<p>Cross-posted with WashDad</p>
<p>Our sons sound similar. Pomona, though filled with brainy students, just didn’t feel “weird” enough to him. I agree about the “architecture” at Mudd. Were they <em>trying</em> to look bad?</p>
<p>cross-posted with mini</p>
<p>We liked our contacts with admissions at Pomona a lot more after our son was accepted than before. Maybe a coincidence. It’s a beautiful campus and the students seemed friendly to us, just somehow not my son’s tribe.</p>
<p>After the official campus tour was over, we stopped by the school’s television studio to check out their facility. We were waylaid by a professor, who really enjoyed talking about himself. To the point that it became awkward for us to try and extract ourselves from the conversation. He wasn’t a teacher in our son’s intended major or anything, but he was a real turn off for me.</p>
<p>I agree with coureur (post #20) re: old and new architecture. I often look around and imagine a place (minus the new buildings) how it would have looked in ‘the old days.’ Sigh… While the new ones are probably more efficient and comfortable, I love those old classic college buildings, esp. libraries.</p>
<p>Well, at my alma mater, they are actually knocking down the 1970s library (keeping the basement as a sort of bomb shelter). Alums raised $115 million or so to get rid of it.</p>
<p>By the second or third info session and tour, we gave up on them altogether and did our own self-guided ones instead. We (S. especially) had done a lot of research on his own, and it was nice to be able to focus on the things that most interested him. Having lunch in a dining hall was usually helpful too.</p>
<p>Gigantic modern sculptures pimpling an otherwise beautiful campus are sort of a downer too (my alma mater has plenty of them). If wealthy alumni want to contribute something, that’s great, but sometimes it might be better to display these non-monetary gifts at their own house!</p>
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<p>I so agree about Harvey Mudd architecture. It looked like my high school, built circa 1950. Considering how wonderful Pomona was (loved the free lunch they served everyone who was on the tour), you’d think HMC could have come up with something better.</p>
<ul>
<li>the school where the admissions representative encouraged all the students go ahead and take the SAT as many times as they felt they needed to to maximize their scores (said several times for emphasis).</li>
</ul>
<p>the admissions rep who went around the auditorium and asked each student to name his or her intended college major. I know that schools ask this on their applications - but I thought that this was a little much ( D was the only one who answered that she is undecided -and this is a liberal arts, not a preprofessional school) to ask of HS juniors.</p>
<p>-the tour guide who seemed rooted in one place as she simply pointed to the relevant buildings around us!</p>
<ul>
<li><p>having certain buildings, - the library, the gym, the dorms… not be accessible on a tour for security reasons. </p></li>
<li><p>one tour took us to a dorm room the size of D’s bedroom at home that housed five, count em five kids. This school is known for having some of the nicest housing anywhere, so why they chose to show us this set up , I’ll never know!</p></li>
<li><p>the scrawled notes on the kids’ doors saying let’s meet for “pong” at 9PM…UNTIL we saw the big sign in the lobby inviting everyone. Realized it was a spoof, no underage drinking involved and even better, kids were actually going!</p></li>
</ul>
<p>As I said on the other thread, I’ve brainwashed my kids not to make snap judgments - but I have definitely had to remind myself to do the same!</p>
<p>At my alma mater they are knocking down an entire residential college built in the 1940’s or so, precisely because it was so hideous. Nice to have that kind of resources, huh?</p>
<p>The new residential college, funded by Meg Whiteman of eBay Princeon '77, looks like this:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/~whitman/[/url]”>http://www.princeton.edu/~whitman/</a></p>
<p>A couple of colleges where we were not shown dorm rooms, no explanation given. And this was during the summer.</p>
<p>The admissions head who presented part of the info session at a very highly rated midwest urban U. Made it sound like the school was doing us a favor to talk to us.</p>
<p>Case Western where the guide helpfully pointed out where a student had shot a professor–maybe not so unreasonable.</p>
<p>
I felt this way about Stanford. Especially the building that houses admissions. I guess I’ve got too much Yankee blood in me. I think colleges should look slightly shabby!</p>
<p>
But the ugliest one of all is at Caltech. Grey glass tower in the middle of Spanish Colonial Revival. It was supposed to be a much lower building with a turquoise dome. Now *that *would have been striking!</p>
<p>The building that houses the computer department at Carnegie Mellon is of that style called “New Brutalism”. It’s pretty darn ugly. The new computer building under construction doesn’t look like it’s going to respect the campus style (or at least color scheme) much better. Beige brick green trim - I rather like it.</p>
<p>I dunno. You got to go pretty far to beat this “bomb shelter Baroque”.</p>
<p><a href=“http://berkshireeagle.mycapture.com/mycapture/enlarge.asp?userphoto=0&image=14604537&thispage=1[/url]”>http://berkshireeagle.mycapture.com/mycapture/enlarge.asp?userphoto=0&image=14604537&thispage=1</a></p>
<p>(It looks wurser in poysin. And it’s even worse inside.)</p>
<p>Speaking of sculptures, we saw several phallic symbol-like monstrosities on several campuses-Penn State has one (although it’s been there forever) and my alma mater, Gettysburg has one now, also. What’s up with that?</p>
<p>Mini, that’s dull, but not actively ugly. This is Wean Hall at CMU: <a href=“http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/sdc/www/cmu/wean.html[/url]”>http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/sdc/www/cmu/wean.html</a>, but you can’t see that the concrete is striated inside and out.</p>
<p>Oh, that one’s not bad at all, and it even has sortta windows. </p>
<p>Ya gotta see Sawyer in person. It is set back with a 350-yard grassy lawn in front, as if this is the most important building on campus. Inside it has “monkey carrels”, two-person booth-like extravaganzas where you can swing up to the top one like an orangutan. But it’s coming down!</p>
<p>The photo from the Berkshire Eagle looks like a cross between and self-storage facility and a parking garage. What sort of building is it?
Almost wonder if some architects figure it’s too hard to work WITH the older styles, so they head in the opposite direction, often grim and blocky.</p>
<p>At least the CMU people themselves laugh about Wean Hall. But nobody goes to CMU for looks, do they!</p>
<p>Our worst experience was at CalPoly where the admissions officer seemed to be on drugs - think George Carlin about 15 years ago. At several points he stopped and asked “what was I just talking about?” And the tour guide concentrated on the physical buildings with absolutely no pride or enthusiasm for her school. I kept telling my S and H that it really was highly regarded in engineering and technology - you never would have learned that from the presentations.</p>
<p>My S was very turned off at CalTech about all the info on pranks etc - it really sounded like they hazed students. And when someone asked our guide about all the Nobel prize winners she said, “Well, they don’t really make the best teachers.” Which may well be true but it would have been smarter to point out the other benefits of their presence on campus.</p>
<p>We loved everything about our tour at WUSTL except when they totally skipped the Engineering Department because our guide had never taken any classes there.</p>