What school was unexpectedly your least favorite when you visited?

MotherOfDragons

@Lindagaf wrote

Be a hater, or leave.

) Yes ma'am!

D really didn't like U Richmond when she and H visited. On paper, it was near the top of her list, but once she visited it fell completely off the list and she never applied. Reasons cited revolved mostly around the pre-professional atmosphere (insert favorite accountant joke here), and that the only minorities she saw were all sitting together at one table in the lunch room-she said it didn't feel inclusive enough to her. I respected that, but still sigh when I think about their amazing graduation rates and job placement rates.

Troyus

@PragmaticMom : Oberlin is tobacco free and has been for almost a year. Even before it became tobacco free there was a huge stigma on campus against smoking and in the dozen or so times I was there I never, ever saw anyone in the designated smoking areas.

SouthFloridaMom9

Vanderbilt . . . same sentiments as someone expressed up-thread.

IBviolamom

Ours was Grinnell, and not for the reasons we expected, although driving through cornfields for hours before arriving did freak D out a little bit. The admissions office made the poor choice of giving my daughter a freshman as a host for their Discover Grinnell weekend, and this was only six weeks into the fall semester. The girl was very sweet and friendly, no problem there, but proceeded to tell my daughter how the school doesn't really care what you do academically and that she knows tons of students who are on their sixth year as undergrads. She also gave my daughter the idea that there is a ton of unchecked drug use on campus. I really don't understand why a girl with very little experience as a Grinnell student would be given the job of hosting a prospie. Also, D sat in on a physics class with a professor of an unidentifiable (to her) nationality, who had an accent so thick she couldn't understand a word he said. And there were these weird long spiderweb/like things floating through the air all over campus that would get stuck on your clothes and in your hair. Our tour guide (who was great BTW) had one floating from her head the entire tour. )

So many things about the school were quite impressive but my daughter couldn't get past the things above and it shot straight to the bottom of her list. She did send an application, but literally forgot about it and never mentioned the school again.

Midwest67

@SuburbMom

So funny! We are Chicago area people and that is our nickname for Notre Dame! The Cult!

Obviously, the people who love it, really, really love it. Forever. For generations.

HSM1417

The worst by far was Carnegie Mellon. Since D was applying for engineering, it started pretty high on the list. All the students seemed stressed. The campus was bleak and depressing. She had lunch with a friend's daughter who was a junior there and was told most students don't have a lot time to do much other than study. She had some garlic hummus from the dining hall that we could smell on her breath the entire drive back to Philadelphia. We always say the school literally left her with a bad taste in her mouth!

happy1

@SuburbMom H and S are "cult members" -- Your post made me LOL!

Midwestmomofboys

@pog2016 No mountains or oceans (it is Wisconsin . . . . ) but campus overlooks Lake Mendota, with sailing, pond hockey, beers on the Terrace . . . . some people's idea of heaven on earth!

But that's what makes these threads interesting and entertaining, to realize that we all have different perspectives!

STEM2017

Any college where a student takes the time to approach our tour group and say, "Don't go here!"

SUNY - Stony Brook
Georgetown
Temple

It happens more than you think.

lr4550

Worst by far for D15 was American. Started off with a shamelessly cheesy movie during info session. We couldn't believe how bad it was. The tour came next and it was the only tour we ever ditched mid stream. Felt badly but she wanted to move on, big time.

Worst for D18 so far was UW (Univ Washington). She is leaning heavily to SLACs and I wanted her to see a big school with a great reputation- academics and campus beauty- and Seattle is a lovely city. She was in a BAD mood when we headed toward campus. Lots of people and traffic. She literally refused to go on the tour. Too big she said, No way. I was bummed, I (me personally) wanted to see more of the campus. It's a great school, great location, beautiful facilities!

ClaremontMom

Any college where a student takes the time to approach our tour group and say, "Don't go here!"

Thinking for a split second I was on Facebook and not CC, I reached for the "Wow!" button....

Never happened to us, but I'm sure if it did, it would definitely have had an effect!

STEM2017

^S is mature enough to know that there are miserable kids at every college. But these "in your face" encounters were impactful.

pog2016

@Midwestmomofboys Haha. Yes I realize how silly it is to complain about no ocean or mountain in Wisconsin. Also silly to complain about the weather, but honestly, when do you get to sail on that beautiful lake--it was still snowing in mid April. Although I must admit the students seemed way heartier than I was--they were walking around in sandals and shorts while I was bundled up in my down jacket.

porcupine98

Any school where the tour guide described EVERYTHING as "awesome." Especially if they were things my kid didn't give a hoot about.

redpoodles

I didn't love Harvard's presentation. It felt like they loaded a video and abandoned us. They made us watch Amy Poehler's graduation speech from the previous year. There were SO MANY PEOPLE. The tour guide was nice however we did not go into a single building. Not one. He couldn't really answer any academic questions, the tour was more focused on the (memorized) history of Harvard. Thankfully it was a nice day--I can't imagine doing it in less than pleasant weather. This visit wasn't for us--we went with a cousin on tour, so we had no expectations other than spending time with them. I can't imagine flying in for this tour--save your $$ they don't care.

I also didn't love the BU tour. The presentation was great! But the tour itself--well, I couldn't hear anything over the traffic despite the guide wearing a mic. The tour groups stopped too close to each other so you could hear both guides (or 3) talking but couldn't understand any of them. Our guide also looked depressed or like he hates his job so that didn't help either. But my D's both liked the school enough to apply.

Also, our first Wellesley tour was awful! Very intimidating and the guide walked so fast she left some family's grandparents behind. There was a German family on our tour and our guide started speaking German to them (even though they spoke English). It was simultaneously impressive and very off putting because it went on forever and the rest of us were just standing there waiting. It seemed showoff to us and made us feel "OMG we so don't fit in here" but I'm sure that family appreciated it. There were other families dressed very expensively with coifed mothers doing the tour in high heels and dresses. I had my sneakers and Target t-shirt. Subsequent tours have been great, my D enrolled, so that's where it is. Most people there speak a second language fluently. Give second chances.

myjanda

Time is too limited and there are too many schools out there to often give a school a second chance - but for both my D's their worst visits ended up being where they are now and both are very happy with their choices. No judgments at all, just funny how it worked out for us.

D14 and I were totally underwhelmed when we first saw American (don't remember the details of the tour, just the first impression). All these kind of squat odd buildings built around a bland quad. Felt this way the first two times I saw it and my daughter did too. She ended up choosing it because it offered a lot of what she wanted and gave her the best money to attend. She's a junior and now when we visit we love it and I can't remember why I didn't find it attractive.

D16 and I visited Lafayette at the end of a long driving tour that took us to some lovely LACS in New York and PA. We drove into Easton late at night, tired out and found the city sketchy. The hotel was in an area with lots of either empty or junky kind of stores and the hotel parking lot had those blades at the entrance I've only until then seen in rental car lots that don't let you back up once you enter. We went out to dinner and then stopped by a CVS where after we left we both admitted we kept waiting for someone to pull out a gun. We were so beat from the past days we almost skipped the tour the next day but so glad we didn't. We both loved the campus, the vibe and the area around the campus on the hill. And when DD got a sudden, very unexpected scholarship at the very last minute, we drove back down, this time with DH, and not only did we still love everything about the school, but, you guessed it, this time we found Easton to be quirky but fun and safe. Granted it was a year later and Easton really has been making great progress recently, but I think it was equally if not more our mindset that had changed. D16 picked Lafayette over a lot of other schools which gave her equally good financial packages and I've rarely seen someone so happy at a college.

I should add that we really only visited colleges we thought might be good fits for both girls to begin with, and which we had researched considerably in advance - so no big surprises on any schools. Still, for both girls if you had told me in March of their senior years that they would be going to American and Lafayette respectively, I would have been pretty surprised....

GnocchiB

Lol @myjanda - the mental image of the blades in a rental car parking lot cracked me up because I was skimming and thought your meant Lafayette had them installed in their parking lot. THAT would cut down on a lot of tour ditching, I guess.

Although I picked UVa as the one school that was unexpectedly our least favorite, I have to give a shoutout to Harvard for exceptional achievement in the category of being disappointing to us.

This was 3 summers ago and my D and I found the video they showed at the beginning to be really, really condescending. It featured current Harvard students, including a young Latina woman at home on the farm where she grew up and her non-English speaking parents/grandparents were featured. The dialogue was something about the doors that Harvard was opening for her, but it came off really badly - as if Harvard were saving her from a rural and primitive way of life (there was livestock and cooking involved). It seemed to be trafficking in stereotypes. Also in it was and alum named "Matt," identified by his first name and his class year, speaking about his Harvard experience and we could tell how clever they thought they were being because they never used his last name (Damon). My D wanted to bolt as soon as the lights came up and the AO speaker for the day (white man in khakis and blue blazer, straight out of central casting) but I convinced her to stay to see how much worse it could get.

Good times.

Love this thread.

Dolemite

Amherst or it's anagram Hamster as it's known in our house. Bland architecture and the student body seemed like one giant Frat.

Special dishonorable mention to Duke. Split campus, not in a city but not in a college town - the worse of both worlds. Why would anyone want to be referred to as a Dukie - no wonder they are miserable.

preppedparent

Yale - although it had some savings graces, its location in New Haven is a draw back for many.

Holy Cross - again its location in Worcester makes it somewhat less desirable.

nogddg

Add us to UCSD haters. I was SURE, S, a beach lover, would love it there. As mentioned, there is no beach feel at all. He really hated it, despite our adorable perky tour guide. It just didn't have any soul, hard to describe. As an engineering student, he also hated the separate colleges with the "weird" requirements. It was also a big turn off to have to park in a far away lot, wait in long lines and then catch the bus to the campus. We chatted with some students on that bus back to the car and I think DS was thinking how crummy that commute would be once you are forced off campus.