<p>Cornell, August 2014. We went into the trillion-dollar theater with the trillion dollar sound system and the trillion dollar voice who welcomed us anonymously from back in the curtains somewhere. Canned, uninteresting presentation in the theater, then we were shepherded to the admissions office where the 300 or so of us got into this long line waiting to go into the office and sign in for the tour. It was moving at the rate of maybe one person a minute, and my D said “Can we just go dad?? I don’t like it here.” And we did leave, along with about half of the rest of the crowd. She refuses to apply to Cornell, she said she found it cloistered, cookie-cutter, and stifling.</p>
<p>She really didn’t like any of the Ivies except Columbia, she said the rest are too full of themselves and too expensive. She decided against bothering with a Harvard visit.</p>
<p>She REALLY loves Columbia, though. Columbia is her guy. </p>
<p>@jimkingwood, my D and I had exactly the same experience in November 2014; I wonder if it was with the same presenters. Most of the time at the info session was spend talking about non-Hopkins things to do in Baltimore and campus safety and almost nothing on what it’s like to be a student. The clear takeaway was to spend as little time on campus as possible and make sure to move off-campus as soon as you can. My D refused to go on the tour after the info session.</p>
<p>@jimkingwood, my D1 loved Columbia also. She didn’t want to tour anywhere else after that. She is now a freshman there. D2 was turned off at Harvard. It was kind of like “we’re Harvard, we don’t have to sell anything to you” Blah info session and we left the tour and walked around ourselves. She loved Yale (which D1 did not like). </p>
<p>@jomama2g My D is ED Columbia and waiting with fingers crossed and hoping. She loves NYC and Columbia. 2nd is Duke and then, so far, 3rd is U of Rochester. She is applying to WashU and some others also.</p>
<p>She loved the Tulane presentation at her school last year and really liked the people, but we never got a chance to visit. She applied a little over a week ago and received an acceptance letter and 32K scholarship yesterday evening. We’ll see. We’re from Texas and she loved Cajun Food so it will be tempting. Still don’t know how the scholarships work at Tulane, trying to figure that out!</p>
<p>@BobcatPhoenix We spoke to my D’s college advisor - she goes to a private school and the advisor knows the people at JH - and she said she was very surprised. But my daughter re-iterated for her that she strongly disliked the school and if it wasn’t for the JH reputation she would have left after the first 10 minutes of the presentation.</p>
<p>You didn’t miss much on the tour; the tour guide took off 20 miles a minute and you had to run to get close to her to understand a word. So we just said f’ it and lagged and chatted and looked around a little ourselves.</p>
<p>The people at the reception desk were very gracious and couldn’t have been nicer, but we liked nothing at all about the school other than that.</p>
<p>We took the formal tour of daughter’s first choice school even though we were very familiar with it, since her sister is a 2013 graduate. Sister was with us too and it was funny that the tour guide actually brought up a story relating to one of their summer abroad dialogues…she didn’t know she was referring to my daughter ! We cut the tour short since we really just wanted to make it known that she was officially there. She was inited to sit in on a class, which she really enjoyed</p>
<p>Amherst: info session was held in a huge chapel and incredibly pompous; admissions officers and students were unkind unfortunately… also admissions officer kept putting down all the Ivies, bragging about how much better Amherst was… while I would say they definitely offer a good education there’s no need to talk trash</p>
<p>American University (DC): asked the admissions officer if they offer Persian and he asked if that was the same as Arabic… also promised us a tour in advance when we booked the visit but when we arrived said they had no student available, gave us a “self-guided” map and shooed us away</p>
<p>1) Savannah College of Art and Design - summer week workshop during the hottest/wettest week of the summer. D got caught in a rainstorm, A/C in dorm went out, building where her classes would be is far from the main campus in a high crime neighborhood. Not applying, and SCAD was her original top choice school. :-(</p>
<p>2) RIT - went to September open house expecting to be blown away. Was my top choice on paper. Opening session was great, but it went downhill fast. Student who conducted the tour of the animation department was Chinese and barely spoke English; the classroom areas for animation were dark and dreary. Head of the school was all about the film program, said practically nothing about animation. Dorms were crowded and dark and really far from classroom buildings. Too much brick. Campus seems huge and in the middle of nowhere. Just a terrible visit. D will not be applying there either.</p>
<p>Kiss of death: Macalester–none of the students talked with each other; each was head down looking at his/her phone & lost in the world inside the headphones and a strong anti-religion talking point from the student guide (“There’s only one cross on campus, but it’s in the historic chapel, so we can’t get rid of it”).
It was such a contrast to both St. Olaf and Carleton where the students were calling out to each on the sidewalks and the huge trust factor with backpacks just left on tables, knowing that they would be there when the student returned.</p>
<p>@MDdad2012 - I had the same experience at Temple with my S in 2011. We had an appointment to visit the Boyer School of Music, and unfortunately nobody told us about the massive construction going on and that the parking lot on the map where I intended to park was being turned into a new dorm. So we were very late for our appointment; I did call ahead, but the woman in admissions was very surly when we arrived and said we missed the building tour and there was nothing she could do. She basically just gave us a pile of brochures and told us to get lost. </p>
<p>My D has had a very good experience with the Tyler School of Art at Temple, however. She was completely uninterested in attending there but did a summer Portfolio Boot Camp and loved it. They had an admissions rep come and talk to all the campers and her teacher was wonderful, told me at the end of the camp that D was an “art animal” and she would love to have her in her class. I still want to take an “official” visit to Temple during classes so she can see how crowded that campus is when all the students are there. </p>
<p>Also surprised to read the post about Drexel; we went to the October 26 open house and never even saw the fitness center… The department session was led by a fulltime professor who was wonderful and stayed quite a while to answer my D’s many technical questions. The dorm tours were well organized, and though the dorms are well used, my D really liked the suite style dorm and talked for a long time with the girls in the room about the school as well as the dorm life. The Westphal building is amazing, by far the best arts building we have seen anywhere. My D did not expect to be interested at all in Drexel, but now she has been back to visit again and applied there ED! </p>
<p>As parents, we are concerned with our son’s experiences of religious affirmation at the elite universities to which he is applying. At Duke, the paid staff person with admissions couldn’t have been more rude. When I asked about opportunities for participating in campus religious organizations, etc. she acted like there were none and why would I be such a controlling parent as to expect my son to go to church while in college. This is at a university that has religious ties, even if in name only, and has one of the top ranked divinity schools in the country. My wife ruled out Duke just based upon the rudeness of the lady with admissions. Harvard was a little better. There, we were told that Harvard has organizations for everything and if our son wanted, he could start his own religious organization. Stanford guide’s response was that there are churches all over the Bay Area and no one would stop him from going to church if he wanted to go. We aren’t some obscure religious sect. Mainline evangelical Christians who want their son to remain faithful to God in college.</p>
<p>I should also mention, though, that Yale could not have been nicer and went on and on about all the wonderful opportunities for religious affirmation. Princeton likewise.</p>
<p>UC Santa Cruz: I thought the campus was beautiful, but the kiss of death was that it was SO dark around all the buildings and felt too secluded for me. It would be a lovely place to go camping for a weekend, but I wouldn’t want to live there.</p>
<p>After 3 amazing tours at Penn State, University of Miami and University of Texas Austin that had tons of cheering and really upbeat tour guides I went to Columbia where they put us in a very dark depressing room and I watched everyone start closing their eyes falling asleep … then we heard of the “starving lion” mascot that had ribs showing … I am still picturing Penn States amazing Lion Shrine … then the tour guide went on for an hour about “the most exciting thing to happen on campus all year” the BIG thing everyone looks forward to … I start thinking Ok …this sounds like Thon at Penn State … I was brought out of my sleep … the ONE big thing that happens on campus is … drum roll … a “musical broadway show satire of life on Columbia campus” … this is the one big event and only event he spoke about … snooze!</p>
<p>After having visited about 12 campuses in the last year, this thread is an enjoyable read.</p>
<p>We had car trouble on our way to Maine for visits at Colby and Bates. S said it was “a sign” and we didn’t visit and he’s not applying to either school. How’s that for arbitrary? His list was getting too long anyway, so I didn’t press him for a more logical reason. </p>
<p>Union - as with an earlier poster, S didn’t like the trimester system. He liked the idea of taking just 3 courses for a shorter, more focused time, but not having breaks at odd times. Our tour guide said that summer internships and jobs are mostly filled with students from other schools before Union’s 3rd trimester ends in mid-June. That was the deal-breaker for S. </p>
<p>UGA Honors College tour - son said all they talked about was how great the food was and how good the football was at Georgia. Son LOVES football, but that was not his determining factor of where he wanted to go to college. When he asked about their commitment to the Engineering program and their recent expansion - they responded with something like “yeah - I think we are adding mechanical.” This was a group of really smart kids - don’t think any of them took up their free tuition offers.</p>
<p>@honestmom-to clarify, my comments on Drexel are based on a visit about two years ago. I believe it was during an open house, so it was crowded. As far as talking about the fitness center, it had been finished very recently-within the last six months or so. My guess is that is the reason it was emphasized. Layout wise, my son just couldn’t come to embrace the idea of being that integrated with the surrounding city. My comments were not meant to criticize the school, just pointing out what turned off my 17 year old son. I think that, overall, the tour and presentation were very good-good facilities, very good education, and the tour guides were informative and engaging. We had a couple of girls training as guides following our tour leader, and I was able to pick their brains about the school (talking about school size, semester system, etc.) It is a terrific school, and I would have been happy if my son had elected to apply and attend. Good luck with your daughters application.</p>
<p>Personally, I was frustrated by the interview process for 1 of my schools. A local alumni representative emailed several applicants in the same email (did not bcc-I could see the other addresses), had us use a website called Doodle to sign up for a time slot (again, public website). I found this to be a breach of privacy-having my email shared with other applicants, etc. This really reflected badly on the school for me and made me slightly uneasy.</p>
<p>Carleton College - Attended a Minnesota Private Colleges event in summer 2014. The session was very poorly organized. Our tour guide talked extensively about how faculty were technologically inept. Couldn’t answer basic questions about things like summer research opportunities or even most popular majors on campus. I know that the student was not an accurate representation of the Carleton student body, but it left a very poor impression on S1. He isn’t even going to bother to apply, which is too bad, since the school would be a very good fit. </p>