<p>beenthereanddone-
That was my response to an earlier comment (at 12:40 today) essentially accusing me and my daughter of wanting a school comprised only of white students. Muhlenberg is a perfectly nice school, and one I’ll recommend to my younger daughter, who is a bit more artistic than her older sister. Can we drop this now?</p>
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<p>Why do people insist on reading things into posts that aren’t there? Preppy is a “code word” for white? Really? Sounds like paranoia to me.</p>
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<p>Well, @soze, I very specifically noted IMHO I thought the kids who wore them were among the best dressed at my kid’s school, but I happen to like preppy clothing, particularly when it’s slightly quirky. And especially when so many kids are wearing the equivalent of pajama bottoms to school!</p>
<p>I’m also not ashamed to admit I like Vineyard Vines. They treat their employees well and sell classic, high-quality clothing from what I’ve seen. They also seem to have a sense of humor about a lot of their designs.</p>
<p>@beenthereanddone, with all due respect, I think your comments about Sue22 are terribly out of line .</p>
<p>But in the spirit of getting this thread back on topic, I will note that, as liberal as my kid is, he found the quirkiness of the kids at Macalester College just too much for him. I had a similar reaction to Bard (my dream school when I was in high school) back in the day. Sometimes it’s the genuine earnestness that prospective students are rattled by! </p>
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<p>I absolutely love listening to kids at school when they are discussing their visits/lists & likes/dislikes. I’m pretty sure I’ve learned to keep a straight face through it all. Then I share at home…with hubby. He doesn’t know the kids, so it stays pretty anonymous.</p>
<p>One of my favorite threads…
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/705291-stupidest-reason-child-won-t-look-at-a-college-p1.html”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/705291-stupidest-reason-child-won-t-look-at-a-college-p1.html</a></p>
<p>Umm, I don’t know what’s going on with this thread, but to answer the question (as a student):</p>
<p>Boston University - too urban and spread out.
Northeastern - too urban and looked like it was trying to be super high tech when it wasn’t.
Brown - too many hipsters (LOVE hippies, not a hipster fan), not too liberal at all but too politically/socially active for my taste, and too urban.
MIT - HATED the campus (buildings, etc) and too urban again.
UNH - felt very sheltered and not the level of rigor I was hoping for, even in a safety. Wayyyy too big.
[Probably] Harvard - hate the area around the more central part of campus, hate the culture of elitism and finals clubs, has different views about education than I do. Just been continually reading more and more bad things about it
Clarkson - seemed run-down a bit and also kind of reminded me of my high school.</p>
<p>American: We were scolded by the receptionist–she couldn’t find our name on the list and said “You have to sign up, you can’t just show up!” And when D showed her the confirmation on her phone she didn’t even apologize. Info session video was cheesy and the tour & guide were ho-hum.</p>
<p>GWU: I liked it but D didn’t like the urban campus (or non-campus)</p>
<p>Princeton: D thought the campus & surrounding shopping/restaurant area looked too touristy.</p>
<p>@3boystogo That’s pretty much how I would describe the general tour at UF. Kinda blah. However, they do cover what most in-state folks care about, and that’s a description of what UF looks for in its holistic admissions (how important is that essay again?!). With a campus of 50,000 students, 16 colleges, etc., not much more detail is available during the short overview.</p>
<p>If anyone plans on touring UF, you really need to do one of the college specific tours. We did the standard tour, and then, later that same day, the engineering tour, which we found MUCH more informative.</p>
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<p>Did Boston schools - BU, BC, NE.
Loved BC - it’s so stately. Not a big deal that you take the T to your dorms. It’s right there. They talked about religion of course, all church based schools clear that up right away. Some are super religious and you have to sign a behavior contract, others have completely distanced themselves from their church origins. It’s important to know where they are and how you fit in. I’d prefer a moderate church based college to a left wing intolerant-of-anything- mainstream philosophy college.
Northeastern - seemed like graduate school to me. Great that they are all so serious about getting jobs. All parents want that in a school. But, I felt they were missing an element of school spirit and 19 year old lightheartedness. The buildings were pretty uninspiring, when they said it was originally a men’s engineering school, it all made sense. My S liked it though. He has a quirky side.
BU - we liked it way more than we had thought we would. Somebody in the thread didn’t like it was on the river? Random. The river is so beautiful, and makes it feel like you have space and aren’t cramped in the city. The view from the new Admissions office was stunning. Maybe not as academic as the other two, but you could make it what you want. And how cool is it to live in brownstones as your dorms? It seemed like a good midpoint between the vibes of BC and NE.</p>
<p>Alabama vs TCU? You’re so right, Alabama is on top of their game in recruiting right now. Who else gives GUARANTEED full tuition scholarships to freshman based on SAT? I attended their info session in Orange County, CA. They packed a ballroom with Southern Cal kids and their parents, dying to go to Tuscaloosa. The presenter was an engineering grad, who had the huge personality and presence of a Top 10 football coach. He was awesome and launched right into everyone’s fears about going there. He met them head on - assuring the crowd that they were up and coming in academics, have a great honors program where you get special treatment, told us about the fabulous new dorms and athletic facility, etc etc.
They gave out T shirts, lanyards, glossy brochures, it was first class.
TCU’s nice, but my D toured there and the guide said they were building a new library because they’re trying to get the kids to study more. Oops.</p>
<p>Ugh, UCLA. Tour guide had too many negative things to say about USC, trying to make themselves look better by comparison. They should stick to talking about their own school. Campus not that clean. 3 people in 2-man dorm rooms.
At USC, they didn’t mention UCLA, except in context of the crosstown rivalry football game. </p>
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<p>Interesting negative experience. Did anybody LIKE Tulane? It’s one of my son’s top choices but we have not visited.</p>
<p>That’s the good thing about this thread. You might love a school for the reasons that someone else dumped it!</p>
<p>I think plenty of us love Tulane! (proud '89 graduate of SPH&TM) Interesting about BC - when we visited, they stressed that it’s fine to apply if you’re not Catholic (we are not) but when S2 did apply and we filled out the Profile, BC had a supplement and one of the questions asked was “where do you attend church”. They stressed it because of finding scholarships (riiiggght) - I thought it was weird. </p>
<p>Yes, I’ve had students really like Tulane, as well as some who were lukewarm. My own visit was pretty good.</p>
<p>I happened to be on a Tulane tour where the only other guests were an admitted student (presidential scholarship candidate) and her family. The admitted student was from a Chicago public school near my home and seemed far more alternative/hip/nerdy/urban than most of the Tulane students. The tour guide was a cheerleader and sorority member, well-informed but very mainstream and perky. I thought, uh-oh, this is the wrong guide for the hipster admitted student, she’s going to be rolling her eyes out of her skull when we start hearing about Greek Week. But when I spoke to that student afterwards, she’d loved the school and the tour. So who knows? Even after going on hundreds of tours myself, I can’t predict how students will feel.</p>
<p>For those of you who loved a college that you visited, please post here:</p>
<p>[Colleges</a> you (surprisingly?) loved after visiting 
](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1446880-colleges-you-surprisingly-loved-after-visiting.html][b]Colleges”>Colleges you (surprisingly?) loved after visiting :) - Parents Forum - College Confidential Forums)</p>
<p>For those trying to find visitors’ best (and worst!) impressions of colleges, it really is helpful to keep the two threads separate. ;)</p>
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<p>That was no engineering grad, it was Chuck Karr, the dean of the engineering college!</p>
<p>We loved our Tulane visit earlier this year. Several times during the tour, random students shouted to us to just come there. Several others came over to high five the tour guide. At some school tours, the students seem stressed and unhappy. The Tulane students were all smiling and having fun. We know the academics are great, but if the students are also having fun, that’s impressive.</p>
<p>I was surprised when my son crossed UC Santa Barbara and UC Santa Cruz off of his list. I think we had a rather unpleasant introduction to UCSB when our self-guided tour was complicated by a very poorly-drafted walking map of campus, but I still thought the setting would blow him away. We had torrential rain in Santa Cruz - it’s hard to appreciate the beauty when you can’t see anything or walk around. We thought Davidson was oppressively clean-cut and preppy. I was amused by the parent whose daughter was turned off by arty hipsters, coming out of a New England boarding school. As products of boarding schools, my husband, son, and I all shunned colleges that seemed as if they’d be just four more years of the same. . . and I always thought the “J. Crew” stereotype was invented by people who never attended the schools, where students either wore the same regulation outfit every day or rolled out of bed and dashed to class in their pajamas. </p>
<p>DD- OU crossed off almost immediately due to the hills (quote “I would fall in a hot second”) and the quality of the dorms. She’s refusing hall dorms at this point.</p>