My kid refused to apply to BGSU because I went there for one semester over 20 years ago! Very few people know this and It actually may have been a fantastic match for her.
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Our family went to colonial Williamsburg, VA and had dinner in a historic Inn. Despite being instate at the time, my daughter refused to even apply to William & Mary saying, “I dont want to have to do homework next to an oil lamp.”
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I just remembered another school she took off the list. We had toured Duke University after it had rained. My daughter noticed the gargoyles on one of the buildings and said she “wouldn’t be applying, because its so creepy.” (note: she was a legacy too, ah well 
).
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FWIW, I went to W&M and lived on the end of campus near Colonial Williamsburg. One day I was running down the main street (running is putting it kindly, I move very slowly, fast walkers were probably passing me) with my walkman on (remember those yellow rubbery ones? That.) And some random man grabbed me and pulled me to the side of the road. I was about to be mad at him when i realized he had literally prevented me from being run over by an ox cart. I didn’t hear it because music was so loud and I was so damn slow that it crept up on me, even though they were basically plodding along. So. One could add “didn’t want to be run over by oxen” as a TOTALLY VALID, imho, reason to not go to school there…
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Hilarious.
I was annoyed at my D for not applying to W&M, which I thought was a great fit. Apparently we vacationed there too much so she felt the school was an extension of Historic Williamsburg aka colonial Disney in her mind. (I could share a middle school pic of her and friends in colonial garb, but I won’t.)
I’ll share this story with her so she can tell me “I told you so!” Haha
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Football rivalries were a really, really big deal for my S24. Several great schools that otherwise were a fantastic fit he just couldn’t commit to because rivalries.
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My son wouldn’t even look at a college if it was red brick! He ended up at one that is limestone!
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To revive a 2 month old thread…
My daughter, who might be a science major, was researching Kenyon College. She found videos on YouTube that said that Kenyon is haunted.
She booted Kenyon off of her list!
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My daughter doesn’t like red brick either. But it is probably 80% of the colleges that we have looked at!
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That’s funny, Denison is just down the street from Kenyon (well, 45 minutes away), and they pride themselves on being one of the only colleges with a cemetery right on campus. I believe that some long-term faculty and school officials can still choose to be buried there. One of the two inns in Granville is supposed to be haunted, and it is clear from the reviews that some people specifically ask for the rooms rumored to be most spooky. I would not be in that camp, but it takes all kinds, I guess.
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My elementary school was a Friends school in Philadelphia and was on the grounds of the meetinghouse, which was founded in the early 1700s. There was a graveyard within a few feet of our classrooms which we walked past everyday — and occasionally walked through. Being close to the meetinghouse, the graves were very old — the newer part of the graveyard was further away but still active.
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My kid applied to American, but refused to show any demonstrated interest. When they (unsurprisingly) got waitlisted and declined their spot on the wait list, it finally came out that they didn’t want to go there because if there’s a nuclear war in the future, Washington DC is likely to be a target and they find that possibility too stressful.
(on the other hand, the graveyard on Kenyon’s campus was a huge plus in their eyes).
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The reference to haunting reminded me – when my son visited Earlham, he wasn’t wild about the cemetery running alongside campus. A few months later, he committed to Denison with an historic cemetery on campus . . . .
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U of Maryland Law School (old one; there is a new one now) was built connected to a church and the church part was used as an event space. In the back courtyard was a cemetery where Edgar Allen Poe’s grave is, along with about 25 others. Walked by it twice a day and knew it was right downstairs from many of my classes.
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