One of favorites from Evanston: “Harvard, the Northwestern of the northeast”
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My son had the same reaction at a school…he went to Catholic HS and he said “I feel like I’m at (name of HS).”
The high-five is super weird.
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My kids also said they didn’t want to go to a school smaller than their High School which had about 2500 kids
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Both of my kids said this (no school smaller than HS, our HS is probably about 2400). S25 is looking MUCH larger, and I think is just now realizing that huge isn’t always ideal. S22 ended up at a 5000 student school, and I think wishes it was a little bigger.
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Same here. Mine wants a 5k minimum but prefers larger and urban.
Deleted. I forgot no replies on this thread. Oops!
I have one colleague at work who went to ND and he is barely taller than me, so maybe 5’5”. Definitely doesn’t fit this mold !!!
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He must have been a diversity admit!
More seriously…it was noticeable and rather odd.
I am a volleyball dad and used to being around tall kids and tall parents. Somehow, the gen pop at ND seemed TALLER than the volleyball kid and parent population.
Again, lots were athletes, but why would a D1 school have such a large proportion of its students be athletes?
More likely it was confirmation bias. We saw some really tall people and then noticed it when we saw more really tall people. We may have been mentally screening out the normal sized people.
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Where are you from? I’ve lived all over the US and I’m always surprised how different the “average” heights seem to be. In NYC my husband and I, 5’3" and 5’10" were absolutely typical. In Boston he was nearly tall 
and I was average for the first time in my life! Moved out west and we’re just the tiniest people we know. I have people regularly tell me that I’m their smallest friend, 5’3" isn’t really that short!
Our daughter is 5’10" and in a class of 50 graduating seniors in Washington, she wasn’t even in the top 5 tallest girls, but when we lived in MA, she had volleyball and basketball coaches stopping her in the hallway.
Rambling sorry. I think ND has always appreciated athletes, whether or not they play D1 sports. Maybe that’s reflected in their population?
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I know a guy who went to Notre Dame and he periodically does trips back there just for fun. He loves that school.
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I was fascinated by this comment as I never really noticed this in US in my travels, but your comment tracks (though MA looks taller than NY on average)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/10/06/americas-tallest-shortest-states/
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Could be just the area we lived in!
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We are in California. I think CA has so much diversity that there is a full / distributed spectrum of heights in the gen pop. But I have lived all over the US and people are definately taller in some parts of the US.
I just wonder if when we were in the dining hall if we weren’t standing in line surrounded by the women’s volleyball team or something and just didn’t know it. I would think that they would eat in a separate place (athletic training table), but who knows?
And YES, I think ND does value athletes and that may be reflected in their student population. Great point!
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My colleague is definitely very school-proud.
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We visited ND over the summer and felt (with tiny sample size of course) that it had the nerdiest kids of all places we saw. It’s full of Hermoinies (only very Catholic), is what my boy said.
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I’m laughing at the All Tall People comment. My S22 is a rower and, at 6’, was definitely the short guy in the boat in HS. I think partly because he hung out with so many very tall guys, every college we visited his comment was “the guys here are so small”.
No my child. You just hang out with giants.
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Same here, but our son is 6’3." Tallest guy in his college boat was almost 7 feet. At 5’4," I always felt like an elf around them. Rowers get asked if they play basketball all the time.
On topic: Our son crossed off colleges that did not have tanks.
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Pretty much D19’s reaction too, though we visited after Brandeis and not Tufts. To add, it was snowing in April that day, we were freezing by the time we got to BU and the meeting center for tours was not only warm but was offering us hot chocolate! Instant positive impression. She didn’t end up applying as she got into her top choice ED but it would have been top 3-4.
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Well if you ever know someone looking for a nice D3 STEM school with rowing, WPI has tanks…
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