<p>Had high hopes for both.
Son did not like Earlham’s campus (there are all these temporary-looking trailer things everywhere and they’re the first thing you see when you get there) and some of the buildings seemed worn down. </p>
<p>Kenyon tour guide seemed disengaged and snobby and some of the other people on the tour were obnoxious.</p>
<p>Neither of these seemed like especially good reasons to me,but when they get a bad taste about the school, it’s hard for them to shake it. </p>
<p>In Earlham and Ohio Weslyan students we passed in class seemed out of it and not engaged which was a big turn-off. (Not to say you wouldn’t see that anywhere.)</p>
<p>Son crossed Rhodes College off his list because he felt it was too small, and because the girls who gave our tour referenced Harry Potter about 10 times too many. I loved it, and told a friend it would be perfect for her very bright daughter, an aspiring writer.</p>
<p>Loyola of New Orleans came off son’s list during the info session; he felt they were trying to appeal to “B” students, and that it wouldn’t be academic enough. He refused to even take the tour.</p>
<p>Northeastern: the info session and tour was so packed that we were not able to hear anything. My daughter stated that the school felt " disjointed" and " cold." She was not referring to temperature.
Muhlenberg: too small for her</p>
<p>Last night DH told the story of his visit to Goucher with DS. Took a tour on a Wednesday afternoon c. 1:00. Guide took them to a dorm room-where they found a half dozen kids drinking and beer cans littered everywhere. Outside the dorm the guide started to take them one way then quickly changed course and rushed the tour off in another direction. DH was curious, so he went around the corner to see what was there. He found a huge group of kids getting stoned. He said what disturbed him the most was that when he, an unknown adult, walked by the group no one tried to hide what they were doing.</p>
<p>Texas A&M during an Aggieland Saturday - too crowded / no professors (first visit during the summer was positive - very friendly people who seemed genuinely interested in my son)
OK State - too country for my daughter
UT Austin - arrogant - I think it was the associate dean of engineering who said if your child was the captain of the swim team we don’t care - we only care if they are winning gold medals.</p>
<p>I crossed off UMBC and Stony Brook. I just didn’t like the campuses. The buildings and surroundings were either dull, simple or bland and completely lacked “energy”. </p>
<p>I LOVED U of Rochester! And that’s where I will be going this fall hehe, that might be slightly biased.</p>
<p>@Sue22 - a friend of ours took his son to tour Clemson a couple of years ago, and all he could talk about were the pretty girls playing frisbee in an outdoor commons area. I’m convinced the admissions office paid them to be there! The kid applied but didn’t get in, but is very happy at University of Dayton, so it all worked out.</p>
<p>@footballmom104-
My alma mater hosts a summer dance festival. Pretty, fit girls all over campus. A friend took her son to visit during the week of the festival and highly recommended it as a recruiting tool!</p>
<p>Reading this thread has been very informative. It’s made me seriously reconsider the value of campus visits, at least brief pre-admission ones.</p>
<p>How often have you heard someone talking about their college experience or alma mater, talk much about the architecture, the landscaping, the admissions staff, or the one or two students they met first and spent a couple hours with?</p>
<p>Luckily other students are looking at deeper, more meaningful factors. I’ll guess I promote the idea of a couple early campus visits and see if my daughter finds campus visits more useful for choosing an architect or an education.</p>
<p>An indirect way to visit campuses and focus on the student interests and culture might be for a high school student to attend Splash programs. They started at MIT but have been spreading quickly with the help of Learning Unlimited. They offer HS students (and sometimes junior high students) the opportunity to take brief ‘courses’ from an unimaginably diverse selection of topics. Students from the college choose what they teach from what their most passionate about and most want to share with younger students. The Splash courses are often free or VERY low cost. Some of the colleges whose students offer them include MIT, Stanford, Chicago, Harvard (HSSP), NYU, UMaryland-BC, Boston College, Clark, Duke, Chicago, Yale, Northwestern, Babson. These are offered by student groups, generally with no input from the admissions departments. It might not be the most efficient way to learn about a college, but it should give a student a good idea of the passions and culture of the student body more than the architecture. The visiting student might learn something beyond the college or discover a possible passion as well.</p>
<p>I can tell you take the process of college selection very seriously and believe that the people on this thread are only looking at ridiculous extraneous details to make important decisions.</p>
<p>Have you ever thought that there may be college filled with those who agree with you? A place filled with other very serious people without a sense of humor, who may be a bit more conservative or rigid that the rest of the population? A college filled with people who tend to look down at those who may not take their studies seriously enough or who may not really notice their surroundings or care about social interactions?</p>
<p>Well for real, there are colleges like that! They may even have similar courses to other colleges and their architecture many look the same. But the moment you step on campus and begin to meet their faculty and students you can tell you are among your own!</p>
<p>Hope you and your family find just the right place!</p>
<p>With less than a twentieth as many posts as you, I don’t think I take college selection so seriously.</p>
<p>I said this thread made me reconsider the value of brief college visits. I’m sorry that I then focused more on why they may not always be so helpful at times. I was also struck than many students cited aspects of the culture of the schools.</p>
<p>After years living on a campus, my friends talk about their college friendships, coursework, parties, all-nighters, weather, classmates, cities, etc, but rarely the admissions staff or the architecture beyond their dorm-room. I didn’t realize before that my friends and I aren’t cultured enough to appreciate our surroundings or care about our social interactions.</p>
<p>I love this thread… It’s an interesting study IRL about how various impressions count AND it’s good to know that there are fits (and not) for everyone.</p>
<p>With 3000+ colleges, it’s ok to cut some due to pretty much any factor IMO - as long as you end up with one that works.</p>
<p>I read this thread every time it pops up. I enjoy reading others impressions of schools. Students are individuals and when it comes down to it they can only go to one. Often the reason they articulate is code for “this just doesn’t feel right but I can’t really explain it”. Why question it? The list has to be narrowed somehow.</p>
<p>An example:
We visited several schools over the ritual Jr Spring Break Pilgrimage with S3 this year. He’s been to a good number of schools between earlier visits, summer programs, EC events, and trips with S2 several years ago. This was not his first rodeo. On paper Wake Forest was an excellent fit. Size, admission stats, location, major, etc. We had a great info session and really good tour guide. Back to the car and we asked what he thought “Meh, kind of vanilla. Nothing outstanding. Except for a couple of university stores on the quad you couldn’t walk to anything. I’ll apply if you want me to.”. Uh no, not after that review. Personally I loved it, but I had my turn. There are too many other excellent colleges to try to convince him that Wake is really one he should focus on. In retrospect I thought they may have lost him when neither the admissions chat or tour mentioned Business/Finance/Econ once (that I can recall that day). He may have been left feeling it wasn’t a focus for them. I didn’t ask him or feel the need to analyze it. </p>
<p>I have a friend who visited a lot of schools with her son and she said it got so they could tell whether they would like the school as soon as they got out of their car in the parking lot. There is a vibe generated I assume that they picked up on which is similar to how most of us are when we arrive at a hotel and as soon as we walk in the lobby you know whether it will be a great or just okay stay.</p>
<p>One of the things that I personally experienced is the school on a hill with the town below scenario. The two schools I am familiar with were not embraced by the town/city they were part of as the fact that the school was literally above the town made the town folks feel that the school thought they were superior to them.</p>
<p>Another detail is how the students feel about the President of the college. In one of those school on a hills, the students did not seem to like the college president. This was evident to me when I read here in cc in that school’s forum that they called the president by their first name and wrote less than positive responses to the president’s actions. </p>
<p>So there are many subtle qualities besides a good or bad school tour to be considered.</p>
<p>Along those lines, we always check out the student newspaper online beforehand. Things aren’t as sugarcoated. If it’s a smaller area the local paper will often have stories that can give insight to town/gown relations.</p>
<p>^^^ totally agree. One school my son considered had a horrible online school paper. It was a STEM school and while I know engineers are not so strong at writing. I thought that as college students they really should have been able to write a better newspaper.</p>
<p>This thread has been going on for a very long time because people find it helpful or at the very least amusing. People share their experiences…they do not feel that they have to justify them. </p>
<p>Your response was condescending when you said:
“Luckily other students are looking at deeper, more meaningful factors.”</p>
<p>It mocks people and their opinions. Certainly not necessary when a lot of what is written here is written tongue in cheek already. People recognize the absurdity of their reactions to some colleges or situations they encountered on campus visits. But as others have said, when you have a long list of schools, just about anything can be used to cut it back! </p>
<p>And yes, there are many of us who keep coming back to CC to get and share information, hear other’s opinions, and to help guide other’s with our experience when asked to assist. By no means should CC be one’s our only source of information or guidance. It is a community that works best when there is mutual respect.</p>
<p>Theorist, you said, “….Reading this thread has been very informative. It’s made me seriously reconsider the value of campus visits, at least brief pre-admission ones.”</p>
<p>I hope not. I find this thread pure fun and it is one of my favorites. I don’t think the message you should take from it is that the visits aren’t valuable. Just the opposite, the visits are highly valuable for many students who find that the visits give them confidence in the college choice they make. They often visit schools they have already determined offer what they want in terms of programs, majors, prestige, size, location etc. Visits are often about “feel” and that gut feel they get is valuable to them in choosing between multiple schools. </p>
<p>Our family did many visits and sometimes both our children saw the same schools. Their reactions to the schools were usually very different. You might be right that the value of visits in the pre-admission phase is limited; but after admission when the student is in the process of making a choice between a few colleges, visits are very helpful. And, at that point when they are looking at all affordable schools with good programs, it might come down to what you see now as petty – architecture, landscaping or the staff that the university chose to represent them to the prospective student.</p>
<p>We live in Southern California and are just a few days back from a grand tour that included U of Alabama, Tulane, Temple, UPenn and Yale + a day in NYC. Strangely enough, my D was a bit put off by the overt friendliness and politeness of the southern schools. My point being that anything different, even if it is a positive thing, can be the final straw when these kids are already comtemplating leaving family, friends & hometown and wondering how/if they will fit in. </p>
<p>Oddly enough, she did not seem at all bothered by the honking, yelling, and rude gestures that we witnessed in Philly & New York - LOL. I think she was amused…</p>
hehe, that might be slightly biased.</p>