<p>OK after reading back a few pages saw the remark about Dahlia and Suburgatory and Northwestern, but after googling still can’t get a read on it. Is she like a Legally Blonde bimbo or Valley girl? The kids we saw at Northwestern were very intense and super bright looking…almost nerdy…clarify Dahlia, somebody!</p>
<p>My D crossed Linfield College and Pitzer off her list.</p>
<p>dke, we found on our tour of MIT that even the girls looked bright, which was quite shocking! Hate speech can go both ways. Imagine that.</p>
<p>lab317, what did your D see at Pitzer that she didn’t like? We just toured there, and felt pretty good about it, but aren’t sure, since we didn’t see a ton of students or visit a class.</p>
<p>Pomona - even though D had a great interview and tour. She felt the campus reminded her too much of her boarding school.</p>
<p>Occidental- Loved the campus and the students but the surrounding area is a little shabby. </p>
<p>Cornell - Too hilly and in the middle of nowhere.</p>
<p>Amherst - Too preppy.</p>
<p>University of Miami - We visit and stay in Miami frequently, but what turned my family off was the weather. Those afternoon “showers” were more like a daily flipping of an ocean. The campus was beautiful, but the traffic was atrocious and freshman weren’t allowed to have cars. </p>
<p>University of Central Florida - I didn’t like the buildings, especially the windows. In person they seemed extremely outdated. The campus was large. I didn’t care for the feel.</p>
<p>Dahlia-bright, wealthy, superficial with semi-Valley accent. But no dude/valleyspeak. Nice expensive branded clothes.</p>
<p>barrons, which college are you referring to?</p>
<p>UCSC … Gorgeous campus but felt a little depressing after touring the engineering school with blander than bland facilities far from urban activities. </p>
<p>Harvey Mudd … Too small and does not have the major he wants</p>
<p>UCBerkeley … Not friendly</p>
<p>hanaviolet - barrons was responding to post #3902.</p>
<p>Yes, I see I’ve butted in on a previous conversation! I read it as “Dahlia-bright,” i.e., bright as a dahlia, (thinking barrons was referring to a particular school), but I see now barrons was talking about “Dahlia,” (whoever or whatever that may be).</p>
<p>Carry on & thanks dodgersmom!</p>
<p>So, hanaviolet, Dahlia would be a small LAC in the deep south, maybe Mississippi? Formerly a women’s college that went co-ed about ten years ago…with a beautiful campus that has a good riding program and, interestingly, an outstanding math department and astrophysics major.</p>
<p>EastGrad, it sounds lovely and has a wonderful name. I can practically smell magnolias and hear the buzz of insects. Thanks for the info. (Although, in barrons description, the human aspect sounds a little scary.)</p>
<p>Northern Kentucky University- modern buildings, not very pretty. People were very nice. Had a one on one tour and while walking around our tour guide seemed to know everyone, he said the whole school is that way. Nice library. The informatics building was amazing, $53 million dollar building, new. All the facilities were nice and clean. Dorms were nice, liked the suite style a lot. Definitely did not have as many students around as other schools. Mom was afraid it was a commuter school and that an out of stater like me would be bored and lonely on the weekends. Student ID gets you local bus service, even into Cincinnati. Can see the city skyline from campus. </p>
<p>University of Kentucky- Lexington was beautiful. Lots of local things to do. 6 miles from Keeneland race track, Fridays at the track were very popular. Tobacco free campus, HUGE plus. No cigarettes are allowed anywhere on campus, not even outside. Loved our tour guide. Huge library, loved the feel of the campus. So much school spirit. The size of the campus was absolutely perfect, big enough to have something to walk around but not too big. Lots of place to eat around campus and off. It just really had a great feeling when you were walking around. Everyone was so sweet. Only an hour or so away from NKU but you felt you were a lot farther south, in a good way. Dorms had cement walls but every floor had a kitchen you could use, which I liked a lot. After visiting this became my number one school. Also loved how many sororities there were. </p>
<p>West Virginia University- did not like Morgantown at all. It felt run down and just icky. Our tour guide was nice but we got some dirty looks from people around campus. Cigarette butts. A little too spread out for my liking. Dorms were nice, but the room we saw was in the lobby and was a showroom so it could be a lot different from the actual dorms. Really liked that every residence hall had a family living in it though (husband and wife with the possibility of a few kids) that was there if you get home sick. Our tour guide said that her freshman year her family would do reading night where the husband would read an excerpt from a novel and the wife would have cookies and milk out, they could walk their dog if the students missed their pets, they had other social gathering things and they checked up on you during finals week to make sure you were taking care of yourself… Oh, the classrooms had chalkboards which I just did not like. This turned into a definite no.</p>
<p>Off S’s list:
- Colorado State Univ: S did not feel the love-- strange tour guide, railroad tracks and lots of trains thru east side of campus. One train that passed blew its whistle continuously for about 2 minutes. Lory Student Center has nice food court with fireplace but all fast food, which was a big turnoff for S. Campus laid out strangely, most academic bldgs on east side (hence closer to annoying trains), with nicer dorms and gorgeous new recreation center more on west side. Felt disjointed. Also info session was heavy on the marketing and light on the academics.</p>
<ol>
<li>Colorado School of Mines: S did not like the bazillion to one male:female ratio (in his eyes), and campus is mishmash of unmatched architecture. S also did not like the very small feel and relative lack of campus energy. We asked 2 people where the admissions bldg was, and neither of them knew. It was a block away. Campus is laid out in a grid with streets running N/S and E/W, and campus slopes downhill from back to front. However I have to say that the tour was amazing-- very focused on academics and guide made it very clear that Mines is rigorous. I loved the surrounding topography, but S hated that the Coors factory was an eyesore easily seen adjacent to campus from the hilltop where we parked. Students get great educ there and employers fight over graduates, and I sort of wish S had liked it. I would have felt completely comfortable with him going there. </li>
</ol>
<p>Big thumbs up for S:
CU Boulder. We’ve looked only at 3 schools so far and S is convinced this is the school for him. He fell madly in love with the campus.</p>
<p>Hendrix - just read a post that reminded me about the trains, so close and so loud that we literally had to just stop speaking with the admissions person as we sat on a bench until they passed, which seemed to take forever and was very awkward, and we were across campus (but it is a small campus). Also the mosquitos were terrible, and we were told that there are always drainage issues in the center of campus, but then we noticed that some of the dorm windows had no screens??? and that the dorms were truly “early gulag” and very rough, some not very well maintained at all. In one, someone on the tour asked why the first floor living area was so extremely bare - damaged walls, no furniture. The answer from the tour guide was that on weekends this was where the biggest parties happened, and whatever was on the wall or anywhere else would be trashed anyway. Also, the town was just too small. This was a college that was high on my list, so we stayed for two days trying to make sure. DS ruled it out.</p>
<p>Someone above mentioned the University of Central Florida in Orlando. Any day, that could become the largest university campus in the US, soon surpassing Arizona State which has over 60,000 students.</p>
<p><a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_university_campuses_by_enrollment[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_university_campuses_by_enrollment</a></p>
<p>Drexel …HORRIBLE campus. Rowen in New Jersey…felt like an episode of Jersey Shore…never saw so many poorly dressed students and parents in my life.</p>
<p>WPI. I wasn’t there at the time, but D would not even get out of the car, saying the campus was ugly and all the students she saw looked “worried or angry”.</p>
<p>She also disliked the University of Scranton. The info session lady was dull and spent way too much time talking about the mall, an “Office” tour they have in Scranton, and the sales tax on clothes in PA. Really dopey tour guide who focused on stuff like: how much printing costs in the library, how boys in the dorms have big TVs and girls have little ones (??), and how she, the tour guide, hates math (my daughter is interested in studying math) and has only had to write one paper in her time at college (she was a junior). It was also the most homogeneous student body we have seen of our 10+ tours- kids pretty much all white, all the girls dressed the same, etc. </p>
<p>I was actually surprised by how relatively nice the city of Scranton seemed, though.</p>
<p>This is a great thread and a bit entertaining to hear some teenagers descriptions reactions to places that do not give them a good vibe or where they just can’t see themselves living.
Lehigh - “too hilly”.
True. I wondered about broken ankles from slipping on icy hills in winter. Great school though. LOL</p>