<p>We just came back from a trip where we did some drive-throughs and she didn’t cross off anything, though she’s only a rising junior.</p>
<p>Haverford - she was pretty sure she wanted BIG CITY and larger school but we were on our way to Philly so we walked through. Her comment - “I could see myself here, it’s nice”. Hmm. </p>
<p>Bryn Mawr - she was humoring me, she doesn’t want a womens college except maybe Barnard. It was hot, we drove around and didn’t get out of the car.</p>
<p>Fast drive by: UPenn and Drexel. To me, “meh”. Drexel seemed all high rises and UPenn just all over the place.</p>
<p>She then spent a week at Temple Engineering and is still out of town so I won’t hear if that’s on/off the table until next week. </p>
<p>Completely agree that these mom-daughter road trips are a blast (loved them with S’12 also). I am going to try to squeeze in one more before volleyball gets nuts in August :)</p>
<p>OHMomof2–Re: Splash. My son has attended the Yale & MIT Splash courses and is presently attending Yale’s summer Sprout program. He has loved each session and only wishes he could attend more often! The Learning Unlimited site is not always current so you may want to check each school’s site for the program and registration dates. You can just google ‘Yale Splash’ or like their Facebook page in order to receive updates.</p>
<p>I believe MIT plans to run the HS and middle school Splash sessions separately this year. (HS will be weekend before Thanksgiving and middle school in the spring.) Yale’s is scheduled for Nov 9th, Columbia’s on Nov 16th and MIT both Sat & Sun of the following weekend. The MIT program attracts a lot of the CTY kids from further afield. </p>
<p>I only know the NE programs but they are offered at other schools nationwide. I have been very impressed with both the offerings and the administration of the programs. Yale’s runs as a student organization.</p>
<p>Hmm, we had wonderful experience visiting at UW (did become my son’s first choice and he just finished freshman year). The info session was professional, organized, effective (unlike some other big publics we had been to). When my son went to admitted students day (probably 600 people, 200 students plus parents), the admissions rep he had spoken with for 10 minutes, 6 months before on his fall visit, stopped him in the dining hall line, recognizing him and talking with him about his decision.</p>
<p>No, Barrons, it is actually possible for someone not to care for UW. Honest. Believe it or not. It doesn’t mean “axe to grind.” It just means it’s not to their taste. Which is ok. Not every school has to be to everyone’s particular taste. It doesn’t reflect well on people who can’t just accept that not everyone loved “their” school.</p>
<p>Some schools are very good about making you feel welcome, IU for one. They treat students from Chgo. suburbs like gold. I didnt visit WI ( dh did) but have heard from many…
tour was nothing. I def. think some schools are much better at the first impression.
Purdue was not great…my alma mater. Very disappointing. I know WI is well respected,
they’re just not that welcoming and stingy w/ merit money ;)</p>
<p>Alums w/ kids attending UW are outraged, as are many others… they did decide to freeze tuition I believe in response to finding $1B spread over numerous accounts… hidden. </p>
<p>I would agree with 3togo about Penn. I lived in Philly when I was young and drove by Penn many times and thought it was no big deal. Just some very tall buildings. When I finally walked through the campus, though, it was completely different than I expected.</p>
<p>How about a thread called “Colleges your child crossed off the list before visiting and then put it back on the list after visiting?” ;)</p>
<p>We had gone to one of those large college fairs some time ago. And my daughter took an immediate dislike to the rep for one of the schools. No matter how hard I tried to convince my D that she’ll never see that person again (after admission) it didn’t work. She refused to even consider the place.</p>
<p>Well, many months later, we went on a college visit trip and she agreed to stop by that college fair school only because it was close by to where we were going to be anyway.</p>
<p>And, of course, she liked it a lot.</p>
<p>There’s just no accounting for the teenage mind.</p>
<p>I agree. I’ve seen schools dissed on here that we love and I see schools on here that we didn’t care for that others love. When students go on group visits to schools from our high school it’s not at all uncommon for one to love the school and another to hate it - all from the same visit.</p>
<p>Different strokes for different folks. There is no “one” good college nor any Top 100 (in any order) that applies to every student.</p>
<p>What continues to fascinate me about this thread is how small things make a big impression, on students and on parents. For instance – to draw on the current comments about making students feel welcome – we are instate at Indiana and my son assumed that is where he was headed – until his visit. The admissions rep was unintelligible, literally reading the bullets from the power point and nothing more, and came across as uneducated and unqualified. That experience started the doubt in my son’s mind. When we got to UW, the ad rep in the same type of on-campus info session was articulate, intelligent, and charismatic. Throw in State St and Lake Mendota, and he was sold. If he had a different ad rep at the IU session, would he be there now? Maybe. </p>
<p>I suspect these two schools are not alone in balancing their in-state/out of state populations. My son has heard lots of stories about friends of his friends who didn’t get into Madison instate and wound up at other UW campuses. IU has similarly been pushing to increase the stats for instate kids, with a 3.6 unweighted average gpa – catching many families by suprise that the their solid, but not exceptional student, cannot get in to Bloomington. On the other hand, IU has done a good job at giving merit money to both in-state and out of state high stat students, though we have heard that the automatic in-state scholarship has dropped to $6k. It used to basically cover in-state tuition, now it doesn’t. Not sure how that will impact high stat in-state kids, whether it is a calculated decision that they are not going to lose those kids to other schools if they are paying some for tuition. From everything we hear, there is not much merit money at UW in-state, and as an OOS family, we sure wouldn’t expect merit money to go to OOS students.</p>
<p>I don’t allow the drive-by although my kids have tried - ‘I’m not getting out, I don’t like it already.’ We’re here, we are getting out and seeing the main quad on foot even if we only stay 20 minutes. No campus - okay maybe Drexel - looks remotely the same on foot as it does out on the main road in a car. My daughter wouldn’t be attending what she then decided was her dream school if we had judged campus with a drive-by.</p>
<p>Thirty years ago, I visited UCSC as a high school senior, decked out in my polo shirt and pleated skirt. Although I found the campus to be spectacularly beautiful, I ruled it out even before the tour began because I could tell I just did not fit in with the student body (which was decidedly hippier back then). Fast forward 30 years, and I recently took my son to visit UCSC. He did like the student body (he’s much earthier than I was) and I think would have fit in nicely there, but he ruled it out for entirely different reasons than I did: He wants small classes, and though he thought it was beautiful, he didn’t like the sprawling campus. </p>
<p>A really superficial thing bothered me on our visit to Puget Sound: The first people we saw were a father/son also visiting the school. The student had a toothpick in his mouth. Even walked into the admissions office with the toothpick still there. I found this really tacky and it made me wonder about the students the school attracts. It turned out the father and son were from Georgia. I later mentioned this to a friend who is from the South and she enlightened me that it’s kind of a “cool” think boys his age do. So I guess we were exposed to an interesting Southern regionalism while in the Pacific Northwest. Son loved the school and it’s his solid safety, but I haven’t quite forgiven the toothpick. </p>
<p>Silliest reason son ruled out a school: We did a Stanford drive-by (slim odds of getting in anyhow). When he saw the Mission-style architecture, he said no way was he going to Northern Calif for a campus with red tile roofs, which are in abundance in Southern Calif where we live. Ok then. </p>
<p>About the information sessions: I generally find them to be far too generic with info you can find online. Not enough about what distinguishes this school from the others we are visiting. </p>
<p>Spring break road trip with my son = one of my fondest memories.</p>
<p>I have no axe to grind with UW-Madison…I just was mentioning that our first tour was not welcoming at all although I was very impressed with the university setting (especially being on the two lakes) and of course am familiar with their academic reputation. Our 2nd tour for S2 was much better although he did not decide to attend there as he felt more wanted someplace else. We will be going with S3 to take a tour for him this summer to give him an opportunity to see if he would like to apply or not depending on what he thinks. Everyone has different perceptions of the same place depending on many factors.</p>
<p>kjcp – I agree, different perceptions, different factors – all so unpredictable. Our kids – and we – can react, sometimes irrationally and sometimes for good reason, to the smallest things. In this torturous process, I know I was looking for some small glimmer that would help me sort this out, and so read significance into small moments, right or wrong. </p>
<p>I continue to enjoy reading about all the little things that turned kids off (or on) along the way.</p>
<p>+1 to snowdog’s comments. The “I am not getting out, I don’t like it already” would be totally unacceptable to me. That would go for college visits or any other place that I took the time to drive my child to.</p>
<p>Midwest Mom, I really enjoy this thread. I am looking forward to touring with my son seeing what S3 likes, or doesn’t like about the ones we visit. This is my youngest so this will be the last round of tours…bittersweet.</p>