I think an important thing to look for is how many different places are there on campus to congregate and hang out. Dorms should have lounges on each floor ideally. The student union should have comfortable seating areas. There should be more than one place to go when you want a get out of your dorm. I liked Hamilton so much because they seemed to have a variety of hang out spots. Variety is especially important in a rural area
Something kinda funny I appreciated as a mom…
My kid’s school has a number you can call to get a sick meal put together for you by a volunteer group of Jewish ladies who make homemade chicken soup and care packages, and deliver them right to their room. We’re not Jewish, but the idea of a group of moms willing to take my kid homemade soup when she’s sick…really kinda warmed my heart. My kiddo used the service when she was ill once and got all sorts of cool things in a care package. Ginger ale, tissues with lotion, a thermometer. The lady kept calling and checking on her every day for a week to make sure she was getting well. It was really sweet. (of course I was calling, too…but it was nice to have someone there who could check on her, you know?) We later made a donation to support future care packages:)
Something weird we liked…local ordinances that support rights of pedestrians over motorists. it’s a bustling pedestrian town, and cars are used to stopping for people under threat of citation.
Also kinda funny…a town ordinance makes it illegal to harass or harm squirrels. My daughter’s college has a ton of fat really bold squirrels who will knock you down and steal your lunch if you’re not careful. I think they know there are laws protecting them.
Trees. My kid’s campus has trees everywhere, and some gorgeous natural areas right near central campus. My kid’s campus apartment has deer and geese and hawks that come out of the arboretum and visit. We walked into the chemistry building, and the main lobby is a giant atrium. Lots of indoor trees, too.
Gorgeous old buildings, ivy, a library that looks like Hogwart’s, a really cool town.
This one is crazy funny…A Velociraptor. My kid is a HUGE Jurassic Park fan, and actually credits the film with her earliest interest in biology and genetics. Her college has a wonderful museum with her very own little raptor skeleton to visit, and a bunch of other fantastic dinosaurs. She’s found a room in the museum with a comfy chair where she can hide and study.
One of the biggest libraries in the nation. For a kid who likes books…this was golden.
Art Museum, Archaeology Museum.
A whole little town set up to test experimental vehicles with robot pedestrians and robot dogs. Sort of an amazing engineering complex.
A herbarium with extinct species of plants collected in the 1800s.
A botanical garden where you can visit a rain forest in the middle of winter.
An open air farmer’s market in the fall.
Every kind of world food you can imagine. World food markets, too.
Lots and lots of research laboratories…everything from medicinal plants, to fungus, to genetics, to cell, molecular and evolutionary biology. Research opportunities.
Free busing everywhere.
Lots of diversity. In addition to being a big STEM research school, it’s also a big arts school, business and law…lot of top programs in a variety of fields.
Street musicians and artists.
The place just kinda pulses with a great energy.
Note to self. Buy DS a Tintin shirt and have him wear it on upcoming college visits. :>
I’m not sure how my D feels about this, but I personally want there to be the option of living in a co-ed dorm with separate bathrooms for males and females. I get turned off when I research schools that expect you to live in an all-female dorm if you don’t want gender neutral bathrooms. It seems no one cares about this, but for me it’s a biggie.
When we toured colleges - at the height of Harry Potter madness - we used to ask if they had a quidditch team. My daughter thought that would tell something about the student population (she didn’t actually want to play quidditch in college).
@MaryGJ You have to tell us what school you’re talking about! I love the idea of those care pkgs for a sick student:))
Yes, I want to know too! I’ve got a D18 and that school sounds perfect for her!
ETA: I’m guessing UofM. It’s on my D’s list!
I believe u of Michigan
Yes. U MICH. Campus Hillel offers “JEWISH PENICILLIN HOTLINE, a student-led volunteer initiative, delivers kosher matzah ball soup with chicken broth (vegetarian option available on request) to sick students on campus, at no cost. If you’re feeling sick, or if you know someone who is feeling sick, you may fill out the form below to place your soup order”
@citymama9 Good point, and along those lines is on-campus activities and entertainment. D’s college is small, and located in a small isolated Midwestern town, and there aren’t a ton of off-campus options for a Saturday night. But there’s always something going on on-campus; concerts, plays, dance shows, athletics, lectures, socials, festivals.
Here’s a list of schools with a chicken soup hotline from Hillel’s.
I think Duke also has one (we should start a separate thread on this maybe!)
love the chicken soup hotline… D liked schools where students were clearly interacting with each other - there were a couple of schools where the vibe was just “monotone” and those were immediately eliminated.
My daughter also gets chicken soup deliveries from Hillel- Thanks for reminding me!!
My D was sold on her school when she saw a performance of an a capella group. She auditioned and was accepted her first semester. She ultimately dropped out, however, when the PC police said that everyone had to be allowed to join, even if they couldn’t carry a tune. I, who am so tone deaf and flat that I never sing out loud, supported her choice. The club was open to all who could sing; they didn’t have to be music majors, but still… It became so awful to listen to the performances with people who were just horrible singers but thought they were Mariah Carey that I stopped listening to the Youtube videos. I guess I am saying that there are certain EC’s that should be limited to people who have the skills or talents to participate successfully, but I think that no EC should be limited to majors and everyone should be allowed to try out.
Other things we noticed were the cleanliness of the cafeteria (bathrooms have already been mentioned on this thread and I paid attention to those as well), the quality and selection of foods, the hours (my D lived on campus all 4 years so there needed to be food options almost 24/7). Her school has a dietician major and it offers nutritional consults to students, which is a nice thing.
We also paid attention to the community service and involvement at the school, as well as the activities for weekends.
There is a small Greek life on her campus, but any more than that would have been a total turnoff for her and she did not get involved with it at all. I wanted her to join Hillel but she never pursued it, choosing instead to belong to groups that were more diverse culturally.
My son only wanted a small campus that was not near home and that didn’t look hideous. He wound up at the same school as his sister, where he pursued a totally different major and EC’s.
Visited about 15 east coast and midwest LACs with younger kid – coming from a diverse public school and, as an athlete and a musician, he wanted a school where there were not bright lines among different “types” of kids, so interaction in the dining hall and grab-and-go meal places was often instructive. Another “intangible” was the opportunity to play music without being a major/minor, so talking with music faculty was important. My kid sat in on about 10+ classes, and really noticed a range of student engagement in the classroom. Finally, what made an impression on me was how students interacted with me, when I was doing work alone in a corner somewhere while my kid had meetings etc. on campus. Told me a lot about what kind of campus community it was.
As a person with a lot of houseplants, I made mental notes at colleges with especially impressive trees. I ended up at a school that was on that list, but I remember URochester was also high on the “colleges with nice trees” list, as was Colgate (largely for its willows, IIRC).
Everyone guessed right. My kiddo goes to University of Michigan:)
@Midwestmomofboys Which LAC’s in the midwest did you visit? My son has applied to several and I think it’d be interesting to hear what impression you formed. We haven’t done much besides the typical visit yet due to sports obligations but are hoping to this spring.
At Harvard you have to try out of the radio station, the newspaper(s), probably the Harvard Lampoon, the literary magazine, all the a capella groups and probably plenty more. There are also plenty of club sports, clubs and activities that aren’t competitive. The houses have great hangout spaces. In my day our basement had squash courts, a dark room, a pottery studio, practice rooms, pinball, foosball and ping pong, a student run snackbar. There was also a lounge with the daily papers. Harvard has only one meal plan. That’s because they consider mealtime a big part of the experience. They want intellectual conversations to be happening outside of class.
@smakl70 Back east, we visited Vassar, Bates, Conn Coll, St Lawrence, Dickinson, and Haverford. In the midwest, we visited Oberlin, Kenyon, Grinnell, Denison, Wooster, Earlham, Lawrence, Knox and Kalamazoo. I posted visit reports on a number of those schools, on the school-specific page, and responded to lots of threads looking for comparisons among those various schools, so those might be helpful. My personal favorites – Grinnell, Knox, Dickinson and Denison – but that’s just me. Feel free to PM me.