Bing is one of the most popular SUNYs with people from my high school. Other popular ones are Plattburgh, Potsdam, and Geneseo
@stem2017 have you toured Stony Brook yet? We are OOS, but they seem to have good engineering.
@jmek15 We have toured SB. We are very familiar with the school. My wife and I are from Long Island. Lots of pros and cons regarding SB. It is very strong in STEM majors. The major downside for us is its commuter/suitcase school reputation. But for the price, it’s tough to beat for NYers.
@CA1543 Our experience at BU was very much like @paveyourpath – the info session was very polished, almost inspiring. Then, our tour guide was very concise and didn’t repeat any info from the intro session. I, too, was very surprised my DD liked the urban campus. I think she is starting to appreciate that a large student body affords more variety of housing, less impact of Greek life, etc. she wants to study neuroscience/behavioral bio so I can’t speak to CS but she was pleased with the academic pitch.
Tufts was unusual–great info session speaker that made me want to enroll but the tour felt very ‘closed’–only went inside one building and it was not impressive. Pointed out that there were 6 houses for special populations to hang out with their “own” type and one was “women”–huge turnoff to my DD. It took a couple days afterward for DD to say “take it off the list.”
Our first impression of Dartmouth was traditional and conservative but we were slowly wooed by the description of their curriculum, schedule (D plan) and student activities/services. It helped that our tour lead was from our state and was pursuing my DDs major and pre-med. The campus is more traditional and they too limited access to buildings on the tour but kept saying we are welcome to go anywhere if we wanted to see more. It seemed like getting access to a Dartmouth education would negate any of the trivial pursuits my DD has had at other colleges (nice dorms, good food, low Greek life)…kind of like falling in love!
So we returned today from our trip to East Lansing, MI to look at MSU. D17 met the local rep at a college fair, and after talking he invited her to attend this honors edition of an open house.
Morning started at 8:30 with registration. About 250 kids were in attendance. The head of admissions to the university opened it up with a super appropriate moment of silence for the victims in Nice. He followed that up telling the kids that they were invited because they were the ones who would be ‘changing the world for the better’. He was a great speaker/motivator and funny as hell, getting the expected dig in towards UofM.
Then someone from admissions and the dean of the HC spoke for a while to describe how the HC worked.
A couple highlights for the HC:
• HC has been around almost 60 years making it one of the oldest
• 3700 honors college students
• The usual honors courses…I would say an average amount: 175. Max size is kind of all over the charts. 50-120 for lectures (vs. up to 700), 20 for labs seemed about right.
• Need to take a minimum number of courses, and do some experiential learning, to graduate with honors and stay in the HC. I don’t remember them talking about a GPA to remain.
• HC kids can forego prerequisites for many classes, given many more options….even ignoring whatever AP/IB/DE credit you get. “If it makes sense, you can do it” was the basic message. I had not heard this for any other program.
• Can take a limited number of grad-level courses for no extra $
• Lots of emphasis on Service, Research, and Study Abroad. Lots. They have a Top 10 study abroad program.
• Housing is interesting. They have no single honors dorm. They do this on purpose, because they could easily do this if they wanted…and they’ve been around a long time. They feel it’s better to integrate HC kids with the general population, so they instead have Honors floors in 5 or 6 different dorms a LLCs/residential colleges.
• Scholarships. They make it just confusing enough to make you think you will get gobs of $ here. And your K might. But for everything there seems to be a little bit of a competitiveness they don’t speak of. It’s not all automatic or every kid at this event would be awarded all the scholarships. Suffice to say there are some decent chances at merit at MSU if you apply early.
• Panel of 7 HC kids. They were great. All good speakers and obviously loved their school and the HC. All were doing research, most started freshman year. One presented her research at a conference end of freshman year. Another was a co-writer on a publication freshman year on his research project.
After this we did various campus tours and spoke to an academic advisor for the Neuroscience programs, which was the best thing we could have done. Got a lot of super valuable information from her, and she and D got along great. I won’t bore you with that stuff tho.
Housing
• 5-6 ‘neighborhoods’ comprising of several LARGE dorms.
• We saw a community bath dorm. Nothing to write home about and we couldn’t see the actual dorm because they were being rehabbed!
• Lots of suite-style dorms. I think these were most prevalent. They seemed to be built mostly in the same layout in the 70s 5-10 stories.
• Lots of Living-Learning Communities to choose from. Lots of emphasis on sustainability in general
Campus
• Big as Hell. If your kid does not want a big campus, or is not open minded towards a large campus…don’t consider. That said, my D likes a compact campus like a Case Western, but she thought MSU ‘felt’ smaller than it was.
• I think it would be very difficult to try to live near you classes. You will just have to go long distances to some classes. Dorms seem to mostly be on the outer edges of campus. You could easily have a 20 minute walk to class. Easy.
• Some LLCs could be good choices at least freshman year. Not as much walking to class. Go to class in PJs. Live with kids in your classes.
• Very very bike-friendly with a bike shop centrally located.
• Pretty setting, with a river running through the middle of campus.
• Lots of green space. Lots. A whole friggin’ log of space.
• Mostly red brick buildings. Pretty.
• OK, I only saw 25% of campus, so there is more to explore
• It’s a really big campus.
General impressions/comments
• They are not on CA or COA. App opens mid August
• They have great meal plan options and the food is voted in the top 25 best college food. All you can eat plan is recommended.
• 700 clubs
• NO QUIDDITCH!!
• Kind of an obnoxious train track on the periphery of campus with train whistles at all times. There was construction on two crossings, so they may have been the reason.
• Good ole midwestern nice people. Everyone was super nice and laid back.
We went this weekend on a SIX HOUR tour / experience at the University of Minnesota. They had breakfast and lunch for students, we toured lots of buildings, and had two mini classes. They were really trying hard! It became clear that my D17 is only interested in a few small liberal arts schools out east and her final college list may just be 4-5 schools! It was too bad because the U did a great job with everything but a big college is not where my D sees herself. So, with that I think we are done with college tours but have yet to really start applications.
Ugh. Several typos above, including:
I meant:
We saw a community bath dorm. Nothing to write home about and we couldn’t see the actual bathroom because they were being rehabbed!
We had planned to tour one suite-style LLC, but kind of ran out of time, and had discussed it in detail with the AA we spoke to, so felt like we could just watch the videos on YouTube.
@2muchquan, did I hear you right? No quidditch?!? Dang, that might be worth an application right there.
More seriously, I like their approach toward (the lack of) honors dorms.
@2muchquan thanks for the detailed trip report for MSU. I graduated from there and my favorite thing about the Honors College was being able to waive the prereq. for classes and take what I wanted. It was nice to take an upper level sociology class without sitting through sociology 101 first. I don’t remember the size of campus as being much of an issue. Upper level classes in my major were all in the same area, and there were so many other classes it was easy to schedule things so you weren’t going from one end of campus to another. There were definitely parts of campus I would go for months at time without seeing.
@caroldanvers Thanks for your perspective. Very helpful. I thought the ability to waive pre-reqs was so cool. I haven’t heard this of other HCs.
I think the reason it seemed like classes would be all over is because we were talking about Neuroscience, which is inherently multi-disciplinary. So classes were a little more spread out.
My big news! :x
My oldest D (age 23) is engaged! Her BF (er, now fiance) proposed today on the trail where they first talked to each other eight years ago. They’ve been together almost six years (since fall of senior year in HS). He’s a great guy and really like family already. H and I and her sibs are all so happy for them. Wedding next July – yikes!
Not that I’m complaining, but now I’ve got a HS junior and HS senior to plan college with and a D to plan a wedding with. It’s going to be a busy year. 8-}
Kids leaving home
This is going to be really tough on me (and I think tougher on H) unless she goes to the local school (very unlikely) or the one that’s an easy drive (possible if she doesn’t get merit elsewhere…). But she really wants to go further away as well as preferring schools that don’t happen to be close. Oldest D is at the local college, so I haven’t had to deal with a kid leaving yet. I have to admit, I like having D11 around. We will still have S18 at home, but obviously not for long!
@MichiganGeorgia, my H’s family has a strong association with GA Southern – there is even a building named after his grandfather who was a professor there for many years. It’s not named after him for a donation – a college prof and a teacher don’t make enough for that. 
@dfbdfb, congrats on your D’s very early acceptance! <:-P
@snoozn Congratulations on your D’s engagement!! My older D also has a serious boyfriend of few years and H and I are kind of waiting when they announce their engagement. How exciting! I hope you will keep your sanity going through wedding planning and two consecutive years of college planning!!
@MichiganGeorgia the dorms at VSU are gorgeous, suite-style rooms. The boys had the corridor style rooms, and I don’t know what they looked like. When we were waiting for D to be done with the convocation (and droves of crying kids around afterwards), we checked out the school newspaper. They had some apartments close to campus that, frankly, were amazing. Especially for the price. They were pet friendly, looked like a resort, and started at $387/month. It was called blantoncommon.com . VSU is definitely on D18’s list.
D17 and her dad and grandpa are headed up to Boston today for her first college tours. My boston peeps are like, why aren’t you going? I have finals, but really I’m not going because I don’t want to stress her out. We’re calling it “The Rationals Trip” because the three of them are the coolest heads in the family :). I’ll report back on what she liked/didn’t like. She’s looking at Northeastern, MIT, Olin, and WPI.
@snoozn congrats on your daughter’s engagement! Have you looked at the Tacky Wedding Things thread? It’s fairly hilarious.
@snoozn Congratulations on your daughter’s engagement. Very exciting year for your family.
@snoozn congratulations on the engagement. You’re going to be a very busy lady!
@MotherOfDragons: I wish your “Rationals” a great trip, and I will be interested to hear your D’s impressions of WPI. We liked the school VERY much, but the dorm was a turnoff. The room they chose to show us on the tour was very small for a double – and it was actually a quad. It was so jam packed with the 4 girls’ belongings that there was, quite literally, only a square of about 3 ft where you could actually see the carpet. One of the girls said that it was a forced quad, they would never have chosen such a crowded arrangement. It just looked really claustrophobic to me! My D was not impressed… ( and she is already used to sharing a smallish dorm room). I’m hoping that this was an unusual case there and that you can report back!
@snoozn – HUGE CONGRATS ON YOUR d’S ENGAGEMENT! WHAT JOYFUL NEWS.
@2muchquan – thanks so much for the MSU report-- impressively detailed.
@dfbdfb – huge congrats to your D on getting an acceptance so early! Must feel good. (If it were my DS18 - I am afraid he might say - “See mom I told you it would work out fine.” and be done - back to his regularly scheduled gaming & hanging out with friends.")
@MotherOfDragons – look forward to hearing back about your D’s tours! Those schools are on our potential list too - have not visited Olin or WPI yet. DH is taking DS to see Cornell next week - long drive but they will have a pretty full day there with some focus on engineering. Will report back.
While I was on our MSU trip I checked CC when I had a minute here and there. Maybe I missed something, but the way ya’ll were fixating on the meaning and importance of the Course Rigor checkbox was quite comical. I think ya’ll are certifiably nuts.
It also made me reflect on this whole crazy process. D17’s top 2 schools are now what many of you would consider safeties. She was so excited at MSU. She gets excited at almost every ‘next school’ she sees (exceptions were Davidson and Clemson). There are so many opportunities for kids who want/seek them. She’ll do great at any of them. And your kids will too.
Now chillax!
@2muchquan LOL!! The box that really matters to me is the “balance due.”
@snoozn congrats to your Dd! You have a lot going on. You ought to plan a girls trip with all 3 before the wedding. Some time to just have fun together. 
@carachel2 Ha! No rich grandparents here either. lol. But D does have grandparents on both sides that could come together and pay full freight but that’s not going to happen.
@snoozn Congrats!!! How exciting! Can I help plan the wedding? I love planning parties and my parties are legendary. No weddings yet though. lol
So, CCC has been operating on the DL. 
I am currently working with 3 families (not including my D). (Free of charge). I’m helping with college selection for one of them. I met with the family for the first time yesterday to run their financial numbers. They have twins. All I can say is I was literally floored at what a difference having 2 kids in college at the same time makes and also not having significant non-protected assets. They are solidly upper middle class and would get HUGE need-based aid for each child at the meet-full need schools. I was certain the NPC was wrong and redid it and ran it for several schools to make sure. It really made me understand the focus on such schools for so many. Of course, chances of getting accepted to those schools is very slim.
With a smaller family, significant non-protected assets, D qualifies for nothing at the same schools. Very interesting!