Wow @collegedad7 that’ was exhaustive, but I scratched my head at the description of Vassar’s music dept. gothic-like Hogwartsish building surrounded by rows of peonies in the spring, set off in a bucolic area . . .
But that’s okay, you’re leaving room for the rest of us!
NYU: son felt like there was no there there. Begged to leave about 20 minutes into the tour.
UVM: worst tour guide ever. 45 minutes into the tour and we were the 5th of 8 families to peel off. We learned nothing about student life and didn’t see any academic buildings but got overloaded by her “proper” values. (We are a liberal MA family from a liberal Boston suburb but she did nothing but look down her nose at us…and pretty much every other family except for one.) Still applied because Burlington rocks and everyone we know there just loves it…and I can see why.
BU: Tour guide walked facing forward and told everyone that he wasn’t comfortable if anyone stood close to him. Oh and he said “no questions…I don’t feel like talking”. We peeled off after 20 minutes. Still applied as a backup to another Boston school (below).
Up the list:
McGill: Tour guide just rocked. It was 3 degrees Fahrenheit and there was a fresh foot of snow on the ground and my son loved it.
Northeastern: Rocketed to the top of the list. Great presentation; great tour.
DePaul: Up my son’s list…down my list. Completely underwhelmed by the students both on the tour and from the college. And a completely lack of energy on the campus. That said, nice facilities.
Penn: OK…my alma mater…and the people that work there are still incredible. My son was able to do a track workout at Franklin Field (on his own)…they let us in early which was just so nice. Boring presentation. Amazing tour guide. Friendly students. Made me proud.
Having a DS who works as a student in his school in the Office of Orientation and Recruiting (and had to go through four interviews TWICE to be accepted - each year starts over) I hope you reported a tour guide who not only didn’t speak in your direction, but WARNED YOU not to ask questions!! I rarely “tattle” on anyone in a service capacity, but the school really needs to know that!
Yeah, the BU tour guide sounds like a sitcom character, and it’s kind of funny in that light, but not so funny to waste the time of people who may have gone to a lot of effort and expense to visit the school.
12 Visits from around the country (6 positive and 6 negative).
Negatives:
UC Berkeley - Ok, but do you really need 6+ trash sorting bins? Gave off too liberal of a vibe for our S taste.
Univ of Louisville - Seemed mostly concrete & institutional. Flat tour guide. Not what we were looking for
Bucknell - too much construction on campus cut short the engineering area tour. When you travel 1400 miles for a tour and the host cant “find a way” to work-around it doesn’t speak well.
Univ of Delaware - went on a college fair day - very busy and the staff seemed unenthusiastic. Campus feel kind of blah. Just didn’t feel right in the end.
TX A&M - Spent the time either telling us how great their traditions were, or telling us how we should not expect to get into their programs, or our majors. While we appreciate real-talk, there was hardly anything positive emphasized in the engineering tour, or anything that made you feel the university wanted the student to succeed. The saddest thing of all is that my wife is an alumni here and even she thought our S should not apply, even though he was an auto-admit!
Clemson - Mixed on this one. Good general campus tour and good campus feel, but admissions office couldn’t tell us which officer was our rep (not on website for our state, so they e-mailed it to us later during the tour instead of calling, so we were gone before we could meet with them). Engineering program overview person dodged every question, then major specific folks from our first choice did a poor job in tour, seemed very aloof, and showed us a chem lab that was very unimpressive (they didn’t even elaborate on what that lab was used to teach) . Couldn’t believe they were seniors.
Positives:
Vanderbilt - Right mix. Great info session and tour. Nice oasis feel. Positive.
Rice - Great info sessions and tours. Great campus vibe. Hogwarts-style feel.
Ohio State - Great tour guide and info sessions. Faculty meeting was great. Made a big school feel small. Were able to give us a feel of the school spirit without ramming it down our throat - professionally done!
Miami OH - Descent tour and info session. Pretty campus. Best part was the faculty interest we found in the chemistry department tour - very nice facilities.
Princeton - All I can say is that from the lecture hall presentation, to the engineering tour, to the dorms and beyond, you felt like you were getting smarter just by being there (in other words, the vibe was great).
Univ of Texas - General info session great - engineering session informative and guides very helpful. Campus was urban but not too urban.
Moved up - Union - Beautiful fall day, great tour guide, engineering combined with liberal arts, happy looking students.
Moved up - Grinnell - Incredible facilities, super friendly students, great class visits, genuine and impressive admissions spiel, unmatched resources, good food, good overnight, positive welcoming vibe, son ended up applying EDI after second visit
Moved up - Swarthmore - Great campus, great location, intelligent students, good class visit
Stayed steady - RPI, WashU, Caltech, Harvey Mudd
Fell down - Colby - Visited on a beautiful October day…mom, dad an younger son fell in love with the campus but older son was turned off. His biggest concern was the Physics class he visited that he thought was well behind his high school Physics class. He also thought the students were too fashion/image conscious. Poor admissions spiel. Best food though.
Fell down - Bates - Seemed small somehow, only campus we visited that was on break. Tour guides spent a lot of time talking about unusual classes like recreating medieval battles.
Fell down - Carleton - Not sure why son did not like it. Perhaps a poor admissions spiel. Mom and dad liked it.
Fell down - Haverford - Half the time on the tour and spiel was spent discussing the Honor Code, which turned my son off as he did not see it as a significant differentiation.
@CaptainKong The 6 trash bins at UCB and getting smarter just being at Princeton made my highlight reel. lol, great stuff. Thanks for sharing, quite a mix!
@twoinanddone Agree. I’m frankly puzzled by the remark you refer to about there being “too many” Jesuits at Georgetown. I only say this because the number of Jesuit priests working at Georgetown continues to decline because of the declining number of Jesuits. And one refrain we heard in visiting was that religion at Georgetown was a “veneer” and that the university wasn’t religious enough for some people.
It’s also worth noting that the religion courses at Georgetown are not the equivalent to Sunday school. They aren’t “pushing” Catholicism or Christianity. The one we sat in on was very provocative. And it WAS taught by a Jesuit.
^^^I don’t think @twoinanddone (or anyone) needs to explain or defend how they felt at a particular college. For some people seeing one priest and one crucifix may be a turn off, to another that would be completely expected going into a Jesuit college. That is why school visits are important and that people have different takes on the same school is the entire point of this thread. (And FWIW my S went to a different Jesuit college and one of the two required theology courses was Catholicism-based-- I’m not sure about the core curriculum at Gtown).
crossed off : George Washington University- much too urban, even though I wanted proximity to a city.
moved up: Swarthmore, Johns Hopkins- Swarthmore was gorgeous and I had an amazing tour guide. JHU was where i had my “this is where I belong” moment.
I was only suggesting that Jesuits should be expected at a Jesuit college, just like palm trees should be expected at U of Miami and a lot of red sweatshirts at U of Wisconsin. A lot of people seem to want colleges to be what they want them to be and not what they really are.
There is another thread about silly reasons a student rejects colleges like that the mascot is a spider or, my favorite, the ‘door are too heavy’ but this thread is more about reasons the college moved up or down the list even if the reasons still have a ‘student’ reasoning to them, like the dorms were old or the food was fantastic. I think more of the 121 pages of post have been that a program wasn’t as expected or the school was in a much more rural location than expected.
I think people do not expect Catholic schools to be catholic. Would someone visit the Coast Guard academy and say ‘Wow, it had a real military feel to it’ or to Liberty and comment on how conservative it is? I’ve read so many times on CC that Catholic schools are just so Catholic! with an implied note that they shouldn’t be, that there shouldn’t be crosses in the classrooms or a requirement for a religion class for non-catholics. I expect to find Jesuits at a Jesuit school, military people at a military school, environmentalists at UVM and CU (although I admit, 4 trash can choices are too many for me, and I don’t like the guilt of having to choose ‘landfill’ for my trash).
Up:
UMD- when I think of a college in my head I think UMD. Perfect campus. And the taco bell didn’t hurt.
Villanova- loved the buildings and the way things were laid out, the area around it was pretty dedicated to the school and loved the atmosphere and the kids that went there. I really saw myself there.
Wake Forest- beautiful campus perfect size looked so proper and just…pretty. Didn’t even feel like a school. Downside were the classrooms looked like a high school, but chic-fil-a woohoo.
Stayed the Same:
Loyola MD- campus was really nice. I really hoped admissions was gonna say something to wow me about the academics but they didn’t.
Duke- Nothing about the campus really impressed me. It was so big and scattered, loved the buildings though.
Down/Crossed off-
UNC-CH- buildings were HUGE almost like apartments. Wasn’t traditional enough for me.
Down, Baylor. Too much football talk for her. They taught us a cheer that involved miming ripping the heart out of a cow…then followed that up with “Let us pray”, lol. She also didn’t like that there were captive bears on campus. She did love a nearby park that had great running trails.
Up, Univ of Oklahoma. The engineering department personnel were very welcoming.
Georgia Tech: ended up being a second choice after her visit, much to her shock. Great programs, though honestly the urban setting was a negative.
Harvey Mudd went way up after the brief visit. The campus buildings are meh, but she really liked the mountain view. The staff we met were excited about their work.
Dartmouth…she expected to like it, and she did. She’s all about the mountains.
Princeton: immediately loved the beauty of the buildings. Sadly, no mountains. Everyone was very nice there though.
Messiah College in PA: what a charming place! Sweet setting and many welcoming people. Good places to run.
Ursinus: They really should have had an adult do the presentation. The student presenter kept saying of everything,“Which is really great/cool/nice” and told us John Locke wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Baghavad Gita is a Buddhist text. She also could not give clear answers to clear-cut questions. The tour guide was excellent, though, and it seems a really fine school that has everything a liberal arts college should have. The one thing it is missing is a large contingent of really bright students. Down.
When I did the college tour thing with a family member, she had some unusual reactions (in terms of not being what I expected):
DOWN:
Claremont Colleges: Found them too far from LA. She was disappointed as I think she expected to be able to stroll into LA or catch a bus to the beach. She was also turned off by all the discussion about which college was “best” etc., and the frequent references to being as good as or better than the Ivy League.
Swarthmore: The single dining hall bothered her. Guess she’s big on choice. She also said felt that she occasionally wanted to be “anonymous” and didn’t feel that possible at Swarthmore (said the same thing about Amherst and Williams).
Northwestern: She loved the place until some students and tour guides started making disparaging references to University of Chicago. She felt this indicated a real insecurity. She said she didn’t want to go someplace where they were always comparing themselves to another university.
UP:
UCLA: Had the reverse reaction to Claremont. Found the “buzz” at the university exciting, loved the sheer size of the campus and proximity to LA. And she felt that the faculty she spoke to were interested". Her reaction was "I’m surprised how much I liked it.
so interesting as to different reactions…that’s why i think multiple visits are essential, if possible:
UP
Bard: admittedly D is all about english/dance/art/theatre/Poly Sci/, etc so not surprising Bard was a hit…Tour guide was perhaps the most articulate, knowledgeable, comfortable guide we’ve had to date. Really no info session, just a conversation which was welcoming and not canned. D was able to meet with head of dance as well as an written arts faculty member during our time and came away very impressed overall.
Ursinus: completely opposite experience from @twinsmama Had a 1-1 info session with admissions officer who handles our region which enabled us to steer the conversation without feeling like we were “hijacking” the session from others. Tour guide was great (again 1-1). Very nice campus; very clean and neat. Kids seemed very engaged and happy. D was able to sit in on an english class and had a great experience saying the kids were very engaged and the professor was really interesting. I would classify Ursinus as the “Avis” of small liberal arts colleges in that “they try harder.”…also a fan of their new President. Perhaps this is a case of low initial expectations, but impressed nonetheless.
SAME:
Muhlenberg: on paper it’s a slam-dunk in that is has a terrific english department and its theatre and dance depts are nationally ranked every year. That said, something just didn’t click. Info session was fine, not outstanding…tour was good, not great. Campus is very compact, but very clean and nice. Diversity seemed to be a bit of a challenge just from the naked eye test. Little bit of a jock feel even though arts are huge. Really can’t put my finger on why it wasn’t a home run, but just wasn’t. Met briefly with dance professor but unable to get a real feel other than serious. Probably worth a closer visit at some point.
Bryn Mawr: If Ursinus was the Avis, then Bryn Mawr was Hertz in that they know they don’t have to try and it kind of showed in a very canned/rehearsed info session and a meh tour and tour guide. That said, kids seemed very friendly happy, diverse and engaged. Sense is that once you’re in the “club” that you will be well cared for and alumni network is stellar, but they definitely didn’t feel the need for the warm and fuzzy approach. Stunning campus and great suburban location with easy SEPTA access for a 20 min. ride to Philly.
We just finished a tour of 3 more schools over spring break. All very different from each other.
Off the list-College of Charleston. DD decided it was “too urban” and didn’t have a cohesive feel to the campus. Also hated the fact that they no longer use textbooks-everything is online. Her hs does this and she misses having an actual book.
Stayed the same-Wake Forest. We had visited last year but the tour was cancelled due to a thunderstorm. Still loves it. Beautiful campus, friendly students, small class size, great study abroad. Winston Salem seems to be a growing city with a vibrant arts scene.
Moved up-South Carolina/honors college. This is one that I insisted she visit. Surprise-mama was right and she loved it. The girl who had no interest in big state schools loves that the honors college gives her the small school feel but with all of the opportunities of a large school. But only interested if she is accepted into honors.