<p>^ Hey, as long as the father completes the common app, is accepted, and pays tuition for himself. I’d feel pretty sorry for the daughter coming from those circumstances, talk about helicoptering.</p>
<p>I ended up holding an impromptu 1/2 hour information session at my alma mater. While my son had his interview I wandered over to the information session to listen in. Because of a snafu the official presenter was late and as we waited I overheard a family trying to puzzle out the answer to a question they had about the school. I’m a pretty active alum and I had helped my son thoroughly research the school so I had a lot of information and I volunteered the answer to the question. We got to talking and before I knew it there were a couple of other families joining in. One of the families suggested I head up to the podium!</p>
<p>I hope my perspective was helpful, but who knows, perhaps the next entry we’ll see here will be, “I was at an information session and this obnoxious woman was spouting off…”
;-)</p>
<p>Sue, we’ll back you!! </p>
<p>I’ll be honest, when I’ve been at admissions chats at S2’s school with S3 (one general and one special interest), and specific questions have been asked about S2’s major that were not answered by people sitting close to me I have spoken to them afterwards to give them the answer if I knew it as well as anything else they might want to know about the department that I have knowledge of. People have always seemed appreciative.</p>
<p>Snowdog - I felt bad for her too. They were so overbearing. I wonder where she ended up.</p>
<p>I have no problem with a parent asking a relevant question during a tour as long as they don’t monopolize the entire tour (which has never happened so far). The subject might very well (and usually is) be something that others in the group were also thinking about.</p>
<p>I’ve been known to … uh …ahem … ask a question or two myself. :o</p>
<p>As far as not being able to hear what a tour guide is saying – now that’s a pet peeve of mine. It has happened a couple of times.</p>
<p>One tour started out on a narrow sidewalk on campus. There were a lot of us and the guide started yapping away while we were practically in single file 30 or 40 persons back.</p>
<p>Dear tour guides: Wait to speak until we can circle around you!</p>
<p>^ I totally agree with you. Another thing i hate is when the tour guides speaks specifically to one family rather than the whole group</p>
<p>This thread has surpassed 1 million views. However, it is far behind the 1.3 million views for “Colleges for the Jewish B student”</p>
<p>We have some catching up to do.</p>
<p>Colleges my child crossed off list after viewing them: Everyone but the first one we saw. The first school, my alma mater, New College of Florida, has first-year dorms with bathrooms in each room (shared by two people). Since then she requests to look at the bathrooms in the dorms, and doesn’t want to go because there’s no privacy. It’s a big quality of life issue.</p>
<p>So, it might not really come down to this, but she keeps harping back to it. We visited Sarasota in January, also, when it was 75 there and 10 degrees at home, so that also made a big impression.</p>
<p>I can relate to the bathroom issue, although a negative is that since the bathrooms are in each room, it may be the student’s responsibility to keep them clean all year. At NYU, all dorms offer private bathrooms for each room. I’ve often wondered how the kids didn’t come down with the black plague from the lack of cleanliness. But I do feel if built up the kid’s resistance! :)</p>
<p>At my kids’ college, some bathrooms are in the suite, and have to be cleaned by the kids, and others are in the hall, and are cleaned by staff. Believe me, it is WAY BETTER to have the bathroom cleaned by staff, even if everybody in the dorm sees you naked.</p>
<p>^ right with you Hunt! Especially with 4+ sharing the bathroom they have to clean.</p>
<p>That is one more item to add to your kid’s college packing list - flip flops or some type of shower shoes to avoid athlete’s foot in the showers and in the shared bathrooms.</p>
<p>Yes, let’s just say in the men’s shower there is more than just athletes foot lurking by drains :)</p>
<p>Yikes. Now that you say that, I can’t imagine wanting to go to a school with co-ed bathrooms in the dorms.</p>
<p>Disgustingness is not necessarily gender-linked, as I can attest from the co-ed bathroom I shared in college. I’d still rather have mixed disgustingness that gets cleaned up every once in a while, than single-sex disgustingness that gets cleaned once or twice a semester. Also, having the bathroom cleaned by staff reduces conflict with that one suitemate who won’t clean.</p>
<p>Just returned from another college tour vacation. We visited Indiana University, Vanderbilt, UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke. Son marked UNC-Chapel Hill off his list because of their policy of limiting % of OOS freshman students. He really doesn’t want to feel like a Yankee in the land of Dixie. IU and Duke are still on his list and Vanderbilt has been added. I was hoping that University of Michigan would start looking better to him since we are in-state but I think this trip has actually made it move further down his list.</p>
<p>At New College we had maid service that vaccuumed our rooms once a week and cleaned our private bathrooms. The bathrooms were never disgusting.</p>
<p>I think I would rule out a college that offered maid service. Seriously, if kids can’t learn to clean their own private space themselves, there’s a little too much entitlement going on.</p>
<p>I lived in a dorm in a coed suite with a coed bathroom 35 years ago. I liked it that way because then I was sure that my mother, who lived dangerously close by, would have a reason not to make a spontaneous visit… and I was right.</p>