also another thing is how big the campus is. or, at least how complex it is to walk around. i love getting lost. if i feel like i already memorized and learned the layout of the place after one visit, i don’t really like it. this is because i really enjoy walking around campus between classes and it would be kind of dull if you already know where everything is. i want to get lost and explore! some schools are big but the layout isn’t that complex and it’s very simple and monotone.
the general aesthetic of the campus is also something i look out for. are the buildings beautiful? are you in awe and inspired? or is it just really industrial, modern, and concrete?
are people hipsters? do they look like they all stepped out of a tumblr photo set? are they “edgy” (i dislike all of this, so i would rather stay away) (an example of this would be uc berkeley). aint no time to be worrying about ugly retro fashion, way too high schoolish.
do groups of people wear different things? or do they tend to group together by clothing style (which hints at cliques). if so, nope. don’t wanna feel left out for not wearing whatever is popular since im very basic/plain.
@otoribashi We had the same experience with UCSD. We went on one of the 10 rainy days per year in SD, so I was not sure whether the sour and dour mood of the students was caused by the rain, but based on your post, probabaly not!
Not a “little” thing to my D but:
Can non art majors take (and actually get into) advanced art classes?
Can you get into art studios at night & on weekends or there other ways to get access such as clubs?
@alooknac Yes – for my kid, one question was whether ceramics is part of Studio Art program or not? Surprised to discover that, at Oberlin, Vassar and Kenyon it was not part of the curriculum. Ceramics was offered through coop/community programs at those schools, a major negative.
@alooknac, yeah, that’ll be a big “little” one here, too. (For my D19, it’ll be whether non-music majors can perform in orchestral groups—which, actually, was part of the reason my spouse chose her undergrad college over other options.)
@alooknac ah same goes for me except instead of art it’s for music lol. at my current CCC we have practice rooms with pianos and anyone’s allowed to go and they’re usually not completely filled up unless it’s finals week. ive visited some schools and some say they have practice rooms inside the dorm buildings/residence halls with a piano so that’s also a plus!
also, do they let non-theater majors audition for shows and do they generally get accepted? and orchestral groups too. i know some groups say that anyone’s allowed to audition but then they just go with the people who have that major… not that it’s a horrible thing since they’re probably better musicians/actors/singers but it would be nice to let beginners get involved too and not just experts right from the start ;~;
sometimes you want to begin to get involved in something or break out of a shell and go for that audition but it’s discouraging when already it’s such a competitive advanced atmosphere. a lot of times college seems to be billed as a place of growth so it’s a bit discouraging when that happens… but the other side of the argument is of course having less advanced choirs/orchestra groups/shows because they let anyone join. but luckily that’s why most schools have groups of different levels.
Re: the a capella. It was the school threatening to remove funding after some kid who couldn’t carry a tune complained. Believe me, my fantasy was to be a singer but I can’t sing, so I understand but I choose to leave it to the people who can. I was heartbroken for my D, who inherited her vocal abilities from my H’s side of the family, because the one thing she enjoyed most about school was ruined for her. My D is not a snob, she is the nicest kid you have ever met, but she felt like it was the equivalent of her demanding to be put on the chess team (which my S founded at that school), as opposed to the chess club, despite the fact that she doesn’t know the difference between a bishop and a pawn. They should have offered an open to anyone singing club in addition to the one she was in, which prior to being diluted, actually entered contests.
“It was the school threatening to remove funding after some kid who couldn’t carry a tune complained.”
Holy crap. That’s terrible. The group should have sacrificed the funding. I need to tell my singing students to avoid that school. If you don’t want to share the school here, please PM me. I was a judge in the collegiate a cappella championships for many years. It’s a huge deal to me if schools are trying to destroy quality. (As your D has observed, a cappella groups cannot be good if they are not selective.)
Tons of campuses have both selective and open-membership singing groups. I haven’t heard of colleges discouraging selectivity in performing arts groups before this.
(Not to digress too much, but I do not view this as a dichotomy between groups that aim to be excellent and groups that aim to have fun. For me, being musically excellent is fun, and sounding bad is not fun.)
It was a SUNY school and I don’t know that the kids could have refused the funding and still been able to travel to the places they did, which were mostly other SUNY’s. D graduated awhile ago and I don’t know if the situation is still the same. I don’t want to have you tell kids to avoid the school because my kids got a good education there and it was otherwise a wonderful school. In any event, a situation can change at any time, for better or worse.
it’s a silly thing but honestly for some reason it’s a huge little thing for me. columbia and ucla for example, according to their online stores, have some pretty…unappealing clothing… everything looks so plain and whoever designed their gear just… yikes
but ucsd, ucsb and stanford have some really nice looking apparel and make use of their school colors and logos in a fashionable way (especially stanford. i swear, if stanford had an ugly logo/color scheme/apparel, i might have disregarded it already as a school too competitive to apply to. but since it’s very aesthetically pleasing, im still holding on hope, as shallow as it sounds lol)
but yeah, good fashion sense (and options for women!) is important to me
some schools have nice designs but then they’re all for men, women get stuck with ugly poor designs / poor quality stuff. (though that’s not exclusive to any one school, even olympic gear on team usa shop is like that. it’s an industry thing unfortunately).
@Hanna@techmom99
I go to a school with ~13 a cappella groups, including one that I’m in that’s all inclusive. My school
s policy is that any exclusive group cannot receive funding, but there are still 12 exclusive a cappella groups and one that anyone can join. And yes a cappella groups can be good even if they’re all inclusive. We have fun and don’t sound bad. Anyone can sing, you just need the right instructor.
“A cappella groups can be good even if they’re all inclusive”
Choirs can, sometimes. I have never seen an a cappella group that could. If you have a link where I can hear an all-inclusive a cappella group that doesn’t sound bad, I’m extremely interested.
I’d say how friendly your fellow prospective students are towards you when breaking the ice, as well as the general personality vibes they give off. I know that was a factor for me.
This is EXACTLY what we need to do for our daughter!!! Did day of the week for the visit help to facilitate this? Who set this up for her on the campus??? Thanks for posting this.
Important things we considered was the availability of food off campus and the distance to a grocery store were at the top of the list. Lots of people walking around campus and noise were important.
If you want to take graduate classes as an undergraduate, you should consider the school’s policy around that. At my school, anyone can sign up for any class if they have the prerequisites, but a lot of schools are more restrictive.