^^I could totally dig UCSD!
We are headed to La Jolla this summer for vacation and all the hate made me think we shouldnât even do a drive by!
To be fair, New Haven in 2017 â at least in the vicinity of Yale â is far removed from New Haven in 1997 or earlier. We visited last year, and the campus was gorgeous and the vicinity lovely. Looked heavily gentrified to me. We had absolutely no issues or concerns.
@BunnyBlue youâve been banned! lol
@TempeMom - La Jolla is a beautiful place, so you donât want to miss it. Itâs just the UCSD campus thatâs uninspiring.
@TempeMom great school in an excellent setting. Itâs problems are mostly skin deep.
For what itâs worth, that school for us was Columbia.
We ended up being late for the presentation and made it to the Campus Tour.
It seemed very crowded and not in the best part of town. We left the tour earlyâŠ
For us it was Amherst. D17 and I visited last fall and we both walked out with the same impression. Couldnât really express why (which frustrated DH), just a ânoâ.
This thread is really helpful at this point in the game in reinforcing that there is no âperfectâ school.
Like @myjanda I am struck by how very important these tours are. You realize that there is way more to a school than whoever you get as a tour guide (like the one that had us almost running around campus), but you only have so much time, energy and money to try to differentiate them, so for better or worse, thatâs a huge part of the impression they make.
@karnmom There are plenty of perfect schoolsâŠthey just have to find the right kids (and vice versa).
I am surprised at the variation in tour guide quality, and have wondered for years why schools donât find the best salesmen/women for their institutions. That said, in the end we found that everything around the tour was more informational than the words coming out of the leaders mouth, or the often inane questions of the parents.
How did others act when the tour came through? Did students open doors? Did administrators smile? How many conversations were there in the courtyard on a nice day, or outside the dining hall? How many students wore school swag? Did the tour guides interact with others while on the tour, and did that guide know many people (graded on a curve based on years at school)? Are students eating alone? Are the students sitting together looking at their phonesâŠor each other? How many groups are studying together?
Iâm sure itâs hard to find great tour guides, but itâs impossible to hide the culture of a school. If you look closely, you can see a lot more than what youâre being told in the information session and on tour.
@1518mom We didnât get a tour of CCM, it was TG weekend but D loved the facilities. Alas, she didnât get in.
D hated Ithaca. Hated it. Had a headache that came on as she stepped from the car and it left her as we made our way down the valley afterward.
For theater people, D loved Baldwin Wallace and its facilities, though I thought it looked like a high school campus. They did provide the parents of those auditioning ( over 200) with a delightful, real lunch at tables in a dining room that was old fashioned and charming. That was a happy surprise since you had time to sit for an hour with other parents and visit. It was a very friendly and organized day. A+ for that.
Penn State was a big hit for her. KU was lovely.
Biggest surprise was she hated NYU Tisch. Sheâs a city girl at heart but she couldnât stand the crowded lobby or the frenetic activity of the main building. We walked in and made a one minute loop around the ground floor, she said ânopeâ and we left. The Village is great and the WSPark is nice but the Tisch building where sheâd spend all her time was a complete turn off.
@fun1234 We did try to visit Vandy. We tried to find the campus. It was hard it seemed spread out. It was hard to see where the main campus was could not find any hotels so then we went to the Mc donalds near by. I felt very nervous People were coming up to us and asking for money and as we were leaving someone tried to come up to us another street person. So we took off so fast and headed to find a place to go hiking and traveled to the smoky mountains. It was so fun.
@karnmom, Amherst was a ânoâ for our DDâs as well; they even toured twice and nothing changed - funny how impressions are formedâŠ
@mtmcmt ??I think you must have meant to tag someone else. I donât even know what CCM is! 
For my son it was NYU. He wanted a central campus with access to both engineering/CS and physical sciences in the same place.
CCM - College-Conservatory of Music (at U Cincy). @1518mom
In defense of New Haven (Yale), it was definitely a dreary place when i went 78-82. However, my D is a junior there now and downtown has been revitalized. There are many nice restaurants and trendy stores. It is actually quite the foody place, it was very highly rated nationally. To be honest, unless they are doing some sort of community service/volunteer work, most Yale students just pass through New Haven proper on the way to the train station and that is usually on the shuttle or Uber. I go there often (about to go for my 35th reunion in May) and I will be looking to see how my classmates react to the ânewâ downtown. People always talk about how much better it is to be at Harvard/Boston. But I know for a fact that Harvard students donât go much past Harvard Square so the vastness of Bostonâs greatness is lost on them.
Thank you @SwimDad99 for your comments so they wonât think me extremely biased toward my alma mater.
I refused to let my S apply to Harvard after CVS forced Tasty Burger out of Harvard Square. Itâs just not the sameâŠ
All this dislike of MIT. Has anyone actually spent time in Scails? Or BCS, across the street? Both relatively new. They have open areas, and BCS has a green area.
Yale, although I have driven by there possibly 500 times over my life, I had no reason to visit, I certainly was never invited. It would have been a big reach, dart throw for my daughter, but we walked around just to check it out. I thought we would drive up and see a sign and drive through gates, we drove in the side into major construction. Itâs next to a city, I just never knew. The buildings are supposed to be pretty, but I guess just not my taste.
We have been to MIT twice for the science trivia challenge, this would be second on the list but we didnât actually visit. I like grass and trees I guess. My daughter likes schoolâs she can get into, I guess.
While the Amherst campus was by and large disappointing, the museum of natural history is a beautiful space and quite fascinating. Someone felt the need to spend a lot of money on fancy drawers and cabinets! Well worth a visit if youâre in the area. Also consistent with the theme of prehistoric relics, I see they decided on a mammoth as the mascot.