Went a different school, similarly priced. It would have.
Adding to these points (about Penn not being as highly considered as, say, Swarthmore or Haverford), I believe that in the 60s-70s, Wharton had a roughly 50% admission rate - if you had half decent grades and we’re the child (son) of a solid businessman, you were in.
Lots of “rich/old” East coast colleges saw that their urban surroundings were a problem to attracting the students they wanted and they worked with the city or community to improve things, while taking security measures.
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I started at Texas in the fall of 88. Back then, you were an auto-admit if you were in the top 10% of your class and had at least an 1100 SAT. No essays. You could major in whatever you wanted. It is a radically different process now.
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Daughter is going into her junior year at Holy Cross, and while we’re from MA and thus not flying to campus, friends of hers from further away fly to Logan a fair amount but also to Providence (PVD). It’s roughly equidistant from Worcester (about an hour drive), less of a headache to travel in/out of, and I think can often be cheaper.
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A plug for flying through Providence.
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Added to this - for kids going to Worcester from points south, Amtrak runs a train to Providence then an Amtrak bus to Worcester. It’s appreciably more reliable than taking Amtrak all the way to Boston then taking the T to Worcester because there are lots of random outages due to weather (rain and snow storms) between Providence and Boston. But from DC you can get deals for an Acela to Providence then the bus to Worcester and it’s easy and comfortable.
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When my daughter had a weekend at Smith, we flew in and out of Providence. Originally scheduled because my uncle lived closer to that airport and we were going to spend a night with him, but he got sick and we stuck with the plan. It was easy.
He always preferred the Providence airport to Logan. There weren’t as many direct flights to places he wanted to go to, but parking and size made it better for him.
It would have been interesting to hear why. When I visited with D19 (in what was a much bigger audience than the one you described) they said something like they had their own app because they wanted to know people really wanted to apply there and would put the effort into it, rather than just ticking another box and adding supplemental essays onto the common app.
FWIW, D19 also found the pre-professional vibe off-putting.
(Edit to add, this is for Georgetown)
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Exactly! I actually really liked that this was sort of their way of reducing application volume and giving them a little way of seeing some demonstrated interest. But I can certainly see reasons for moving to the Common App. I really just was hoping they might own that a little bit versus coming across as generic.
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Yes. I remember randomly filling out the application and picking liberal arts. And when I got to UT, I saw this massive line of students that extended all the way outside this tiny, cramped, outdated liberal arts building. I asked one of the kids in line what they were waiting on and she said it was for financial aid.
I then went to the really nice business school with a mock stock exchange with donor plaques on the wall. I changed my major ASAP.
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Joke?
(As the parent of kids who have frequently been the answer to that question.)
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Same. We got this question at many schools, and, coming from Tokyo, S19 almost always “won”.
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That was the wrong choice of word. “Icebreaker” is what I meant.
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We loved Marist on our tour. Only thing off-putting on our tour was when the person leading the info session (a grad student) asked where everyone was from. We said Boston and it was like we had said Australia. She was like “wow that’s a long way”. It was only a 3 hour drive and the closest school my D was even looking at. Made us feel like everyone there must be from NY or NJ (and everyone there touring that day were in fact from NY & NJ).
Other than that we loved the campus, it is absolutely gorgeous, and my D did apply. Merit was too low though even when they added a couple extra grand in April.
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I was talking to a prof about Williams (on an airplane, so yeah, just random) and he was going on and on about how diverse it was. My cousin was a student there at the time and the 6 girls in her suite were from MA (2), NY (2), RI and CT. They were all 18 and white, so not quite a melting pot.
And 3 of them were named Katie.
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Yeah, that tracks 
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When I visited Williams for myself, so back in the stone age, they showed us a from where for the whole floor of guys everyone was named Chris (or maybe Steve or something else similar or common). So maybe this is somehow a Williams thing?
Absolutely loved Marist. We’re from Mass too and we got the same sort of reaction. I will say when we went on our 2nd visit (I think it was admitted students day) the Director of Admissions seemed to recognize us and even mentioned my daughter’s essay. Ultimately, she chose GWU because she really wanted to be in a city, but she really did like what Marist had to offer.
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Instead of assigning you to a tour guide, they let you pick after the guides introduced themselves at the end of the info session. Our D26 picked an international student from South Africa who was a science major, as she intends to be. We really didn’t get any reaction being from New Jersey.
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Maybe, they’re lying about their age. 
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