Context: this was an exploratory type of road trip to figure out what matters and what doesn’t. He had been thinking of CS but now maybe Engineering but wants a broad education.
Georgia Tech. Up
Big, vibrant campus, self-enclosed and in a safe neighborhood with restaurants, pharmacies, grocery stores, etc.. Lots of bland brick architecture. STEM-oriented obviously, but they made a point of mentioning their non-STEM offerings, how they weave STEM into them and their arts programming. Students seem well-rounded not nose-to-the-grindstone super nerds. It comes across as collaborative, not competitive. They make a point of having Study Abroad options that the engineers can participate in.
LOTS of time spent discussing the career center, internships and coops, less mention of research. They have huge career fairs, apparently the CS one was so big they rented out the Mercedes Benz Stadium! Huge maker spaces, specific to each individual engineering major. We got to peek into the MechE ones. It seems like it does what it does very well and would be a good fit for an ambitious, fairly savvy kid. Not much mention of traditions, students only live on campus for one year and then it seems like there’s a ton of apartments nearby.
Atlanta is great! I didn’t go in with high expectations but it feels very vibrant and fun. Car-centric, but otherwise a lot to like. Walk around the Beltline.
Duke - Up but probably off
The most beautiful campus we’ve seen so far, both the grounds and the buildings. Not a piece of grass was out of place. All very faux Gothic. It has an interdisciplinary bent and lots of flexibility around changing majors and double majoring.
The engg. school is only about 30% of the undergrads, so feels fairly cozy. It sounds like you see the same faces in your classes as you move up. The guide didn’t seem to find it too hard and kids in general seemed social and happy. She mentioned strong advising. She was also basketball-mad and had done the camping out for many weeks thing to get tickets to the game.
The dining hall was amazing. We had lunch there and marveled at the food and architecture (modern cathedral vibes). Very fancy. Given the size of the campus (big and we only saw one half), I was surprised that there were almost no bikes or scooters anywhere. Not sure what the story is there. Overall it felt like a very curated, luxury experience with great academics.
Raleigh was forgettable. It felt dead and the restaurants and stores we saw were meh. My son couldn’t imagine living somewhere with no town in walking distance, so I think we’ll focus our reaches elsewhere.
UNC Chapel Hill - Down
We realized we bit off more than we could chew and canceled our NC State tour since we were staying in Chapel Hill. On reflection, we should have stuck with NC State and canceled UNC CH as it doesn’t seem to have much of a reputation for STEM. Anyway.
The campus extends off the main drag of Chapel Hill the school is big but not huge. Lots of big, beautiful trees and old architecture. Felt a little scraggly compared to Duke, but still pretty. The info session was alright as was the tour but we weren’t taken inside any buildings, so it was harder to get a sense of the place. It reminded me a little of UC Davis in some ways. Again, lots of double majoring and unstressed students. They emphasized research opportunities and the great network you’ll have. It didn’t seem nearly as career- focused as either GT or Duke. Very humanities, social science-oriented. Students overall seemed all ‘one type’ and very conformist dresswise, with a lot of CH merch. We both found that off-putting.
Chapel Hill itself did not appeal. I had thought it would be a charming college town but it’s about 4 blocks of merch shops, vape/weed shops, a surprising amount of homelessness for the size of the town and a few very mediocre restaurants. My son called the town ‘a net negative’.
Elon - Down and off
Elon is in a small, fairly remote town with more suburban sprawl around it. I’d already started to realize this was a dealbreaker but we stuck with the tour anyway.
There’s something about modern brick that I just don’t like and there’s a lot of that at Elon so I found it hard to love visually. Lots of construction and they are deliberately expanding. In the info session and during the tour they heavily emphasized their low faculty to student ratio and their attention to the student experience. In fact, when they called out the guides, they had so many that there were no more than I think 3 families per guide and we were assigned by name.
The faculty seemed very approachable and our guide seemed to be on first name terms with many of them. We chatted with the head of the CS department, which seemed pretty small. They’re in the process of creating an engineering college and moving CS there on what sounds like a 1-2 year timeline. Very modest maker spaces.
We ate at the dining hall which was not great. Limited options, not that tasty. The campus felt too big for the student body in that we barely saw anyone walking around which didn’t appeal to my son. Students seemed to be a bit of a mix, a fair amount of ‘quirky’ students, supposedly a decent number of frats/sororities though we didn’t see any.
Davidson College, Down and off
We stayed at Carnegie Lodge, Davidson’s on-campus guest house, which was quite charming and a nice break from the chain hotels.
The women leading the info session (current student plus one young AO) were quite woke and there were lots of pronouns, none of which we’d encountered anywhere else on the trip. There was lots of talk of the honor code (leave your stuff out, no cheating), a culture of caring and empathy, and how well you can get to know your professors. Ample research opportunities available and a post-freshman year summer research option that lots of students take advantage of. There’s also a cool ‘matching’ type program they have to get Davidson students working on research with professors elsewhere.
It’s a beautiful campus, again with old trees and old brick buildings. More approachable than Duke, more elegant and well-tended than Chapel Hill. High quality art everywhere, you can even rent a piece of art for your room. It wasn’t huge, though big for the size of the student body, and I think that translated into a sort of stillness. The town itself was charming though small, maybe 4 blocks of stuff. Shops and restaurants seemed fairly upscale rather than student-oriented. If you were looking for a small, intimate community with a lot of support and shared politics, this would probably be a good place. It felt like a cocoon. Not much mention of rigor though presumably it’s there. Seemed humanities-oriented though maybe that was just who we talked to. Something about the college felt very female overall, and the vast majority of guides and AOs were women. Not a good fit for my son who wants more energy and maybe something a little harder-edged.
UGA, Neutral (Not intending to apply)
He was never going to apply here, I just wanted him to visit a huge campus, so we ended up canceling our tour and just self-touring. When they say it’s a big campus, they’re not kidding. The maps on campus show walking times and I think end-to-end it was 45 minutes! The old parts are beautiful — more old trees and grand brick buildings. But the vast majority of it feels much newer, a little hulking and is much more bland. There’s a stadium on campus, which I guess translates into fun game days. Students seemed happy, friendly and social. Again a fair amount of conformism with most students dressed very similarly and not what I would call fashion-focused. Overall, this was starting to feel too big though my son didn’t seem to hate the size. It was also too sports-centric. A lot of shuttles and big roads going through campus.
Athens was great though! When I think college town, this is what I had mind. A few streets, not just a few blocks and it had great restaurants, stores and music venues. It felt like a place people lived and had some personality. We hung out in a board game cafe for a few hours and had a great time.
Emory, Up
Good presentation and tour. Overall, I’d say the college feels very well run. No brick! The campus is mostly very modern and stylish. They’ve hired great architects and the buildings are well thought through, not big, bland slabs. It creates a very different feel from the other schools. The older parts are also not brick, and instead are marble, again creating a different feel. Since they have their other more SLAC-like campus, the Atlanta campus is much more compact than you’d expect just looking at the school’s overall population. We liked that, because it translated to more energy and walkability. It did lack the big green spaces and huge old trees we’d seen elsewhere though.
The Coca-Cola affiliation is an odd one, but it seems to have translated into lots of money for the school. There’s a tradition where they hand out Mexican Coke bottles to incoming freshmen, they toast their four years and can then get their name engraved on the bottle.
The CDC is right next door, there are three Emory-affiliated hospitals and they seem to have very strong Bio and Chem departments. Our guide was pre-med though and said only about 10% of students are. It felt like more. They have a strong creative writing department and a focus on writing across all majors was mentioned a couple times.
Very strong advising (you even meet your advisor virtually before you show up) and there’s additional major-specific and grad school oriented advising. Less career talk than GT and it felt like a lot of the kids went onto law school, med school, etc.. Lots of school traditions including a skeleton that gets dressed up and roams the school and they seem to do a lot to help first years integrate into the community. It seems like they’re quite intentional about school spirit without it being all about sports. Unclear how the split campuses affect social life and if the two groups integrate in the upper years. 50% of upperclassmen live off campus and the rest live in on-campus housing that’s a shuttle bus ride away. Some Greek life but sounds like it’s not at all dominant.
The neighborhood was suburban with just one little block of restaurants, so that wasn’t great. Safe though. Supposedly a 15 minute drive into Atlanta but it felt like it was pretty far away spiritually.