@TheStig2, I was going to say Bucknell, also! Funny, because we DID like Susquehanna, which is not too far from Bucknell, also in the middle of nowhere.
Dartmouth was the other one. I know, weird. We just didn’t get a good vibe there.
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Johns Hopkins. We had visited earlier in the summer and S thought he was going to apply ED. So he did one of their overnight visits (they offered 3 in fall, one right before the ED app was due). At night he met several humanities kids on the hall who told him they weren’t happy there…campus not cohesive, engineering kids saying others are in the school of arts & crafts. Next day he took two classes, both small writing classes. One was dismissed 10 mins early by prof bc no one had done the reading and there was complete silence. Prof spoke to son afterward and said that the English and writing seminars depts were superb and not to get put-off by what happened. Well, he was. Was supposed to stay for lunch on campus with hosts and declined. We left and had crab cakes at a Baltimore restaurant known for them, so at least our trip was salvaged. That was the end of JHU ED.
Boston University, NYU and Brandeis for S2. Did the tour, slipped out during the presentation.
I got up and left during the Swat admissions office presentation. Sounded like too many others and I was just done. S2 did the tour, sat in on a class and applied.
The closest one we came to walking away from was Caltech. The two young women guides seemed absolutely miserable about attending there.
@countingdown – My son is thinking about Caltech (not sure why) but we had a similar experience - the female tour guide talked about collaboration among students as problem sets being so hard it was forced and a “misery loves company” mentality. 
The guide we had took the group to the dorm where the walls were all painted black. It was incredibly depressing. They also talked about how much they cried doing problem sets. but it’s ok because everyone there is stressed out.
Surely there are happy people attending Caltech who have time for fun, but we sure didn’t see any on the tour.
Claremont McKenna. My daughter knew it wasn’t the school for her, so we left.
Not a leave early but a had to stay late story. Bryn Mawr. Even though D was visiting from California and had email confirmation of her visit, tour and interview, they just couldn’t piece it together that she was actually there for a visit. Didn’t leave the tour “early” but had to stay “later” just to go through the application motions. Worst experience of all the colleges she visited.
Carnegie Mellon - just a terrible vibe for us. Info session talked all about how hard it is to get in, tour guide talked about how stressed out everyone was, etc. Left halfway through. Opposite happened with Swarthmore, funny enough. We almost skipped it but ended up going and loved the campus. Funnier still, the college my daughter is at now, Brown, we never visited before applications at all because they were on Spring Break during our tour, only after. So you never know!
Bryn Mawr used to have an awful secretary in admissions when D1 visited – older woman who was quite grim. I remember thinking that they could REALLY have put a better foot forward there.
@intparent I think she might still be there! Apparently, an older (grim) woman was her interviewer. My daughter saw Bryn Mawr, Smith and MHC on this trip. After her visits, Smith and MHC kept in frequent contact with her throughout the admission cycle. Not a word from Bryn Mawr. I know it is a good school but they didn’t do anything to “sell” themselves.
Someone should tell them…
We had a wonderful experience at Bryn Mawr and my D thought it was very personalized and she felt very catered to, including an AO who kept in great touch. Funny how experiences can differ so much. We also visited on a sunny spring day when all was in bloom and the campus was striking.
We only did 3 tours, but Caltech was the best. Son met with Admissions, then I was called in for a little while. Tour guide was in CS. She was articulate, and several students stopped her to say hello. Son was given a list of classes to sit in, and invited to come back next day.
We left Vanderbilt after the info session. They said they did not support co-ops. For D that was a deal breaker and she said unless we wanted to do the tour she was ready to leave. We did.
Harvard. We were there on a lark anyway (it was early in the game and kid was genuinely curious), but the tour had way too many people on it, the weather was horrible and we were over it.
They probably get too many tourists, which explains the poor crowd management, but it also felt as if they didn’t really care/plan for people to have a positive experience. Overall, the place felt stuffy and self-satisfied, we were weary of it all after listening to the questions from overwrought parents at the info session, and we were just done.
UMass Amherst was also dreadful, for different reasons. Again poor crowd management, but the worst part was the info session, which involved endless droning on about admissions requirements (all stuff one could look up) and nothing that gave us the flavor of the school or why anyone would actually want to attend.
The Harvard info session was the worst I’ve seen. Basically, they load up a video and you’re stuck watching it for half an hour. Then they’re super excited to show you another video of last year’s commencement speech. Then the tours–they feel like cattle call. I think they just get SO many people coming through (for such a small school) they can’t do it any other way. It’s also one of those tours where they take you by every building but not into a single one of them (not even a dorm room).
The BU info session was very good. But the tour felt like walking next to a highway (Comm Ave can be very busy and noisy). The guides have microphones and it was still hard to hear. Plus they’d stop within sight of each other so you could hear the other group’s guide too, and your guide, and then you actually couldn’t understand either of them. I really wanted to leave that one right away but my D liked it.
^^ I will never understand why, when tours have 10 different stops, all 4 tour leaders need to start in the same place and talk over each other. Yet it has happened at many of the schools we’ve visited.
My DS and I did not enjoy touring Georgetown. The admission talk was pretentious and no effort was made at all to sell the school. The tour itself was so boring. “Here is a dorm. Another dorm. There is another dorm…” was all that the tour guide had to offer. Of course, we spent a lot of time in the over the top student center with the fancy fireplaces and big screen TVs but didn’t see a dorm room or classroom.
Haha - I was talking to my D2 last night who is a freshman at a small Ohio private - and who is a tour guide - she was saying she has to give a tour today when it is suppose to be thunderstorming - I hope she doesn’t become someone’s reason to post on this thread about her school! LOL!!!