<p>runningmom-nm-PLEASE name that school!</p>
<p>dragonmom-you too!
Also-for the poster -cannot remember who- that suggested a visit to VOODOO donuts in Portland-ahh-the smell of the 60’s being made right on the sidewalk …</p>
<p>runningmom-nm: Not to try to change your daughter’s mind or anything, but Wes is anything but a dumb jock school! The frat you are talking about is quite the outlier, and we often like to say that the reason Wes has all its sports fields integrated in the campus is that that is the only way they will get people to watch the games :P</p>
<p>re: Dartmouth. A friend of mine took his D to see Dartmouth. On the ride home he asked what she thought, and she said it looked like nobody was happy, all she saw were grim, stressed faces. She didn’t apply.</p>
<p>Haha. Reading this thread it certainly reads as if no one should make visits or go to info sessions. We all get tiny bits of info that give us strange impressions of schools based on random data points.</p>
<p>Weskid: I think runnningmom knows that.</p>
<p>dragonmom: Your line about the sixties & drugs – priceless. Soooooo funny.</p>
<p>In fact, it seems that the more we investigate, the more useless info we acquire!</p>
<p>Oh oregon 101 - you must be able to guess - Reed College of course! Which is currently at the top of my D list. She has a couple of weeks to make her final decision, so we shall see. Guess I’ll save money on her clothes budget if she goes there…</p>
<p>Weskid - yes she knows that may not be a correct impression of Wesleyan but it still nags at her. We went to an Author talk that evening, and then she went to an Afro Amer Lit class the next day and she talked to the professor and that part was all amazing. Unfortunately another negative was the student in the admissions office, he was just so unfriendly and condescending. Granted it was towards the end of the day and he probably just wanted to be done but we couldn’t get him to help us. We asked for a map - he pulled one out of a drawer, handed to us and went back to whatever he was doing on the computer. We asked directions to the Student Union, big sigh then he begrudging pointed it out on the map. No eye contact, no interaction. When she asked about the class she was thinking about attending he said “oh that one will be way over your head, you probably wouldn’t understand anything”. Very disappointing, we were fully expecting to love Wes. However because the class and professor were so great it is still in the running.</p>
<p>Back to the topic of this thread - it is amazing how the staff and students who work in the admissions office can have a huge influence on first impressions of a college.</p>
<p>lol, Naked Book Club. </p>
<p>If I remember anything irrational, I’ll post it. This is a great thread.</p>
<p>I don’t know if this is irrational or not but last summer we toured USC. The guide took us to a room where they keep all their athletic trophies and front and center were the Heisman trophies that OJ Simpson won for the school. I was totally turned off as was another mother. I asked the tour guide if there was controversy about this on campus and he replied that USC’s position is that they are proud of Simpson’s accomplishments during the time he was at USC. I understand that he was not convicted, etc. and I understand these awards were before the killings, but it still bothered me. I felt they could at least have put them in a less prominent position. </p>
<p>We were at Admit Days for one school last weekend and the first thing we noticed was a strong smell of urine on the steps near the entrance of the school.</p>
<p>EWW! mimk6, that sure beats the Dartmouth guy handing out business cards. He did lose his civil suit, so this is not just bias or second guessing a jury decision. EWW!</p>
<p>when we were in conneticut looking at a school- we were irrationally drawn to a school becuase there was a hen house and goats and chickens</p>
<p>I didn’t like one school because as we were walking past some students, while we were in our tour group, two girls walked by saying to each other “kind of ironic them being here on a tour and everything here is so horrible”</p>
<p>The naked book club reminds me of Burroughs Naked Lunch. Quite an image. As a college teacher, I hope it’s not mandatory for the prof!</p>
<p>How about this for irrational? (We were the irrational beings, alas.) At a SUNY school that my very elegant D was dead set against attending, we looked around while driving when visiting another school. We thought it was the ugliest school we’d ever seen. Then others said the school was cute, so I went back and explored its website. It is cute. We were looking at the maintenance plant!</p>
<p>I think impractical H might have done that as a gift for D.</p>
<p>Seeing how cute it actually was did not make her want to attend.</p>
<p>This thread (& my experience) leads me to believe they should be paying admissions’ secretaries/receptionists a TON of money (& have stringent ‘cheerful/responsive’ requirements…)</p>
<p>For us, we were having a perfectly wonderful tour until a wise guy started talking about his drug deal in a very loud voice intended for all the parent to hear. What a jerk! Then when we were doing a dorm tour, a group of girls drove by and screamed “tell them about the alcohol, Bill!”. The two put together really bothered us. This was a small, private school in NC. Why try to torpedo your own school?</p>
<p>Well, hard as it may seem to believe, I think some kids would think they were making their school more attractive! They think it’s funny, why wouldn’t you?</p>
<p>DH & DS were at an accepted students’ day at a small LAC. They were on a tour, going thru a dorm, and the guide was talking about the substance free floors. One dad (trying to be cool) said, “Really? They give out free substances?”</p>
<p>Half way through the tour our Yale tour guide called time out and ducked into a dorm to use the bathroom. So we all followed him into the dorm and got an unscheduled look at the Yale dorm rooms. It was sort of funny. He was a good guide and I liked him - he just made the mistake of drinking too much coffee before the tour.</p>
<p>When we toured CalTech years ago, the guide showed up, was called aside by the admissions secretary, ducked into the bathroom and proceeded to give the tour in an inside-out tshirt. I was dying to know what it said that they told her to cover up!</p>
<p>Lafalum–at least that dad was adding a bit to the tour. One thing I’ve found is that often the poor tour guide is talking to a dead silence of parents/kids (maybe everyone’s nervous?). I end up being the only one laughing at their attempts at humor/asking questions. Of course son hates this! lol</p>
<p>JS: Some of us can’t stop being mommies. Yup, I act the same way. Kids are too used to it to hate it, though I am a figure of fun to them. I’m worse in my own classes at community college where one day my class was sooooo dead I actually spun out a fantasy in which I turned into an armadillo.</p>