<p>I’m a bit skeptical of this idea, but I can see it, sort of.</p>
<p>I didn’t feel anything special when I first stepped onto my undergrad campus during the admitted students’ weekend. I felt something special as I actually got to <em>know</em> the campus, meet the people, over the course of the weekend. I think that expecting a school to feel like home when you don’t actually know anything about it is unreasonable.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the vibes that you get when you step on campus can be indicative of something. </p>
<p>My undergrad school was a tech-oriented research university. After I graduated, I took some classes at a small local university with a very “traditional college” feel, and while it had fine classes and great professors, I just never got used to the campus and the culture. It felt like I was in a village of gingerbread houses instead of at a research university, my department was in an ugly, remote little building that felt tacked on to the rest of the campus, and I had trouble relating to the campus culture of mostly liberal arts students. For my MS degree, I applied to that school, and to a local tech-heavy research university, and got in to both. When I walked onto the campus of the local tech-heavy university to check it out, and walked through the building for my department, I smiled and felt at home. It felt like what <em>I</em> associate with a university, and the quality of the building and facilities suggested that this university valued my department.</p>