<p>My daughter eliminated University of Portland after a very brief visit. She was supposed to be there for a full preview day. She cut out immediately after the opening welcome speech, after hearing that a priest lives in every residence hall on campus.</p>
<p>Iām not a parent, but I am a student who has visited nearly two dozen schools. Iāll share my nightmares, as there were a few.</p>
<p>Marist College - HATED every second of it. Went in with a totally open mind, as many kids from my HS attend. Ended up with the most annoying tour guide Iāve encountered, hated how spread out everything is, was not impressed by the kids, and hated all the hills. Immediately off the list.</p>
<p>Fordham University - My momās alma mater. My uncle also attended undergrad and law school. For their happiness, I wanted to like it, but I loathed it. Hated the location so much, I didnāt even want to tour. The campus is nice, but the students I met were unimpressive.</p>
<p>Vassar - Stopped by since Marist was such a bust, and theyāre practically neighbors. Would be a great academic fit, but felt like it was a ghost town. It was a Saturday evening around 5pm in Octoberā¦campus should be filled to the brim with kids out and about, but I saw a grand total of two students. Didnāt bother scheduling a tour for the next day.</p>
<p>Drexel - Went in loving the co-op program, couldnāt get out the door fast enough. Our presentation took place in a dingy, dank old classroom that was so removed from any populated area that the adcom didnāt even know where it was. The adcom who gave the presentation asked what everyoneās planned majors were, everyone was bio, business or international studies (myself). Proceeded to spend 15 minutes on the engineering program. Okay, you have a great program. But not a single kid was remotely interested. Very very annoying. Was also the ugliest campus, all the buildings were in disrepair and had nasty watermarks and even a hole in the wall. NOT what prospective parents/students want to see.</p>
<p>Temple - Had a tour and info session scheduled. Drove from Drexel to Temple- so yes, a negative state of mind, BUT- we didnāt even get out of the car. Ten minutes to get there, and I knew within three that I would never, ever live in Philadelphia, never mind that neighborhood. Iām just not an āurban personā, at least, when it comes to NYC or Philly (funny, because Iām from suburban NYC area). </p>
<p>Love at first sight:
BC (my mom and I, and the second time, us plus my dad. Dad whispered to me during the tour, āWho do I make the check out to?ā) Was my first choice from Day 1, still is. Waiting anxiously for a letter now!</p>
<p>Fairfield - Gorgeous campus, but I felt the academics arenāt at the level of the other schools Iām looking at. I stayed with a friend for 2 nights, 3 days, and LOVED it. Went to a class with her and was very impressed by the students. Great vibe, and Iām partial to Jesuits 
I applied EA, will be hearing back shortly.</p>
<p>Villanova - Visited in the summer, as my grandfatherās passing in the spring forced us to reschedule our trip. Hardly any students on campus, but we spoke with the secretary for Undergrad Admissions - Milly, the MOST helpful and insightful college employee, inc adcoms and deans, Iāve met - and a student who offered to show us around while his laundry finished drying. Took a 20 minute tour, and the adcom for my area happened to be available when we were on our way out. Did not like him - he was very, very negative. Basically told me that IF I was admitted, I wouldnāt be able to pay for it. (Thankfully, he was moved to a different region this year). On the walk to the car, I burst into tears because he discouraged me so much, and until he opened his mouth, Nova had moved from hardly on my radar to my #2 choice. Turns out, my SATs and ACTs far surpassed the numbers he told me I needed, and I fit the admitted student profile extremely well. Waiting on a letter from them, should hear in the next two weeks.</p>
<p>I also applied to:
George Washington (LOVED their small, separate campus; if I matriculate, Iāll be requesting to live there for at least my freshman year),
Assumption College (Worcester, MA - gorgeous campus, my safety),
Boston U (hated it the first time, stayed with a friend for the weekend, and applied the following week. Students there are incredibly cool, mature, focused, intelligent, and unique),
C of the Holy Cross (very cool students, saw myself fitting in their after about ten minutes on campus),
Loyola Maryland (totally a hidden gem still. Visited on the recommendation of a teacher Iām close to, and loved every second of it. I have reservations because of the distance, but if I receive a scholarship or acceptance into the Honors Program, itās certainly in the mix),
St. Johnās U and Adelphi (safeties, only applied because I figured the reasons that would keep me close to home -if one of my parents or my sister fell ill, or, God forbid, worse- would require that I attend a cheaper school I could commute to). </p>
<p>Hope this input helps someone, I know Iāve made my younger sisterās search a lot easier!</p>
<p>Ones that made the strongest impressions:</p>
<p>S1: Went to Middlebury first and loved it. Brown- loved it. Great tour. Great location- self contained but right in the city. Wesleyan- not as enthusiastic, but liked it. Amherst- terrible tour guide, totally turned us off. Dartmouth- very impressed but seemed kind of cold. University of Rochester- liked alot. MIT- loved it. Goes to Brown and loves it.</p>
<p>S2: Emerson College- loved it. Right smack in the middle of the theater district in Boston. Unbelievable facilities. BU- hated it. Too big, lousy tour guide, very impersonal. Wesleyan- great tour guide who spent a lot of time with us- impressed with the roominess of the dorms (which we didnāt see the first time). Middlebury- loved it. Best of all: Vassar. Absolutely fell in love. Gorgeous campus. Great tour and info session. Spent the night and went to a class- just fabulous. Applied ED1. Find out tomorrow :/</p>
<p>mommygā¦hope it is good news tomorrow for S2!</p>
<p>Nelly29 - That guy at Villanova has to be the one that made my friendās dd cry too. He told her he ānever heard of herā private HS in NJ and berated her for visiting when she should have been in school (but her private had the day off, he didnāt listen to her say that). What a jerk and someone should not just move him off a region but maybe out of admissions!</p>
<p>@amanda - Sounds like the same guy! My first impression when we started talking was āWow, this guy is a jerk!ā Sent a two-paragraph thank you email the next morning anyway, telling him how great I thought the school was, and how much Iād love to attend. Never even got an answer. THANK GOD someone else read my application this year; if he was still the admissions guy for NY, I would have written a letter asking to be read by someone else.</p>
<p>Wonder if heās the guy who did a college fair in Pittsburgh last Fall, who told my D that V is so exclusive that most applicants werenāt acceptedā¦without even asking what her credentials were! D was totally turned off.</p>
<p>Nelly- Thanks for this. I found it enlightening!</p>
<p>Did any of you who had the problems at Villanova go back and contact the Dean of Admissions? This rep is damaging the reputation of the school and negatively affecting candidates. I understand if youāre worried about the effect on your application but if you chose not to apply as a result of this personās actions I strongly urge you to send a mature, well-written email explaining your reaction to this rep. No business wants someone actively discouraging customers; conversely if Admissions supports this type of behavior then youāve learned a lot about the type of school youād be dealing with.</p>
<p>^Sheesh! That Villanova guy sounds like a real piece of work!! I canāt imagine why heād go around being such a ****. Is he thinking that by touting āhisā school as impossibly hard to get into, people will be all the more driven to apply? Does he just not have any people skills? Does Villanova know how he comes across to potential applicants? I mean, what gives here?</p>
<p>thank you holliesue. todayās the day at āthe end of the dayā. no sleep last night and my tummy hurts :/</p>
<p>Undergraduate students do not teach lectures.</p>
<p>I am an undergrad at Case, many of the classes here go research/project presentations. The student was probably presenting his material to the class.</p>
<p>Every place I have been a student or an instructor, it has been my understanding that the qualification for teaching undergraduates is to have at least a masterās level degree (or be at a masterās level if in a phd program). Teaching assistants can be graduate students not yet at masterās level, because they are not the primary instructors. The qualification to teach graduate students is to be a phd. So undergraduates would not technically be qualified to teach other undergraduates.</p>
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<p>@nelly & amanda, wonder if schools really understand how important the adcoms & the tour guides are to this whole process? Having been through this with 4 children now, our last two tour guides really made a great impression & were actually very influential with the children deciding to enroll! One is a Freshman & one is a Sophomore now.</p>
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<p>I wonder if we could get back to the basics of this thread and just give quick impressions of the schools.</p>
<p>Putturani - Interesting. My D LOVED the Brown (science) tour guides, and it totally sold her on the place. Her worst visit was at Wellesley, and she went in very disposed to love it. She said that before visiting her issue was that it was a womenās college, and otherwise a good fit. After her visit, she said she had no problems with womenās colleges generally, she just didnāt like Wellesley. It made me sad.</p>
<p>I crossed off Georgetown and Wesleyan (polar opposites, huh?) nearly immediately after visiting.</p>
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<p>^why, what were your impressions?</p>
<p>My daughter went to a planned overnight for students interested in Wellesley. She had been very excited to attend, and ended up really disappointed in her experience. The hosting student was a first-year who promptly announced that she was hung-over! She had only been on campus two months, couldnāt answer my daughterās questions about classes, etc,. She also wanted to avoid the ācrowdsā of the weekend event, so instead of following the programming, she brought my daughter to eat at other places, etc, so my D didnāt get the dining hall experience, or interaction with other visiting students! It was awful, and D decided not to apply.
Wellesley really should have been much more careful when selecting their hosts. And I donāt understand why colleges use first-year students for admissions work at all. They tend to be under-informed and have very little to contribute beyond whatever the catalog says!</p>
<p>Sorry if this is long but Iāve been lurking on many threads on CC since we began the whole college process with my now 12th grade son. Iāve learned so much and enjoyed what others have shared so hereās my visit story: Columbus Day weekend our family of 5 trekked the 5 hours up to Syracuse to visit open houses at both SUNY ESF (College of Environmental Science and Forestry) and SUNY at Cortland. Prior to the trip, I LOVED ESF. It was my āfavorite school on paperā because of the great third party reviews, the small-school-big-school benefits it shares with Syracuse University (son loves spectator sports and whole familiy are big NY Jets fans), the quality of the green conscious civil engineering program, and the price tag. Son was open to checking it out and I was hoping he would love it too once we got there. By the end of our visit, son hated it. . . . . . .but I hated it more! What went wrong? Hard to describe but just felt like a place you didnāt want to be. On a campus filled with beautiful modern and refurbished buildings, opening presentation took place in the basement of the oldest most depressing building they had. (Husband remarked it reminded him of the 3 times he visited and slept on a WWII battleship when each of my 3 boys were cub scouts. . .like boiler room of your old elementary school in the 70ās). Downer. Once the tour began, on a classes-in-session day at 10:30am on a sunny October OPEN HOUSE day, the whole campus was a ghost town. No students walking around, hanging out, tossing a frisbee. Saw one student on a bench, sleeping. Not being a morning person myself, I wasnāt expecting a frenzy of activity but itās 10:30, not 7:30. . . .and it is OPEN HOUSE DAY. Downer.
In the campus library, we saw about 6 students but all were sleeping on chairs in the lobby like people stranded at an airport during a snowstorm. Downer. Lab facilities and other buildings we toured looked clean and modern and nice. But the handful of students we passed walking around in onesies and twosies had heads down, staring at the floor, not talking, laughing or anything. Downer. And worse, in every stairwell of every building and about every 25 feet in every single hallway was a small flyer hanging that read āDepressed? Call or visit blah blah blahā. While I couldnāt put my finger on exactly why. . .I actually FELT depressed walking around this campus and all those flyerss made me feel like it must not just be me. Remember, I came here LOVING this campus and hoping my son would love it too. By the time we get to the table touting the brand spanking new dorms that are currently under construction and will be opening for all the incoming 2011 fall freshmen, Iām ready to call the number on those depressed flyers! And the students manning the reception area around the posters and artistsā renditions of the up-and-coming new dorms complete with swatches of the carpet and paint and wallpaper?. . . . .all asleep or half asleep on leather chairs! By noon, as we drove around the downtown of Syracuse on our way out of town, the whole city of Syracuse felt like a grey, depressing ghost town. The SU campus is right next door to ESF. Itās a school with +12,000 students and we didnāt see ANY people outside. None. And itās now midday on a beautiful sunny October day. Syracuse is know for itās long, grey, snow-filled winters so I would expect those days to be a bit rough but this just felt wrong. I had kept quiet about all my observations during the visit but on the 30 minute ride to SUNY Cortlandās open house, I asked my son, āSo, what did you think?ā. Heās a good kid and knew how much I had loved the school and I think he didnāt want to hurt my feelings when he answered, āWell, I think the new dorms are going to be really nice but I couldnāt really see myself there.ā At which point I blurted out, "I HATED IT! I wanted to love it but I hated it and thought it was depressing! And why was no one even awake during OPEN HOUSE!!!? Upon our arrival at SUNY Cortland, we saw tons of students, in their red school shirts, EVERYWHERE. We had missed the administrative presentations but got on a campus tour with 2 freshmen young men whose love for their school was really infectious and charming and they gave us a real āinsidersā view of the school. It was very refreshing after the ESF experience. When we left there, son remarked, āI liked it. Itās what I picture in my head when I think of what a college should look and feel likeā. Needless to say, son applied to SUNY Cortland (for a 3+2 Physics/Engineering program with SUNY Buffalo because they donāt have engineering at Cortland). If he ends up attending (he was accepted!) , he can still attend sporting events and concerts at SUās Carrierdome because itās only a 30 minute bus ride. Plus Cortland is a pretty sports oriented school itself. We are keeping fingers crossed that he gets accepted to NCSU for engineering. After flying down for a visit just after Thanksgiving, son declared it his first choice and liked everything about it. For the record, I really liked it too. Other schools we visited and the result: SUNY Oneonta (he liked it. . .a lot felt similar to Cortland but he liked Cortland a lot better so he didnāt apply; my take: agreed with son but was a little put off by the 4 students smoking a hookah outside the freshman dorm we visited on the tour!), SUNY Albany (enthusiastic tour guide who LOVED her school but son didnāt care for it and didnāt apply; my take: dorm we visited was gross and prison-like, empty booze bottles lined up against the window of a freshman dorm visible from the outside not something a parent wants to see; cigarette butts EVERYWHERE and many hawked loogies (sp?) on the sidewalks. Students who love/like their school wouldnāt do this so bad vibe for me. If son was into political science, opportunites due to proximity of state capital would force me look past the āvibeā stuff but since heās not, was glad he didnāt like it either. SUNY Stony Brook: Tour not great but a strong school and closest to home. Son liked and did apply. SUNY New Paltz: Lovely campus, great tour, fun and enthusiastic tour guides. Son enjoyed this visit and the campus but ultimately did not apply because he is more sporty and less artsy and even though he liked it, he just did not see himself there. My take: I kind of agree and ultimately heās the one that has to live and learn there. Son also applied to but we did not yet visit: SUNY University at Buffalo, UMASS Amherst, WVU, and UCONN (BIG reach). He was accepted into engineering at WVU but the others we are still waiting to find out. Before he commits to anywhere, we WILL visit. Our family experience has absolutely shown me that no amount of research, CC, reading, videos, word-of-mouth can take the place of visiting in person and seeing how a college āfeelsā. Again, sorry so long but I felt good to purge all that!</p>