We liked a lot of things about Minnesota, including the physics building. It would be cool to have a new, modern physics facility inside of a classic, old, columned exterior. This was in his top three, along with Nebraska and Purdue.
He liked the name of the college: College of Science and Engineering. He hates college names like LAS, or Arts and Sciences (“What are ‘those people’ (Arts) doing in my college?”). Our campus visit started with a CSE-specific meeting where they showed videos about the physics of superheroes, and of a device that would disassemble an Oreo using heat and spray the molten filling into a person’s mouth. They really knew their audience and it was a big hit with all the geeks in the crowd (myself included).
We ruled out Purdue due to cost since his scholarship there was pretty small and it was among the most expensive of all the schools to which he applied.
We were trying to get a feel for his thoughts on Nebraska vs. Minnesota. He is not the type to fall in love with a school and we weren’t getting much feedback. We were convinced that he would be no closer to a decision today than he was two months ago. He’s very adaptable, and doesn’t seem to care about things like dorm room layout and who has the biggest indoor climbing wall.
So, we helped him to choose Nebraska. Costing about half as much was definitely a factor, but we also realize that choosing a poor fit solely for cost is not a wise decision in the long run. While Nebraska isn’t a small school, we felt that he would fit in better with 25K students than 50K. We also like the location. We can see him going into downtown Lincoln with friends; we cannot see him going to downtown Minneapolis. And virtually everyone we talked to there just seemed really nice. Staff and students. When we asked him if he was ready to pull the trigger, he watched some YouTube videos of the marching band and decided that he could see himself playing that fight song.
They have a tradition of playing the opposing team’s fight song, so I will still get to hear him play “On Wisconsin,” even though we eliminated my alma mater very early due to cost.