<p>My DD crossed off
Stanford - the buildings were not uniform
UC Davis - the desks were too old
Texas A & M - too big and too brown
Baylor - Waco was too scary
Cornell - too cold</p>
<p>Englishman - My daughter applied and was accepted to Pitzer (2012). The Admitted Student Day was fun and interesting but also insightful and it ultimately made her not wind up there. If your child is comfortable going to different colleges for many of their classes than he/she will be happy. My daughter is interested in Creative Writing and Ceramics and found that Scripps was just given large funding for their ceramics program so the other school in the consortium have basically dropped the program (not exactly but mostly). At Pitzer their creative writing program emphasizes poetry which is her least favorite genre so again, she would be taking most of her classes at one of the other schools (Pomona I think). My daughter is shy and did not like the idea of not having one college where she would get to know everyone, kids and profs, and become comfortable with them for four years. It does expand your options but she preferred to find one college that would meet most of her needs, especially her two major areas of interest.</p>
<p>On the other hand the campuses are beautiful, the kids were friendly, the surrounding town is adorable, the weather is great. We were there on a Friday afternoon and all the kids were in the pool - very appealing to a NYer.</p>
<p>Well, we visited Cal Poly Pomona this weekend and didnāt even get out of the car. The smog was pretty bad and we both felt our chests tightening. We skedaddled out of there. A definite deal breaker. </p>
<p>Interestingly, we visited Harvey Mudd earlier the same day and didnāt notice any problems with the air, even though they are 8 miles apart. I guess the air flow favors the Claremont colleges.</p>
<p>āCornellāoff the listāreally isolated and town tiny (have to visit it to understand how isolated and tiny), one course at a time seems very intenseā</p>
<p>We visited Ithaca College during the summer - first time Iāve ever been to upstate NY - and youāre right, the town is very small. On the way there, I was starting to worry cause we drove for hours and hours through nothing but farmlandā¦couldnāt help but think āwow, we drove all the way from South Carolina for this?ā But once we finally got there it was lovely. As soon as we stepped foot on campus, my D said āthis is where I wanna go.ā Iām a city girl so the small town isnāt really for me, but the campus was beautiful, and we also got to see some waterfalls in town. Very nice college town.</p>
<p>Also loved American Uā¦ </p>
<p>NYU - my favorite, but D says she canāt really see herself living in the big city.</p>
<p>Really regretful that we didnāt go on up to Syracuse while we were so close. Truth is, just got tired.</p>
<p>jenneeāI havenāt read the original post you quoted about Cornell, but I think the poster may have been discussing Cornell College in Iowa as I believe they follow the block planāsimilar to Colorado College. I do not know enough about either Cornell College in Iowa or CC in Springs to be certain, but that is my guess.</p>
<p>Ithaca is a wonderful college town. You just have to get past the weather!</p>
<p>The only school my son chose not to apply to after visiting (last spring break) was Columbia. He didnāt like the idea of living in NYC.</p>
<p>HUMBOLT. Our tour guide was enthusiastic about the botany programs. He showed us the inside of the green house. Our group stood in a room of stuffed dead birds for two hours. (ok maybe only 10 minutes of channeling Tippi Hedren) The rest of the tour was out doors in under the pouring rain. Our guide was not wearing a jacket or shoes. (I swear he had shoes when we started.) He likes the raināyou know, like, how itās all wet and all, broā¦and ya. </p>
<p>We couldnāt get out of there fast enough. Both Ds really wanted to like Humbolt. We felt lucky to escape without contracting pneumonia or becoming trapped in an alternate dimension. To this day we canāt figure out how he lost his shoes.</p>
<p>Ooh - off to check out Humbolt! My youngest wants Botany and what you describe (even the stuffed birds) sounds like he would fall in love.</p>
<p>Ok, that didnāt take long - one google page. Since itās a CA State U it wonāt work for us. Oh well.</p>
<p>Realized I never posted the trip to Emerson, which was by far D2ās #1 school. Loved it, it was perfect, yada yada yada. Show up & D goes to visit a class. I duck into the atrium to grab a cup of coffee and a homeless man is asking for money outside the Dunkin Donuts. I get my coffee & give him some change. As Iām walking into the vestibule to go back to admissions, another homeless person with obvious mental issues is sitting there yelling āyouāll all be sorry.ā I start hoping that D doesnāt like the school, otherwise Iām going to break her heart when I tell her thereās no way sheās applying. D2 returns from her class which was āfineā but she was underwhelmed. She compares it to her summer writing programs, except that the quality of the student writing that was presented wasnāt as good as sheād been exposed to at other schools & programs.</p>
<p>The info session starts. Adcom is really impressed by all the state of the art things they have including the automatic blinds which he proceeds to demonstrate for us by using a remote. Ooh. And name drops constantly, which impresses lots of parents, but unfortunately DH & I were also broadcasting majors back in the day, so Iām not dazzled. Tour begins. Itās a vertical campus, so itās really 3 tall office towers next to one another. Tour guide puts our entire group (20+) in an elevator every time we need to go up & down, and tells us this is how you meet a lot of people: jammed in an elevator. D has a mild case of claustrophobia. I watch her face turn different colors. Again lots of emphasis on things and how much they cost; I get that State of the art equip is a big deal in broadcasting (which isnāt why D is there) but at my 3rd tier directional U we had state of the art equip too. I think the dealbreakers came in the library, which wasnāt quiet at all. Tour guide tells us there that if you got over a 550 on the math SAT, youāre exempt from a math class. And that thereās only 3 languages available for FL credit: Spanish, Mandarin & ASL. </p>
<p>As much as D2 wants to be immersed in writing, she wanted a rounded education as well. It plummeted off her list & she became insistant that all her friends visit the schools on their lists.</p>
<p>The walk thru the āHall of Princessesā (or whatever it is called- the hall that pays tribute to Miss America competitors) was the fatal blow for my daughter at Oklahoma City University. I had to give her a couple of hard pokes to the ribs to get her to stop laughing during the tour. The guide was quite excited by it, and my D just didnāt get it! Also, beautiful campus but really bad surrounding area. [URL="i</p>
<p>^^^ lol, takeitallin!</p>
<p>My son was underwhelmed by awarthermore, too small, quiet, isolated.</p>
<p>We mostly visited campuses that fit his criteria (pretty enclosed campuses in big cities) so predictably loved Univ. of Chicago, Fordham. Thought Northwestern was too suburban and spread out.</p>
<p>But, honestly, he admitted that all campuses were beautiful. My older son goes to Pitt and loves that the campus is interspersed with Oakland. My younger son feels exactly opposite.</p>
<p>takeitallināi had to google it to make sure you werenāt making it up!! 
Wow.</p>
<p>[Oklahoma</a> City, OK - Miss America Statues](<a href=āhttp://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/16126]Oklahomaā>Oklahoma City, OK - Miss America University)</p>
<p>In reference to Oklahoma City University, hereās a link about the Miss America statues on the collegeās Hall of Fame.</p>
<p>Donāt think I could have made that one up. There are even statues of the 3 students who have the pageant over the years.</p>
<p>takeitallināLOLāthat would have been my DD too. We were touring one campus and they were having elections for sorority queen or something and the girls that were in the running had a photo and info on their dorm roomāD couldnāt understand why and was laughing at that.</p>
<p>Never let it be said you donāt learn anything valuable on CC. And I donāt care what it is officially called. It will forevermore be known as the āHall of Princesses.ā</p>
<p>DS crossed UVA off his list this summerā¦too Southern, which should have been obvious, but he didnāt know until then that he wouldnāt like that vibe. Didnāt help that male tour guide wore green and pink in what I found a startling throwback to my own high school era AND he kept talking on and on about secret societies. (Love the Hall of Princesses story. I will now always associate Oklahoma City University with Versaillesā¦)</p>
<p>We all really wanted to like RPI for engineering (and the info session was held in perhaps the coolest building Iāve seen) but the person (might have been the head of admissions) running the info session was really condescending which was a turn off 1 (i.e. someone asked about level of math in the senior yearāAB vs. BC and he replied that you should just take whatever math you were ready forānot PE. Later he said to challenge yourself and not take ceramicsā¦people were really trying to understand whether the school would prefer to see, for example, a physics course vs something in the humanities or, in another instance, how important it was to take AP English vs. regular English senior year and he kept not really answering the questions but making it seem like the only options were math/science vs. ālaughableā subjects such as PE or art. </p>
<p>My D is interested in engineering but really enjoys English and hopes to have time to continue with her foreign language if she can. RPI has discontinued all languages and doesnāt look at the writing score of the SAT because the school understands that math/science kids canāt write (really?!) and, to boot, they donāt have a required English class for freshmen. Really? Donāt our future STEM professionals need to know how to write and communicate effectively? We were stunnedā¦didnāt wait for the campus tour as D knew it was definitely being crossed off her list. (Hope Iām not offending anyone hereāIām sure itās a great school but perhaps some of these philosophies could have been communicated differently.)</p>
<p>Returned yesterday from our first college visit trip. First stop was Hampshire College Preview Day for HS Sophomores and Juniors. The first surprise was that neither my son nor my husband and I thought the campus was ugly, and this is in February! I grew up in
Ann Arbor and currently live in a Maine town with a small, highly selective LAC, and the Hampshire campus, while not populated with ivy covered buildings, had a nice vibe to it. The college was very welcoming and the schedule was well thought out, allowing the prospective students to attend a ārealā class and the parents to take a tour and attend a variety of information sessions.<br>
My DS attended a Drama related class while my DH and I attended the Financial Aid session. The financial aid session was sparsely attended, not sure if that meant many attendeeās parents were wealthy or perhaps they felt they had enough information. We met up with DS for the lunch with faculty and Hampshire students, and DS gave us the sign he would prefer to leave, a head shake and mouthing āLetās goā. DS thought the class was very good, but as an aspiring actor, he told us he realized he wants to be āwhere the action isā, meaning a school in or near an urban area. He also said he wants a diverse community, where all sorts of people would mingle.
Next stop on the tour was a visit to Bennington College. We did drive up to the college, but quickly decided to cancel the tour and continue on home. So while the trip was a bust in some ways, it was valuable in helping to clarify for DS what he wants in a college.</p>