@cloudysmom - care to share why you hated Christopher Newport? It’s kind of been floating around the periphery of my d’s list – it checks off most of her required-program boxes but it’s really far (too far to visit) and she’s not too keen on the south. (And, in her words, “it has a stupid name”) CN doesn’t seem to get a lot of mention on this site so my attempt at info gathering here has been stymied. Please dish!
I wasn’t the poster that commented on CNU, but we were there and I must say…
The dining lady at Christopher Newport (Miss Linda) was the most entertaining person on any visit we’ve been on!!
Cute school, seemed very mediocre overall.
Very flat. Proximity to ocean is nice.
Dorms seemd nice.
They seem like they care about students.
@zozoty She thought it looked great until we visited, that made a huge difference! The brick buildings with the columns, it was just all so over the top. Like they were trying to copy the architecture of UVA as well as VA of course, but had to do it bigger. These buildings are HUGE with tons of steps. Ridiculouslyoversized. The new section, with these buildings, the dining hall, are all together then you walk over by the dorms & you have entered 1972. Looks like 2 colleges. It was all exceptionally well maintained however, very clean, beautiful plantings. Hard to describe what I mean but have you ever seen buildings or houses that are new but supposed to look old & it looks sorta silly? Well that was this for us. All the brick was the same color, very uniform and new.
It also appeared that you can’t walk anywhere from the school, but I could be wrong about that. I will say that nearby is a fabulous diner & we joked she needed to go to CNU just so we could visit, lol.
@sunnyschool I agree, it seemed the place cared for the students. The school is trying to be very selective with admissions to raise its rep quickly & it seems that is working. I will say that no students said hello to us as we were walking around on our own. It was the only school where the kids didn’t seem as friendly but that could have been a fluke. It also seemed hard to get to, you have to get off the freeway & drive forever, it seemed.
My D really liked her visit to CNU. She thought kids were extremely friendly and very laid back, and she loved the overall vibe of the campus. It wasn’t filled with white, privileged, uber-competitive type-A personalities.
@eb23282 I agree, I did not at all get a snob feel and they kids weren’t generic prep school types at all.
DH, DD18 & I visited CNU on a terrible day. It was intermittently snowing and raining. We were so cold, but everyone was walking around with smiles. People held doors for us and just seemed very kind. The thing that hit me the most was that student’s bikes were unlocked. I asked about this and our guide said that they take the honor code very seriously at CNU, so leaving things unlocked was not a problem.
Popping in to say Happy Fall and I still hate Duke.
@cleoforshort have you done any recent school visits that we need to hear about?
Johns Hopkins and Berkeley. I grew up in the Bay Area so I knew what Berkeley would be like, but it was worse than I remembered. Honestly glad DS and I have the same taste because he also did not care for either school!
I took my son to Berkeley this summer to visit and it was much nicer (at least around the campus) since I went there in the 80s. The streets and sidewalks were very clean and didn’t reek of urine and incense on Telegraph. Still, my son didn’t want to apply there…couldn’t see himself liking it there.
I was just browsing this thread and came across this post by @cakeisgreat that made me laugh so much. It just struck me as so funny. I’m taking the liberty to repost it in case anyone missed it.
"A couple of things I did not like about our Clemson tour:
- At beginning of tour, guide ask if anyone had to use restroom, do it now, so D and I used it - then they left without us and we had to search around to find the tour - it was already out the door, down the path, up a large flight of stairs, and inside another building.
- There was a family with a family member using a walker, and the tour guide left them behind constantly. The family finally told their D to stay with the tour group while the mom/person with the walker tried to catch up at each stop. By the time they got there, the tour guide was done and ready to move on to the next stop...and left. It annoyed me after awhile so I stayed back with the family and chatted with them to keep them company. At one point we got totally lost and could not find the group. So frustrating! Found another group and stuck with them but had to hear the same stuff over again and was not with our kids. Then D texts me and we work out where we are, so the original tour guide says, "Oh its easy to find your way to her" and gets D lost finding me. Then we try to leave since that tour is done, and get lost again for 20 minutes. Asked for directions twice. Super annoyed by the end.
I tried not to complain to the kiddos too much since I figured this is probably just one of those “tour things.” S19 not applying (I think). D20 applying stil "
@zozoty my oldest graduated from CNU. It was an excellent experience for him. Academically strong, access to professors, a friendly student body, and very solid D3 sports. Yes, it’s geographically flat, but it’s a mile from the James River (you can see the river in the video below) and about 30 minutes from the Atlantic Ocean. A significant number of older buildings have been replaced, with more slated for demolition or renovation. Take a minute to read the history of CNU and you will see why there are vestiges of the junior college it used to be. Across Warwick Ave are college-owned apartments with storefronts below them (Panera, Subway, etc). Further down Warwick is a grocery store and many other fast food restaurants as well as a drug store. When my son was there, there was a coffee house in the library. Newport News is not great, but the Mariner’s Museum (across from the main entrance) is 550 acres of park/trails as well as home to a terrific museum. The Ferguson Center on campus provides entertainment (concerts, plays, competitions, etc). It doesn’t hurt to apply and maybe take a trip during admitted students day. Just my 2 cents. Good luck!
Re parking for admissions tours: I am a faculty member at a large public research university. I have to pay for a parking permit, and the parking office just regards it as a “license to hunt,” as opposed to any guarantee of space availability. I have sometimes had to walk about a mile from a parking spot that I did find, in order to get to my office.
So I can understand why parking may be at a premium, especially for admissions visitors.
However, when our family drove into Cambridge, MA for the Harvard admissions tour multiple years ago, if someone had directed us to park at the Alewife station and take the subway, we would not have found that helpful. For one thing driving around Boston is about the worst driving I have ever encountered. Worse than SF, worse than LA, worse than Washington, DC during rush hour (with accidents blocking all five major numbered freeways at the same time), way worse than Chicago.
I lived in Cambridge, MA for a year, but the “Alewife” station does not ring any bells. My car navigation system cannot be programmed while the car is moving. Also, you want me to take a subway, with my daughter, who might be considering Harvard? (Yes, she has a cell phone, yes she could Google the station, yes she could give me directions–but could I follow them in the Boston traffic? Maybe not.)
It has been a lot of years since I took the subway in Cambridge, MA, but the experience at the time was so bad that I changed over to taking the bus from the Harvard area to MIT. Really unpleasant stations. Really unpleasant stairs. Maybe improved later, but I would not have known that. Perhaps this would be a weed-out experience for the rural students Harvard whom is otherwise hoping to attract?
No parking anywhere near Harvard. No kidding. It was the worst experience of all of our visits anywhere, even including Princeton where the roads were completely flooded out, necessitating half-hour detours each way from the motel. Even including Stanford with the dead squirrel that our tour guide suggested we might want to step over. Actually, not merely dead, but desiccated. Somehow rendered almost two-dimensional.
We had a very similar tour at Miami University (Miami of Ohio)! Very annoying! We missed half of the speeches at each stop because we were so far behind, and we weren’t the only ones, more than 1/2 the group was behind. The guide was a peppy student that walked the campus daily, some of us are from flat land, not hills like at MU. The campus is beautiful but my daughter ended up at UC, where there are also lots and lots of hills, but we never got left behind on any of our 3 or 4 campus tours there!
@QuantMech, one reason you would be directed to Alewife is that it would allow you to avoid Boston traffic. It’s on the western edge of Cambridge, a quick 10 minute T ride to the Harvard stop. I’m surprised you don’t remember it because it would have been the terminus of the train you took from MIT to Harvard Square. Parking in Cambridge IS terrible. Both when I worked there and attended grad school I rarely drove unless I was getting there by 7:30 or so.
Alewife didn’t open until December of 1985. The red line was supposed to be extended to Route 128 through Lexington and Arlington. Lexington approved the extension but Arlington did not so Alewife became the “end” of the Red Line. #TransitNerd
That was also the period when the stations were updated and the public art was installed, for instance the bronze mittens and gloves “scattered” throughout Porter.
Getting back on topic, I wasn’t a big fan of the schools with Gothic architecture-Yale, Trinity, Vassar. I know most people find them beautiful but to me they just felt gloomy.
@Sue22 – me too! Add Duke to the list. So monolithic and dreary to me, esp. on a cloudy day. Ponderous.
I didn’t like Duke or Smith, and I expected to be awed and astounded by both. Nope.
@Sue22 That’s funny! I like Gothic architecture, but there’s something about red brick buildings that just say “college” to me. (Probably because that’s what my alma mater looked like—mostly red brick except for the gloomy gothic building where my dreaded math classes were all held.) D’s school just “felt right” to me immediately. Then we heard about the endowment from George Eastman that specified that all buildings should be red brick, and I knew why.