<p>Santa Cruz is on top of a hill, literally among redwood trees…tour guide told us that having a “joint” at night under the trees is popular…watch for bears though…<br>
Seems to have excellent science program…dorms and dining hall need major upgrade …feels like rustic summer camp…not popular with D.</p>
<p>Agree we need to visit UCSC and hope to soon. I have a feeling though that D will also see it as glorified summer camp. She is interested in their science program</p>
<p>My D loved UCSC campus, we only went because we were already on the west coast and afterward were so glad we did. We both thought it was wonderful.</p>
<p>So I have been sitting here quietly reading about UCSC. I went to school there for 4 quarters 30 years ago. It sounds just the same. I had a great experience there but you really have to be an alternative type of person to feel like it is a place for you.</p>
<p>We are in Virginia and have visited some local schools. </p>
<p>The only one that was struck with force was Randolph-Macon. On paper, the school looked good and during the tour, parts were very good. Its just that the students were a bit…different. We joke now about how we met the real life ‘Sue Heck’ (from The Middle). Not bad, just…odd. </p>
<p>Son also crossed off Roanoke College in Salem. It had everything going for it but the size. He really wants a bigger school. I especially liked their core curriculum, very interesting.</p>
<p>Alas, Son has NOT crossed off James Madison University. It is his favorite so far, closely followed by Elon.</p>
<p>About UCSC, I visited when I was junior in high school 30-some years ago. I didn’t care for it precisely because it didn’t have that central quad/ gathering place that I was familiar with. Fast forward to a couple of years ago when D1 went to an admitted students session. I really thought it would be perfect for her since she wanted to be near the beach. As we were driving home I asked what her thoughts were. “Too many trees”. Really? That’s why she wrote off a school? But looking back, my own reasons really weren’t that different. I guess the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree :-)</p>
<p>^Good one, E-me2. :)</p>
<p>Often…there are places parents like…but son/ daughter doessn’t…my D usually comments by saying…" If you like it so much,mom, why don’t you go there.". Well, we don’t get a do over…moreover, we parents should not worry too much, there is not the one college a kid has to go to in order to become a happy,well adjusted , thoughtful, intellectually curious,
And last but not least successful adults…so we parents should just relax, step back and enjoy the rde.</p>
<p>Caltech. Too small and just different. No place to get away and hide for a bit.</p>
<p>“I could not stand Harvard, the campus was located right next to a major road, tons of noise and it just spoiled the campus vibe. The Quad was beautiful, although I did miss a real center on campus. Cambridge itself was nice, but not outstanding. The prices in surrounding stores reflected what the average student spends - they where horrendous.”</p>
<p>Mmmm… I just remember the din of traffic off Cambridge Street damped by ivy-weaved red brick walls separating the Yard. The amber incandescent lights behind the frosh houses at dusk. A brisk walk, catching a glimpse of J.D. Watson and his illustrious scarf, emerging from the natural history building. Running past the T Station, and the edgy kids that lounge in the pit, to get to the antiquarian smoke shop before they closed. Peeking in on the cadre of draughtsmen in the glass-walled architecture building. Arguing with friends over jazz at that vinyl records store with the locomotive placard in front. Getting a giant ‘GYRO’ and an orange shake from that place across from the massive newsvendor stand. The cute BU girls who came by to crash our awkward bachelor party. And those fire-tossing, sword-tossing street performers on weekend nights.</p>
<p>@ polarbear: I am glad you had such a positive impression! </p>
<p>It just proves how subjective campus visits can be. What feels just great and comfortable for one student might be absolutely unpleasant for another.</p>
<p>Expected to love it, wanted it to be on DS’ list, but the visit was terrible. Our adcom was snarky (he gave the presentation to the parent meeting on admissions and financial aid as well) and we found him to have surprisingly poor people skills one on one later. Having driven hundreds of miles for the registered event, we were disappointed. Had some humorous conversations while waiting for interviews - we were not the only family to notice our adcom’s interesting approach to the process. </p>
<p>DS described dorms as “early gulag” which wasn’t the deal breaker - it was the combination of seeing the drainage issues apparent in the low-lying campus (even the tour guide joked about the standing water) and experiencing the mosquito problem while hearing about the addition of a football program as the next big “investment” in the campus. Also, DS said the campus was just too shaded and felt claustrophobic, and the science buildings were small-ish. Conway didn’t help; charming in its own way but again, just too small.</p>
<p>Great food in the cafeteria, though.</p>
<p>In order:
-Cincinatti - not challenging enough
-Michigan State - not challenging enough; not as good for OOS financial aid as I’d thought; ugly campus (even though it’s pretty well reviewed); apathetic-seeming students
-Washington in St. Louis - never visited, but I didn’t like the campus from the pictures I saw (not an unpopular opinion) and it was too close to home
-Columbia - curriculum was too rigid; my parents didn’t want me in NYC; I didn’t think I’d have a prayer of getting in
-Brandeis - too social-sciences/humanities-focused
-Howard - too social-sciences/humanities-focused
-Georgia Tech - decided I didn’t want tech schools
-Drexel - RIGHT next to Penn, which was also on my list; not challenging enough; no real campus; commuter school; seemed overly technically focused
-Swarthmore - way too small
-Haverford - way too small; didn’t offer any less common foreign languages (nothing more obscure than Japanese, which my high school had)
-Maryland - not as good for OOS financial aid as I’d thought; didn’t like the campus (too spread out); not as close to DC as I’d thought; too sports-focused</p>
<p>Love this thread by the way.</p>
<p>Alabama - way too into sports. In an hour and a half tour, academics was mentioned in the last 5 minutes only. (and my DS is an athelete)</p>
<p>LeMoyne - just a weird place. Working too hard to hide being Catholic.</p>
<p>James Madison - we thought we would love this one. It was just boring.</p>
<p>I liked Belmont Abbey but DS didn’t. It was the most welcoming and personalized of the tours. DS thought it was just too small and too much like his current high school.</p>
<p>DS loved Princeton but I was less impressed. They are very proud of the fact that they don’t give merit aid and the pre-tour presentation was all about how hard it was to be admitted and very little about how good the school was. The tour was about 50% tourists rather than students with families. For some reason, they had drastically underestimated how many would tour and about half of the group had to wait for a last minute additional guide. Since she was a “sub”, she wasn’t prepared to answer questions and just suggested we call admissions. </p>
<p>Penn came off the list. Even though the tour guide was from the nursing school, she gushed mostly about Wharton. Other than the Wharton building, the rest of the buildings seem to be in need of basic maintenance. Just couldn’t see my son there and since he isn’t planning on B-school, he wasn’t feeling very welcomed. </p>
<p>OTOH, we loved some schools we didn’t think we would like but that’s a topic for another thread. :-)</p>
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<p>That’s what I’ve heard. I feel like kind of an idiot for having Penn on my list but having little interest in business, though I do find other desirable qualities about it.</p>
<p>enlightenme2- We also visited recently and my son’s reason for UCSC was “too many hills”. This from a kid who runs cross-country and plays soccer 6 days a week.</p>
<p>Before we went on tour, Skidmore and Ithaca were high on her list for “matches.” We went to a junior day at Skidmore and midway through a presentation, as the professor speaking directly referenced why the school was so much better than other schools, my niece turned to me and said: Slytherin. We weren’t able to recover after that. The tour guide also spoke about the shortage of door rooms and that almost all freshman get triples, really doubles as triples.</p>
<p>We thought Ithaca was a slam-dunk until my niece saw the connected buildings and realized that it must be get very, very, very cold there. Moving on…</p>
<p>Hampshire, we were charmed by, but she could not handle the lack of grades and while my niece is progressive, there was quite a bit of talk about not using pronouns and she just didn’t connect. It was also a bit worn down. Her visit to Hampshire led her to cross off Bard too.</p>
<p>Franklin & Marshall’s tour guide was nice but very jock-y and my niece, who’s capt. of the x-country team herself, started thinking of it as the “jock school.” Plus, it must have been 100 degrees when we visited so we were focused on water the entire tour.</p>
<p>She visited Holy Cross on election day which was definitely a mistake. The Romney signs were a huge turnoff and we had to fight to keep it on the list. However, the dining facilities sold my sister. My niece has gluten allergies and they took her into the kitchen to meet with the head of the dining facilities who also had a gluten allergy. Their personalized care for kids with allergies was impressive. I should also give a shout-out to Skidmore for their dining facilities. They were great with my niece too.</p>
<p>It’s sad for me to even write this, but Penn State, University Park. DH and I are alumni and were so excited for the kids’ first official visit (they had been there a couple of times just to walk around with us). What a disappointment! Tour groups were large, guides were not dynamic (and I think DH and I knew more history of the school than they did), didn’t take us through some of the most beautiful parts of campus, and the dorms had not changed since we were students, which is NOT a good thing. They didn’t even have WiFi in the dorms yet. During the info session before the tour, 50% of the time or more was devoted to selling the branch campuses. We were not visiting University Park to hear about branch campuses. We had toured 3 other Big10 campuses (IU, Illinois and OSU) already by the time we got to PSU and those schools seemed to genuinely WANT students to attend their school and the tour guides were super-enthusiastic about their experiences. We were so disappointed that we wrote a letter to the (new) PSU President telling him our thoughts…and got a form letter response.</p>
<p>The University of Texas at Austin, my alma mater. Of course DS had been on the campus many, many times - we lived in Austin for several years when he was younger, and he’d participated in the Open House event held the first Saturday each March. </p>
<p>When DS and I visited last summer, I felt like we were in a bad dream. It would have made for a very unfunny SNL skit, actually: the varieties of unhelpfulness, rudeness, and downright abusive treatment which we witnessed others receive as we waited in various offices, or experienced directly ourselves.</p>
<p>In fact, one - located in the Main Building yet, with its tower rising above us - was so awful to a whole line of patient and polite people (both current students and visiting families) that I later went back just so I could get her name. Her business card read Senior Admissions Counselor!</p>
<p>My son very gently told me that as much as he wanted to be a Longhorn, being treated that way was a price he wasn’t willing to pay.</p>
<p>The one bright spot was hearing (from the only normal, nice, professionally behaved person in a long day) that he would in all likelihood be admitted. It made the rest bearable, almost, because he was able to feel that he was making a choice.</p>
<p>My S crossed off Temple U, Rutgers U and Parsons New School of Design after visiting. Kept UArts, MICA and Pratt.</p>
<p>Temple is in a rough neighborhood and Rutgers was way too big for him.</p>
<p>My D crossed off Princeton after a second visit as well as TCNJ, Rutgers, Rowan and Columbia. </p>
<p>Princeton failed the “What do you guys do for fun?” Question. No answers satisfied my D. Columbia seemed like it came off for no reason. She loved it. She was just determined to apply to no more than two Ivies.</p>