What should a father wear to accompany a student on summer tours/info sessions?

<p>My S1 will be a senior in Sept. He has 10 colleges on his list. We visited most of them between last summer and now. When would he actually do the interviews? Can they be local? If it’s just him, how should he dress? Suit necessary? How do we know which colleges want interviews? Sorry to sound so ignorant on this subject-</p>

<p>A slight detour off-topic…</p>

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<p>Wait, your husband is a mohel? Is he a doctor who took the additional training, or is he a professional mohel? Hold on, I feel a need for a mohel joke punch line (“nu, what SHOULD I put in the window?”)</p>

<p>OK, back on topic.</p>

<p>Prospie students are expected to be nicely dressed for an interview, but I think it is fair to cut parents some slack. They are the ones who are doing a lot of the heavy lifting during college visits, what with all of the driving and logistical arrangements and whatnot. Luggage gets lost. Ice cream gets dripped onto clean shirts. One college has to be the last on the list, when clean laundry is running low (or ran out). Weather changes, and it’s suddenly and unexpectedly muggy hot or icy cold. People who aren’t flying Southwest try to get by with a carry-on, meaning a limited wardrobe. </p>

<p>Can we go back to making fun of parents who act like boors? I enjoy that much more. ;)</p>

<p>No, he is an OB but he was the doctor for our rabbi (who just had twins) and she asked him to serve that role. He is used to doing that in a hospital all the time in scrubs, not on a bimah with 200 people looking on!</p>

<p>Am I the only one here who gets creeped out by sitting in close confines with other people (baseball game, church, college orientation, etc.) with oblivious-middle-aged-gotta-wear-shorts dude’s sweaty bare leg resting against my pant leg? Not quite the shirtless basketball scene from “Along Came Polly,” but still unnecessary and gross.</p>

<p>^^ Don’t worry - I’d never allow my bare leg to touch a stranger’s leg! I’d get creeped out if a clothed leg of a stranger was resting against mine. I think you just have a phobia of bare legs if you don’t expect to see anyone wearing shorts at a baseball game. I don’t know where you live but I don’t think you’d enjoy southern Cal, or Hawaii, or Phoenix, or a number of other locations very much with your middle-aged bare-legs aversion.</p>

<p>(I’m saying all of this a bit tongue in cheek - I don’t actually care that you don’t like bare legs - that’s your right)</p>

<p>I never like to see adults in shorts and t shirts unless you are doing an outdoor activity in super hot weather. Visiting college campus is not considered an outdoor activity.</p>

<p>I GET shorts at a baseball game. Also I lived in Hawaii 3.5 yrs. While “white collar” workers often wear Hawaiian shirts there, I don’t recall shorts being acceptable in office environments. Australia…now there’s a country where you could show off your gams 365, ucla dad.</p>

<p>Amen, cbreeze, couldn’t say it better myself.</p>

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It is if you visit UCLA or UCSD or UCB or … Make sure you don’t visit a large campus in the west (and probably many other places) if you don’t want to see adults in shorts.</p>

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Maybe we’re having a disconnect, I don’t consider a campus tour equivalent to an ‘office’ but maybe that’s just been my experience. It sounds as if you and cbreeze have different experiences and this is something that can vary between a physically large state campus, like UCLA/UCSD and a small LAC with a student population equivalent to that of a HS. </p>

<p>I wish I could get away with wearing shorts to work but I can’t…yet (I loved it when they finally moved away from ties).</p>

<p>I’ve worked in Australia in a few places and unfortunately the places I went didn’t allow the wearing of shorts at the office either.</p>

<p>I remember some big arguments in my workplace about whether shoes had to be worn. (Large corporate research lab.) My floor was also where the boardroom was, so there were higher standards. The upshot was that people did have to wear shoes, at least when they were out and about and not in the privacy of their own cubicles.</p>

<p>One group I work with includes academics from around the country. A few of the male group members wear shorts. Not surprising for the California people, but it is surprising for the fellow from a midwest state. No matter the weather, I’ve never seen the man in long pants. Maybe he wore long pants before he got tenure? :)</p>

<p>UCLA dad, I see the “casual Friday”-type outfits as what I’d find ok for college tours. Lightweight, cotton or linen, denim if you want, and nothing even remotely fancy or expensive. But still NOT the beach outfits you seem to think people are puritanical a-holes for for not wanting. Once you green-light shorts, some moron will wear a wife-beater, another a banana hammock, and then the whole thing becomes a trip to Wal-Mart. I’ve lived in CA, HI, Chicago, and southern Spain, so I know about heat. I know enough about it that I know no healthy middle-aged guy ever died because he had an extra foot of cloth on his pants as a show of respect to the institution.</p>

<p>I still say there are shorts and then there are shorts!</p>

<p>Schmaltz - And no healthy middle-aged guy ever died because someone else happened to wear shorts, the wearing of which shows no disrespect for the institution.</p>

<p>Enough of this - I like to wear shorts and you have a hang-up about them and I know I won’t change and you’re not likely to either.</p>

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Yes - and the ones I’d wear to a campus tour (or the store or out and about) are the type considered ‘walking shorts’ with pockets, commercially sold even in upscale stores, - not workout shorts, not bball shorts, not those hang-down-almost-to-your-ankles shorts (although it doesn’t bother me if others wear those). I even make sure they’re clean.</p>

<p>UCLA dad, what about the wearing of sleeveless t shirts for men for touring college campus. Is that acceptable too? After all, it’s only a difference of a few more inches of cloth to a regular t shirt.:rolleyes:</p>

<p>^^^^Nobody wants to see hairy armpits. Nobody.</p>

<p>(I think nice shorts are perfectly fine. Khakis or bermudas.)</p>

<p>But hairy legs are acceptable?</p>

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<p>Lack of means is not an excuse? You have to be kidding! Do any of you know any really, really poor people? I mean no car to go to garage sales poor. Choose between food and a roof over your head versus any non-essential clothes poor? </p>

<p>They exist, have kids and some of those kids are college material. Where my kid attended primary and secondary school there were kids who lived in these conditions by night and attended school on full scholarships by day. The school also provided the uniforms and EVERYTHING else the kid needed to successfully compete with the Perots, etc.</p>

<p>Those kid’s parents fell into 2 basic catagories. Those who did what they could and came to functions dressed as they were (I noted that without an exception they were clean). And those who were phantoms --never to be seen. I always really respected those parents who tried to support their kid in gettting this primo education over those who stayed away. I guess I didn’t understand that the failure to dress to the proper standard diminished those parent’s efforts in some way. </p>

<p>I know a man whose daughter is graduating from Baylor this year having attended on full scholarship. That man is going to her graduation ceremony. I guess I should tell him he shouldn’t go unless he can afford to not just dress cleanly, but appropriately. Would one of you please send me a list of what clothing he must acquire to not offend the sensibilities of decent folks if he attends in merely the clean clothes he owes.</p>

<p>The idea that an educated person would say that lack of means is no excuse for not meeting some conception that person has of proper dress is unfathomable.</p>

<p>It sounds like business casual is acceptable to most, unless it’s too hot (in the 90’s for some and 110’s for others).</p>

<p>Hairy legs are acceptable. Hairy armpits are not. </p>

<p>(NBA, please take note).</p>