What school was unexpectedly your least favorite when you visited?

At my son’s school they made freshmen park their cars in an off campus lot that was exactly a mile from his dorm. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade…when he dropped his truck off at the lot he’d run home to work on his mile time, just for the heck of it.

Our S is constantly amazed by the number of tourists on campus, but has recently grown to see them in a more positive light. He sees all of the walking and bike riding as a positive - time to clear his brain, relax, and burn some calories. There are some really nice areas for off campus food, but due to Stanford’s location there are many more expensive places than the campus dives that many long for. If you’re into ramen as a comfort food there is an outstanding ramen shop. Stanford is a bubble unto itself and will be appealing to some and not to others - Vive la différence!

I find it fascinating what criteria is important to prospective applicants and their families when choosing colleges…

Good for your daughter and her friends. Inconvenience or not, safety is always the most important matter to any students on any campuses. My impressions about Stanford regarding the topic at hand and other matters, though, are corroborated by a Stanford student in the following YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iob-pysV0ng

It’s fun watching various college student YouTube bloggers. Apparently, the trend lately has been to post “What I Hate About ______ college,” and though these are one student’s perspectives about the college the student’s attending, it’s always fun to watch them. I also enjoy watching what I love about _____ college to get a rounded view.

Ya, not watching an 18-minute video, since they exist for just about every campus. I’m sure there’s a ton to hate about Stanford. I’m not even a big fan of Stanford. They’re building like crazy everywhere.

My kid actually attends UMich and walks everywhere, no bike, no car, at night, in the winter. Safety is always important. Kids typically travel in packs. And that’s why we have parents to teach them those “safety” lessons as they grow up.

However, I think anyone complaining about 1-2 mile walk or bike ride at night in Palo Alto is funny, since some of the most popular Stanford hangouts are not even in Palo Alto, such as the Dutch Goose and the Alpine Inn.

Love to keep going on the topic, but I’ll be moving on now.

I suppose those are not really THE criteria. People already had filtered through their primary criteria (such as finances, distance, academics,…) when they decided for a handful or two of colleges worth paying a visit in the first place.
At that point, those colleges already made someone’s short list based on general suitability, and its perfectly reasonable to now apply less “tangible” criteria, e.g., what “feels” like a good match based on first impressions.
My daughter was clear, that she certainly would be okay attending ANY of the colleges we visited if that’s how the chips fell - but it’s certainly even better, if the next for years are spent at a place that “speaks” to you on some emotional/subconscious level.

brandeis- can’t believe what a letdown this place was. not only was i expecting more of an intellectual student body the grounds and upkeep of the university was appalling. i was floored on how bad it looked and not much effort is made to make it look nice. i’m being nice saying it’s only obsolescence. i could go so far and say it’s looks like the projects.

the air quality inside the buildings was awful as well. we toured the outside of the cafeteria and the smell pervaded the dorm hall ways as well. muggy, dirty, smelly, and none of the expensive tuition was going to make it nicer.

seems like the school is living the past of its stronger academic past and name. truth is, not many would want to go here because of what i said and the university just gave up on these things. imo this is turning into a 3.0-3.4 gpa school that’ should plummet in rankings.

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trinity- don’t know where to start here. several parts inside the university was very nice and gave you a good feeling. the bad part about trinity is what’s outside the fence (hartford) make no mistake it’s bad and unsafe on the other side.

remember the movie escape from ny? well this is just like that except trinity is the good part and you want to stay inside the fence. here’s the skinny: throughout the university they have these lights/alarm stations with a button to push if something bad is about to go down. it’s only a matter of time until something really, really bad happens at this university because of the location. they should build a bigger fence, have stronger security features and other protocols to prevent this. sadly something tragic will have to happen before it gets done. and mark my word, its not if it’s when.

also this is another school living on it’s academic past. this is prolly the worst of all the nescac schools and has become a 3.0-3.4 gpa school as well. not to mention it’s recruitment of athletes.

For me I think I’d say NC State. Not sure it would be the top for my son, but it would likely be near the top. It is a beautiful place…if you like red brick. Everything is red brick. Every building, every walkway. We stopped at one spot in our tour and the tour guide is discussing the buildings around us. Points to one and asks can anyone tell me what is unique about this building. Silence for a few seconds, and then I chime in…“It’s not made of brick”. RIGHT! it’s the only building on campus that is not made of brick (on the outside). Apparently there is plenty of brick on the inside.

But aside from that, the tour wasn’t particularly informative. She would point in the distance and say, “if you stand here and look between those trees, you can see our iconic clock tower”. Why can’t we actually, you know, GO to the clock tower? Never spent any time in a building, only walked through them. It consisted of stopping at strategic places on campus and pointing at every building within a quarter mile.

Additionally, the engineering campus was completely separate from the main campus and it looked like an office park (apparently intentionally) and the buildings were all…brick. Place felt disjointed, they didn’t take us anywhere that might be interesting on campus. Just open areas.

Hmm. Seems like I needed to get a lot of my chest on that one. We were on our way back from visiting Ga Tech and my son loved that campus, so there was quite the contrast which probably amplified our negative opinion.

What a cliff-hanger: everyone waiting with bated breath, what winning building material GA Test was using. :wink:

Brick office park. That brings back memories.
RIT Rochester Institute of Technology is very proud of their brick. It’s so special it’s patented, as was mentioned several times during the tour. IIRC the only special thing about the brick is its size. Ooh. Ahh.

In the past brick color was determined by color of the clay in the area, so the old buildings on campus are made of Georgia red clay.

The new stuff is modern though. :wink:

It wasn’t (all) brick. :slight_smile:

“here’s the skinny: throughout the university they have these lights/alarm stations with a button to push if something bad is about to go down”

These blue light security stations pretty common on college campuses. In fact, I can’t think of a single college that we toured that didn’t have them.

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But if you visit Trinity, you’ll understand what the poster meant. They are SUPER prevalent. I definitely noticed it vs. other schools. It felt like they were every 30 feet.

My D20 and I were surprisingly turned off at Wake Forest. She definitely wants to leave the midwest and go south (I’m from NC) and she’s a great student … seemed like a logical place for her to visit. I LOVED Wake (didn’t attend) when I lived there. I walked in the auditorium for the intro and I thought immediately … not her place. Nothing wrong, just not her people. I asked if she was getting any “vibe” and she said no. But … during the tour she said “mom, noone is smiling here or saying ‘hey’!” (She was right.) We bought the obligatory Wake tee shirt with each of us thinking that the other was happy with the school. A few hours later, we realized we were both just being polite. We stopped back at Elon on our way to the airport and the experience only solidified that it was a much better fit for her. She breathed deep happy breaths walking around Elon. I ended the weekend with another tee shirt bc she didn’t even want the Wake one!

Having said all this, I continue to love Wake and think it’s a great school! It’s just not the right fit for my kid.

Interesting thread!

Boston University-campus too linear, seemed like you would be taking a shuttle bus back and forth a lot

Vanderbilt-had high expectations for a beautiful campus, came across a dead rat on the ground during the tour plus DD felt no “vibe”

They call those squirrels.

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Georgetown. Very strong “rotting trash” smell on campus. Hopefully it was an anomaly, but it really affected my experience. Also didn’t like that you can’t double major across colleges.

I didn’t really like Baylor when visiting. It was a really nice campus and everyone there was SO nice, but I realized how religious the school was and how it wasn’t really a fit for me. I originally thought I would be okay with the religious stuff, but on campus, it just felt too much. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Waco either–I realized I wanted a more urban feel. Nothing against Baylor, though! It seems like a great school; it just wasn’t right for me!