<p>For me, at one school, the kids all dressed really boring- cookie cutter, seldom did I see anyone with a bit of flair, indivuality, imagination, and everyone we saw had a backpack- no other means of carrying books- some backpacks had one book, but seemed, at least to me, that no one wanted to appear “different”- you know, a cool scarf, something besides a sweatshirt on</p>
<p>To some that may sound petty, but it gave me a sense of no quirkiness, or willingness to be who you were</p>
<p>I could be off base, but eh, that is what I sensed…my D later said, without my prodding, that she thought the students were not interesting…it was just a “feeling” sure, but it stuck</p>
<p>I didn’t expect fashion icons, but jeesh, they looked like they did in HS</p>
<p>Reading about some pretty raw and crude parties that were held on campus in the student newspaper! I should think that the admissions office of that school would have done a better job of not having that issue of the paper in the office. At any rate, I was pretty shocked at what was printed and decided that perhaps the focus was not on academics.</p>
<p>my parents sometimes commented on the other parents on the tours- the parents who would ask me which boarding school i went to, where we vacationed, what other schools i was applying to, etc.</p>
<p>There was one school where it really seemed as if the guide was on drugs. I’m sure she wasn’t, but it left such a bad impression that ZG didn’t even apply.</p>
<p>Being the wishy-washy person that I am sometimes, I had a hard time forming an opinion about most of the schools we visited. I could see good things and potentially not-so-good things about all of them!</p>
<p>For my kids, well, one wouldn’t get out of the car at Boston College and the other one felt the Northeastern “had no personality.” Neither seemed like very well grounded decisions to me, but, oh well…</p>
<p>After one tour, we went over to the dance department. The secretary there, while answering my d’s question, was quite terse and quite rude. That was a definite turnoff.</p>
<p>On another, all the kids looked very “preppy” (similar to cgm’s feeling that there was no differntiation). The campus was beautiful, but I felt like I was visiting a country club that I couldn’t afford, and wouldn’t take me as a member anyway! Later, D told me the same thing. She didn’t apply to either school.</p>
<p>At one small Ohio LAC, they played loud classical music in the Admissions Office; also the decor in the Admin. Affice was old and outdated (by like 50 or 60 years). I thought to myself “if they’re trying to attract kids who are 17 or 18 years old, this is the wrong way to do it!” I found out later SpringfieldGirl had the same reaction. That campus also had a very busy highway running right through it.</p>
<p>At an engineering U son visited, they proclaimed proudly that they were a school of nerds (kind of a go nerds!! nerds rock!!) That’s all it took for him to nix them. I don’t think nerd-dom is a good marketing tool.</p>
<p>At a mid-Atlantic LAC, the admissions rep who spoke at the info session: (1) had a bad cold and was continually blowing his nose and (2) the cuff of his left pants leg was hiked up above his sock and he never adjusted it.</p>
<p>When D claimed that she was NOT going on the tour and that we had to leave immediately (I got special dispensation to visit the bathroom first), she later told us in the car that the pants cuff thing had driven her crazy, too.</p>
<p>A few years ago, we went on a tour of Georgetown, which went on for over 2 hours–people were dropping like flies–but we hung in there. It was not slow, either-- more like a mini marathon. Just before the tour started, and everyone had gathered around the tour guide, she first welcomed everyone, and then she said, “First, before the tour, let me just tell you a little about myself . . .” She practically read us her resume, which went on and on; obviously, her list of attributes was impressive (otherwise, she wouldn’t have bothered), but that seemed both unnecessary and just a tiny bit weird to me.</p>
<p>Went on another tour, where the tour guide made sexist jokes and kept putting down Ivy League schools-both of which seemed really unnecessary. Among all tour guides, he was the most impressive, though, in his ability to walk backwards in a straight line, while answering questions in an articulate manner and pointing to all the sights.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I don’t get turned off by irrational things.</p></li>
<li><p>(Actually, I don’t remember getting turned off anywhere.)</p></li>
<li><p>My kids really didn’t get turned off by irrational things, either. My daughter carefully checked out what clothes people wore, but that was pretty rational as a source of information. The one less-than-rational response she had was at Brown, where our tour guide was a perfectly nice, energetic, jocky, all-American-girl type. She didn’t know anything about the many sculptures dotting the campus, and her major was very real-world and businessy. Pretty much on that evidence alone – and notwithstanding that after the tour she spent time with one of the most scholarly girls she knew in the class ahead of her, who was a freshman there – my daughter decided that Brown had an anti-intellectual vibe, and wrote it off. Then my son wrote it off because his sister had written it off, and he trusts her judgment a lot. But usually that’s rational – I trust her judgment, too, just not on Brown.</p></li>
<li><p>Best irrational kid response: The girl who hated Barnard because “everyone” (i.e., two or three people) assumed she was gay. It was the only school she had visited without her mother, a male friend, or a friend to stay with. It will be a sad shock to her when she learns that, based on how she presents herself, a fair number of people everywhere will think that she’s gay.</p></li>
</ol>
many of the guidebooks have info that helps with this. There are a few listings here in CC that have a correlation to this also. Recently there was a listing ranking Universities and the LACs on the % of their students that were white … many of the schools with the highest % of whites also have the reputation for being privaleded/preppy. Mini also has the “entitlement index” (or something close to that) which ranks schools by some measures of the wealth of student population … again there is a correlation to schools with the wealthiest students often having the reputation of being privaleged/preppy (this one may be on the CC archive and not the current version).</p>
<p>We visited an engineering school where the young women tour guides did not have much energy. I wasn’t looking for rah-rah school pride, but when DS asked them about their majors and their summer research projects, they couldn’t even muster much enthusiasm. Was a turnoff to all of us, though DS will return during school sessions to see if the vibe is different.</p>
<p>The only school that I could say gave me an irrational turn-off was one in NYC where one of the mothers reminded me of the queen bee’s mom in the movie “Mean Girls”. Dressed like she was trying to look 18 :eek: . But at the other schools I can’t think of anything like that that stands out in memory.</p>
<p>A “communications major” tour guide asked the students about their prospective majors. Hearing “applied math” she exclaimed: “wow, what do you do with THAT?”</p>
<p>I wouldn’t rely on guidebooks for the “country club” atmosphere. All the proxies that 3togo mentions can give some information, but I’ve visited schools that look similar on paper, and some were “country club” prep and some weren’t. (And there was only one that was overwhelmingly so.) This is a feeling that I only got on the basis of a visit.</p>
<p>Sounds like Stanford - the unaffordable country club.</p>
<p>Turnoffs:
1.Berkeley - The tour quide talked extensively about being on her 5th major in 3 years. None of
the kids around campus were smiling. At the question and answer session after the tour, not a single parent asked a question (other than me).</p>
<p>2.Brown - Highly disorganized. The Admissions presenter was very overweight, had huge breasts and wasn’t wearing a bra. The tour guides were very poorly spoken and unimpressive. No dorms and few of the buildings were shown. We were allowed to peak in a window of a room - unbelievably small. Literature about the school was refused to anyone who was not already a high school senior.
3.Harvard - Tour guide kidnapped the group and held them in a church in high heat forever. Talked mainly about what a fun place Harvard is and all the EC’s the students were involved in. Made a big effort to deemphasize the academics.
However, mentioned she was going to med school, and that her favorite memories were all the hours she spent in the library studying science. Awful traffic. Had miles to walk to one crosswalk to Admissions office. Music building reaked of mold. Boston traffic is awful.
4.Pomona - very elitist, snotty attitude, many FAT students on campus, VERY RUDE soccer coach, rudest, snottiest all around school visited.</p>
<p>I remember being turned off at nearly every old-line northeastern school by the modern archtectural monstrosity sitting in the middle of campus that they each seem to have built around 1975. These really clash with the beautiful old buildings that so many of thes old colleges can boast of. What a shame.</p>