Off-Topic Discussion from "Colleges Crossed Off List or Moved Up After Visiting"

[circuitrider]

@NiceUnparticularMan

I don’t remember criticizing Vassar’s campus! I really like it

Ah. Different thread. My bad:

Colleges your child crossed off the list after visiting, schools that moved up on the list. Why? (NO REPLIES)

VASSAR: DOWN (so probably out). I want to say at the outset I personally really liked Vassar, but I also think it was understandable why, for my kid in particular, it suffered in contrast to WUSTL the day before. Probably the biggest contrast was the campus. Where WUSTL has a strong campus architectural theme, Vassar is very eclectic. S24 did say there were individual buildings he loved at Vassar—he really liked the Chapel, and then the Library was as advertised (I had built it up and insisted we have time to visit and poke around, and it completely delivered). But overall the campus didn’t have the same “wow” impact on S24 as WUSTL. I think contributing to that is WUSTL’s layout has a sort of ascertainable geometric formality to it—it reminds me of an English garden of the grand “country house” style, in which case Vassar would be more the English “cottage” style with a lot of meandering paths (in fact in sessions they talked about the intentional meandering) and more natural sp…