Hello all! D17 and I had a busy long weekend doing college visits - I have skimmed what’s been going on here but I’m sure I’ve missed a ton, you all stay busy. :)) Congrats to all who have gotten apps out the door and acceptances in!
This weekend turned out to be very valuable for my D in terms of honing in on what she’s looking for in a school - enough that she came away with clear preferences for her applications. After so much ambivalence and only half paying attention, this is major progress!
After visiting, Vassar shot up D’s list to nestle next to Smith on the “definite” list. It was artsy/nerdy in just the way the people who had suggested it to D made it sound, and D had a very positive response. They have a brand new science building and seem to be putting resources behind STEM. Like Smith, Vassar has a fairly open curriculum, but they seemed like they offer enough guidance for that to not feel overwhelming. (The way they presented the open curriculum at Brown did not appeal to D, she felt like she would drown there.) Unfortunately, Vassar is one of those LACs that is a significantly tougher admit for girls than for boys, but D does have 75th percentile stats there (for whatever that’s worth, lol) and our admittedly limited Naviance data looks at least decently realistic (though the Naviance dots don’t show gender of applicant.)
Bryn Mawr sadly did not show itself well during our visit, and fell off Ds list altogether. This was a major disappointment from a school she was really primed to like! It’s inexplicable to me that a college would put together a special visit day featuring lunch, essay workshop, info session, and tours - attract 40-50 visitors to this special day… and then only have 1 student tour guide available to troop everybody around in one giant herd. 8-| It was a complete waste of time. She didn’t even do the backwards walking thing, so only the 2-3 people right next to her could hear anything she was saying. We marched into and out of buildings before we even found out what they were. When we did stop someplace large enough for the whole group to hear, the guide’s spiel seemed to focus a lot on their close relationship with Haverford. D said she got a greater sense of the history and tradition of a women’s school from the now co-ed Vassar than she did at Bryn Mawr. In the end, the school just felt bland.
Part of me wants to say that I shouldn’t be so hasty in judging a school by one visit/tour - except, we had to register for this day, and presumably so did everyone else. They knew how many people to expect. I understand that the college was on Fall break and there weren’t many students around, but then they should have had the women who led the info sessions step in and lead tour groups, or something. Or, just don’t plan a special visit day during Fall break when you can’t accommodate the group. It does say something about they way they run things there. If we’d had any idea, we would have skipped the tour altogether and had time to visit Haverford - which we couldn’t do more than quickly drive through because the tour at Bryn Mawr ran so late. Oh well!
Swarthmore on the other hand, was also on Fall break, but managed to cough up 5 tour guides (each of whom, my D noted, was unabashedly nerdy in a slightly different way ;)) ) Our tour guide was so infectiously enthusiastic about being a student at Swarthmore, it just radiated out of him. It seemed like every building we stopped in, he was able to name a friend (he must know half the student body!) who was in a related major and all the cool things they were doing and projects they were working on. You really got the sense that they’re not kidding about Swat being a collaborative environment, because this kid could seemingly name every professor of every class that all of his friends were taking - and he seemed as excited by what they were doing as by what he himself was studying. D was deeply impressed. There was so much intellectual intensity, but it all seemed very positive, caring, and optimistic. D was also happy to hear that both the student who helped at the info session and our tour guide had come into Swarthmore undecided and had been encouraged to really explore and experience different areas before settling into a major (the first semester is graded pass/fail just for this reason.)
As a bonus, the campus was the most stunningly beautiful of any school we’ve seen thus far. Maybe it’s the volume and maturity of the trees, but Swarthmore had a very zen, peaceful vibe shot through with whimsical elements like the giant adirondack chair on the main lawn and a large tree swing. So… she knows it’s a long shot, but D came away from that day wanting to apply to Swat ED. She described it as “pretty much the ideal”, and she feels like she would regret not giving herself the best shot possible to get in, even though the odds are so slim. Fortunately, she also really liked Vassar and Smith and we’re still planning to visit Barnard and maybe Haverford and she’s got 3 SUNYs and RIT for safer bets. Mostly I’m glad something was able to cut through her fog of indifference and actually generate a little bit of positive anticipation for this “whole college thing.”
Now, we have a lot of work to do! 
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