We just did tours of a number of New England LACs. Some quick thoughts:
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Middlebury. I really liked the school and we had a great tour guide. My daughter thought it was good, but not good enough to do ED for. Middlebury is so incredibly ED focused that it drives the regular admissions rate to very low levels. So she will likely will not even apply.
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Bates. Loved all the people and the food (free meal vouchers!). The school has a reputation for these things and the did not disappoint. We did not like the neighborhood. My daughter just did not feel safe there. I am sure that official stats will indicate that Bates is incredibly safe, but my daughter’s perception = reality. Crossing this one off of our list.
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Wellesley. I posted on this elsewhere. I LOVED Wellesley. It seemed more like a Summer Camp than a College. Just a beautiful wooded setting on Lake Waban. Gorgeous old buildings that were updated on the inside–no musty odors. Top tier academics and a great message of female empowerment. Campus was OPEN unlike a lot of schools during the summer. Great little town right off of campus. I was blown away. My daughter thought it was OK only because she sensed a mean vibe among the students on campus. She may apply, but wants to research this more.
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Dartmouth. Great info session followed by an AWFUL tour. I almost reported our tour guide–she was that bad. Admittedly, parents asked her some bad questions or asked her questions about things that we already had talked about. But the tour guide was just INCREDULOUS at their stupidity. She had no grace whatsoever and it was really off-putting. I had to constantly remind my daughter not to let the actions of one person color her whole view of a school. But the damage was done. Off of our list.
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Smith. This one is FUNNY. We had a great visit. Loved the info session, loved the tour, loved the campus, loved the housing system. My daughter came in talking about ED’ing there and the visit only intensified her feeling. Then, when we and other families were leaving, we all got $50 parking tickets from Smith. We all literally printed out the parking passes that Smith emailed us and parked where we were supposed to. The tickets said that we were using “lost, stolen, altered, or invalid parking passes.” The terrible thing was…the parking lots were NEARLY EMPTY. I reached out to Admissions and they are mortified and trying to rectify the problem. Still, Smith is a strong ED candidate for my daughter, but they had better fix this parking thing. Very likely to apply, but this parking ticket thing is literally a “bureaucratic litmus test.”
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Bowdoin. Super nice people and a terrific tour. Great campus and academics. They gave us a meal discount and the food was really good. One thing rubbed me the wrong way. An AO talked about “baring your soul” in admissions essays. Then she would not answer a parent’s question about regular admissions rates and ED admissions rates (the answers are in the public realm). My daughter didn’t care, but I really did not like this. But the school is just so hard to get into that it is likely coming off of my daughter’s list.
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Mount Holyoke. God, what a beautiful campus! The only problem was…everything was CLOSED. We also had an odd tour. It was a slightly hot day (maybe 80 degrees) and our tour guide kept us inside for most of the tour. But MHC is SO PRETTY and this was a mistake on the school’s part. I don’t think that our tour group came away with an appreciation for MHC and most people just left after the tour. They also had only one info session, but it was hours before our tour, so we missed it. My daughter and I stayed and walked around after the tour and looked at the outside of buildings, but basically could not get in anywhere. We did meet a very nice person from MHC athletics who enthusiastically answered my daughter’s questions about volleyball (she is a candidate for D3 volleyball). Will apply, but our visit felt incomplete.
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Holy Cross. We added this school as an afterthought and my daughter LOVED it. Great tour guide. Great gym facility. Great science center. Nice dorm. I learned that my daughter is pretty “facilities driven” which gives me some pause for concern as I personally believe that people/culture > facilities. But what she says goes. Will apply.
One surprise to me as a business person. I was a little shocked at how unsophisticated some of the schools were in selling what is effectively a $400K product.