Wow, I’ve been away a few days and I missed so much. Sounds like a few of you had some great school visits. We went up north for college visits and had a great weekend even though we did not get the fall weather we were hoping for. We brought the whole family and did a drive by of one school and toured three schools.
Syracuse
Syracuse was not on our radar but we spent the night there Wednesday and had about an hour to kill Thursday morning before we had to head to our first tour. I figured I might as well drive D around and let her see a bigger city school since so far we were focusing on small rural schools. I was surprised that it was prettier than I expected. We couldn’t drive right through campus because the roads are closed to traffic during class hours, but we were able to see a little bit. It was a good way to start a conversation about the pros and cons of different types of schools.
Hobart and William Smith Colleges
After driving around Syracuse we headed over to Geneva, NY to see Hobart. Hobart and William Smith is a little hard to explain- it is one school but works in a coordinate system. Everything runs as one college except the girls and boys have different sets of deans and there are a few traditions that are different for boys and girls (I think some event having to do with matriculation and maybe something at the end of senior year.) They also have different mascots and when you graduate you get a degree from just one of the schools.
When we first got there we drove through the town and found a spot to have a quick lunch. This area is very cute and very upstate NY -I don’t know how to describe it, but it is kind of old fashioned small town, nothing like my kids are used to in Florida. I wasn’t sure what they would think but they loved it! I’m not sure but I want to say it was maybe a 4X4 block area - not too tiny but not a city either. Everything there was local, no chains or anything. We had lunch at a small place that was a gift shop and also had a few tables and a lunch counter. We also saw pizza places, a gelato place, a hobby shop, etc. This part of town was about 3/4 of a mile away from campus. We later found out that on the other side of campus is the other half of town that has the regular stores like a Wegmans grocery store and a movie theater.
The town sits on Seneca Lake which is one of NY’s Finger Lakes. As we drove to campus you could see the lake on the left and the admissions building (a beautiful old house) sat right on the edge of the water - so beautiful! When we got there they had a packet waiting for us and we got to sit overlooking the lake while we waited with a few other people. The admissions rep had us walk over to another building for our information session where we sat in year another room with giant windows looking over the lake. Luckily the admissions rep was great so we weren’t too distracted! I thought the session was very informative and I learned a lot more than I had online and in the different guide books.
The school is a little over 2,000 students. They seem to be extremely involved with each student - I feel like all the small schools say that but from what he told us I felt like Hobart was actually doing it. I’m trying to remember some of the things we learned without going to get my notebook. There is a freshman year program like at many small LACs, there is a requirement that you either double major or have a major and a minor. They have a cool sounding Leadership School where you can take seminars and classes on ways to be a good leader - everything from how to make an agenda for a meeting to how to plan a budget for a project. You are guaranteed an internship or research. There are no specific class requirements, there are areas of study that you must fulfill but you can use tons of different classes to fulfill each one (so D would not have to take a math or a language -that made her happy!) The largest class size is 30 but the average is 15.
There were only 3 other kids there and we were split into two groups for our tours. We were lucky enough to have two tour guides who were pretty different from each other so I liked having the two different perspectives. The campus is beautiful, bigger than I expected. I had friends who went here in college and I visited them once or twice, either I don’t remember much or the school has really grown! We loved the mostly brick and stone buildings and I liked that there was a lot of green space. D and I always like to see places like quads where the kids can just hang out on a nice day and there were lots of spots for that. The students we saw on the tour seemed nice and friendly. My D is a little worried about the SLACs being too preppy or outdoorsy for her. Both she and my D21 thought the kids here seemed like just regular kids - a little on the outdoorsy/jocky side but not enough to bother them. The cafeteria is brand new with both a traditional area and a “food court” type area that is open late - they all looked very nice. They have both single sex and co ed dorms and the room they showed seemed fine. I asked and they said you could choose where to live, but I wonder if not enough of one sex chose to live in the single sex dorm if you might get stuck in one anyway.
Overall we really loved it. The only drawback for us is that it is not easy to get to - we have to take connecting flights to either Syracuse or Rochester then there is an hour long drive after that. Plus the cold - it is so cold in upstate NY for a FL girl! She is less worried about that but when the time comes I think that will be a big decision she has to make.
This was WAY longer than I planned and I have to get ready to meet D at a college fair so I will do the other two schools later.
