<p>
[quote]
My brother goes to Princeton and his impression of the eating clubs is certainly not as rosy as yours. For so much 'egalitarianism' and 'openness' he sure does have to sneak in through windows a lot...
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, I'm a Princeton student too ilovebagels, and I'm just telling it how it is, for me and most other people I know. Why doesn't he just get a pass from an upperclassman when the clubs are using them? I swear people have given me more passes than I've ever used personally. Besides, there are plenty of other parties going on outside of the Street. I personally like going to Black Box in Wilcox Hall on occasion too.</p>
<p>My daughter had quite the list: No schools in a red state (no idea where that came from, I'm a republican), No school with cows on campus (immediately crossed out my alma mater UC Davis, Cal Poly SLO), must be well kept up (Harvard fell on that one, day after some big reunion and it was a mess), Must be in a good walking city (Penn fell because the sidewalks of Philadelphia were not wide enough), and, my personal favorite, cannot be close enough to home that I'd run into my mother at the local shopping mall. (This crossed out Stanford).</p>
<p>can't be
-religious
-all girls
-liberal arts based
-too many stuck up rich kids (but i'll make an exception for stanford)
-too liberal or conservative (but i'll make an exception for UCB)
-historically black
-away from any big cities</p>
<p>i'm all for the tech schools personally</p>
<p>there is too much hate for texas on this thread. geez. i can understand not liking the deep south/bible belt/racist states. but texas is not that bad. i like it here...</p>
<p>I love it, UCDAlum82! My son had some arbitrary gut decisions like the sidewalks one. He wouldn't even get out of the car at Penn because he didn't like the railroad bridge coming off the freeway. But, I particularly like the "run into my mother" thing!</p>
<p>^ You can't even see that railroad bridge once you're on campus--and it's really several blocks from the parts of campus where students spend all of their time. :)</p>
<p>45%er is right. You really can't see that bridge from Penn's campus. Maybe you can from the athletic buildings, but not anywhere else. </p>
<p>The only thing I really didn't like about Penn ambiance-wise was partially the noise, the urban location (I didn't like Columbia's atmosphere that much either), and the huge number of people smoking. To be honest if I were applying today I probably wouldn't care about those minor things, but it made an impression. </p>
<p>As for Texas, the only thing I feared is that it would get absurdly hot in the early fall and late spring (I wouldn't stay for summer session in a million years). I've been to San Antonio and Houston before and I couldn't believe the heat. I feel bad for those Trinity U and Rice students, I hope they have AC in the dorms!</p>
<p>I'm rather picky, as I already have all my schools picked out. Hey, I'm going to be spending 4 years at this place, spending probably close to 200,000 dollars (not including fin. aid/scholarships). I better be selective in my choices. </p>
<p>no extremely conservative/liberal schools
no schools in the deep south (nothing against it; just not my cup of tea)
no fundamentally religious schools (no required mass, no bob jones, byu etc.)
no schools with funny or religious names (holy cross, St. Olaf's and colgate come to mind)
no schools with an abnormally large usage of pot
no schools with a very lopsided girl/boy ratio (esp. no all-girls schools)
no schools that don't have a fairly defined campus/good campus life
no schools that aren't in/near a large city
no schools in Alaska (i'm tired of this place! life-long Alaskan here)
no schools within 2000 miles of home (this is not too hard to find: all of the lower 48 schools are included in this personal requirement)
no schools that do not have international relations/political science programs
no schools that have extremely low racial diversity (15% or less)
no schools with 25%+ asian population (I'm asian also; they're cool and all, just too clique-ish for my tastes).
no schools with an obsessive frat/sorority scene
no schools with a heavily "commuter" nature
no UC schools with 2% out-of-state students
no schools that aren't near a large body of water (i.e. must have oceans/great lakes)
no 2 year/community colleges
no online colleges</p>
<p>That's all I can think about now. I can probably come up with 10+ more criteria, if I really tried. Yes, this does eliminate 99% of schools. But I'm only planning on applying to 10 of them, so it's okay.</p>
<p>ha ha... I'm applying to Claremont Mckenna, U Arizona, Michigan state, U Wisconsin-Madison, Northeastern U, Georgetown, George Washington, San Diego State, and a couple others that I can't remember right now. Not all of these are "ideal" for me, but I know I'd be happy at any of them. As of now, Claremont mckenna and Michigan state are my favorites. Contrary to what the post before says, I'm really not quite that nitpicky in a more general sense. Those are just some of the criteria I used to narrow 2000 colleges down to 10 that I actually wanted to apply to.</p>
<p>that's true, but U arizona and SDSU also have very good honors programs. And they're huge, so if I wanted to avoid that kinda druggy stuff, it would be very possible (I hope).</p>
<p>I haven't visited any colleges yet, sadly due to costs, and I wouldn't know most of the stuff from personal experience but only by what I've read (a lot), so thanks for the input bo5ton.</p>