Which Pretty Good Colleges Are You NOT Considering?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>I figure that maybe as a flip side to the usual CC focus on the dozen or so most sought-after colleges, it might be interesting to talk about colleges that you think are good, and that you think a friend of yours might really like, but that you are not going to apply to at all. I'll let you decide how good is good enough to be "pretty good" for this question. (My working definition of "pretty good college" would include, but not be limited to, all the colleges mentioned in the two main posts in my thread </p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/437362-still-looking-college.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/437362-still-looking-college.html&lt;/a> </p>

<p>including colleges mentioned in a lot of college guidebooks.) </p>

<p>For concreteness, I'll give one example. I don't expect my oldest son or anyone in my circle of relatives to apply to Brigham Young University in Utah. Even though BYU has some respectable programs and strong students, and even though it enjoys quite a high yield among its admitted applicants, it doesn't have any appeal to us, partly because we are not Mormons and partly because we tend to like colleges in larger urban areas. </p>

<p>That's the kind of thing I'm looking for. Give an example of a college that you acknowledge as a pretty good college (which is what I acknowledge about BYU), explain why you're not applying, and then maybe someone else reading the thread will cheer up, knowing not everyone is trying to pile into his or her favorite college. I'll enjoy learning from your replies.</p>

2

<p>This IS a different idea — I’ll take a shot at it:</p>

<p>For me it was Tufts.</p>

<p>When I started my school search I loved everything I read about Tufts and the more I learned about it the more I felt it would be a good fit. Location, size and academic offering put it on the top of my list. However, when I finally got a chance to visit I felt it wasn’t the place for me. It’s kind of hard to explain because there wasn’t anything in particular that I disliked. For me it was more of a gut feeling that I just didn’t connect with the student body. </p>

<p>The funny thing is that to this day I can honestly say that the best information session I ever attended (and I’ve done my rounds) was the one at Tufts. It was well organized, informative not only about Tufts but about college admissions in general, and far from boring. I still think very highly of Tufts.</p>

3

<p>It is UPenn for me.</p>

<p>I thought I love it. And then I went to the campus for a debate competition and found out that I truly just did not fit on the campus. Another gut feeling.</p>

<p>I am also not considering Columbia, Pitt, PSU, Harvard, or Yale. Just for various reasons.</p>

4

<p>Rural schools. Period. </p>

<p>I know there are some great ones…it’s just not for me.</p>

5

<p>Any college not in Cali. Why leave such a beautiful, laid back place with such great schools?</p>

6

<p>Because then you’ll realize how terrible California really is. ;)</p>

7

<p>UCLA- great school, and a beautiful one at that. Im just not into the so-cal thing.</p>

8

<p>For my son, schools not in large cities. Doesn’t want to visit Dartmouth.</p>

9

<p>Daughter will not consider our excellent state flagship UIUC because “too cornfield”.</p>

10

<p>Thanks for the interesting replies. It’s apparent that geography matters.</p>

11

<p>Reed College… Oregon; no relatives there, so it’s an issue for me (Intl. applicant).</p>

12

<p>I don’t like Harvard, Caltech, MIT, or Princeton…</p>

13

<p>Even though I applied to colleges a long time ago, I’d be happy to go through the colleges I considered briefly and explain why I sliced them off the list. (Keep in mind that my explanations are not necessarily rational, but I think that’s the general point of this thread-- I think all of the following schools are GOOD):</p>

<p>I’ll start with the Ivies I sliced off:</p>

<p>Brown: Too close to home. Too stigmatized as a slacker school.
Dartmouth: Not enough of “my people.”
Columbia: Too close to home. Didn’t like the campus.
Penn: Too many kids whom I felt were materialistic. I didn’t like walking into the student center and feeling like I couldn’t just sit down at any table and talk to the students. During my college campus tours, I made a point of interacting with college students as much as possible, but at Penn I just felt very turned off. It was also too close to home.</p>

<p>And the Ivies I kept:
Harvard, Yale, Princeton: I couldn’t really tell these schools apart, and while I wouldn’t have complained to go there, they also didn’t call my name, so I ended up not applying.
Cornell: I didn’t want to go for various reasons, but I considered it for family’s sake. Loved the campus, loved the surroundings. Felt better after I realized that there was a “weirdo dorm” (Risley) and that I would find my own.</p>

<p>Other colleges I probably would have been amazingly happy at, but ended up getting sliced off with a combination of my and my parents’ caprice:
Reed: Amazing school for me, but a little too small (and, for my parents, too far).
St. John’s C: Amazing school, loved it on paper, way too small. (According to my mom, it wasn’t as “wholesome” as Chicago, whatever that means).
Oberlin: Too remote. Too small.<br>
Wesleyan: Too many people like me. Too small. Too close to home.
UC Berkeley: Too far (for my parents).
Rice: Too not in the right part of the country for a gay Jew (for my parents).
Colorado College: Too not worth considering because of its lack of eliteness.
Carleton: Too remote. Too small.
Bryn Mawr: Too many girls.
Swarthmore: Too small.
Haverford: Too small. Too happy.</p>

<p>** </p>

<p>Looking back on this list, I really dinged a lot of schools that deserved a closer look. Though I couldn’t be happier with the school I’m at and I ended up not applying to any other schools, I think it would have been to my benefit had I been able to flesh out what I really wanted in a school a bit more, and it also would have helped me had I fought my parents a bit on what school is best for me. (My two parents, between them, hold three degrees from two different Ivy League schools. Even though neither of them particularly enjoyed the schools they attended, I think their idea of what a superelite college is is somewhat inflated, and as a result my college list was biased towards schools I was qualified to get into rather than schools I would be happiest at).</p>

14

<p>Princeton, any of the UCs, NYU, UPenn.</p>

<p>Currently my top choice college is Mount Holyoke-which I’m pretty sure I’ll get into-and a lot of people haven’t heard of it here on the West Coast.</p>

15

<p>My child refused to apply to CMU and JHU after campus visits, and to Swarthmore after the tour guide’s sarcastic remarks about Swarthmore’s student body. Also off the table were Princeton for being too preppy, Dartmouth for being too “boring”, and CalTech and MIT for being “one-dimensional”.</p>

16

<p>“Daughter will not consider our excellent state flagship UIUC because “too cornfield”.”</p>

<p>All four children in my family said the same thing.</p>

17

<p>lol @ “too cornfield”… Got my MS at Illinois and still shudder at the sight of cornfields and truckstops.</p>

18

<p>Purely among those I’ve visited, and only those that had a ‘turn off’, rather than the ‘if I was willing to do mroe apps, I would’:</p>

<p>Berkeley - No. Unkempt and a large vagrant population. Loved the trees, sloping campus, and all of that, but I didn’t see why I should pay 40k+ to go across the country and attend.
Bowdoin - High School in a very blah town.
Dartmouth - Simply didn’t measure up after visiting Middlebury(Might look there for grad though)
Cornell - Michigan State University on steroids. I don’t want to pay the 150k difference for that. I’ll take instate+scholarships before 50k a year.
USC- LA
UCLA - LA
Any other school in LA - I think it’s a great place to visit. However, after visiting Beverly Center Mall, and saw more 50+ year old guys with gel and/or highlights than the guys(and girls) at my high school, I knew I could never live in that city.</p>

19

<p>I am visiting roughly 20 schools and narrowing it down to 8 or so to which to apply.</p>

<p>It seems I am visiting every prestigious UNIVERSITY east of Chicago and north of Richmond, but I’m really not…</p>

<p>Little to no interest in:
Villanova
BC
Boston U.
Dartmouth
Brown
Case Western
Illinois
Indiana
Columbia
Harvard
MIT
NYU
Fordham
Delaware
RPI
Binghamton
Penn State</p>

<p>Additionally, there’s a whole lotta LAC’s in this part of the country I’m not considering:</p>

<p>Amherst
Williams
Middlebury
Oberlin
Kalamazoo
Haverford
Swarthmore
Bates
etc… (the only ones I’m considering are Colby and Bowdoin)</p>

<p>PLUS you could ixnay all of the prestigious schools outside this region:
Stanford, Duke, UNC, Wake, Vandy, Tulane, Rice, UC’s, Claremonts, WashingtonSTL, UWash, etc.</p>

20

<p>I initially had a lot of schools in Boston (MIT, Northeastern, Emerson, Boston U), but my dad refused to drive me there and flying is out of the question because I’m attached to my large amounts of personal stuff.</p>

<p>Emerson was off my list even before dad’s input, not enough focus on athletics. </p>

<p>I applied to Penn State, was initially very excited about it and probably still wouldn’t mind going there, but ended up x-ing it because of size and, again, athletics. I would struggle even making the team there, and if I did I would be at the very bottom of the barrel.</p>

<p>NYU was always a top choice, but location was a little bit much for me. I live in a population 14k town, going to NYC is a drastic change.</p>

<p>I considered Pitt, never applied because of prestige. It turned out, ironically, that if I didn’t get into my top choice under ED I was going to apply and probably attend instead of going to one of my previous safeties. Mainly because of location. I love Pittsburgh and it’s not far at all for me.</p>

<p>Never had any interest in any of the Ivies except Penn because they don’t have my major.</p>