^^^ This is the best post of the week right here.
@RustyTrowel Are you building a list for more than one student? Unusual to see an engineering school like Olin on the same list as Carleton and Kenyon.
@doschicos One student; complex game board. Evaluating Physics, Engineering, Engineering Physics, Physics + 3/2 or 4/2 Engineering. Also linguistics, Latin, Japanese…gads.
Crossed off:
Elon - Absolutely beautiful campus, but we went to an open house that was very crowded, disorganized and impersonal.
Villanova - great tour guide, but the food was bad and D didn’t like the idea of being forced to take certain religion courses.
Bryn Mawr - D had a negative feeling from the info. session so we skipped the tour.
Emerson - Seems like a great place for certain majors, but only a few city blocks of buildings and no campus was unappealing to D.
UNC - I loved it but D thought it was too big.
Moved UP:
Wellesley- beautiful and so many great opportunities.
Davidson- great academics. D loved sitting in on a British Lit class.
Lafayette- beautiful area, friendly people, great school spirit, nice overall LAC
U. Richmond - like the city, all the school has to offer, nice atmosphere, fun traditions
“Bryn Mawr - D had a negative feeling from the info. session so we skipped the tour.”
Oh, that’s too bad. IMO, one of the most beautiful, stunning campuses and I’ve seen a lot.
We had a negative impression of Bryn Mawr’s admission office, too. Too bad, they do have a beautiful campus.
Bryn Mawr was one that moved up when we visited. The admissions info session was great - it was a small group and they still split it in half and it was more questions and answers than any other place that we visited. Our tour guide was great, too. We visited because we were in the area, and my D did not think she would like it, but after that visit my D put it on her college list. Even though she did not end up there, I have to admit that it was one of, if not the most beautiful campuses we visited.
When we visited several years back, it was a one-on-one with the Admissions Officer and a private tour with the tour guide. The personalized attention was refreshing. My daughter wasn’t keen on women’s colleges at the time but we were visiting Haverford, Swarthmore, and Penn so I asked her to give it a shot and keep an open mind. Not only was it added to the list but she decided she was open to other women’s colleges. Wellesley made the final list as well but she liked Bryn Mawr a lot better.
Bryn Mawr is pretty and I like it personally, but I’ve heard others say that they feel it’s too small/ claustrophobic. So there’s that.
It’s very personal, @Dustyfeathers. The rest of our college tours in Philadelphia included Haverford and Penn.
Haverford went way up and it’s a very small LAC. The campus was very nice and felt spread out, and while it feels like it’s not close to a large city it really is. (We stayed in the city and took Septa to visit the campus so we knew just how close it was). The class my daughter audited was interesting, the prof was great as were the inputs by the students taking it. She was impressed that the prof knew everyone’s name and took the time to introduce her to everyone.
Penn, on the other hand, felt too large and impersonal for her. We were a bit lost and couldn’t find a student who would take the time to help us out (this is the only time this was an issue on the many campuses we visited). The audited class (same subject as Haverford) was a large lecture that was taught with 2 TAs and there was no discussion. So yes, it was larger, but that isn’t a plus for everyone.
These perspectives are very personal and visiting is great since it allows kids to figure out just what it is that they prefer. What is claustrophobic for one kid might be just perfect for another. And what one person thinks is too urban is just right for someone else.
@Lindagaf , @momocarly is referring to Colorado State and polo - see #1514.
I thought Bryn Mawr was beautiful. My D thought was really bothered by all of their traditions and superstitions.
Again, it’s all very personal, but I still like reading other people’s opinions about schools. It’s helpful.
Ok-- here goes. Based on my 2 kids.
Moved up:
Penn- lots of energy, warm welcome, exciting all round, fun urban location
Northwestern- great feel, solid academics
Wash U- pretty campus and buildings, up and coming engineering
Indiana University- great vibe, midwestern friendly, nice landscaping
Illinois UIUC- perfect mix of solid STEM, activities and social life, took a few visits to embrace large campus
RPI- great school spirit, solid techy, kids friendly and interactive
Moved down:
Duke
Cornell- kids were so serious
Lehigh- hilly, felt too woodsy, campus not clean
UVA- clubby, so crowded
MIT- felt weird and so academic, mind boggling technologies
Case Western- small, sad, geeky
U Miami- felt like vacation land, not a traditional campus
Visited a lot of schools with 2 separate kids. Formed a lot of impressions, probably all inaccurate
Moved Up after Visit
Pomona College - really nice campus and presentation. By far the most impressive of the Claremont colleges
Amherst College - lovely campus, informative guide, people seemed happy
Brown University - people were happy, bustling but not overcrowded
Vassar - much more appealing than we expected, great new science center, feels like a place on the rise
UChicago - impressive gothic campus, enthusiastic guide with a good mix of talk about both student life and academics
Yale - same as UChicago, but with an even better tour guide
Wesleyan - first time we went it was so cold we Californians thought we were going to die. We rushed back to the car and really got no impressions at all. Two years later with second kid, it turned out to be pretty great
UC Berkeley - as big as UCLA, but comes across as more serious academically. There are really big upsides and really big downsides to going there I think, but the upsides were more prominent
Scripps College - tiny beautiful campus like a Maxfield Parrish painting, seemed very close-knit
UC Santa Barbara - our expectations were not that high going in, and it turned out to be more academically serious than we thought. And it is right smack on the beach with everyone on bikes. The most “California” campus ever.
Moved Down after Visit
Tufts - oversubscribed campus tour with about 100 people per guide, and all the guide would talk about (when you could hear him) was Jumbo the elephant and how the students paint a cannon over and over. Couldn’t find out a thing about classes or research or anything academic
Cornell - the only tour date for several weeks was on a weekend. Hundreds and hundreds of people toured that tay, but there were no students at all on the main campus - none. It felt big, cold and empty.
Dartmouth - could not shake the impression that fraternities and alcohol socially dominate that place, even though I have a friend whose daughter loved it
UCLA - Just too darn big
Haverford - just too darn small, even for kids who were interested in LACs Really nice, but too little.
Columbia University - didn’t feel like a college campus at all. Just one giant square surrounded by tall buildings, chock full of people sitting on every inch of open space
Occidental College - can’t explain why, it just didn’t grab us. Didn’t seem serious enough about academics, perhaps?
Claremont McKenna - small modern campus that felt kind of like a big fraternity for pre-law and pre-business majors. The most completely “pre-professional” school we have ever seen.
Stayed the same after visit
Williams - Impressive facilities, but very isolated, and the tour guide was not very reassuring that isolation was not a problem for many people. She basically said “people come here because they like the isolation, so you should think about that…” Other than that, it felt just like Amherst in atmosphere.
Middlebury - Pretty grey stone. For some reason no one was outside. Incredible athletic complex for a school that small. It was the first college we visited and we didn’t have anything to compare it to
Princeton - just as beautiful and well-equipped as advertised. The presentation was very formal. On the tour they would not let us see the dorms and the tour guide basically admitted that the social divisions created by the eating clubs and such are still a bit of a problem
Stanford - lovely Spanish Mission style buildings that go on and on and on and on. It’s almost overwhelming. It was hard to figure out how the campus social life worked, or where the heart of campus really was, or where you even were half the time
Harvey Mudd - we had a great tour guide and it is really remarkable what they do there academically - but that has to be one of the butt-ugliest little campuses in the nation, and half of it is underground
UPenn- very loud and crowded, construction sounds everywhere, busy automobile traffic in every direction, but has its nice spots.
UC San Diego - sprawling campus with large modern buildings set far apart from each other in a eucalyptus forest. Felt kind of lonely - but you look down the hill and you see the beach at La Jolla and well, that’s pretty awesome
Swarthmore - like a giant flower garden, impressive academics, not sure how happy students really were there. Really confused by that one.
2 Likes
Some Mom impressions, partly shared by kids:
Down: Dartmouth - they lost our family for our senior and any other kids that we will ever have or talk to when the student tour guide praised one of the social events with “…and they don’t card.”
Down: Berkeley - After being elbowed and shoved around in the standing room area at the Tokyo-subwayesque admissions talk, our tour guide with genuine feeling remarked “After growing up in Palo Alto, it is really great to be around kids who don’t have CEO’s in the family.” Good for him.
Up: Reed - The admissions talk discussed ancient Greece and economic trade in the Mediterranean… Basically if you found it interesting you “got” Reed - I couldn’t drag either kid away.
Down: MIT - great school, again tour guide issue: hospitalized for months on end due to the harsh climate, culturally adrift and lonely because of a lack of Latino culture, verging on flunking out of most classes. Only being a tour guide for the money.
Meh - I loved everything about Middlebury; both kids were totally bored.
50/50 - Bowdoin - One loved it, one was out the door. The student panelists agreed that they had about 1.5 hours of homework per day, the lightest load of any school we visited.
2 kids :
Boston trip yielded some very strong feelings :
Son hated BU campus (I graduated there and LOVED the campus, go figure). Moved down.
I was not so hot about NU campus but son was OK with it. Neutral.
We all loved Harvard, but who cares about the campus… Neutral
Worcester Poly nice campus in ugly city. Moved up after a visit.
Maryland trip
Johns Hopkins similar to Worcester, only nicer campus and much worse city. Up for campus down for city
UMD down
Upstate NY
RPI way up
Geneseo up due to nice campus, down due to remoteness of the city from civilization
Binghamton DOWN (modern dorms but aging classrooms and depressing tour guide).
DC area
George Mason - up nice campus, faculty
American U - down, did not love the campus but very nice location. Admissions presentation was cheesy
G Washington - neutral, about what we expected
Pepperdine. Really beautiful campus on a hill in Malibu overlooking the Pacific. Doesn’t get much better. Christian values with a beautiful chapel. Warm reception at Admissions who took pains to make someone available over Christmas break, and gave us a welcome backpack, towel and candy canes. Nice, nice people. Only downside was it doesn’t have my student’s major. Otherwise, this place is tough to beat.
Our Boston and NY visits:
Wellesley - down - beautiful campus, serious students who that day looked very stressed to us. My D also sat in a class and she did not like the interactions between the prof and the students (always hard to extrapolate things from a short visit, but it still left an impression).
Brandeis - down - can’t even really explain why, but she did not like the campus or the vibe here, even though it seemed to offer plenty in terms of what she wanted to study.
Tufts - up - even though it was a busy spring break day and the info session and tours were packed, we all really liked the tour we took. D liked the class she audited as well. And the general vibe just seemed to fit her. Housing after 2 years came up as an issue, but that was more of a concern to us as parents than to our D.
Barnard/Columbia - down - just too urban for my D. Barnard was particularly strong in things she was interested in but it went way down after the visit. The person (I believe she was a student) at the admissions desk was rude (more to the girl in front of us than to us, but it still makes a strong impression), the info session and tours did not spark any interest, and my D was disappointed that in the small class she audited the prof still did not know the names of her students. And while I think the idea of getting to live in NYC for 4 years would be amazing, my D definitely did not feel comfortable in a big city.
I realize that all of this might have been different had we visited on a different day, but I guess that’s the way it goes when you do a quick visit and just get a snapshot of a campus. I still think all these colleges are wonderful places, but these are the impressions my D had when we visited.
1 Like
ha, this was why my husband picked it for grad school :). I think he minored in beach volleyball.
1 Like