Sure you can if you don’t want to live in a construction zone for several years for buildings that might only be open for the last year or so of your 4 years, if at all. Investments in the future aren’t a bad thing but with so many schools to choose from, it is perfectly rational to want to go to a place where you can already enjoy renovations instead of a construction zone. 
@JenniferClint well, actually, I can, when every school from HYPSM to well, name me a private, urban or rural - magically arrives at the exact same total cost. Ok, maybe $65K here VS $72 K there…
Construction at these schools is not an investment in the sense of “will produce a return”. MAYBE the Ivy and Ivy + schools can continue this foolish arms race, but Students and parents, at some point, would appreciate lower tuition over a lazy river, a climbing wall, or a new admissions building.
I went to Colgate a generation ago, and the dining hall was like Hogwarts. There was a very steep hill down and back. The dorms were heated by steam, and the boys across the hall had a fireplace.
There are SO many new buildings now that I was very disoriented visiting campus. The new dining hall is very conveniently located UP the hill near the NEW dorms, and has all the charm of a rest stop on the Thruway. And guess what magical number they arrived at for tuition, being as they are located in the exact middle of nowhere? Like, think one traffic light and three bars? Two hours of cows and silos in any direction? Yup, the exact same number you’d pay at Columbia or Harvard or BU or Tufts or UPenn or Villanova or Lehigh or …it makes no sense.
Like I said, I EXPECTED to like it. I just didn’t. I was tripping over the clouds of mud in the sidewalks, had my youngest in a stroller, and the tour guide didn’t seem very bright. He had just graduated from bioengineering And didn’t seem to have anything better to do in July than be a tour guide for Duke. It just wasn’t at all what I expected.
Gudmom-
Totally respect your opinion and experience. My first Duke trip was actually different so may be a timing issue. 8,000 acres of campus to see so we wandered on our own a bit.
Spent over an hour in the enormous botanical garden that is centrally located. Then we took a tour of the lemur preserve (look it up pretty amazing). Then while on the tour we saw the new dorm construction that will be complete next summer. Muddy indeed but amazing gothic wonderland surrounded by acre upon acre of similarly spectacular architecture. We then went into the chapel which is amazing. Finished up at their brand new award winning food court.
We then went over to Cameron stadium which isn’t on the tour. A guard was kind enough to take us in so we could see the Fuke hall of fame Wall and take pictures on the court. Unexpected and very cool. Right next store we watched a lacrosse practice.
Needless to say my kid was sold. That said he also thought Cornell was beautiful
@Nocreativity1 Don’t you mean Cornell was gorges?
SwimmingDad- first heard that joke while touring Cornell as a prospective student myself in 1982. You have officially dated yourself. Cheers!
Cornell class of '92 here and everyone had the “Ithaca is gorges” bumper stickers when I was there ; )
Have to say that my daughter had the same impression as @Gudmom in terms of the students’ stress and unhappiness in the College of Engineering. Much to our dismay (double legacy, third generation family), she didn’t even apply. She said it felt like there was a disconnect between the adults discussing collaboration and the students talking about the competition. I didn’t necessarily feel that in other parts of campus, but I couldn’t argue with that impression in the engineering quad.
@Gudmom the poor kid was probably waiting to begin grad/med school or was working in a lab on campus.
@Nocreativity1 – They were still selling Ithaca is Gorges tee shirts when I was on campus this week.
@JenniferClint the poor kid actually said he didn’t have a job yet, and so he was staying on for the summer to figure it out.
You seem to be taking the Duke comments pretty personally, and I’m sorry about that. This is what the thread is about, unexpected reactions. My unexpected reactions just happened to include Duke.
I’m just bothered by the insinuation that the tour guide must’ve been unemployed. Why make a negative assumption about a kid you’ve interacted with for <30 minutes?
Everything else is perfectly fine.
My kid will attend Stanford but “fear the trees?” Seriously? I simply don’t fear any tree unless it’s about to fall on me. Went to Cornell for 4 years. The freezing weather persuaded me to stay in bed and skip classes a lot. Good thing Cornell was almost free for me. Good food though. My kid didn’t apply there and I didn’t care.
I would say Emory. For some reason I expected more open spaces and kids walking around, but the Saturday we visited the campus was eerily quiet with a lot of active construction and an abundance of barriers in place. Even the tour guides seemed surprised when they were forced to make adjustments on their walks. However it hasn’t swayed my S19 who is still interested.
Chapman. It was pretty, though very quiet, and they have an incredible theater in which the tour guide said while you are sitting down I will tell you the cost of attendance ha ha. But they took us into a room and it was a triple that seemed SO SMALL and it shares a bathroom with another triple so six girls (in our case since we have a daughter) all using the one bathroom and then the room itself seemed so cramped, it really turned my daughter (and me too) off. I can understand if going to a state school at a much lower price that you may have to make some compromises in things like that, but for their prices (even though I know they give pretty good merit for good grades) we both just said ‘no’.
And yet every room at UCLA is a triple and people are still lining up to go.
@twoinanddone yeah I get that - that’s why I said at the end " I can understand if going to a state school at a much lower price that you may have to make some compromises in things like that, but for their prices (even though I know they give pretty good merit for good grades) we both just said ‘no’." A triple at UC prices is quite different than a triple at a school where COA is $72,000
We found no correlation between dorm rooms and COA. If anything it was inversely related and the more affordable state schools had nicer dorms than the private LACs we visited.
@momofsenior1 interesting. Not in California, I gather? I’m on my second kid going to college now, visited a lot of schools with first kid, now seeing some with second kid that i didn’t see with first one. And not a lot of schools have taken us into a dorm room overall.
I’d agree that all things being equal (or not, in this case more $$) six girls in one bathroom just wouldn’t fly.
I grew up with 6 kids in one bathroom. It was not luxurious. Dorm was a bathroom at the end of the hall, with I think 20-24 in a room with 4 sinks and stalls, 2 showers. One daughter had 4 girls in a double bathroom and the other had a hall bath with 2 sinks/2 stalls, 1 shower for 10-16 girls.
Ya, my older D is at school now on a hall with a communal bathroom with a couple of stalls, sinks and showers but I think that’s better than just one of each for 6 people. To each his own. I was just commenting as is the point of this thread on what school was OUR least favorite when we visited, @twoinanddone