<p>Boy, I hate to write this…but DS crossed Lawrence off after his second visit, and it probably need to go under stupid reasons as well. He went for a physics weekend and couldn’t help notice that all the girls that he met were less than ideal. If financial aid was better, he would have been more concerned…but then he ended up at a single-sex schools, so is it better to at a school with less-than attractive women or NO women?</p>
<p>(FWIW, both of us thought the STEM departments were great there).</p>
<p>That’s funny, MizzBee! He went for physics weekend and thought that the girls were too geeky? LOL! I would love to hear a female perspective on the attractiveness of the guys.</p>
<p>Yoy see why I hated to write it? It was also Greek formals, so he saw non-STEM girls. When he went for another trip he figured he was in the top 10% of looks, and the physics weekend made it worse. If I won the lottery I would pay full pice to Lawrence in a heartbeat.</p>
<p>We’d read here that the tourguides at Princeton could be on the condescending uppity side, so came prepared. Our tourguide was so personable that I wanted to scoop him up and take him home with us! Smart, ambitious kid from California and he was taking us on a tour on his birthday. We didn’t see a dorm room or Prospect St. but I showed my daughter and husband Prospect on our own. Actually we didn’t see the inside of any buildings, but it was a huge tour day (Good Friday) and there were about 300 people in the first of three info sessions of the day. They broke us up into groups of 30 or so. I wish that parents would BACK OFF in these tours and let the kids get up to the front. Princeton has always been THE perfect U. as we have family ties, and our daughter fell in love with it. This scares me as I"m not sure she could get in, but we just started the process, love the area, and thought we’d check it out with her as she’s only really seen city campuses in our travels. Next this summer to Duke and Chapel Hill…</p>
<p>What do you think of this? When touring a school last Saturday, we approached the students’ workout/weight room. A sign on the door read, “Remember the dress code. No sleeveless shirts or tank tops allowed.” That did it for me. I don’t think son understood the implications.</p>
Personally I think that is a pretty good reason.</p>
<p>35 years ago I turned down MIT and one of the main reasons was there were so few women and the ones I saw and met were not very appealing. (BTW, at the time at MIT this was a math problem … if 50% of the men were geeks and 50% of the women were geeks that still meant there were something like 8 non-geek men for every non-geek women).</p>
<p>I have pretty simple goals for my kids … I want them to be good people, I want them to be happy, I want them to be educated, I want them to be financially secure, and I want them to be a healthy relationship that makes feel safe, happy, and loved. College is a prime time to find mates or at least practice for the real thing … and I think a young adult wanting to in a situation with viable dating partners is a very fair concern.</p>
<p>I have never heard of a dress code on a college campus. Having to cover one’s shoulders seems very conservative to me. Do you think it’s reasonable? This is a Presbyterian college. I had never thought of the Presbyterians as being ultra-conservative.</p>
<p>Oh, and son crossed it off the list because it seemed small and the girls were not attractive.</p>
<p>3togo - I couldn’t agree more. I have asked my kids to look to the right, look to the left, could these be your people? Academics are important but at the end of the day the kids need to be happy…and at age 17, it is those types of things they don’t think about.</p>
<p>momofboston, I love what you said about kids “finding their people”! That’s exactly what it came down to for my daughter. Once she found the colleges that met her requirements for program, size, location, etc. - it came down to just that - “finding her people”. She sat in the dining halls, watched all the kids and how they interacted with each other, and made her decision.</p>
<p>D. cross off colleges/Med. Schools when she did not like location and current students are not “her bunch”. She simply mentioned that she does not see herself going there. Crossed off the highest ranking Med. School on her list, did not like city after interview there, did not care for current students. She never cared too much about rankins anyway…but she might be different in respect of location…she did not care even for Chicago, which most would prefer over many other places not mentionning the great schools.</p>
<p>The dress code at the workout facility likely has nothing to do with a campus wide code or conservatism. I worked in campus recreation for years. Many workout facilties have this same dress code. </p>
<p>Believe it or not, but many women and men are intimidated by workout facilities. They do not know how to use the equipment, perhaps they are overweight, whatever. They are even less likely to use the facilities if everyone is dressed in tank tops, etc and showing off their hard bods. It also reduces the obvious and obnoxious oogling, etc that always happens at workout facilties.</p>
<p>Secondly, sweat and stink on machines and equipment is reduced when you require full shirts that cover dripping pits.</p>
<p>^I’ve been in commercial gyms (in NJ, home of the Situation!) that won’t allow tank tops in weight rooms either. Bare, sweaty flesh in contact with the pads on the weightlifting equipment is a hygiene issue, not a puritanism issue. Staph infection, anyone?</p>
<p>I thought this was an “oogling” issue, but I guess it could be a hygiene issue. I belong to a gym (that doesn’t have this rule) and we might have one machine that could touch some flesh, if wearing a skinny-strapped tank top. I wear a sleeveless work-out top, but it’s got around 4" of fabric on each shoulder.</p>
<p>Our high school had a problem with Staph-MRSA. Common thread between kids infected, the gym at school. Specifically, the weight room. Kids were not wiping down the benches and machines. Yuck! and scary too!!</p>
<p>Back to the “other students”. Our kids have dropped schools off their list because looking around, none of the other students “looked” like them. One school the kids were very goth, lots of piercings, tattoos, etc. and our clean cut, almost preppy kids just didn’t fit in. Nothing wrong with that at all.</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd & Caltech stayed on D’s list even after the tour, lol. I’d say half of the boys looked the traditional “nerd” part but the other half seemed to gain D’s approval. The odd thing was that the girls on the tours seemed to be the ones with limited social skills rather than the boys.</p>
<p>BTW: I LOVE these tours – best people watching, ever.</p>
<p>ETA: I grew up near UCI and used the library often. It’s always had a different vibe. So much different than the local Cal States, UCLA or USC.</p>
<p>I agree that the gym dresscode is fairly normal at most gyms</p>
<p>However, Whitworth is a conservative Christian college (versus a college that is affiliated with a church). Reading the behavioral expectations section of their handbook will tell you if the school is a good fit for your son or not </p>