Maybe in the past. Look at the NMSF cutoffs for the past few years (pre-Covid). Western states and southern states do just fine. Florida, Georgia, and Texas are on the rise. I think the implication that GPA/SAT scores don’t add-up isn’t as valid any more.
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How did Swats grade deflation become a discussion of High School weighting?
If everyone knows that Swat is a tough grader (which they do), the opportunity (for Med school as mentioned) is to have a great GPA within those boundaries. Do people really think that having a higher GPA at a school not as rigorous as Swat is going to help them get into Med school? If you want to go to a highly competitive Med school, going to Swat and doing well is your best way in.
If you doubt that, as the admissions folks about Med school acceptances at Swat. They are among the highest first choice placement schools in the country.
PS - timing and efficiency of machines don’t matter as much when you’re not sitting in a concrete basement staring at the rotation of the machines under halogen lights.
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kind of unrelated but it is interesting how beautiful looks does not guarantee beautiful inside. Notre Dame is def the best-looking campus in my opinion with a very uniformed building looks, even the new Duncan Student Center (gorgeous!!). However, I’ve stepped into my sister’s classroom building. It was just ugly and the dorm quality is not encouraging even they have exceptional dorm community. The encouragement to live on-campus is great, but it would be better if they have good dorms to accompany with the 4 year on-campus living community.
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Thank you everyone for your comments. I’m not really going to push my DS to go to Swarthmore because of the dorms. I just felt tempted to after feeling so underwhelmed with the Wes campus. I’m not going to focus on it anymore because I don’t want it to dampen his going-to-college experience, which I realize it already has. My post was more of a vent and I feel better now, lol (misery loves company). I do think that out of the schools he got into, Wes is definitely the best fit for him, and yes, that is the most important consideration. I have heard horror stories of roaches, no heat or hot water at other schools so if he has to deal with old and rundown, it’s not that big a deal. It’s a shame though, that if the school is so great in other respects, people are crossing it off their list based on campus visits. I hope the University addresses that in the coming years. We didn’t get to see the campus before he applied. If we had, it may not have made his list. I do feel very superficial now, which is a good thing because I am now focusing on the positives. I agree with @AlwaysMoving that Middletown “has just the right amount of food/shopping on the main street and it’s a safe town.” We all had delicious poke bowls for lunch and noticed a variety of food options. The Main Street was bustling and the Connecticut River is a few blocks down. I can’t wait to see how my DS’s experience goes. This is my first to go to college so it’s a big moment!
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Actually it was about the implied incompatibility between beautiful college campuses and academic rigor “(large, pretty campus first, academics second)”.
Also, I lived in one of those South Campus dorms at UNC once upon a time. Not quite as bad as a Motel 6, but not necessarily winning any awards for architecture.
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Neither of my kids who toured Wesleyan --or their parents, for that matter – really warmed to the campus architecture or to Middletown, but I thought it was a cool place nonetheless and would have been happy if they had wound up there. In fact, it was the last school to be eliminated when I suggested that one of my kids pare down his application list, and I was a little disappointed to see it go.
Count me as another parent who saw – and was somewhat frightened by – the infamous Hamilton quad dorm room. But I loved that Hamilton didn’t feel compelled to provide a sanitized portrait of dorm life.
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It was good enough for a Kennedy in recent years. Not sure if or where they dormed, though.
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If it’s any kind of consolation, a particular part of Foss Hill does have a rundown look to it and it’s most likely the part that caught your eye when you toured. And, why wouldn’t it? It’s the courtyard of the first four units and virtual entry to the rest of the central quad:
Every year, the administration encroaches a little bit more on this student-led “permaculture” initiative (the result of the loss due to age and disease of a lovely grove of beech trees.) And, while I applaud the idealism motivating the students, I can’t wait until it gets sodded over and returned to “civilization”. 
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At my D’s school you are randomly assigned to your dorm and that’s your home for 4 years. D toured one of the nice and new dorms. Got placed in one of the oldest. She was upset when she found out but after a week at school would not have lived anywhere else if given the choice. This coming year she is choosing to live in an 8 person suite in her dorm. When she saw these her first week at school because someone she knew lived in one she said, “Those are not nice”. But now she’s choosing to live there because she thinks the group experience will be fun and I guess she thinks they are nice enough. Honestly, the housing is more about the people than the “accommodations”.
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Prettiest campus snd the best dorms I saw was at UChicago.
The campus is just gorgeous, combining gothic with modern architecture by world renowned (pritzker winning) architecture.
The dorms are all basically new. UChicago has expanded the class size substantially over the decade and invested a fortune in dorms, performing arts facilities, gyms etc.
It was extremely impressive.
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I think this was a safe place to vent about your feelings about the dorms! As a parent, the exterior asthetics of schools definitely had an impact on me, but it’s actually probably one of the lesser important factors, and the students’ opinions are what matter!
I don’t have specifics about these schools, but have two in college and have visited a lot of schools. If this is your first off to college, maybe (unfortunately) you didn’t get to see many/any in person, inside? In most cases, I really believe that once you are inside the room, a dorm is a dorm is a dorm. Concrete block walls, institutional tiled bathrooms. Kids can really jazz it up or make it homey inside, or not!
It sounds like your son is doing great with the decision making progress. Good luck! It’s exciting!
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We had the same impression at ND. Campus from the outside was stunning. Step inside and it was shockingly awful.
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Random info, here are the ten oldest college buildings still standing:
#1: Wren Building, College of William and Mary. Constructed 1700. Finished a scant eight years after the College of William and Mary was founded, the Wren Building is the oldest university building in the United States. Named after English architect Christopher Wren, it was restored by John D. Rockefeller in the 1920s to its eighteenth-century appearance.
#2: Massachusetts Hall, Harvard University. Constructed 1722. Though Harvard is the oldest institution of higher education in the U.S., founded in 1636, its oldest existing building was finished twenty-two years after William and Mary’s. Massachusetts Hall has the distinction, however, of being the oldest dormitory in the country, and was home to many of the Founding Fathers during their college years, including John and Samuel Adams. Presumably, then as now, beer was involved in the college experience.
#3: Connecticut Hall, Yale University. Constructed in 1752. Yale’s Connecticut Hall also served as a student dormitory in its early years, housing notables including Nathan Hale, Noah Webster, and Eli Whitney. Largely rebuilt after World War II, it now serves as a home for faculty offices and a computer lab. (If Oxford’s oldest building can be a cafe, why not?)
#4: Nassau Hall, Princeton University. Constructed in 1754. Nassau Hall has a special place in American history wholly separate from its status as Princeton’s oldest building: for four months in 1783, it served as the meeting place for the Continental Congress, effectively making Nassau Hall one of the former capitol buildings of the United States.
#5: University Hall, Brown University. Constructed in 1770. Like its older sibling at Princeton, Brown’s University Hall played an important, if somewhat less illustrious, role in the Revolutionary War as a barracks for French troops. Oddly enough, the building was briefly re-militarized in 1853 in response to the Dorr Rebellion. It is now home to administrative offices.
#6: Old East, University of North Carolina. Constructed in 1793. Old East is the oldest university building originally constructed for a public university (UNC was founded as a public university in 1789; the College of William and Mary was a private institution until 1906). It was built as a dormitory (see a theme here?), a function it continues to serve to this very day.
#7: Old College, University of Georgia. Constructed in 1806. Reputedly based on Yale’s Connecticut Hall and like that building originally constructed as a dormitory, the Old College is now home to the offices of the Dean of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.
#8: Old North, Georgetown University. Constructed in 1809. Now home to the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, Old North was at the time of its construction one of the most magnificent buildings in Washington, D.C., but fell into obscurity after the construction of the massive Healy Hall in the 1870s.
#9: Old Queens, Rutgers University. Constructed in 1809. Built seventeen years before Queen’s College was renamed after Revolutionary War colonel Henry Rutgers, Old Queens has never served as a student dormitory, though when it was built it had living quarters for faculty as well as classrooms. It is now home to various university administrative offices.
#10: Waller Hall, Willamette University. Constructed in 1867. Compiling a list of the oldest university buildings in America presents an interesting challenge, because the oldest buildings are invariably found at the oldest colleges, which (not coincidentally) tend to have been founded before such minor milestones as, say, American independence. In order to provide some regional balance, Willamette University’s Waller Hall rounds out our list of the oldest university buildings in America – built in 1867 is the oldest university building west of the Mississippi still in use as such. (Willamette University, again not coincidentally, is the oldest university west of the Mississippi, founded in 1842.)
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Please don’t hold back your true feelings. 
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Gotta disagree with #10
Most of the NESCACs have one or two buildings pre-dating the Civil War, including Wesleyan’s South College (1828 - it was acquired fully built from a former boy’s military academy and now serves as the President’s Office) Williams’ West College; Amherst’s Johnson Chapel and North and South Colleges; Hamilton’s Chapel (1827). The only exceptions I can think of are Conn which was founded in 1911 and Colby which had to vacate its original campus in the early 1950s.
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Glad you got to vent, @ORivygrad. Don’t feel superficial—I think we all notice things like this when we’re making such a big investment. Plus, it’s not like you could notice the engaging teaching/mentoring and all the opportunities for growth because those aren’t tangible sights to see!
Btw, my D19 thought Wesleyan was picturesque, and Middletown was a real life Stars Hollow (the town from Gilmore Girls). Once your son is a student there, the physical details will fade away and it’ll be all about the people and the experiences.
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For a refreshing visual perspective of Wesleyan, this will get you to one of the nicer short videos I’ve seen (across all colleges, really): Starlight Over Wesleyan - YouTube.
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Thanks for that. I know, Wesleyan isn’t nearly as bad as I portrayed it. My post’s title was very misleading. It was more the dormitories that I disliked. (I noticed the video didn’t focus on that side of campus.) All of their campus videos are so enticing. I guess when I saw the dorms it was just shocking. My intent was not to trash the school. My son is choosing to go there, with our blessing, which really speaks to the school’s other offerings (also, considering he has other excellent options like Swarthmore and Vassar).
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@ORivygrad, you can always request to be housed in Clark Hall (1916). Oldest student residence on campus; gutted and newly refurbished about ten years ago:
Thanks for the suggestion. I think I’m just going to let the cards fall where they may. I’m realizing I’m just a housing snob. When I went to Columbia oh so long go, I requested to be housed in Shapiro, the newly built dorm that housed freshman and seniors. I passed on the freshman-only dorm, Carman, so I could live in relative luxury. Though I had a great experience and made wonderful friends, I’ve often wondered how different things might have been if I had signed up for Carman. They always seemed to have such a blast.
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