remembered that cheap, rude creep, and I didn’t want my son to apply to Vanderbilt ONLY because of the memory of that guy. Fortunately, my son paid no attention to my wishes when it came to applying to schools, and unknown to me he did apply (and got a huge merit scholarship to boot.) He is both happy and successful there, and reports that the campus is NOT full of people like the guy I worked for.</p>
<p>So, it was indeed a dumb reason, and I’m fortunate my son is an independent type.</p>
<p>A few pages back someone mentioned Washington University’s addition of St. Louis to its name. I grew up in St. Louis, and back then it was just Wash U. It wasn’t until I started reading CC that I came across the WUSTL designation. I think it is stupid.</p>
<p>Not quite as stupid, however, as Columbia University in the City of New York. As if anyone would confuse it with some other Columbia University!</p>
<p>Now my mind is wandering…The University of Illinois at Springfield in the City of Springfield, Illinois. Ha.</p>
<p>The Lafayette-Lehigh thing of posts #32 & 33… I told DS he could apply to Lehigh if he wanted to, and if he was accepted he could attend - as long as he could figure out how to pay for it, because I was never going to write a check to Lehigh (I was kidding of course). But with 2 Laf parents it didn’t matter; Lafayette was in his genes. We drove him around Lehigh, doing our best to be neutral, and he didn’t even want to get out of the car. He just happily finished his soph year at Lafayette.</p>
<p>I told my D she is not allowed to apply to any schools in NYC. I just feel like it’s a terrorist target. I have no problem with her going to school in Boston or Philly, but not NYC. It’s irrational, and may be due to my own prejudices (I have never been a fan of NYC despite growing up just outside the city).</p>
<p>TCU was a total turnoff thanks to a tour guide who bragged about spearheading the effort to keep a speaker with whom he disagreed off campus. So much for expanding minds in college …</p>
<p>An unnamed Colorado school has a section of its website devoted to diversity that was full of typos. Made the effort seem token. Very bad impression.</p>
<p>I don’t really think those are stupid reasons though. Not applying to Ivies because of my fear that they are full of snobs and ds would be totally out of his element is probably a stupid reason, however.</p>
<p>Lafalum84, I can’t find a link, unfortunately, but I did read a report a few weeks ago that said that NYC is one of the safest cities from terrorist attack now, because they’re on such high alert. Of course, I understand your concern and probably would feel the same way if my son were considering schools in NYC.</p>
<p>I refused to let S consider Syracuse because I always hated seeing ridiculous orange sweaters at the Big East tournament. Whenever we visited a school we always checked out the school colors as I explaned to him he would be wearing them the rest of his life.</p>