Wesleyan for us. Such an uninspired jumble of buildings and conspicuous emphasis on arts before academics.
Also Swarthmore - tour guide said nobody ever goes into the city of Philadelphia. Also when someone asked about social life, she said, “You don’t care about social life, right? That’s why you’re interested in Swarthmore.” It was a joke that had the ring of truth and was enough to confirm my son’s lack of interest.
Though I have to admit he just about broke out in hives every time we set foot on a liberal arts campus. His mother and I thought it would be the perfect environment for him, but he was clearly consistent in his desire for something bigger (and more urban).
“conspicuous emphasis on arts before academics”
I’d say it was in addition to not before and the arts can be one’s academics. That said, it obviously wasn’t the right fit for your family and that’s okay.
Lehigh for one of their Junior Open Houses on a snowy day in February. The hills. The pre-professionalism.The parental obsession with how much their kids would be earning after they graduated. The droning on and on by one of the deans.The smugness of the very underwhelming tour guide. (You would have thought she was at MIT!) The color brown (with no irony). Did I mention the hills?
Runner-up (for me, not the kid): Swarthmore: The QUIET. The lack of students visible on campus. The cold feel of the architecture. The appalling attitude of the folks who “greeted” you in the admissions office. I’ve never been so disappointed by a school I’d always held in high regard. Get over yourself!
Just curious as we are strongly considering University of Richmond and it’s an expensive visit for us…
Anything not to like?
I haven’t seen it mentioned here.
@lalalander111, not sure this is the best thread for getting positive (or even rational!) reviews of any given school, but Richmond was mentioned once here:
We just returned from visiting Richmond for admitted students day and thought everything was truly exceptional. They have a very large endowment and use it on students, facilities and programs. Everything about the campus is immaculate. They provide so many opportunities for students. Students were friendly. The staff went out of their way to assist us. We really loved it. To put things in perspective. We have son at Hamilton, which is a great school. Richmond compares favorably to Hamilton. The facilities and campus are actually a notch above Hamilton.
I think these kind of threads are meant for fun, venting, a little tongue-in-cheek. Please don’t use one or two people’s opinions to judge your own list. Do your own due diligence based on your own needs and preferences.
Not that I don’t appreciate a little positivity once in a while but this thread is definitely for the Goldilocks in each of us. The spires weren’t tall enough. The polo fields were too far from the dorms. There weren’t enough farm to table options in the cafeteria. The equestrian center architecture wasn’t modern enough. If you think that the porridge is just right, this isn’t the thread for you.
@baltimoreguy reminded me of a tour that I had blocked from my memory. Before D’s senior year, we drove from Philadelphia to Alabama. We visited other schools on the way, but UA was the main purpose of the trip.
We checked into our hotel and thought the room smelled funny. Turned out that under the sink in the kitchenette was a bag of (partially eaten) chicken wings. Apparently housekeeping had forgotten to empty the trash. Front desk apologized and moved us to a nicer room. We had a nice dinner in town and liked the area.
When we got back to the hotel, the door wouldn’t open. Somehow the keyless entry had malfunctioned. So they put us in a suite (Room #3) while we waited for an hour+ for Maintenance to break in to Room #2 and get our luggage. We were tired and cranky but were still looking forward to the next day.
The next morning, we boarded a bus at the stadium for an extensive campus tour. Yes, it is lovely. However, D was turned off by the perfectly coiffed and beautifully dressed (heels and skirt) sorority member giving the tour (I thought she was adorable). Meeting with Honors College rep was great, but clearly D still wasn’t feeling it.
As we headed to our Engineering appointment, I noticed D scratching her arms and neck. “Are you OK?” I asked. “I’m really itchy. I must have gotten bit by some freaky Southern bug.” I looked more closely and yes, it was hives! First and (so far) last time she had them. So we swung by Admissions, thanked them, and asked them to cancel the rest of our schedule. We swung by CVS for some Benadryl (which meant she couldn’t share any of the next 8 hour stretch of driving) and headed north.
Who knows if it was the seafood she’d eaten the night before, the laundry detergent used at the hotel, etc.? D saw it as a sign that Alabama, despite its many strengths, was not the place for her.
I’m kind of surprised they didn’t try to charge you extra for the chicken-wing-scented room.
Re U of Richmond, we hadn’t planned on looking at it, but were nearby and stopped early on a Saturday morning in summer…Wow, what a beautiful place. I put it in my top 5 campuses, along with Wellesley, Dartmouth, Miami (Ohio), & Princeton. But the kids couldn’t take the spider banners hanging everywhere.
It wasn’t anyone’s fault, but I knew Amherst was in trouble when we went there in March directly after having visited schools in North Carolina and Virginia where it had been sunny and in the 60s. It was 34 and raining as we walked towards the admissions office and S18 was already ready to head home.
The GPS system in our vehicle had not updated the route to Ohio University following “new” construction a few years ago (along 33, I think). It kept showing us moving across open ground.
@baltimoreguy - My four years at Wesleyan probably explain why colleges that look TOO uniform archiitecturally are a big turn off for me. In that vein, Hampshire, Colby, Bates, large parts of Dartmouth, UVA and most of Penn were big disappointments. Kudos to Hamilton, Williams, Brown, and Cornell, for their “not built in one day” looks.
@QuantMech We took that same route last month and the GPS still didn’t work (probably our fault for not updating something). Kind of surreal to drive on the highway while the dotted line shows us crossing mountains and meadows.
Apple Maps took me on an unintentional tour of one block of UCSD once while I was looking for a hotel nearby.
“Turn right, Turn right, Turn right, Turn right, Turn right”
Me: “WTH!!!” Yup, I got stuck in a infiinte loop (see what I did there?) circling one block; Nierenberg Hall for those familiar with the area. I think I circled the block 3 times thinking the hotel had to be on that block somewhere! Finally switched to Google Maps to break out of the Twilight Zone.
I might take S to visit Duke. Just because I would LOVE to be on a tour like the one @jonri 's D experienced. That story is so bad it’s good. S has no interest in Duke and wouldn’t get in even if he did, but it might be worth a plane ticket.
We only ever actively disliked one person on all our college visits. He presented the info session at Northeastern. He looked like Max Headroom, and he acted like a used car salesman as he forced us to watch that horrendous sales pitch disguised as a video. Imagine this emoji talking:
That was him.
@lalalander111
you asked about Richmond. I toured it. Info session was so so, but despite that, I really liked the place. The campus was beautiful and extremely well maintained/manicured -pristine really, not a speck out of place. Their endowment is really big for a school of its size (very large gifts from the Robins pharmaceutical family) so the school funds an awful lot of extras. Slightly pre-professional vibe. My DH however was not impressed - said it felt ‘cult-like’. My D liked it okay but said it was a tad “Stepfordy”. The spider mascot did not bother any of us, though the men’s preppy khaki pants in the bookstore, embroidered with spiders were a bit much!
