<p>chocchipcookie - You’ll get a much better response if you start a new thread. A lot of people that know about Binghamton and Colleges (esp. SUNY’s) with Engineering majors may not read this thread.</p>
<p>^^Thanks. As I said, sorry to hijack this thread…back to it’s original intent of colleges you’ve crossed off the list after visiting. (PS: I’m all set re: my earlier question).</p>
<p>son: hated Leihigh(sp)- dining room was a hill away from the other buildings
loved Tufts & Dartmouth
daughter: hated Vanderbuilt- freshman dorms are far from everything
hated Washington U. in St Louis- too big, even had a comm. college type on campus in the evenings.
loved Haverford College- they even have a 4 + 1 major in engineering with Penn.</p>
<p>St. Lawrence. Son begged to turn around and drive the 7 hours home at 10pm after seeing the surrounding area. Since we’d come all that way we stayed for the tour and interview the next day. Nice tour guide and staff but didn’t see a single student in the new science building and heard a lot of defensive talk about how “it isn’t really as cold here as everyone thinks”.</p>
<p>momlax - surprised you hated Lehigh - it’s a pretty nice school. I hear you about the hills though. My son liked the campus, but didn’t think that the speaker of the open house or tour guide really gave him an impression of what the school was all about. In the end, he decided not to apply because of it.</p>
<p>D hated Princeton because “the town looked exactly like our boring suburb”.</p>
<p>DS dropped 2 schools from his list after visiting, oddly, schools from opposite ends of the spectrum.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Va Tech - he didn’t like the rural nature of the campus and wasn’t interested in the extreme (harped on at many occasions during the day long visit) school spirit.</p></li>
<li><p>U Penn - he didn’t like how the city of Philadelphia cuts right through the school. The number of languages offered almost saved it but that wasn’t quite enough. Oddly, he didn’t mind the city nature of Ga Tech, MIT, Hopkins or VCU.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>He also dropped Rensselaer but not after a visit. He had started the application but decided not to apply when he found out they offer no foreign language classes.</p>
<p>ETA:
He also dropped the Naval Academy after a visit but not because of the visit. He loved the campus and all of the history of the Academy, especially since his aunt, grandfather and 2 great grandfathers went there. He lost interest because the options for grad school were so limited.</p>
<p>DS removed:</p>
<p>Cooper Union-Bio-Mech Professor did not know what type of equipment was in use/info session seemed cult like
Boston U-lack of campus
Va Tech-felt the campus was dated
Carnegie Mellon-students seemed introverted/not engaging
Embry AZ-2 hr drive from/to major airport/everything is brown/not much to do in immediate area</p>
<p>MG, #3600, great, entertaining reviews.</p>
<p>With S1, none of us liked either Weslyan or McGill. He liked Berkley but didn’t like Stanford (much to his father’s distress, guess where he went). He didn’t like USC – too big.</p>
<p>With S2, he and I have visited many more schools. No idea what makes thing good or bad…He liked Harvard and MIT was his first choice for a long time, but after discussions with friends about the suicide rate and anti-depressant drug use at the two schools, he decided he didn’t want to go to schools in big cities…We both hated Tufts. We went to Colgate and he could barely sit through the information session and insisted that we leave (it did have a strange vibe) as soon as it was over. Bucknell we managed to stay through both the info session and tours, but it never made it to the list. We then visited JHU (which was S1’s first US choice), which he hated (and I couldn’t blame him, the tour and info session were night and day different from the visit 4 years previously). We went to Penn (where he would be legacy) but again a really boring info session and tour. Princeton, I was sure he would love, but no…just didn’t seem very ‘interesting’.</p>
<p>I have to admit to being concerned about how he makes his choice, but as he is firming up his list, he seems to be checking things out that he needs to understand better (things like classes and majors offered) so contrary or not for those schools that remain on his list, I feel confident that he is thinking things through.</p>
<p>By the way, our favorite laugh after the 14 day, 20 college/university visit trip, is Vassar who repeatedly sold the benefits of Poughkeepsie as the end of the train line to NYC so you can sleep on the train either way and not miss your stop – everyone we meet that day offered it as a benefit!</p>
<p>Yeah, Poughkeepsie is pretty much the end of the line [parent of a Bard graduate who spent time in the train station here].</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Besides being an odd thing for Vassar to say, it’s also not really true.</p>
<p>First of all, Poughkeepsie is the end of the Metro North line.
It is not, however, the end of the Amtrak line, which also stops in Poughkeepsie.</p>
<p>Also, the Metro North trains do not stop at Poughkeepsie and Grand Central forever and with their doors open.
Eventually the train will move … and a sleeping passenger will miss their station.
The ticket conductors may do a sweep and chase (wake up) everyone still on the train, but I wouldn’t want to count on it. ;)</p>
<p>CMC.</p>
<p>CMC and Pomona expect Southern Californians to drive out and interview in person. Fair e
nough, and more schools should require this, in my opinion. But the time spent in a formal interview should have at least a microtomal veneer of purpose. Pomona interview was terrific; son emerged completely sold and very excited as he spent close to an hour discussing literature with a senior English major. </p>
<p>We are all too aware that the two colleges are not fungible, and that each attracts a different student body. But son was still interested in what CMC had to offer as family friends who are alums really sold it. He crossed off Claremont McKenna and refused even to apply after what in his view was a rather abusive interview with an upperclassman. We were already aware of a kind of obsessive fetish over there about so-called “leadership,” (a term first popularized by the Ivies in the early part of the 20thC to keep Jews out and lately employed by them and others as an informal barrier to Asian-Americans among others) so he expected questions about “leadership” as an abstraction and “leaders” in general, and “how have you led” and similar nonsense (and he was not disappointed on that count). But as he recounted it, much of the interview actually centered on how my son might program on-campus speakers for the next year. As he was applying for a spot in the freshman class, and not a job as director of programming, he was disappointed. The refusal of his interlocutor to change the subject caused him to dig in and eventually terminate the interview. He was also put off by the rather defensive attitude staff and student interviewers in general exhibit at the mere mention of Pomona. </p>
<p>Interview Boy is apparently headed for law school. Assuming he graduates and passes the bar, he’ll likely seek employment in California. Interestingly, I am a hiring partner at the Orange County branch of a national law firm of 500+ lawyers. I look forward to having the opportunity to thank him in person for saving my son four years of wasted time.</p>
<p>Kids are funny the way they reject good things on word of mouth sometimes. We’ve all seen it in our own. My own son blew off a decent LAC on the strength or weakness of a single student interviewer. But your son is looking at the big gun schools of this world so he must think he has what it takes. They are nearly impossible to get into, but if he’s an engineer or scientist of the caliber that actually belongs at an MIT (or Stanford for that matter), then they’ll recognize that fact. Especially MIT which has stopped stringing people along with viewbooks and false hopes about admission. I hope you’ll talk to him a bit before you reject them out of hand based on a story about stress or drug abuse. MIT is truly the big leagues. People there are often brilliant and the grads I know tell me that they were engaged and excited and stressed out the whole time. But they coped and wouldn’t trade their time there for the world. If those kinds of kids make up your son’s social milieu already, then he needs to think again. Talk to some current undergrads. Either of those two institutions can be an incredible experience for students who are already equipped with the drive and single-minded passion for their studies in those areas. If he is operating at that level, gotta go for it, in my opinion, and also think about Carnegie Mellon or Renselaar, which I understand can be very exciting as well.</p>
<p>My daughter nixed Dickinson and half crossed off Franklin and Marshall. She said the vibe she got at Dickinson was not what she was interested in being a part of. I don’t know if this was just me, but I felt as if the facilities there were a little outdated…
She partially crossed off franklin and Marshall because she felt like she was being judged, but she later admitted it could have just been her imagining things.</p>
<p>UCLA - “dingy, blobs of gum all over the ground, too many junk food ads.”</p>
<p>I should mention, there was 1 college both my children liked, which was Baylor. My husband does NOT like Baylor. My daughter loved that she could be in the honors college and double, triple, or whatever major. My son liked it, he was not specific what he liked. Only thing I did not like was that the students did not live on campus much beyond Freshman years. Freshman year was required and then they all left right away. No one would answer any questions about why they left campus. And it was also made clear that you needed a car once you moved off. They seem to not have a valid bus system or whatever else. I did NOT like this at all. </p>
<p>My daughter did not like Austin College at all. She only visited the music school portion and it did not have at all what she liked. My son liked Austin College. My husband really liked Austin College. I liked it. </p>
<p>My daughter and I loved Rice. My husband loved Rice. My son really did not like it. To give Rice credit, my son said Rice seemed like too much work. </p>
<p>Not visiting the campus but being at the talk, my daughter and I liked Carnegie Mellon. My husband and son did not like it. Oh well.</p>
<p>They all visited UNT. My son really really liked it, my husband felt it was fine, my daughter and I hated it.</p>
<p>Would someone please share their thoughts on UMich and Purdue? Those are my D’s top choices and we are from Texas. It gives me chill when I think about February there ;(</p>
<p>Purdue–desolate small town. UM–vibrant large college town.</p>
<p>Don’t know anything about Purdue, but UMich is a very good school (very expensive out-of-state, though) and Ann Arbor is a great college town - shoot, it’s a great town in its own right. </p>
<p>in the past three months or so, Ann Arbor has been rated the10th-best college town in the country by the Princeton Review. U.S. News and World Report, Forbes magazine, and the American Institute for Economic Research have also listed AA as one of the best college towns. It also wins kudos for its job markets (#7, U.S. News), for being well-educated (U.S. News ), and for being a “good place for singles” (Kiplingers).</p>
<p>[Why</a> does Ann Arbor keep landing on ‘best of’ lists that touch every aspect of life here?](<a href=“http://www.annarbor.com/news/ann-arbor-often-placed-on-top-ten-lists/]Why”>Why does Ann Arbor keep landing on 'best of' lists that touch every aspect of life here?)</p>
<p>And I know it sounds cold to a Texan, but really - the last few winters have been almost balmy!</p>