I don’t mind rain on the tours. I do mind tour guides who don’t make any adjustments for the weather. Sometimes you’re standing in sideways rain, looking longingly at the empty lobby on the other side of those glass doors. Can’t we have this conversation INSIDE the building?
I’ve been to Las Vegas in June each of the last two years. Each time I think about touring UNLV, and each time, I chicken out. They need to have those tours at 9 PM in the summer.
I’m visiting 7 colleges around Vancouver and Seattle next month. I hope I come home with nothing to contribute to this conversation!
Ha! Drove five hours in a snowstorm to get to William and Mary. (It should have been a three hour drive.) Had to take back roads the whole way. Woke up to lovely sunny skies and a closed college. We had a drive around the perimeter of the campus, and saw a few students sledding on cardboard. We had a quick drive around town. We then had a three hour drive to Pennsylvania. The whole experience was a complete waste of time and money, but I guess I learned a lesson, which was that it’s not a good idea to visit a college during a major snowstorm!
@thumper1 I absolutely remember that snowstorm. I was hugely pregnant and dh flew to California for a business trip/trip to visit his mom. I was nervous about him going at that time of year as I was home with a just turned 2y/o and a preschooler, and just over 8 months pregnant. Sure enough, we get a record breaking storm, dh gets stranded in San Francisco and can’t get home. He finally managed to get a flight to Dulles two days later than planned (we live close to BWI), but that meant picking him up, normally an hour drive on a good day. Thankfully my very kind neighbors had dug out my driveway when the storm ended, so I ended up driving to my parents, dropping off the kids with my mom while my father drove with me to pick up dh. I’d never seen the beltway in that condition arrived two weeks later (and two weeks early!).
We had pretty nice weather for most of our tours with D. The worst we had was a trip to Boston in August. We were looking forward to escaping the heat and humidity at home in the DC area, but sadly, Boston was experiencing a heat wave. Oddly though, the day started off pretty chilly. We toured Northeastern in pouring rain-temperature had dropped into the 50s so we were freezing. Then the rain quickly ended as we ate lunch. We jumped into an Uber to get to our afternoon tour of Boston College. By then the sun had come out and it was miserably steamy and humid. The BC tour/presentation was a huge turn-off but the weather just sealed its fate to the “cross off the list” pile.
@thumper1 I think you win the prize!!! Sounds awful!
DD didn’t have great weather for any visits. It was either hot and humid or overcast and rainy. She visited Lawrence in January and it was one of those bitterly cold days; 20+ below windchill when it hurts to be outside for more than a couple minutes. I thought that was going to end her interest in Lawrence right there, but she ended up loving it. I guess if she can love it at 20 below, she can love it any time of the year!
Dartmouth College. We toured last summer on a day with nonstop torrential rain. Everyone was huddled under their umbrellas wearing their raincoats with hoods up, and we scurried from stop to stop like a pack of octopuses. People tell me the campus is beautiful, but I will have to take their word for it because as DH later commented, “Dartmouth College looked like the underside of an umbrella to me”. DD was not discouraged tho!
Rice University. Houston Texas. August. 104 degrees. 1000% humidity. I don’t know why the pavement hadn’t melted. (I am a Texan-104 degrees was ok, it was the fact that the air had turned to mist that nearly killed me.)
@milee30 Visiting a cold northern city campus during beautiful weather definitely gives a false impression of the school-year climate. You were wise to suggest a winter visit to Chicago!
We went to Lehigh and Lafayette on the same day during a heavy rainstorm.
For Lehigh, they did the normal tour of 20 peoplein the rain…tromping up and down the hills…I couldn’t hear the tour guide because of the sound of the rain hitting my umbrella.
For Lafayette, they did tours of 1-2 families, made sure to go inside when possible.
That is the kind of day where one college falls off your list.
Years ago, D visited U. Dallas at the end of March. She flew there on Thurs. and planned to return Sat. afternoon–with just enough time to get her hair done and dress for senior prom. A blizzard hit. Our airport (KC) was closed. She was stuck in Dallas until Monday. During that time D bonded with another stranded girl who was visiting the college. They ended up as roommates/ good friends. Prom was rescheduled so she still got to attend.
Maybe not the worst weather but it opened DD’s eyes! I took her to see a smaller in state college (Midwest) that had guaranteed merit aid based on scores. It was a cold, dreary day in November and windy. We didn’t take an official tour but drove around campus and the town. She was complaining and I made the comment about the reality of college life in state.
Before we left town, she had filled out an app online for a Southern school 1000 miles away, near the coast. Later on, she received a letter to apply to College of Charleston and that’s where she’d heading this fall.
She had been my last hold out about moving back East and I had no idea that one visit would finally sway her!
D was thinking about going to an accepted students day at a western Pennsylvania college. The high the day it was scheduled was predicted to be 10. I think they held that day in February for a reason. She went south to school instead.
We were driving to Chapman University for an interview and a dusky orange pall descended over the freeway we were driving on. The horizon looked otherworldly. We also noticed that most of the cars were driving in the opposite direction, which was unusual for that time. Apparently a huge fire had broken out in Orange County, CA, and some areas were being evacuated. Being from Southern California we weren’t too concerned, since fires happen and there was no indication that it was close to Chapman on the news. So, we arrive at the university and cars are pouring out of the parking lot, students are wearing masks and ash is falling from the sky. The campus was closing and admissions was scrambling to cancel tours, but they managed to squeeze in my son’s interview. And he did get in! The drive home was tortuous though.
The worst weather was UMich where air temp was -27 below zero degrees. But the tour was still great. The university made a huge effort to make it comfortable and rerouted the tour for the least time possible outside and stopped for a hot chocolate break.
The worst tour based on weather was Northwestern where’s it was 42 degrees with a strong wind off the lake and they barely let us inside any buildings. We were disgusted.
Not a visit, but accepted student’s day in Boston, February, 2014. They had gotten snow just before we arrived and it was much colder than I was ready for and very windy. S1 still loved it and decided to attend. He was not put off by the cold and snow so I guess it really was the place for him.
My D had a music scholarship audition at St Olaf. We scheduled it and then she got an early write to Grinnell. Since we were going to be a 4 hour drive away we decided to also go to a special event at Grinnell. Unfortunately a blizzard decided to hit on our drive back to the Minneapolis airport (kind of came up out of nowhere). I hadn’t driven in snow in decades and never in a blizzard. We made it back after a grueling 7 hour drive only to have our flight cancelled.
@maya54 It’s all relative. We toured Northwestern in February. Mid 40’s, strong wind off the lake, but the sun was out. The students were wearing shorts and the tour participants from the south were miserable.
We live just a few miles from Northwestern and close to the lake so we were certainly as prepared as anyone. Yes there are boys who wear shorts anytime it’s over 30 degrees here. But they run from inside spot to another, not spend an hour just standing outside like we did on the tour. It was miserable and I lived within spitting distance of Northwestern for 50 years.
We felt like the attitude of the entire NW admissions office was “ we don’t give an f if you attend here and aren’t going to do anything to make your visit pleasant”
