<p>We visited one school with my older daughter during the summer and we brought her friend along. It was a beautiful school in New England but the friend hated it and I think my daughter was influenced. I asked my daughter if she wanted to re-visit when school started but she had no interest. It’s hard to judge a school during the summer when there are few students around, but I think that you can judge big/small, urban/rural etc. OHmom it might be worth your while to stop by a campus since you are there already. My daughter wants a big rah rah school but is willing to go someplace smaller if there is spirit ( 5,000 ish). She does NOT want a small LAC with 3,000 and under because she will " get bored with the people." So far she has not decided between urban vs rural but when we visited my older daughter she looked at me and said," you know I am not going to school in a one horse town." It should be interesting because we have a few rural schools on our list and I wonder if they will stay on the list after visiting. Crepes my daughter is on the same math sequence as your daughter.</p>
<p>Oh I’m so happy you all are posting your thoughts about college visits. S15 has a few schools on his list already and we will try to visit some of them when he comes home from Europe this summer. Chicago seems to be one of his top choices right now. I’m interested in any thoughts or impressions on Northwestern and U Chicago. We may not have the time to visit those two.</p>
<p>I’m another one who will be going to Chicago this summer (not to look at schools, but I figure since we are there we might as well visit U. of C. Still on the fence about Northwestern, though). We did take D15 to S.CA in the spring to get an idea about big/small/urban/suburban, but haven’t been visiting many schools. I’m concerned about going in the summer, since we can “see” the campus online – it was the “vibe” from our spring visits that really seemed to make an impression.</p>
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I am trying to figure out how to ask this without it coming out sounding rude…but I mean it as a sincere question…How do you know if a college loves/likes/hates/or knows anything about your high school? I doubt if any well known schools love our high school, or that it would even be on their radar! I have heard that admissions study your application and compare it with others from your school, but what if there aren’t others? I would love to know more about where kids from our school have applied and been accepted, or what colleges think of our HS graduates. I do know where a few of the kids will be attending college, but not many and I don’t knowwhere all they may have applied or been accepted.</p>
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<p>My thoughts were similar…I wanted to find a couple state schools that she might be happy with, but after visiting (one an official visit, others just walking around on campus) she liked them even less than she thought she might. We still have more in state visits to do, and hopefully we will find something that might be a good safety…meeting the qualification that it has to be somewhere that you wouldn’t mind attending!</p>
<p>I am relieved to know that we are not the only ones who haven’t started planning school visits. D is finally done as of today and I don’t want to think beyond tomorrow!</p>
<p>Crepes,</p>
<p>My oldest son who just finished his first year at MIT is an online math tutor. (He’s a math major, as well) He did one session with my 2015er before he took the SAT on Monday. (He gets accommodations, so needed take it that day) My 2015er has a diagnosed math disorder but with his brother’s help, he actually answered all the questions but one. I don’t know how he actually did, but I’m hoping that was a good sign. My oldest has been an SAT tutor for a while and knew what to target and how to guide my middle son. If you ever want to PM me, feel free to do so.</p>
<p>The SAT lasted almost 6 1/2 hours with the accommodations. Whew! But it will be great to see where his strengths and weakness are and should help us target things for the PSAT. He ran out of energy, his blood sugar went a bit low, and felt his abstract reasoning skills began to fade, so he may have totally bombed the Critical Reading. That would be ironic if he did well at math and lousy at CR! LOL</p>
<p>Oh, add us to the list of families that haven’t visited any colleges (except the community college, where he’ll be attending part time in the fall).</p>
<p>Shoboemom- lol you are not rude. Emory seems to take a lot of kids from our school compared to the other hs in our district. Meanwhile Princeton consistently accepts kids from the other HS and has not taken one of our kids in years. I think this year Princeton accepted the first student in many many years, while the other high school gets acceptances all of the time. Rumor has it that somebody broke an ED agreement many years ago , but who knows. I realize that sometimes on these posts ( just like email) it is often difficult to understand exactly what is being communicated. There are certain schools ( Emory being one) at all different levels that seem to consistently accept a lot of our students.</p>
<p>^i wanted to add that I get my information regarding how many applied, how many were accepted etc from Naviance.</p>
<p>I see a lot of people refer to Naviance on CC. Do you only get access to it if your school subscribes? From what I can tell , our school doesn’t use it.</p>
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<p>Several years ago, en route to a family reunion in South Bend, IN, we took my D1 (HS2012, interested in STEM) to visit UChicago, Northwestern, Purdue and Notre Dame. Here are my brief impressions from that trip:</p>
<ul>
<li>UChicago: hardcore academics, earnest intense students, coffeehouse in the basement of just about every building, urban setting</li>
<li>Northwestern: happy students, lots of social activities and ECs, a bit of a “hothouse” atmosphere geared toward keeping the snowflakes well-tended, in a very-upscale suburb</li>
<li>Purdue: non-nonsense state school atmosphere (in that people are there to work and learn) combined with midwestern good manners, in a small town surrounded by corn fields</li>
<li>Notre Dame: religious (crucifixes in classrooms, and priests/nuns walking around), huge pride in their athletics, set away outside of town on very spacious grounds</li>
</ul>
<p>One specific thing that I remember as crystallizing the difference between Northwestern and UChicago: our NU tour guide told us about their annual [dance</a> marathon](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwestern_University_Dance_Marathon]dance”>Northwestern University Dance Marathon - Wikipedia), organized by NU sororities, which runs for an entire weekend each March and raises more than a million dollars for charity. Our UChicago tour guide proudly told us that they also have an annual dance-a-thon, intended as a destresser the weekend before finals – but theirs lasts exactly 10 minutes, and then everyone goes back to studying.</p>
<p>I think your school has to subscribe to naviance in order to gain access to scattergrams for your school. It’s helpful but not as much as you’d think. I can easily pick out how many athletic recruits are being accepted to certain colleges and how that affects the overall trends and that’s helpful. You definitely get a sense where there may be a general cutoff for consideration at various schools too and that’s also helpful. Where it’s not helpful is at the top clustering of scores and grades because you don’t know the details of the applications, whether a hook or $$ made the difference, where the area of strength was. There are LOTS of connected parents at this high school so I’d be naive to think that there isn’t a lot of brokering going on behind the scenes.</p>
<p>One of my Ds considered transferring to Northwestern and we visited after she was accepted. (Granted, that was during the spring; we never experienced the notorious winter.) I loved that school. It’s enormous but there seemed to be many ways in which it was broken down into communities, including different residential communities and interests. There are a number of excellent schools there: engineering, drama, journalism and I like that there is a cross current of talents. D and I attended an academic advising meeting that was open to all interested prospective and would-be students and we were the only ones who attended. As a result, she was given a very personal session on how to get the classes she’d need without having to deal with bureaucracy. I would have sent her in a heartbeat. She elected not to go but my niece graduated from there and had a wonderful experience. D also had friends from high school who attended and loved it.</p>
<p>I know less about U Chicago but my impression is that it’s changed dramatically in a very short time. Back when D1 was looking at schools, it was the kind of place I could see as a spot for my youngest. It was self-selecting and idiosyncratic though admittedly always intense. Now that its acceptance rate has plummeted, I think the intensity remains but the idiosyncratic and self-selecting nature of the school may be less. The kids D1 and D2 knew who went were extremely smart, creative, and intellectually focused kids who definitely marched to their own drumbeat.</p>
<p>Yes your school has to subscribe to Naviance. It’s helpful as it shows acceptances, rejections and wait lists as they relate to GPA and test scores. It also shows how many actually enroll. It does not give info about letters of recommendation, extra curriculars etc. and how these may impact acceptances.</p>
<p>Yours shows enrollment as well as acceptance? That is great! D’s school barely updates early decision deferrals.</p>
<p>Oh how I wish Northwestern could be on our list but they don’t offer merit $ so I don’t think we’re even going to check out the campus when we are there. It sounds like UChi is probably not a good fit for D either. Boo.</p>
<p>And I really wish our school had Naviance, but it does not.</p>
<p>3 girls yes the Naviance at our school also shows enrollment. I think the schools get to pick and choose which parts they want. Suzy I am with you- my daughter is only applying to schools that give merit as well as our in state schools. Most of them award the merit without any extra work, but a few on the list will require extra applications, essays etc.</p>
<p>Can somebody comment on Georgetown U? I know it’s a catholic school. is the international relations field strong in Georgetown? How’s the student culture, etc.?</p>
<p>Thanks for sharing mihcal1. Love the dance-a-thon story. Gtown is also on S15 list. We will most likely be able to tour before Sr yr.</p>
<p>sbjdorlo, thanks, I wasn’t really aware that online tutoring was a possible option. I’ll ask D how she would feel about being tutored online.</p>
<p>Some of the test advice describes the SAT as a marathon and it looks like your middle son really had a gruelling experience–6 1/2 hours! I can’t imagine how wiped out one would be after that.</p>