<p>MIT’s was awesome…really friendly and helpful :)</p>
<p>I haven’t had the chance to visit Princeton yet, but when I called the admissions office to ask an application question, the receptionist put me through to an admission officer’s phone- the officer wasn’t there but I left a message and he called me back later that day.</p>
<p>Loved Scripps admissions! The Preview Day was very well done. Nice breakfast and welcoming talk, lots of options afterwards–D attended two classes, my husband and I went on a tour and then had a cup of coffee at Motley. Lunch in their apparently fantastic commons was available, but we had to get back home early, so couldn’t partake. </p>
<p>D had interview at Scripps the next week. Lovely, comfortable admissions office and staff. Made us feel very welcome. Although beverages were available in the office, the secretary gave my younger daughter and I vouchers for a coffee at Motley. What a beautiful campus!</p>
<p>We also had a super tour guide at Amherst. She was relaxed and fun, but obviously very bright.</p>
<p>I was not thrilled with the AO I met at Barnard either.</p>
<p>I may be just slightly biased, but my favorite admissions tour was USC’s, and my least favorite was UCLA’s. Let me explain:</p>
<p>UCLA- We go to “Honors Day” (the pitch to all students already accepted into the honors program). We sit in the auditorium with ~300 other honors students, and a lady comes and talks about all the different majors UCLA offers and the wonderful benefits of the honors program (smaller classes, better profs., etc.). Fine and dandy. As a then premed, I went up to talk to her between sessions about how that would help me get into med school/s, particularly the UC’s b/c they’re close to home. She tells me flat out that UCLA med school in particular does not like to take their own (undergraduate students) b/c they want them to try something “different” (whatever the heck that means). Many other UC med schools are also the same. “Okay then,” I thought. I then ask how the honors program would help with science classes. She says I’d have to take those classes along with everyone else who’s premed. Yes, in the ginormous lecture halls. Next session: talk with a UCLA student. We sit down with ~10 other prospective students and a current UCLA pupil, who is as dry as burnt toast. He isn’t helpful at all, and I still struggled with finding out how this “honors” program is really all that special! The rest of the day was filled with decent campus tours and info sessions. Oh, and the housing tour. Can’t forget (literally) the housing tour… Two UCLA students take us to a dorm and we get into the elevator. As soon as the elevator door opens at floor #4876, we immediately hear music (if you can call rap that) blasting from the rooms. The guides did try (i’ll give them that) to point out how “lovely” it is to live 3-to-a-room in an area smaller than an average hotel bathroom, but I had a hard time hearing them over the constant “Boom, Boom” from the other room/s. The overall sense I got was a general lack of unity.</p>
<p>Next day: Explore USC.
We arrive at check-in to refreshments and a guide to the different things we can choose to do. We decided to take the neighborhood bus tour (Yes, that’s right–the NEIGHBORHOOD bus tour in SOUTH CENTRAL). And guess what? It was actually very pleasant. Sure, you can say that they only took us to the “good” areas, but the fact that there are good areas immediately dispels the myth that USC is an island surrounded by “ghetto.” In addition, the fact that the “good” areas were around the off-campus student housing/The Row (Greek houses) is pretty comforting. All the tour guides were very knowledgeable, and I found the student panel (in which prospective students can ask current students questions) to be very insightful. After an info session, it was time for lunch. As we met other prospective students and families within our own respective school’s (i.e. The College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, the Architecture school, etc.–within the University itself), the director of admission approached the podium and addressed the audience. After a short speech, he asks the prospective students, “How many of you were in Student Government?” So-and-so people raise there hands. “How many of you played a musical instrument?” Same sort of response. “Now, of those, how many of you were in your high school’s marching band?” And at that moment, the double-doors fling open, the drums start beating, and USC’s fight song starts up. Immediately, everyone somehow intuitively knew to stand up and make the victory sign. Feeling a little foolish, I too made the sign and motions that accompany the song, but as I looked around the room, virtually every other person in the room was making the same sign, and I didn’t feel so foolish anymore. In fact, I then realized the incredible sense of <em>unity</em> that had been so lacking at other institutions (*UC-cough, *LA-cough). When lunch was over, we went to some more info sessions about the honors programs (Thematic Option and Freshman Science Honors), and I learned that the class sizes ranged from 14 in the writing classes to 28 in the GEs to ~70 in the intro. level science classes-that’s INTRO level, mind you. At UCLA, those same classes would be taught to several hundred students. As I walked around campus later BY MYSELF (this is, in my opinion, important for all prospective students–to experience a university away from friends, family, tour groups, etc.), I noticed everyone was sporting their USC apparel (much more so than any other college I visited–all eleven of them). The sense of community was overwhelming. </p>
<p>And, if I do say so myself, the school has more than exceeded my expectations. :)</p>
<p>Middllebury was our worst experience. It was the first college visit for my daughter who is both a National Merit Scholar and learning disabled. (A long story) Her interviewer was so rude to both my daughter and me that it cast a pall over the next few days of our trip. Her stats were somewhat of a mixed bag-both much higher and a bit lower in different areas than Middlebury’s typical admit. I don’t know how the adcom interpretted this-maybe the typical “they must be lazy” label that gets pasted onto LD kids. At any rate he was supercilious and rude to the point of outright meaness. Daughter did not apply to Middlebury.</p>
<p>Trinity was also bad for different reasons-when asked about her favorite Trinity experience our tour guide talked at length about a drunken mud fight, and she was a student body officer. She knew everything about partying at Trinity and almost nothing about academics. My daughter scratched that off her list as well.</p>
<p>Boston College was the best experience. They had a panel of students answerring questions and emphasized the idea of service as being at the core of a BC education. That was very appealing and BC moved closer to the top of my daughter’s list, although there were no ice cream sandwiches or other goodies to sweeten the deal. All the other colleges were variations on the same formula of emphasizing how unique they were by repeating the same talking points we had just heard at every other campus we visited.</p>
<p>We didn’t visit the Claremont Colleges before my daughter was admitted to Claremont McKenna , but according to my husband and daughter the admitted students’ visit was amazing. They had lots of opportunities to visit classes, talk to students and visit the Athenaeum for a dinner speaker. The students he met impressed my husband tremendously.</p>
<p>Columbia. The tour guide was OK, but the presenter was the best we saw. Informative and inspirational. Applicable anywhere.</p>
<p>Caltech admissions is wonderful. From the information session at my school where one recruiter spent an hour talking to three students (2 of us were accepted EA) and the email response that same recruiter sent to my late night question to the hand-written note on my EA acceptance, Caltech has been amazing at reaching out and being accessible.</p>
<p>The consistently great experiences I had at Scripps were a big part of my decision to attend. “Rescued” from the rain and then given hot chocolate and brochures by the admissions secretary, given roses during the tour (by random students who were in the garden when our tour walked through), remembered years later by my interviewer, always welcomed warmly and responded to promptly, and so forth. Also, when I went in to my interview, our two tour guides spent around 45min (of their own time…) answering my mother’s questions (not always easy)! At no other school did students and staff so strongly and genuinely attempt to “sell” me.</p>
<p>I was turned off by my experiences at both CMC and Berkeley. In a group interview at the former, the adcom repeatedly emphasized the importance of taking the most rigorous HS course schedule, and when we asked if the general rigor of one’s high school was considered, he just kept saying that they expected “the most rigorous schedule” (I’m sure that other things are taken into account, but this stubborn attitude was disheartening given the difficulty of the HS that I attended…AP’s were capped). The tour guide also spent awhile pointing out beer cans around campus and joking about the wild weekend (Really? You have nothing better to say during our hour together?). At Berkeley, the tour guide (only contact with admissions that we had) couldn’t answer most questions. She was strong in her own areas, but the school was just too big for her to cover everyone’s interests. This was less a real weakness than it was a reminder of why I wanted a small school. Also, I felt like she spent too much time “bragging” irrelevantly. She really relied on Cal’s reputation and went for a “well, duh, why wouldn’t you go here?” approach rather than actually being informative. We spent the tour going in circles, with students basically asking “Why should I come to Berkeley?” and her responding with “Well, it’s Berkeley.” Okay, that’s nice…</p>
<p>In neither of the above cases was my experience actually representative. Obviously, both CMC and Cal are amazing schools, and one of them wound up in my final consideration, despite my less-than-stellar experience with admissions (the other, I didn’t apply to). Other students that I know had as fantastic of experiences at these schools as I did at Scripps. </p>
<p>It is too bad that one poor experience with a tour guide, adcom, or whoever can leave such a strong negative impression on a prospective student, but it’s understandable. Of course, one should always take these things–good or bad–with a giant heap of salt, but at the same time, admissions offices know that they give prospective students their first real impressions of a school. They should (and generally do) hire, recruit guides, organize info sessions, etc. with this knowledge. So if they’re putting their “best foot forward” and I’m turned off by it, then that does make a strong statement, even if an unfair one.</p>
<p>Some advice: if you really have a negative experience at a school that you feel like you should or would really like to like more, try to take a second tour or talk to students around campus after your tour. I know it’s not always a possibility, but a more positive second experience can be very helpful in overcoming unfair negativity.</p>
<p>University of Chicago’s adcoms really are amazing. The trip to campus was really what made me fall in love with the school - tour guide was very knowledgable and friendly, and you could tell she really loved the school. It was also nice that they encouraged the group to split up between the 3 tour guides based on interests (one was a social sciences major, one was a natural/physical sciences major, one was a humanities major), so that the questions, etc. could be more specific while still applying to everyone. The info session was relaxed and personal, and the admissions counselor who ran it was surprisingly funny.
In the online world, the students on their PSAC committee are really helpful and friendly, and the admissions blog is the coolest thing ever - you feel like you actually get to know the adcoms, and they are very reassuring about the whole process, which made it a lot more enjoyable. (Also, they have lolcats on the blog - how much cooler can you get??)</p>
<p>If I could marry any admissions team in the world of college, it would be Hopkins. JHU is so interactive with prospective students, very informative, and always there to help. Seriously, I’m obsessed with them. <3</p>
<p>UChicago admissions is very friendly and accommodating. They respond to questions swiftly unlike Northwestern or UPenn.</p>
<p>I’m completely biased, but I love the admissions office I work in. My boss Donna MacFarland remembers everything about everyone(well we only have an enrollment of 300, but this woman rocks), and the interviewers are extremely friendly and the tour guides(myself included) try our best. :D</p>
<p>Harvard was definitely the worst for me. First, the guy at the visitor’s counter was cold and unhelpful. I had to pull any information (even directions) out of him. I think my tour guide was inexperienced, too. He was just a sophomore, so he couldn’t answer any questions about upperclassmen housing etc, and he made the whole place seem miserable. </p>
<p>And to all you yale-tour-haters, I was one of the lucky people that had a great experience. Our guide was friendly (overly friendly, almost), and made the entire campus look like heaven. It’s now my first choice :D</p>
<p>The best experience I had, though, was at WashU. Free lunch, free ice cream (yummy custard stuff), great tour (which included going into some kid’s dorm), AND I got to meet with my admissions rep while I was there. Had they offered me admission on the spot when the tour was finished, I would’ve accepted.</p>
<p>I would have to say that my interactions with the Williams admissions office have definitely been the most enjoyable. </p>
<p>I visited Williams during my junior year, and because I could only make it on a Sunday, when there weren’t any tours or info sessions, I asked if they had any reccomendations about good places to walk around by myself to get a good idea of the school. Instead, a tourguide volunteered to come out on a Sunday to give me a tour. The tour was great–the best I’ve had on any of my college visits: everything was beautiful, and she made Williams sound amazing. When she found out that I played volleyball, she took us to the gym where a club volleyball tournament was going on, and all the kids on the team clearly loved Williams.</p>
<p>Then, when I interview with the admissions officer for my area this fall when he was in town, he really impressed me not just with his knowlege of the school, but in general as a person. An added plus: he had just gotten back from the school in Africa where I’m going on exchange in a few weeks, so we had an additional thing to bond over.</p>
<p>Its interesting people are commenting on soft issues, not that such is unimportant…to the contrary, a poor admissions rep and visit can essentially scratch a school off the list for parents and students. We had similar positive and negative experiences at various schools. But what I am curious about is how does everyone feel about the experience once they applied to their school(s), how they were treated during the application process etc. Some schools run like butter and are very efficient. Some schools are scatter brained it seems and can’t seem to get it all together. And some are as cold as ice. </p>
<p>Our best experience was at WashU. Very friendly, extremely well organized, gorgeous campus, excellent and plentiful food offered to visitors, outstanding seminars arranged for parents and students to attend and ask questions. It was literally an all day affair from 8:00am until well after 5:00pm. Exhausting really. They encouraged early applications, but in the end we were one of the hundreds on their waitlist. Ugh! They do communicate very well, however. We have subsequently been invited “with emphasis” to reapply for admission this next year as a transfer student. Its tempting in some respects, but not likely going to happen.</p>
<p>UChicago’s tour was kind of terrible. The tour guide was wordy and often went off on tangents, and we sat in a classroom for half an hour and hardly saw the campus. The weird thing is, I liked it. The tour guide’s awkwardness/quirkiness and inability to be concise amused me. I wish I got to see more of the school though…</p>
<p>UChicago’s info session was amazing, however. My favorite, hands down. Plus, there was free hot chocolate. : D</p>
<p>Northwestern’s info session was rather boring, but they sent me a handwritten card for attending, which was nice.</p>
<p>Yale’s tour was probably my favorite of the bunch, although Berkeley had the best tour guide (imo).
Yale info session kind of sucked. The girl was new, talked too fast, and kept forgetting things.</p>
<p>Princeton’s tour was very informative. Our group was huge though–one of the guides didn’t show up.</p>
<p>I would agree with the assessments of Colgate and Tufts. Besides the ice cream, lol, Colgate’s admissions office is incredibly responsive to questions from students by email. They also send great marketing materials that really present a sense of the environment there. At Tufts, we had a very dynamic student leader, and we also liked how you could pick with whom you went on the tour, based on the student’s major and your interests.</p>
<p>By far the worst was UPenn. The adcom who spoke at the info session never spoke about admissions or the process. They spoke about the different schools and what they represented, but there were no “nuts and bolts” to speak of. Then we had a freshman tour guide (obviously only halfway through her 1st year,) who had been given a memorize-and-regurgitate script she was unable to deviate from. Though she did tell us the other Ivies she was accepted to, she couldn’t answer any detailed questions. Bummer.</p>
<p>MIT’s admissions committee is wonderful, as is UChicago’s. However, I’d have to say my best experience was at Columbia’s Summer Science Invitational. It was VERY NICELY catered, and we got to speak directly with current students and admissions reps. Columbia’s President gave a funny speech, as did some prominent scientist at Columbia whose name escapes me. We then split up into groups depending on our interests (chem, math, physics, etc.) and got to talk to the head of that department, as well as students and professors in that department. We also got a tour of a lab. It was very informative, and a lot of fun.</p>
<p>The absolute best experience, from the info sessions/tour, to the blogs, to the notification of admission (poster, confetti, handwritten congratulations) has been MIT. The others were not bad, but Penn’s info session leader for two years has been the most arrogant (“Look at my face; I will be your new best friend”).</p>
<p>Don’t be too harsh on the guides, it might be you in a couple of years trying to pay up some of your financial aid.</p>