<p>Other colleges with heavy tourist presence:
Salve Regina (among the mansions in Newport)
William and Mary (Williamsburg)</p>
<p>I’m sorry, but I get a chuckle each time someone says they’ve dropped Harvard, Yale, Princeton or MIT from their list. Schools with a less than 10% admittance rate - and that’s including the legacies, athletes and other hooks - it’s fun to see people give THEM the axe instead of the other way around. ;)</p>
<p>Stanford had the biggest tourist presence of schools on our visit list. Not counting the tennis tournament we saw three busloads of tour groups pull up in a 10 minute time span.</p>
<p>Took my son on a 3 hour drive (one way) to UIUC for their ‘Engineering Days’ event last year and after being treated like a ‘second-class citizen’ definitely decided I wouldn’t be sending any tution money their direction.</p>
<p>First of all I PAID to attend the event and on top of that was directed to park on the street and pay for the parking as well (apparently they didn’t have 10 extra parking spots available that day for potential students).</p>
<p>We arrived just before the program began and found the room where it was scheduled, but the door was locked and NO ONE was around. No signs posted…nothing. Just a few minutes before it was scheduled to begin a couple other families showed up and we all continued to loiter in the hallways not knowing what else to do. Just as I was getting frustrated to the point that I was going to find an office with someone who could explain, the student in charge of the event came running in and explained that she had class that morning and couldn’t get there any earlier. (Did they think of a sign? Or of having someone else unlock the door and explain?)</p>
<p>Then they had piles of brochures and paperwork to distribute, but none of it had been organized, so we sat in a small class room, while they collated and handed out all their documentation. But after that they had special bags that they were supposed to distribute the material in and they didn’t have access to these bags because they were in a locked office. We waited a very long time so they could finally get these bags. I was expecting at least something resmebling the logo-ed canvas bag that Purdue had handed out, but no, we’d sat there for probably an hour of the day watching them collate and then waiting for the same plastic bag that I would have got buying something at the campus book store.</p>
<p>We took a tour, which was moderately interesting.</p>
<p>After lunch we went to a large classroom and there was a presentation by an admissions officer and financial aid staff member. Although it was similar to what we’d been through at other schools it was by far the best part of the day. After the presentation, they started a Q&A session, but a couple minutes into it, the professor for the class that was scheduled in the room came in and very rudely told us all to get out because he had a class scheduled. The staff members attempted to apologize, but all I kept thinking was seriouly on a campus that large, wasn’t there ANY other room available??? Instead of trying to find another space to continue to answer questions, they opted to stand in the hallway where students were coming and going to classes, to answer any further questions.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, we went to the library and there was a question session scheduled with current students, but once again when we arrived the room was locked and we loitered in the hallway while our ‘student guide’ apparently had to go to another building to get someone to unlock the door.</p>
<p>My son is interested in Civil Engineering and they have one of the highest rated programs, but after my experience that day I’m left wondering exactly how they have one of the highest rated programs. I imagine the campus visits that are conducted by the admissions departments are much better organized than the ones apparently coordinated by a couple students in the engineering department. But I left seriously offended that they had wasted my day and they definitely lost a prospective student.</p>
<p>^Oh my gosh. They’d definitely be off my list, too, after a day like that. That’s ridiculous! What a waste of time. Did you tell someone? Did you ever leave any feedback for the department? It could be that, for all the department knows, these students are “managing” their “job.” But it sounds like these students are creating more harm than good! That kind of day would really turn me off. I’m pretty sure my kiddo would feel the same way.</p>
<p>jrcsmom - Wow! I usually give schools a lot of slack on day to day visits, however on a scheduled ‘Engineering Day’ this is pitiful. I sincerely hope you let someone know your displeasure, and the impression it left with your son…ie he is unlikely to consider them. We’ve been to similar events at both VT & UVa. Done well (and both were) they can really highlight the schools unique features and strengths. It takes planning, but isn’t that what they do? I’m sorry you and your son had this experience. There’s really no excuse for an event to be this shoddy at a big engineering school.</p>
<p>Jcrsmom: What is the name of the engineering school? I am of the mind -set that a top-ranked business school should deliver great marketing and a top engineering school should present a well-organized info session - at the very least! It amazes me how often this is not the case.</p>
<p>Sent from my iPhone using CC</p>
<p>JRCSMOM- Purdue is great for Engineering and it shouldn’t be that much farther of a drive. My son, now a senior in college, was really just giving it a pass through on to the school he thought he wanted that was a nearby engineering school. The program they did for accepted students day turned him on and he loved it. Of course, he didn’t share that with me until we were 3 hours away at the other school. We would have stayed around longer had he given me any indication he liked it while we were there. And besides the stupid bureaucracy of a large school and a few not great teachers, he’s loved it. He says it’s the best place to be</p>
<p>NYU (as did two others we know) - cold, impersonal, admissions person was rude, tour guide was preppy and talked a lot about food</p>
<p>Sarah Lawrence - “Too nice” , feeling that rich girls rule</p>
<p>“Jcrsmom: What is the name of the engineering school?”</p>
<p>She said it was the U of Illinois.</p>
<p>I crossed off U of m after spending time in Ann Arbor. Although I grew up not too far from Ann Arbor, I had never really visited until I applied. I hated AA. Wayyy too busy for me- just not my cup of tea. I am most definitely not a city girl and everything there is just so darn expensive. I felt like I had to be rich to enjoy it. I also wasn’t a huge fan of the calc class I took there while dual enrolled in hs. It was just so impersonal and the prof was just rude. Never would I have crossed it off my list JUST because of that, but it was a contributing factor.</p>
<p>Drexel: Sweet dragon, not too much else that appealed.</p>
<p>Yes, fourkidsmom, we did tour Purdue last fall as well and there is a lot to like about Purdue. We particularly liked the EPICs program, what a great way for students to get practical experiece early in their academic career.</p>
<p>We’ve also visited several schools out east. We primarily went to see Cooper Union, but also stopped at NYU and my son didn’t like the lack of the campus feel there. It was too ‘in and of the city’ for him.</p>
<p>But as this thread is about colleges we crossed off the list, Illinois is the only school that we had very high hopes for based upon their reputation and completely eliminated based on our visit.</p>
<p>I considered sending an email after our horrible experience there, but was very angry at the time over the wasted time and didn’t want the email to be irrational and as time passed, we focussed on other schools and it wasn’t as important. Besides my nightmare is if I write an angry email they’ll invite me back for another visit. ;)</p>
<p>Bard. My daughter and I laughed when we saw it and did not bother to stay for the tour. We were not sure we were at a college or a summer camp. Very weird vibe. The campus looked like a mishmash of buildings. Just a strange place in the middle of nowhere.</p>
<p>NYU- loved it this summer when we had a tour, but hated it at the Open House this month. If I heard the word “global” one more time I was going to scream.</p>
<p>New College in Sarasota- this always gets written up as a best value school. What a strange place! You would not believe our tour guide. She was wearing a woman’s slip over a pair of sweat pants. Fortunately she was wearing a bra, because she was quite busty. She had 3 enormous mats in her hair. I couldn’t tell if they were dread locks that had grown out, or she just never brushed her hair. She said she really had found herself after coming to New College. I could only think of Archie Bunker, “Edith, stifle yourself!”
My son, needless to say, wasn’t impressed with what his potential classmates/dates might be like! He chose Wake Forest, which has a beautiful, tradition campus and felt like just the right size. The town does get to be a little tedious after a while, though.</p>
<p>^^^Honestly thats gross. I was always surprised when we had tours like that. Don’t the schools speak to the students about proper attire? Call me shallow but who in there right mind would want to be lead around on a tour with someone who looked like that? Such a turnoff!</p>
<p>BTW Wake Forest is Beautiful. Congrats to your S</p>
<p>^I can’t imagine the same kid liking New College and Wake Forest. New College makes no secret of its hippie vibe, though it has kids of all stripes. Check out the last two kids featured on the student stories part of their website: [New</a> College of Florida - A Public Honors College for the Liberal Arts](<a href=“http://www.ncf.edu/stories/student/jesse/story1]New”>http://www.ncf.edu/stories/student/jesse/story1)</p>
<p>Have to agree - talk about opposite ends of the spectrum!</p>
<p>Wow, how revealing! You can bet if your son went there, that treatment would not have been a fluke.</p>
<p>We live less than an hour from New College; it would’ve been so easy and so inexpensive with the Bright Futures program for residents. But that visit certainly made it clear why 30,000+ go to each of the other state schools.</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd…</p>