They used all of the salt last weekend. Literally, everthing iced over Saturday, they salted, iced again Sunday, they salted, and again Monday. I brought a ton of salt back to Maryland on the outside of my previously not white SUV.
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I was sorry to see that nothing quite measured up to Case on this leg of the trip, but then figured that might be a good thing since your son has been pretty easy going and not too definitive about his college preferences. Keeping my fingers crossed for an acceptance from Case, and hoping that you and your family have a safe and wonderful rest of your trip!
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That sounds like a great visit!
I’m sure you know this, but one way to demonstrate interest open all emails they send to both the student and to the parent (I signed up for a separate parent account and they sent me lots of emails) and then click on the links inside the email and watch their videos, etc (or at least let them run while you go do something else! )
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I’ve enjoyed following your travels since I grew up near Pittsburgh and lived near Cleveland for a bit. If they decide on either of those schools the Akron/Canton airport often has great flights and under an hour from CLE or under 2 hrs from Pitt
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Would love to hear your review of Union!
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Update #4: Union College
After swapping out our ailing rental car for one that worked (albeit without seat heaters), we made our way to Schenectady. Stayed at the Landings Hotel which was clean, quiet, and also part of a large casino complex. You could walk from there to other places if you wanted to but the sidewalks were all iced over and it was frigid outside so we drove.
Dinner on Jay Street, a charming pedestrian zone in the old downtown. Simone’s Kitchen was delicious, as advertised. I was envisioning a hole in the wall but it was more a bright, cafeteria-style eatery with lots of booths/tables and a design-your-own-mediterranean-bowl sort of line. We all enjoyed our food and the hot cranberry apple cider hit the spot. I’d probably go there a lot if we lived in Schenectady. But–spoiler alert– we probably won’t.
Next morning we breakfasted at Arthur’s Market, located in a historical residential neighborhood. Side note: I forgot how much I appreciate the historical architecture on the East Coast. Troy and Schenectady were both spectacular in this regard. At Arthur’s, both food and coffee were delightful but I can especialy recommend the Bacon Egg and Cheese, which came on a house-made English muffin and had some kind of special sauce. SO GOOD.
Union College (in Schenectady) seemed lovely. Definitely smaller than anything we’d visited so far on this trip. The problem? It was something like 17 degrees and super windy and all the people on campus were appropriately huddled indoors somewhere so it looked eerily empty. We didn’t want to leave the fireplace in the admissions office. This wasn’t a conventional visit, anyway – no info session, no tour – just S25 going off with a student to class and then having lunch with some current students. We huddled by the fire, drank tea, and talked about going to look around campus and after an hour or so we managed to sally forth. Checked out the art exhibit on the second floor of the Nott Memorial, ducked into the student union and then back out, and eventually made our way to the science and engineering building. Here, just by walking around, we managed to spend about an hour talking with two different faculty about their students, their research, and the school culture. The first, a bio professor, asked us if we were lost. She was very proud of getting students into research and had just helped three FGLI apply to PhD programs the year before. Talked about how keenly the faculty pay attention to their students (e.g. she mentioned if a kid is late for class or misses class a couple of times in a row, she makes a note, contacts an advisor, and someone checks in with the student and with student’s other teachers). We then met the head of the CS department (he asked us if he could help us when we were lingering in the hall outside his office reading a poster). He had our son meet him in the robotics lab so he could show off the camera system they’d funded through an NSF grant. We met a couple of students who were doing research - one had just published his first paper! Both faculty members had (coincidentally?) attended liberal arts colleges for undergrad and seemed sold on the model. I was/am, too. I think for a shy kid who hasn’t necessarily come to life in high school but has potential, this would be an amazing place. And since my kid fits this description, I was sort of hoping he’d feel the same way.
And yet somehow, despite enjoying lunch with the students and appreciating the campus, it wasn’t his favorite place. I am worried that his anchoring around rankings and acceptance rates is going to be very difficult to combat. (that and the fact that his friends don’t really have Union on their radar – he’s the only one he knows who applied there.)
I personally think that for what our son needs, Union would fit the bill better than a non-engineering LAC and probably better than all the big state schools that he’s applied to. They were generous with merit aid. But…it’s his choice.
On our way out of town we swung by Perecca’s Bakery, an old, slightly dusty Italian-American bakery specializing in bread that they bake in a 100-year-old coal-fired oven. We didn’t try the soups or sandwiches but the tomato pie was terrific.
And then we set out on the last longish drive, down the Hudson River valley to Easton, PA.
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Just wanted to say I so appreciate the time & detail & humor you put into these posts–my S27 is shaping up to be very much like your S25, & you have put so many good STEM schools on my radar. Thank you!
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Update #5: Lafayette College
Drive to Lafayette was uneventful – nary a snowflake in sight. We did make a small detour in Northern Jersey so that S25 could meet up with a friend from his French exchange program. The husband and I lingered awkwardly at a small coffee shop while the boys went to some local hill and took photos of the NYC skyline. As a Princeton alumna and former Jersey resident I felt a yearning as we headed east on 78 instead of south on 206 and a deep nostalgia when passing the classic Jersey diners. But this is not the 90s and my son is not me (and anyway, I’ve been reflecting on the imposter syndrome I felt when in college and hoping for something healthier for my kid.) Onward to Easton!
Easton is yet another one of those well-preserved older East Coast cities, attractively perched on the banks of the river with multiple bridges spanning the gap between PA and Jersey. We stayed in the Grand Eastonian, which was honestly a bit drafty but was comfortable enough (and included a swimming pool and a ping pong table.) Grabbed dinner from Gyro Concept Easton, a new fast-food Greek place up on College Hill, a very steep mile away from downtown. N.B. Google Maps or Yelp (can’t remember which) thinks they are open until 2 AM but in fact they closed at 9 and when we walked in they were already mopping up and encouraged us to take our food to go.)
The next morning we were dragging. S25 complained that his pop’s snoring kept him awake all night (poor kiddo – it’s really not that fun to spend an entire week sharing a rental car and a hotel room w/ your middle-aged parents). None of us was really feeling excited about yet another info session and tour. But I had high hopes for Lafayette and so we resolved to make the best of it.
We grabbed breakfast at Mojo 516 Cafe near campus. They have giant muffins, a throwback to the 90s when muffins were a big thing (remember that?) and bagel breakfast sandwiches. Recommended. Props to Lafayette for signage and communications – it was easy to figure out where to park and where to meet the admissions team. The info session was honestly a little lackluster, especially compared to the one we’d seen at Case – it was just an admissions officer speaking without a microphone or visual aids in a crowded chapel. She didn’t really say anything I didn’t already know so I scanned the crowd and noted that it seemed fairly homogenous – 50% of the male prospective students were sporting the same fluffy hairdo and sweatpants. Both the tour guides and the prospective students were largely white (this was a noticeable difference from Case, RPI, Rochester, and Pitt). I’m trying to find a correct way to say this without being offensive and I guess there’s really not one: the crowd seemed much more socially mainstream, especially compared to RPI. More athletic, less geeky. Could have just been a function of the day we were there? YMMV.
The main tour was pretty standard. Pretty campus, nice library, but (because it was Saturday) campus felt kind of dead. Both library and the engineering building were deserted. Lafayette has a fancy new biology building, a strong career advising program (you get assigned an advisor as a freshman and can meet w/ them as often as you like). The dorm we saw was spacious and included a large closet. But there was a lot we didn’t see. i don’t think we really saw a dining hall and they didn’t offer lunch. We didn’t visit sports facilities. We didn’t really see students or faculty (because it was Saturday). But the net impact was that campus didn’t really come to life for us. We hadn’t signed up for an engineering tour but they squeezed us in. Here, again, it paled in comparison to Case, where we got to explore the 7-story maker space and talk with students. The tour guide on our engineering tour was a sweet, chatty CS kid who actually knew nothing about engineering and freely admitted it – as in “this is a neat space! I bet it would be cool to see what happens in here!” I think I’d have been about as effective a tour guide. But maybe we were just tired. In the end, S25 just wanted to get out of there.
We got back on the road, stopped for not-the-best Persian food in Morristown, made it to Newark in time to spend half an hour resolving a weird overcharge on our rental car bill (as in 2x what my husband had been quoted), breezed through security, and flew back to California.
Did I mention that Saturday was S25’s 18th birthday? And that my husband and I had been debating and not deciding what to do for him/get for him? Thankfully our friends swung into action and saved us. S25’s best friend’s mom (who is also our close friend) picked us up with brownies in the car and when we got to our house, his buddies were waiting on the porch with balloons, presents, a banner, and a cake they’d baked. They hung about awkwardly for a little while and then hopped on their bikes and rode off into the night (so that S25 could buy a lottery ticket, a badge of his adulthood. Apparently it was anticlimactic.)
Thus endeth our Tour de Blizzard.
Shawarma meals eaten: 6
Miles driven: ~950
Colleges toured: 6
Reunions with long-lost cousins/friends: 4
Quail spotted: 2
S25’s rough ranking, post trip: CWRU>Rochester>/=RPI>Lafayette>Union>Pitt.
(My ranking? I’d have put Union ahead of RPI and Lafayette and maybe even Rochester. But again, I’m not the one going to college.)
We have miles to go before decision-day – still waiting to hear from all the UCs, UW, Purdue (I keep forgetting he applied there and have zero hope that this will come through), Case, Rochester, Lafayette, Brandeis, and Oberlin (yeah, I’m not sure why he applied there either. We did love it on our tour last winter and I guess he wasn’t quite willing to let it go.) TBD…
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This is a problem we’ve been encountering too. We visited Union this summer and I expected D25 to like it. It ticked a lot of the boxes, but she just wasn’t feeling it.
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Happy belated birthday to S25 who not only shares Pitt and Union admissions in common (and maybe soon Oberlin, Brandeis, and Rochester), but also shares a birthday with my S25!
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It’s interesting that S25 and my D25 have some overlapping applications despite D25 being a social sciences and humanities type. 
We had a summer tour of Lafayette, but the weather was rainy, so campus was semi-dead. There were students there doing summer research. Info session was in a lecture hall rather than chapel. We also found it lackluster compared to others. But our tour guide was fantastic. And D25 liked the library and campus.
It sounds like your son has really good options already. I’ve heard such good things about Case. And the rest he’s waiting on could take things in a whole new direction. It will be interesting to see where he lands once all the dust clears.
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Congratulations, you made it through the TdB!!! 
It has been great to read your updates, knowing that you are working to give your kiddo a solid understanding of his choices. Good job!
And it does sound like there is more information for your S25 to consider, now that you’ve been on these campuses and gotten a sense of what being in each environment means.
Hope you all get some good rest, enjoy time with the quaillets (ok, not a real word, but you know what mean, chicky baby quails), and have some quiet moments to reflect on the family time together.
(Now I just need to make plans to go back to my mother’s old hometown of Schenectady and hit up your food recommendations. All I ever remember about going there was Friendly’s for, surprise surprise, ice cream. 
)
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I know we all know this but it bears repeating: minor variables such as weather/tour guide/lack of sleep seem to have an outsized impact on kids’ impressions of schools. Not really sure how to control for this. I don’t think he would have gotten excited about any of the midwestern schools had we not visited, so not visiting doesn’t feel right either.
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I don’t know how to control for it either. The college at the end of the trip is likely to be there least favorite if they’re worn out, right? By the end of our PA trip, we were getting slap happy. If I never hear another tour guide say that Flo Rida played at their spring concert, it will be too soon.
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So much earnest explaining about the quietest floor of the library…
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For context, the minimum volume of course work for ABET-accredited engineering majors is 1/4 of the credits in math and natural science plus 3/8 of the credits in engineering science and engineering design, plus an unspecified amount of general education. I.e. at least 5/8 in technical course work, plus some general education (which can vary significantly across colleges). In practice, many engineering major programs require more than 5/8 in technical course work (particularly in engineering science and engineering design). That means that combining technical course work and general education may consume nearly all of the schedule space (or even more than the nominal amount of schedule space in 8 semesters – this can be seen if the total is greater than 120 semester credits or equivalent) leaving little room for free electives.
It is common for colleges to advise unconditionally repeating AP credit, because underplacement is less risky (in terms of students struggling academically) than overplacement, and students taking frosh-level courses repeating their AP credit is less expensive for the colleges than if they eventually end up taking some more advanced courses later. However, a student whose AP credit is accepted in substitution of some course by the college may want to start in the more advanced course in order to have more elective space later. Trying the college’s old final exams of the courses that can be skipped to verify knowledge by the college’s standards can help make an informed placement decision.
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I agree. It also depends on if the school has a secondary admission process like Purdue. Students need to have the higher math and science classes to transition to their major.
But it does open up room for electives later which can be used for anything the student is interested in.
However, an undecided student who may major in an engineering major or some other majors with sequential or voluminous prerequisites* needs to start off in frosh year taking the needed prerequisites in order to avoid unknowingly closing doors to some majors of potential interest.
*Some other sciences, nursing, foreign language and literature if not already proficient in the foreign language, for example.
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I was recently at an admitted student event at a college with an engineering program and this is exactly what they said in the info session. If you’re even thinking about engineering, start with the prereqs. It’s easy to pivot away, but not into.
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Off hand, there is a basic logic to this order of preferences. The midsize private research university is a popular model for good reasons–if you can afford it, of course. You often have a nice balance of highly resourced academic programs but also relative curriculum flexibility, and then a lot of social and non-academic activity options, the latter of which are also often well-resourced.
Obviously some people also end up loving LACs or larger publics. But for some kids, it can seem like those midsize research privates are hitting the sweet spot.
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