<p>He is very strong in math & science, however getting Bs in english/history/foreign language puts MIT/Olin/Penn/Cornell out of reach in my opinion. We don’t have a handle on SATs yet, as he missed an entire section of verbal on PSAT sophomore year, which resulted in lousy score.</p>
<p>PS - older child had stats that were Ivy-contention, but realized her passion (pre-vet) was better-served at Rutgers. The Ivys aren’t everyone’s goal.</p>
<p>
Maybe they were unusually busy on the day we were there. The main parking lot was constant activity, the quad has a road around it with parking all around it, there’s other little parking lots scattered around. To me it seemed like there was a lot of car traffic through the campus. In comparison to most other schools we looked at, it seemed excessive, enough that I considered it a negative (DS didn’t care, of course). YMMV.</p>
<p>We’ve visited the WPI campus several times and I actually don’t remember cars running through it anywhere! 
Maybe they do but I didn’t notice. My S2 loves that school and sees himself there.</p>
<p>Hi ya Chardo:</p>
<p>Honestly, MIT is incredibly difficult. It is beyond reach for most of the student population if they are truly honest about it. My S1 had straight A’s all throughout high school and MIT was not even a consideration for him. He didn’t want the pressure cooker atmosphere. He had a friend who applied to MIT twice (he finished high school in 3 years) and ended up at Caltech because MIT rejected him—twice.</p>
<p>Olin is also not for everyone with only 400 students. This OP is looking for “normal” colleges for her son! 
PS: Hope your son is doing well at 'Bama.</p>
<p>I think that visiting 5 schools over 3 days for a rising junior is way too much overload. He’s not looking for schools to apply to he’s looking for differentiating features of any college that would appeal to him so that he can start getting a vision of what he wants. </p>
<p>I might visit WPI on day 1, and then stay in Boston, then visit Northeastern and Tufts on day 2. These are 3 very different schools and there will be differentiating features galore. </p>
<p>I don’t see the point of visiting UMASS when you can visit Rutgers. At this stage, “Big Public” is Big Public. </p>
<p>Also, don’t waste time at this stage visiting when school isn’t in session. That was a big mistake. </p>
<p>Once there are more “factors” to consider, you can start planning more visits. </p>
<p>I found that for D2, the earlier visits were borderline useless in terms of specific schools, and to be honest, some of those schools probably deserved a second look after she had a better idea of what she wanted, but she wasn’t interested in returning to any of them for a second time.</p>
<p>Another thing to consider when setting up tours at the larger schools in particular, is whether the school offers tours by the engineering department in addition to general school tours; Northeastern, for instance has Engineering Wednesdays…</p>
<p>Hi everyone…I realize it’s been months since your posts but wondering how the trip went for the OP. I, too, have a junior interested in Engineering and we are going to Bucknell and Pitt. She just took the ACT so it’s hard to know what her test scores will be. We looked at Lehigh and Lafayette a few years back with D1. She liked BU (even touring just after the epic blizzard last year) so I’m curious to see how she views Pitt’s campus which I believe is integrated into the city as well. Anyone, have any tips for visiting these two campuses? Both include information sessions and tours. I’m hoping that we can catch an engineering tour at Bucknell if traffic permits.</p>
<p>My daughter and I attended RPIs Open House on 10/26. They had information sessions on business, computer science, and financial aid.</p>
<p>What we liked the best was that departments were open for visits. We visited tables for biomedical, bioinformatics and materials engineering. We talked to professors, students and visited labs like nanotechnology.</p>
<p>The open house gives the opportunity to see the depth of the engineering and science offerings.</p>
<p>The dorm tours also talk about how the freshmen dorms have Learning Assistants. They had a schedule posted for calculus, chemistry and physics reviews.</p>
<p>RPI goes to great lengths to have high freshman retention.
We tried driving around Troy on our way home to see if there are interesting ethnic restaurants.</p>
<p>Previously we visited Northestern, BU and WPI.</p>
<p>We’ll save Pitt and Case for accepted student days. I grew up in Pittsburgh, and I think my daughter would like an urban environment over RPI, but RPI’s focus on engineering is hard to beat. </p>
<p>We’re thinking about attending Rochester’s Engineering Open House.</p>