<p>"The one that stuck out to me was Caltech's. Three students sitting on the stairs of the front of a building. Each student was sitting alone reading a book and eating their lunch...alone...quietly...with textbooks...."</p>
<p>That's actually kind of funny. When we visited, the students were all in the lounge area of one of the houses eating take out together.</p>
<p>yep...a date...with their textbooks...at the library.</p>
<p>To be fair, I think Caltech might also have been the one that talked about throwing the frozen pumkin off the roof...or was that MIT.</p>
<p>My favorite brochure cliche is without a doubt: "We offer the diverse resources of a large research institution and the personal attention and sense of community of a small liberal arts college." Of the dozens of brochures I got as a high school student, maybe one or two did not have this sentence or a variation thereof. It's amazing how every school in the nation has this unique combination!</p>
<p>I remember my favorite brochure was for U of Chicago. They seemed pretty laid back, didn't take themselves too seriously. Their website and their application was like that too. I remember one of the example optional essay questions was: If a teleportation machine were invented that could match the construction of your atoms and reconstitute them on the moon or Mars or where ever out of the atoms there, would the teleported you be you? I know I phrased that horribly, but it was very unique, and after writing so many write-about-an-experience-that-changed-your-life essays, I really appreciated it.</p>
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Nothing says "academic excellence" like a kid wearing a big white dog suit!
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<p>Actually, you can use that dog suit as an intelligence test. A remarkable number of people do not understand that the name of the University of Connecticut athletic teams, the Huskies, is a pun.</p>
<p>Hint: The informal nickname for the university is UConn.</p>
<p>Second hint: UConn = Yukon.</p>
<p>Oh, never mind.</p>
<p>Caltech's brochure? Is this something new? They sent my son some posters, but that's about all. When he wrote and asked them to send a brochure, Caltech told him they don't have one and that potential students should visit their website. </p>
<p>I haven't heard that Caltech pays students to go out on Saturday night, but my son reports they do attempt to bribe students to attend athletic matches by offering free food.</p>
<p>My mother-in-law is a fan of women's college basketball. Several years ago, she invited us to a match between her favorite team and UConn. Not until I saw the uniforms did I realize that the team was not from Alaska. (I'm not a fan of college basketball.)</p>
<p>I used to work at a university that was named for a coastal city but was actually 20 miles inland. Our materials always prominently featured the beach. We'd have freshmen who were disappointed to learn that they couldn't walk to the ocean from the campus.</p>
<p>"Caltech's brochure? Is this something new? They sent my son some posters, but that's about all."</p>
<p>I wouldn't swear it was a brochure. The posters count as far as I am concerned! We also get some free magazine with various groupings of universities - which had similar sorts of photos in the Caltech pages.</p>
<p>Was Caltech's brochure the one with the 3-D glasses?</p>
<p>They're all beginning to blur together in my mind.</p>
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Was Caltech's brochure the one with the 3-D glasses?
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<p>Yes, and if you went to their roadshow presentation, they have a slideshow running at the beginning of the program which requires 3-D glasses to see a variety of the scientific discoveries from Caltech scientists. Caltech is another school that really understands their potential student base. The third one that comes to mind is Olin. I thought MIT was an interesting dichotomy. The presentation from their Dean of Admissions was frank, funny, fact-filled and fabulous (alliteration alert). Their brochure was a little bit too much, "we work hard and discover great things, but we have fun and lots of really cool diversity, too." Their brochure cost them a point in the recruiting lit scoring competition, but the presentation won it back.</p>
<p>The talk about beaches inspired me to dig out the Rose brochure because I knew there was a great quote in it about dorm rooms: "Unfortunately, we can't guarantee that you'll get one of our beachfront rooms." Anyone who has ever visited Terre Haute IN will recognize the intentional humor of that statement.</p>
<p>I now regret throwing out so many of these glossy wonders. I do remember that we were quite taken with the Swarthmore brochure. The theme was "Swarthmore Unscripted" and aimed to give a laid-back image of Swat and Swatties. The whole concept focused on the fun, exciting, friendly, and unique atmosphere of the college praising intensity at the same time knocking the "ivory tower" image of academia. Of course, the brochure was peppered with "candid", informal, multi-ethnic, and, most definitely convivial, student gatherings - either set in impeccably decorated dorm rooms or outside among the beautiful trees. The tree shots were impressive and an important detail because Swarthmore takes their campus trees quite seriously-</p>
<p>The last page featured a sign replete with directional arrows to tell us that Swarthmore is 11 miles from Philly, 329 miles from Boston, 115 miles from NYC, 2701 miles from L.A. and, in case we needed to know, 9,533 miles from Kuala Lumpur.</p>
<p>drb: Terrifying. But give them points for not loading the brochure up with Abercrombie models.</p>
<p>We live near NYC & I used to bring the kids into the city for modeling jobs. (Nice college fund $$$) It was always amusing to see the ad agency get panicked if the clothing didn't fit a black kid & the ethnic makeup of the catalog or ad was about to be disrupted. I've seen them completely reshoot a day's work to meet ethnicity targets. </p>
<p>I once worked with a strikingly beautiful Irish woman with piercing blue eyes and gray hair. She just never dyed her hair and had a very youthful face & the look was stunning with her skin tones. She was always being pulled to appear in shots for the annual report, as was a group of other employees who bore resemblances to Denzel Washington, Mel Gibson, and other super-human physical specimens. No average Joes allowed!</p>
<p>Brandeis has recently been getting a lot of brochure mileage out of a photogenic parrot in the psych. department ( prof there is researching parrots' cognitive abilities.)</p>
<p>Don't know if this reflects preferred learning or recitation styles at the university.</p>
<p>Katonahmom's original post belongs in a CC hall of fame. It was a classic.</p>
<p>My favorite non-standard brochures were the trillions we got from UTexas--Dallas. They were targetting S for their Honors program and promising tons of merit dollars, yet almost every single picture were kids sprawled on lounge chairs by a huge outdoor pool. The few exceptions were kids gathered around a pool table. Because nothing says superior academics like the look of an upscale resort!</p>
<p>MM--the stuff in the original post is not Katonahmom's; she included the website she got it from.</p>
<p>Garland, next stop Fantasy Island!</p>
<p>MM, I am glad that you enjoyed the article as much as I did. FYI, it was written by Paul Many, professor in the Department of Communications at The University of Toledo. His areas of expertise include news writing, editorial writing, editing, feature writing, magazine article writing, literary journalism, technical writing as well as creative writing. He obviously has a wonderful sense of humor.</p>
<p>Btw, I am greatly enjoying reading all these posts about the inventive ways (airbrushed or not) colleges have found to communicate academic excellence in their quest to attract The Applicant - as Marian posted: who can resist a good pun - Go Huskies!</p>
<p>The Olin College of Engineering understands their prospective student, too:</p>
<p>"Dedicated to the collaborative spirit of chamber music, the ensemble is conductorless. (Or is it semiconductorless?)"</p>
<p>Oh, yeah. The Olin catalog has a piece of duct tape along the spine.</p>