I get blasting dear Harvard for mud and gawking tourists and the occasional crack dealer, but it seems a little unfair to slam it for looking old…I mean its age is one of the main reasons it’s considered so prominent, right?
@moooop A few years ago someone complained that the buildings at Harvard smelled. I replied that it was the smell of power. I guess it is better to reject Harvard before Harvard rejects you!
@YonceKnowles … wow, you are not easily sold. I would love to hear about schools you did like…posted anywhere 
Everyone in Philly knows that the cheesesteaks are for tourists. The roast pork is the sandwich you want.
Try strolling through Penn later at night. If you see a fat squirrel going through a trashcan and notice it doesn’t have a bushy tail…that’s no squirrel.
I pretty much agree about Princeton. All the overpriced, status vehicles doesn’t help my impression. I’d never live there or anywhere like it but I’ll feel better if my D uses it for 4 years to transition into adulthood. She can go to grad school in NYC, Boston, Baltimore, Chicago, Providence, etc.
“Everyone in Philly knows that the cheesesteaks are for tourists. The roast pork is the sandwich you want.”
So true. Don’t forget the provolone and broccoli rabe.
The roast pork… hmm… I’ll give that a try this Saturday when we stop by UPenn on the way back from Princeton.
I just got back from Penn/Philly. The cheesesteaks are nothing special, especially when you order them with chicken, no cheese and sans bread. =))
Our S16, who goes to Temple, introduced us to the roast pork sandwich. It was obvious from his interaction with the counter guy at his favorite sandwich shop that he was a regular.
I’m not sure if this fits the topic because we were not thinking this school would be a good fit for our D, but she was being heavily recruited by Virginia Military Academy to run track. We were going to be out that direction for a big meet last summer so we decided to make an unofficial athletic visit. It started off very positively…the athletic facilities were top notch and the new indoor track is unbelievable. On the tour we were impressed with all the stately building surrounding a huge open expanse of grass which overlooked the rolling hills of Virginia. Breathtaking. The tour came to a screeching halt when we hit the barracks. I don’t know what we expected, but wow…not that! The recruits all live 3 in a room with not even enough room for their beds to be down during the day. Each morning, they fold their bed into the wall and throw their bed roll over the railing outside their room(all the rooms surround a big open courtyard) to help prevent bed bugs. Bathrooms and shower facilities are icky. I could see D starting to crack.
When the coach who was showing us around started talking about the freshman class being called the Rat Line and how they are treated, our daughter could barely contain her disgust. When it was finally revealed that females only made up 10% of the population, it was all over. By the end, she was practically crying and when we got to the car she begged us not to even consider this an option.
We kept reinforcing that it was a long process and she should be honored to be a recruited athlete with options and that we would find the right fit for her. Of course, for the next month or so we had a ready threat available anytime she got sassy! 
I guess military academies aren’t known for pampering students.
@jumpermom If you want to learn more bout the Rat Line, read “The Lords of Discipline” by Pat Conroy.
Particularly the private ones like VMI and The Citadel. My plebe year roommate at USNA transferred in after a year at The Citadel. He said it was night and day. Didn’t help at Citadel that he was a “yankee”.
VMI and the Citadel are public schools, but they are run by states rather than the federal government like the service academies.
“@jumpermom If you want to learn more bout the Rat Line, read “The Lords of Discipline” by Pat Conroy.”
Flyspeck – Conroy and his book are about the Citadel, where it is called the Plebe System. Frank Underwood’s alma mater (The Sentinel) in House of Cards is based on the Citadel. VMI has the Rat Line.
Well, war is not a place for pampered people so good prep, right?
I thought I was going to make it all the way through this college process without having anything in the way of an unexpected least favorite school, but ding, ding, ding – we have a last minute entrant! Took S to visit Middlebury this week, which he’d applied to sight unseen. I was sure we’d both love it – classic LAC in a charming small Vermont town. True, and yet somehow it was a turnoff for me. The campus is objectively pretty – nice architecture, beautiful mountains in the distance. But the campus is so unbelievably spread out that the student-lead tour we went on felt like a forced march. I live in a big city, so I walk everywhere and I’m a fast walker. But this was ridiculous. My fitbit hit 10,000 steps half way through the tour (and all I’d done earlier in the day was drive). A number of people actually dropped out of the tour because they couldn’t keep up. And the tour guide, who was from LA, kept talking about how the school does a good job of “paving” the sidewalks in the winter – I was confused for a minute, until I realized that every time she said “paved” she really meant “plowed”. The fact that a school with only 2500 students nonetheless has a free shuttle bus to get the kids around campus tells you something about how ridiculously large the school’s footprint is.
There is a reason those MIddlebury kids are so fit looking.
Hamilton’s campus is similarly beautiful and spread out - one of the things are DD’s liked about both…
I stand corrected, @northwesty. Been a while since I read the book.
@simba9 We certainly didn’t expect pampering!