<p>DavidS: I grew up in Wisconsin and familiar with winter. Evanston seemed pretty tame.</p>
<p>UVA chapel comments are interesting. At least you got to go inside a building! When we toured it two years ago, we didnât go in ANY buildings. It was a really weird tour as far as I was concerned. The admin portion was conducted on some cement stairs outside one building (not the rotunda). We all sat on stairs or in dirt/grass next to stairs for the 45 minute âpresentationâ. Then we were broken up into smaller groups and taken on a tour. We stood outside the library and were told about the secret societies. We stood outside the oldest dorms and told they had no AC, we stood outside several other buildings and were told about them.</p>
<p>I take it you did not enjoy the tour,VAMom2015?</p>
<p>Why the sarcasm? ^^ It seems like you do not like to read the comments on this thread, so perhaps itâs not for you, sevmom? Many here appreciate the feedback and like the details. Are you trying to impose a limit as to how short such comments should be?</p>
<p>Thanks for your report, VAMom2015. I do know that UVA, for example, has no shortage of kids dying to get admitted and those who attend are quite happy. But come on. There is an entire forum for in depth questions on every university. Iâm glad not everyone feels exactly the same way about every school.</p>
<p>We visited Duke last week and crossed it off the list. It was far and away the worst tour weâve had, bar none. The tourguide talked about herself the entire time (what kind of McDonaldâs she liked, etc.) and we saw three buildings. Three! The kids we saw (granted it was summer, but still) looked stressed out and anxious. The tour was also only about engineering. Didnât get to see the Chapel (inside) or a dorm or where the kids eat. We just didnât feel it. The admissions rep spoke loudly in the back of the room to someone so we couldnât hear the video presentation. She also seemed to have an attitude like, you should be so lucky to get into this amazing place.
Chapel Hill on the other hand was terrific. I wasnât blown away by the âquintessential college townâ which everybody talks about but my daughter seemed OK with it. Our tourguide was bright, funny, friendly and informative. He obviously loved it there. The dorms down at the other end of campus where they put some freshman âŠwell, inside they looked like prison cells. Dark hallsâŠdepressing to my husband and me but our daughter didnât seem to care. She just loved it.</p>
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<p>As a New Yorker who visited Evanston on a beautiful spring day and then spent four years there, I can tell you there is an up-side. After four years of Evanston cold, it rarely seems that cold in New York anymore. It actually took a very long time after college before I needed my long down coat again.</p>
<p>So if a student writes off Northwestern only because of the weather, perhaps you can use reverse psychology?</p>
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<p>Exactly! I thought maybe it was just us.</p>
<p>I still havenât posted about our tour itself yet.</p>
<p>Not sure if I should post here, in the U-Va forum or somewhere else.</p>
<p>But it was a lot like described above.</p>
<p>It was very, very odd.</p>
<p>madbean, Sorry . Guess I was a little sarcastic I do think the tone of this thread has gotten pretty serious lately .GolfFather, you may as well post here about the details of your UVa visit since youâve already brought it up (but of course that is your choice). There is also a whole separate College Visit section where you could post as well.</p>
<p>Bowling Green (Ohio). Itâs spread out and flat and windy and requires transportation with wheels of some kind to get around. The day we visited was also bitterly cold. He took one look around, went in and did his audition because it was scheduled, but said immediately there was no way heâd go there.</p>
<p>CCM, the conservatory at Cincinnati, looked promising. Nice parent info session, nice meal, lovely facilities. Showed up for one on one meeting with head of jazz studies and boom - hated him, hated the program, withdrew application.</p>
<p>Eastman School of Music (Rochester)- We (D and I) got yelled at by the admissions rep at a college fair at Interlochen! I asked the woman if it was much of a problem for the students to get over to the main Rochester campus for sporting events, lectures etc. She responded loudly, âMusic IS their life! They donât need to go over there.â That was the end of Eastman- never even applied. That woman was apparently notorious for scaring off applicants!</p>
<p>Got to cross one school off the list today, saved air fare tooâDDâs friend did a tour of the school and all the tour guide talked about was how easy it was to get Pot, how many Pot parties there were on the weekends, etc. thanks, but NO.</p>
<p>ohiobassmomâjust got to cross another one off the list. Kids were considering Bowling Green but if you need wheels, TOO big for them!! THANKS!</p>
<p>Fordham. We didnât even have the pre-visit information session in their normal conference room, and the campus was, in my opinion, awful. This was at Lincoln Center, right after I visited Columbia, so I may have been expecting too much.</p>
<p>Crossed of Sacred Heart and Quinnipiac right away.
Sacred Heart I stepped on campus and stepped right back off. Felt way to small.
Quinnipiac had way too much construction and the tour guide didnât even know the names of the buildings. Not a great representative of the schoolâŠ
Loved University of Connecticut though</p>
<p>Vanderbilt (It was parentâs weekend);
Claremont McKenna (the tour guide overslept, ran in 20 minutes late still zipping his pants, and then took the tour to his room to put in his contacts)</p>
<p>thumzup, that would have made my DS respect the guy! He hated Vanderbilt because he felt it was too plastic.</p>
<p>D-14 thinks she will take Wake Forest off the list. Its a beautiful campus and an excellent school. We visited two years ago with S-11 and D liked it then although she wasnât paying a lot of attention. She really liked the campus but feels it is isolated from the rest of the Winston-Salem community. On the other hand she really liked the campus visits to Duke and Elon. Time will tell.</p>
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From personal experience, this is true in the worst way. Although thereâs a lot of culture here in Winston-Salem, itâs not much of a college town. Very few bars or clubs, and most of the ones that do exist arenât geared towards students at all. The location and set-up of the campus encourages isolation (walled in, nothing is within walking distance). The term âWake Bubbleâ is used often, and accurately, Iâd bet a majority of Wake students couldnât find their way around Winston if their life depended on it.</p>
<p>thumzup, at least the tour guide showed up! We toured a college on a Saturday in the fall and ended up in a group of 40. The tour guide groused that there were supposed to be 6 guides that day and only 3 showed up.</p>
<p>As a parent of a former tour guide, I really think people put too much emphasis on the tour guide. Itâs not like these kids are professionals. S did it because he needed the money. There were days he was stressed from classes, and two weeks he gave tours feeling ârun downâ and with a sore throat/weak voice before he found out he had mono. Although he loved his college, as with any place where you spend 4 years, there were some days he loved it more than others. Iâm sure he was more enthusiastic some days than others.</p>
<p>Lafalum84âI agree, the tour guide, while helpful, shouldnât make or break your decision but they certainly can influence that. One tour we were on the tour guide spent the entire time texting his friends, couldnât answer a single question DS had, didnât know anything about DSâs major (math-not something unusual) and was just downright rude. It was a private tour and the school could have done a better job matching tour guides. Add to that the admissions receptionist was rude, didnât even say hi when we walked in, made us wait to âcheck-inâ for almost 30 mintues, we were about 15 minutes early. No one even thanked us for coming. The combined experience pretty much turned DS offâand he told them so which is not usual for him.</p>