<p>@rhandco I think this preference comes down to one’s relationship with one’s child.</p>
<p>In our case, our S wants to tour with us, as we are bouncing questions and impressions off each other, during the tour and afterwards. But I agree that some parents are obnoxious (not us of course!), which can detract from the experience for others.</p>
<p>@requin Thank you so much for your advice! I was so surprised to see that happen, especially because it was a very well-known school. </p>
<p>@ Tperry1982 Thanks to you as well!</p>
<p>Yes, the catholic schools have to ‘shove it in your face’ because that is the mission of the school. Please don’t go to one if you’ll feel uncomfortable praying before meals, meetings, ceremonies, if you’ll squirm when letters are signed ‘Yours in Christ,’ or counselors are actually priests. Non-catholics are welcome, but the requirements (not that praying is required) aren’t different. </p>
<p>Some Catholic colleges/universities are more “in your face” than others, to be fair. I imagine it would be difficult not to be Catholic at some, and not so much at others.</p>
<p>Regardless how visible the symbols are at one vs. another Catholic college, it’s kind of strange to characterize it as “shoving it in one’s face.” When you go to a steak house, do you complain they’re shoving meat in your face? When you go to Best Buy, do you complain they’re shoving electronic gadgets in your face? It’s inherent in being a Catholic school, for heaven’s sake. </p>
<p>Really twoinanddone? We’ve toured a couple Jesuit colleges (we are not catholic or particularly religious at all, although not atheist) and were told over and over that all were welcome and that there would be no push of catholicism to students. I think what we found is that the schools all required some type of religion courses/theology as part of their grad requirements. I hope this is true because at least one of the schools is a top safety contender and I wouldn’t want D pressured one way or the other. I do however think learning about different religions is a positive aspect. I’m pretty sure it was PC that offered Buddhaism? D thought that was interesting. Seems in our list of schools, they are either uber-liberal or Catholic LOL, not finding much middle ground.</p>
<p>I agree that some are more religious, but I think a more important factor is the attitude of the student. Is not being catholic going to affect his time at college or is he going to embrace the differences? At some schools, it would be very very difficult (Ave Maria) no matter what the attitude going in. Is every white person going to have a good experience at a HBCU? Will a non-sports loving kid like Ohio State as much as one who was raised going to the games? They will still have the college experience, but it may not be the same as someone who likes everything about the school.</p>
<p>With the risk of sounding offensive, I’m not sure what I consider worse, a push for catholicism or liberal political activism/feminism. Where are the more selective schools with under 4000 students in the northeast that practice and embrace political and religious diversity LOL ? In the end, D is very accepting of all persons and her inner circle of friends is quite diverse (academically, socially, economically and racially) almost to the point of being comical haha (I sometimes laugh to myself when a see a group picture) so I think she’ll fit in anywhere and manage to find her niche. She says her niche is “NERD”. I agree.</p>
<p>When I was touring colleges, I found the difference between University of Wisconsin and University of Minnesota to be dramatic.</p>
<p>I loved Minnesota: personalized tour based on my major, well-organized, engaged visitor center staff and tour guides, coffee with the dean of the college because they thought I was a really strong candidate, generous IB credit and merit aid. They really seemed to care about undergraduate students and talked a lot about their emphasis on teaching.</p>
<p>Madison’s tour was generic and there was a very strong attitude of “we aren’t going to try to recruit you because we can get any top student we want.” It was very off-putting. No one in admissions knew about the neuroscience program or undergraduate research opportunities. And when we asked about merit aid, we were initially told “I don’t know if we offer it.” (Turned out the don’t offer merit aid because of that attitude mentioned above.) Madison is a top-notch research university and a great place for graduate school, but the impression I got from everything there was that undergraduates were a very low priority. My parents met when they were both at Madison. They wanted to like it, but they were also very put off by the experience. I didn’t apply, while Minnesota ended up being my 2nd choice university.</p>
<p>Since St Johns actively recruited him (got application fee wavier, didn’t have to send SAT scores and gave him a huge merit scholarship) he thought the religion would be background noise not in your face. Really a slide show with a cross as every third slide? If they want a more diverse campus then they can’t lead with religion. No matter because he fell in love with UMass Amherst and is now a freshman there.</p>
<p>Far and away our best tour was at Notre Dame. The guide was phenomenal and I would hire him in a minute. He chatted with us as we assembled then remembered every kid’s name as we passed through campus; he customized comments to literally every kid based on their stated interests and activities. He gave us a full sense of the distinct Notre Dame culture of Service, community, sports and academics. If there is a Hall of Fame for tour guides then our guide made it on the first ballot. He was also responsive when my daughter asked him a question via email. </p>
<p>Funniest Tour moment - when I took my sister to Vassar on tour many years ago a fat squirrel fell out of a tree right at our feet. It shook itself and ran off. We suspect he had been sampling the Solo cups piled around the garbage cans.</p>
<p>Worst campus impression - Daughter attended a week-long sports camp at Northwestern with 5 or so teammates. Two had to be moved due to heavy mold in their room. Then a fire alarm went off, apparently due to a short, and was allowed to ring for several hours without any intervention from the hosts. None of these 6 girls applied.</p>
<p>Worst Info Session - Stanford. The recent grads who spoke were really great but the Admissions rep was a ditz and the movie was a giant gratuitous pander to diversity. </p>
<p>Nope I - made a stop in Grinnell Iowa to show daughter the campus. I had stopped in twice before just to check it. She said “keep on driving.” Nobody should apply to Grinnell without touring as it is small and remote.</p>
<p>Nope II - Did the full Presentation, Tour, etc of University of Chicago. We took the electric train from downtown to show how close the City was. I thought it went ok and expected we would include it on list. But daughter was very clear she had zero, zip nada interest. </p>
<p>Duke - She loved the 2 classes she attended, but the Tour Guide as quite unimpressive. We got more out of talking to others doing the tour. The official Admissions presentation was merely ok. The distinct impression was of a construction zone as the old Union was being gutted and West Dining was in a modular modern structure plopped behind Stonehenge. The corner of Perkins Library was also wrapped in construction banner and fences. Prospects for construction were for several more years. East Campus was way shabbier than I remembered and I was distinctly unimpressed by the new dorms on both East and West. But the real turnoff to her was how the students interacted (or more precisely, didn’t). </p>
<p>Harvard - Nothing to add to observations above. The classes (one with a very famous professor who has served in multiple Administrations) were great but the kids did not say a word to each other as they filed in before class. She found that strange. The presentation at Admissions was just ok and the two kids asked to speak seemed to have been chosen explicitly for their non-wellroundedness. We get it - you’re smart and completely peculiar. As we left the building the 80 people got strung out immediately and it’s a wonder nobody was hit by a car crossing the street at Mass Ave. The one poor girl trying to herd this giant group gave it a valiant effort to be heard over the traffic by such a large crowd but nobody could really hear her well. I loved the walls and gates around Harvard Yard, the Harvard Crimson and the River setting though. </p>
<p>It is really important to put boots on the ground at colleges to ensure a good fit. </p>
<p>Kiss of love at Temple Open House- My dad and I got lost looking for a building. We asked a random student who responded with an enthusiastic “Let’s do this!” and walked with us until the building was in sight</p>
<p>@coolfunkystudent - When I’m on campus people who are clearly parents & prospective students ask for directions, I always try to walk them there if I have the time and chat along the way. Definitely makes a positive impression.</p>
<p>Also, the consensus I’ve seen here (and gotten from people I know) is that Northwestern generally comes off horrendously to prospective students on visits.</p>
<p>My child may still end up applying to Penn, but our visit last summer knocked it much lower on her list due to the nearly-explicit duplicity we observed. They make a big deal on their website that they (unlike many schools) don’t track whether students come to tour the school, so as to not stack the deck against students without the means to travel to the school and take a tour, and this was repeated by the admissions officer at the beginning of the info session after the tour. (This is something that appeals to both my child and me, for what it’s worth.) However, the admissions officer then went on to keep talking about how writing about your experiences on the campus tour in your “Why Penn?” essay would totally give you a massive advantage when you apply, because it would demonstrate your commitment to and connection with Penn.</p>
<p>A forked tongue isn’t generally attractive.</p>
<p>@dfbdfb I can see the fine line between considering demonstrated interest and having an advantage writing the “Why ???” Essay. Aside from the marketing value of having applicants write one of these essays, I see these in the same light as the question " do these jeans make me look fat ?" </p>
<p>@Jara123 I’m lucky to live in the suburbs, so I was able to visit again about a month after a formal tour for Northwestern. My earlier misgivings were wiped away, and I found it much more useful to independently walk around campus with my family, with just a map and some early morning research, as opposed to sitting in a stuffy room and getting an average tour. I made my own judgements about the school, rather than being given opinions.</p>
<p>We are not from California, but visited a few more CA schools, neither with a true “kiss of death,” but rather just slightly discouraging:</p>
<p>UC, Santa Barbara: Right on the ocean. That has to be stunningly beautiful, right? Well, yes and no. There was no one on the sand when we visited. Several of the low cliffs above the sea had warning signs on them, and there was a rather stagnant lagoon in the area where you could get at the ocean, as I recall. We arrived after the last tour (it was not that late in the day for us), so we took a self-guided tour. The campus struck me as emptier at the time than our local campus in the summer. We may have picked a weird day to visit. The academics there are extremely strong, especially in theoretical physics and materials (and no doubt other areas less familiar to me). </p>
<p>UC, Santa Cruz: This one was all +++ for me, but not appealing to QMP. (I blame poor upbringing!) This campus is stunningly beautiful! Trees, deer, baby squirrels (all alive), wooden bridges over ravines filled with greenery, and a really beautiful beach not that far away. Shade, sunshine, like going to college in a national park. Plus, banana slugs! QMP did not like the building architecture. I wasn’t looking at the buildings. On the academic side, great astrophysics (again, and no doubt other areas less familiar to me). </p>
<p>I’m with WasatchWriter…because the stakes are too high to judge the book by the cover. Most of these schools will get tens of thousands of dollars from us. When the stakes are that high, you can’t afford to write off a university that might have a couple thousand wonderful professors and students just because you happened to run into one or 2 people acting stupidly or having a bad day. My father would bypass a restaurant if the windows were dirty–he thought if they didn’t clean something everybody saw, they weren’t cleaning stuff in the kitchen. If he was wrong, we missed out on a few good meals–no big deal. But to write off an entire college --which could turn out to be THE best place to spend your $$$ --for a mistake made by an admissions worker is illogical and egomaniacal.</p>
<p>The kids and I have toured dozens of colleges in the past few years…the only time we signed up for an official visit was at Penn. We showed up at the big theater at the proper time, as did a few other prospective students and their families. Only one problem: nobody from admissions showed up to give the speech or lead a tour. We called and notified admissions, and still nobody showed up. We weren’t happy about it, but does getting slighted one afternoon in August 2013 negate 270 years of the university’s accomplishments? What sort of egomaniac would make that conclusion? It makes about as much sense as canceling a vacation to Italy because you found a hair in your Little Caesar’s pizza in Omaha.</p>
<p>I also can’t believe so many people sign up for the official tours, and thus put themselves in a position to get their impression ruined by an off moment by someone they will never deal with as a student there. What are you going to find out at an info session? That they have caring faculty, state-of-the-art facilities, engaged students, loyal alumni, and get visited by recruiters from lots of important companies? Everybody from Harvard to Southwest Panhandle State Vocational Institute makes those claims. You want to know if they teach Persian? Look on their website!</p>
<p>Jeez Bucky, if you’re disappointed that a Catholic university has the gall to show pictures of crosses, I’m surprised you don’t request UMass to change its name to USecularGathering.</p>