@moooop Now I’m going to have to re-watch it!
Watching a movie being made is among the most boring activities one can find.
Tufts for my son as well - and my husband works there! Oldest son had been unofficially with dad, but finally took a tour and felt there were way too many old folks on campus. There are a ton of grad students and more mature types floating around the campus, but the age mix doesn’t register with me so much. For son 1, it was a deal breaker. It was a long shot for son 2, but he felt the same way.
@STEM2017 Absolutely. That’s what happened with our D15. So, unbeknownst to S18, we’ve been planning our college visits with that in mind. We are in Los Angeles. Midwest and East Coast tours are more complicated for us. Last summer, S18 decided he wants to go the College of Wooster, which we would be thrilled with. However, we’ve saved our three West Coast school tours for next week during spring break. We would love it if he picked a school in the same time zone we live in.
For us it was UNC - Chapel Hill with S1 (we are OOS). They were very persistent in contacting him – inviting him to local events, etc. Well, all that love worked and we were all quite excited for our visit!
Full disclosure - he was only being sought after by several schools (even received a personal phone call from Harvard, LOL) because, aside from being a very strong student (although not tippy, tippy top), he had a unique EC which enabled him to legitimately claim that he was the “only” high school kid in the country with this particular accomplishment.
Anyway, during the tour, the guide kept making a HUGE deal out of how hard it was to be accepted OOS and then kept saying that IF you attend here as an OOS state kid, you are known as the “smart” kid because the admission criteria are “SOOOO” different for OOS kids vs. IS kids. He just kept going on and on and on… Well, that was a huge turnoff for our son!
As a result, he decided he only wanted to attend a school where the admission criteria was the same for all applicants. In the end, he fell madly in love with Vanderbilt where he had an awesome 4 years! =D>
My daughter is an OOS student at UNC and I can say for a fact that there are plenty of smart students who attend and are from NC. The issue is that it is a state school and does accept a wider range of IS kids.
OK back to the original topic…
This didn’t disqualify UCLA for us, but it’s a pretty funny story. D is a big ramen fan, so on a visit to UCLA we decided to do a “ramen tour” of the top ramen joints in LA. The very first one was in a somewhat sketchy neighborhood. D said something to the effect of, “This isn’t such a great neighborhood.” But we didn’t want it to reflect badly on UCLA so we said, “It’s a big city, most of it is going to look sketchy.”
So after eating ramen we step outside and there’s two guys right outside the restaurant sitting handcuffed on the sidewalk surrounded by four cops. We silently walked to our car and then all busted out laughing. Ok, after that we had to admit that it was indeed a sketchy neighborhood. Good ramen though.
And sorry for the non-hater sidetrack but an opposite kind of story of a later visit to UCLA… Just before this second trip I’d read an article about Stephen Hawking coming up with some new kind of theory on black holes, and a bunch of scientists planning a conference in Norway or something to discuss it. So D and I are sitting in an off-campus cafe sipping coffee, and I overhear two guys sitting next to us talking about that Norway black hole conference! I struck up a conversation with them and it turned out one guy had attended the conference and was giving a trip report to the other guy (his dept head/boss/whatever)! They were both with UCLA. I was all geeked out, but D was all “whatever” (say that in a Valley Girl singsong in your head).
MIT. The (older) architecture was weird and although it was spring break the students there all looked angry. It was also too big for my liking. I also wasn’t a fan of Harvard although we visited just to visit and weren’t actually interested in applying. Someone tried to sell my dad crack in the surrounding neighborhood and it was very preppy and there were no benches which is a big con when you’re tired of walking.
@twogirls - Obviously there are plenty of very smart, talented kids at UNC and at every other state university. Heck, my H and I are both graduates of our big state flagship and I am a big fan of them in general.
I only shared the story as it fit with the title of this thread and it was my S’s personal takeaway from the tour guide’s words. I am sure every school mentioned in this 20+ page thread (including my son’s school) has an opposing view from a parent or student - which is why these threads can be a bit prickly!
@dwhite yes I understand… no worries!
@snowfairy137 @twogirls now that you two are done being civil let’s get back bile and venom.
After reading 20 pages of this thread, I am excited about all the money I am going to save on college visits I won’t have to make. How could I plan a visit that might involve capes, gum walls, or yurts? So many are off the list now! :))
But @elena13 , one man’s yurt is another man’s castle. I nearly posted a response to someone several pages ago who dared to hate on my D’s “practically perfect in every way” school, but then I remembered that this is a hate-fest so it’s totally legit. Instead, I made a voodoo doll of that poster and stuck pins in it, bwahaha!
@dwhite "as an OOS state kid, you are known as the “smart” kid " Back in my day that was true!!! The OOS people were obviously smarter! Not that NC doesn’t produce plenty of smart kids, they do, but they end up going away to follow their dreams at MIT and Harvard and even Duke (etc.).
@redpoodles I agree with you that some leave to follow their dreams… but not all of them get into such schools.
Do many NC kids pick Vanderbilt or Michigan or Emory or UVA over UNC? Of course they do! Do all of them leave UNC and attend those schools? No- not at all.
That’s true, however, it’s also true (back in my day and apparently now) that the OOS kids are kind of known as “the smart kids.”
I remember feeling pretty blown away at how smart the OOS kids consistently were. Two people from my (NC) high school class that were that smart went off to MIT and Vanderbilt, and the one that went to UNC was a Moorehead Scholar (back then this was a full ride scholarship with just one name). The rest of us were average smart. I think my high school GPA was something like 3.6 and UNC was a match (back then, probably not today). I was a smart kid in my high school but not at UNC. OOS kids had higher GPAs and higher SATs. But yeah, lots of smart people regardless!
This might be true of any state school?
PS Professor kids were also very smart.
@redpoodles I do agree with you that the OOS kids are known as the “smart kids.” When we toured the school we spoke to two random students who said that if you were from OOS it meant that you were either really smart… or an athlete ( sometimes both).
That being said, it is mostly the IS kids who make the honors program despite the fact that all ( or almost all) of the OOS kids qualify. My guess is that they want to keep these kids from leaving. Regardless, my OOS kid is very happy there and feels that academically it is perfect for her- not too hard, not too easy. If they are happy, that’s all that matters.
I thought the real advantage of UNC, was that it wasn’t Duke? You just won the national championship and so you have bragging rights until at least Monday. Now let’s steer this ship back onto the rocks…
I’ve been to the sprawling Santa Cruz campus many times but I’ve yet to see a building. The first time I visited, my soon to be wife and I were walking through the redwoods on campus and we heard people yelling loudly 50 yards behind us. Finally, someone ran up behind us and informed us that we were in the way of a round of frisbee golf (you could still say Frisbee in those days without being corrected). We stepped off the trail so they could play through.
I’ve had many super intelligent friends graduate from UCSC but it does have a reputation as being the hippie school and this is a turnoff to the children of anyone who has ever had the audacity to play the Greatful Dead at home.
@Old_parent why can’t we say frisbee nowadays?
I have one of those.