First (and probably only) college visit! S25 and I visited Cambridge, MA, due to his unexpected acceptance to MIT. I’ll share that it was completely worth it. S25 had been somewhat uncertain about MIT, because of the reputation there for exceptionally difficult and time-consuming courses. But we talked to several students, and they seemed to be reasonably chill. We explored the interesting and quirky campus, including exhibits of the ground-breaking research that’s going on at the school (including the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research). For a budding medical researcher, this was his nirvana. On day two, S25 said to me, “I think I could see myself here.” Mission accomplished!
We also visited the Harvard campus, which is gorgeous and historic. Harvard was on spring break, so we didn’t get to talk to any students. Overall, I’m now a believer in the campus visit—really allowed us to get a sense of the college vibe in a way that’s not possible from web sites.
oof, that is a LOT in one day, I am sorry. I hope your family can do something kind of fun this weekend!
Thank you! We started the day with a BU rejection, but S25 got into Conn College shortly after with a huge merit + FA award. We can do a happy dance again. Now, they are off to celebrate their second anniversary with their boyfriend!
Aah this makes me so happy!!! What a great way to celebrate. And I’m so happy they got a big merit award too!
My son really liked Conn College a lot when we visited and said he could see himself there. It’s a really lovely school, but I think part of it was due to visiting the cool record store in town, meeting his doppelgänger at the register (seriously), and being offered a job there by the owner if he ended up at Conn. He was on cloud nine.
He is still sleeping, so no idea if he got in yet. He has a few top choices that he got into so Conn College probably won’t be where he ends up, but if he got a huge merit award like your kid he might change his mind.
Congratulations!!
Edit: He did get a huge merit award (largest one so far) so it makes it an interesting option!
New Hartford isn’t 20 minutes away from Hamilton College. It’s like 5. The city of Utica is 20 min away.
I guess I misremembered. I’m not sure any of that affected D25’s attitude. She just wasn’t feeling it for whatever reason.
My kid will be attending Hamilton and is used to typical suburb/small town vibes, but it is important to visit and get the vibe to see if it’s a fit!
Congrats to your child.
So true about visiting. My child is more opinionated than I anticipated. And I can’t quite figure out the common thread between some of her likes. Or why she likes one and not some other that doesn’t seem all that different. 
I’m just happy she’s found one that seems to check the most important (to her) boxes and fits in our budget.
Congratulations! S25 is also in at Conn with a scholarship. I keep reminding him that Conn is the one with free music lessons for all….
Last decision for this LAC family this morning, thank goodness. Ended on a whimper with an unsurprising no from Bates. My artsy kid is a great student, but attends a tiny charter school with a very limited academic curriculum (no AP’s or anything) and didn’t care about the SAT (just sat for the state test and received a 1370), so this has been interesting. Now we can start on visits to acceptances because we couldn’t travel much last fall. My D25’s results ended up exactly as I predicted, much to my husband’s annoyance, haha: Clean sweep of safeties and targets, no’s on the big reaches (a spring admit for Mount Holyoke, but she’s not interested in that). We visited Wheaton in MA last spring (we are in NH), but now we’ll be visiting St. Lawrence University, Dickinson, Denison, Oberlin (where her dad and I went), and Skidmore. Financial aid packages were what we expected and planned for and very similar from all of them. I think they are all really good options and would be great for her, but she’s gonna have to see what she likes. So far she’s been much more low-key about this whole process than I have (every school “would be fine” 
), but I would think it starts to get real when you visit as an accepted student. (I don’t actually know because I couldn’t visit any of the colleges I applied to; orientation was the first day I saw the place! ) Good luck to all during the final choice phase! 
Your D25 and mine (and her best friend) have a lot of overlap. She didn’t apply to Mt. Holyoke though. We visited most last summer/fall, but are planning a couple of revisits for admitted student days. There seems to be a clear winner overall, but we’ll see after the revists.
Brutal weekend for C25: four more rejections and a waitlist. C refuses to be dispirited, thankfully, but it’s looking like closer to a whitewash than we would have imagined possible a month ago. Two good options, for which we’re deeply grateful . . . but 0-7 (plus two waitlists) at the very selective schools, which doesn’t bode well for the reachiest of the reaches next week. We were prepared for a crapshoot, but we thought maybe C’s stats would load the dice a little. No such luck so far. Congrats to all whose kids are getting in to these amazing LACs.
Please keep us posted on how it goes! I am glad to hear these schools definitely don’t all feel the same in person (my kid is correct that they all seem a bit similar online and in the brochures). I’ve visited a number of them, but mostly as an adult seeing professor friends, and it’s been years. Plus it’s definitely different when you’re a student!
that is amazing! What a great attitude. Personally I think that bodes very well for her future, wherever she ends up!
Bucknell is great for business! We were told it is hard to transfer into the business dept if you don’t enter as a business major, though.
Where do you dig this level of detailed information from? Very interesting.
I think so! For the information from that post, I sourced it from this site that had doctoral information through 2018: Baccalaureate origins of doctoral recipients
Since that time, however, I found this source with the information on doctorates through 2023: https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/jonboeckenstedt/viz/DoctoralRecipients1958-2023/AllData
You can narrow down by the range of years you interested in, subject, Carnegie classification, state or region, etc. Hope this helps!
That is great. Has some results I did not anticipate. Is there a source like this for kids who go on to med school?
Not that I’m aware of, but perhaps @WayOutWestMom knows?
Spreadsheet A2 has “Undergraduate Institutions Supplying 50 or More Applicants to U.S. Medical Schools, 2024-2025” where you can see how many students from each school applied to medical school last cycle. It doesn’t differentiate between current students applying and those who took growth years.