Boston Schools Visit report
We’ve been back a week now, but here is our visit report to Boston.
TL;DR Visited three schools. D liked all three, but really liked BC, a surprise, and BU.
Boston College
After dumping our bags at the hotel, we got back on the T and headed for Boston College. We got off at the end of the Green line and had lunch at a pizza place there. The pizza was fine and the garlic knots were really good. We then walked a couple blocks to the main campus gate. I didn’t know much about this campus, but in the summertime it is really beautiful. The landscaping is perfect and while not as big as Stanford, the condition of the grounds brought that to mind. We arrived early and waited in the admission office. As we waited, several student employees of the admission office talked to us. Honestly, they could not have been nicer. For whatever reason these students really clicked with my daughter to the point that we felt for monopolizing the staff. The students were from the midwest and so were we, so maybe that was part of it.
The information session was really good. The AO gave the usual 20 minute introduction and then there was a student panel. The audience asked really good questions and this proved to be a great session. We then did the tour. The facilities are nice. This was one of the few tours where we didn’t actually see the inside of a dorm, but the staff pointed us to some online resources to see photos/videos of the rooms.
Boston College is a Jesuit institution. They have what I call a “pseudo-core”. You have to take courses that cover 10 areas of scholarship to ensure that you educate the whole person. There is a focus on service as well, although there are no hard requirements. BC feels “more Jesuit than Catholic” to me, and I think that is good. In contrast, I think Saint Louis University feels “more Catholic than Jesuit”. The campus is a bit of a bubble, but with public transport right there you have access to the whole city.
There is a bit of preppy vibe, but overall it didn’t seem to bother D’17 as everyone was so nice during our visit.
D '17 really like the people there and will probably apply. However, we would need merit aid and that is exceedingly rare; I could see this turning into a “financial rejection.”
Boston University
This was the target of our visit. We visited early on the second day. While getting off the T, an employee of the university saw us looking lost and gave us some helpful directions. She also said that she loved the university but told my daughter to make sure that she wants an urban campus. We were early and the admission office wasn’t actually open so we walked around Bay Street and saw the Brownstones that make up may of the LLCs. I thought they were absolutely stunning and would want to live there. We went to the admissions office and the lounge has a wall of windows that view the Charles river. On our morning, it was an amazing view.
The admission session was good, a student and an AO. The student had taken the first year writing seminar that entailed visiting restaurants and writing reviews. Finally someone has invented an English class in which I might excelled. I always try to understand what a college says is distinctive about themselves, but after a week I can’t really remember what BU said made them different. This is not a criticism, and D is interested because the program she is interested in ranked in the top 5. Merit aid is available. For us, it will be necessary or this will be a financial rejection too.
We then did the tour. The tour guides that we had were nice and one had a very 'big" personality. BU is a long and thin campus and bisected by the Green line and a busy street. There is another busy street between campus and the green space next to the Charles river. There are several pedestrian bridges that connect to the green space. There is an area called the “BU beach”. To give a feel for the campus, the area is called the beach because, apocryphally, if you close your eyes the traffic sounds like waves at the ocean The locals refer to “east, central, and west” campus. Most of the Arts and Science buildings and the college D is interested in are in “Central Campus”. We did not tour “West Campus”. The bookstore and the place we had lunch at were in “east.”
Northeastern University
The final college visit that we did was Northeastern University. We used the Green Line of the T to get there and arrived early enough to walk around for about 1/2 an hour. The information session was fine. The one thing that was strange was the actual building itself where they give the information session. It has lots of “natural” light but it is filtered and augmented with colored light in a way that was strangely off-putting. I thought it was just me by my wife agreed. D didn’t really mind or mention this.
Obviously what makes Northeastern unique is their emphasis on a coop program. It is a requirement of graduation to have two “experiential learning experiences”, coops or internships. For the engineers, coops are that different but the emphasis on the coop program is. For other disciplines, I think this is pretty unique. Because of this, it is nearly impossible to graduate in 4 years if you don’t take summer school. As a result, we saw many more students on campus here than at the other two schools. Additional, I had the impression that more foreign students were on campus than I would have expected from the % enrolled. This could just be the way our interactions happened to work out.
If you have a child who works as a tour guide at Northeastern University, I would suggest leaving the room now.
Unfortunately, we had the worst tour that we have had to date. Our tour guide was ill-prepared and basically uninterested in leading the tour. The guide was a rising sophomore student who did a study abroad deferred enrollment. The guide basically had only semester at Northeastern and could not / chose not to answer any questions. I think that the training wasn’t very thorough either. After a while, it was obvious that many other parents and students on our tour felt the same way that we did. While visiting a dorm, one parent asked some softball questions.
Q. “How do you match your roommates?”
A. “I matched randomly”
Q “What do students do for social life on the weekends.”
A. “That is a really hard quesion. Everyone is different.”
etc...
We tried to stick with the tour to walk away after a positive moment but we eventually just snuck away to the T.
Boston in general.
As suggested, we lived on the T. We arrived, took a bus to the airport T station, found an MTBA employee, asked for “Charlie Cards”, loaded 7 day passes ($19) on them, and never looked back. It really couldn’t have been easier. After the trip, D’17 felt like she could easily navigate the system and back and forth to Logan on breaks.
On our last day, we considered visiting Tufts, but the information session schedule would have caused us to have rush to the airport. Since they don’t give any merit aid either, we just enjoyed a lovely morning walking to and spending time in the Boston Public Gardens. We found a fantastic bakery on the way, had some breakfast and just really enjoyed the morning. We allowed extra time to get to the airport, but didn’t need it. In the summer, the T works great. I wonder it if works that well all year round.
DSs have different last name so my stuff doesn’t come up when kids’ names are googled. Hope AOs don’t have time to google parents 
:-S