What school was unexpectedly your least favorite when you visited?

Parents Forum
521

I was telling Daughter about this thread last night. We disagree but I thought our worst was Macalester College. Seemed like a good fit on paper but not for her. The poor students looked miserable and there seemed to be tension in the air. Daughter could not get off campus fast enough.

Daughters pick for worst was her Michigan Tech visit. The panel of female students who presented all talked about how they instantly knew this was the place for them. (All 5 panelists had visited no other schools.) The word “amazing” was used to describe everything. Food is amazing, my professors are amazing, etc. None of them had been in sports or could speak on the sports programs for her. It did not connect with my Daughter on any level but most others on our visit found it “amazing”.

522

No kids playing frisbee or lounging on the grass at Springfield, though to be fair, it was not the best weather. But as far as walking to class goes, no shortcuts!

523

@northwesty BU’s Mugar library. An ugly Sert designed building when it was built in the 60’s that has not aged well.

524

Oh goodie! D’s adorably charming Maine LAC has a non-cute library! We certainly never saw it on our tour. We would have left immediately and she wouldn’t have applied. Swarthmore, Clark, and Northeastern also have fugly libraries.

525

Kenyon College: I read a post on another thread where a parent said they kept expecting a cow to wander across the campus. So true.

George Washington University: someone had drawn some street art on one section of the sidewalk, and that was the only pretty aspect of the university. Each building was uglier than the next.

526

" Swarthmore, Clark, and Northeastern also have fugly libraries."

Add University of Chicago and Northwestern. Beautiful schools overall, but they got the short end of the Brutalist stick.

527

Well, actually I’ve seen cows saunter across the Stanford campus, although across the western portion where it’s more rural. :slight_smile:

528

Re: walking on the grass

You really don’t want to walk on the grass near Texas A&M’s Memorial Student Center! People will yell and swear at you, even if you are a nice old grandma.

529

But the awesome and amazing thing about these libraries is that the allowable noise level goes down as up go up each floor! They’ll glare at you if you even drop a pencil on the top floor.

530

Kid and I totally hated Harvard. By far, the biggest gap of any school between reputation and actually seeing it in person. We kept walking around looking for the “real” Harvard campus, assuming the drab unimpressive one we were going through couldn’t be the actual one. I’ve seen countless dozens of better looking campuses.

First, the Asian Disneyland tours were just so weird and so numerous. Second, with a $40 billion endowment, you’d think you could figure out how to make the main “green” something other than a mud bog in the middle of the summer. Third, we found the place beyond pretentious.

We thought the Veritas motto everywhere was bad enough. But the inscriptions on the gates literally made us laugh out loud. We amused ourselves throughout the tour by trying to come up with even more preposterous pretentious inscriptions, but we couldn’t top the real ones:

"Open ye the gates that the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may enter in.”

“Enter to grow in wisdom. Depart to serve better thy country and thy kind.”

Most schools have the good sense to inscribe clap trap like that in Latin so people don’t know how dumb they sound.

Harvard – worst school of all time!

531

“Add University of Chicago and Northwestern. Beautiful schools overall, but they got the short end of the Brutalist stick.”

And when I was at UofC they allowed smoking in the library. It was like being in a cloud of smoke.

CU Boulder has a beautiful library and they built a gorgeous addition to it when I was an undergrad. I should have spent more time in it, too.

532

"Open ye the gates that the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may enter in.”

What was the prophet Isaiah thinking? It sounds like the foundational literature of our civilization or something.

533

So that suggests that Harvard is
The City of God? The New Jerusalem? Heaven? Eternal Paradise? The Promised Land?

Any of which would prove my point.

534

I hope this thread never dies! :))

535

@crazymamaB I feel like i should go on some more college visits (with or without children) to find some new places to hate on.

536

Is there a school in US that did not make this thread? And to OP, I think attending the most beautiful campus is the last thing MIT students are looking for, but here it is.

http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/10-reasons-why-mit-is-beautiful

537

Okay, fine, I’m diving in. I hope I am not struck down by a lightning bolt for violating the whole “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all” thing. But the temptation is overwhelming.

DISCLAIMER
Every single school here is great for someone, and I would heartily – and genuinely – congratulate that person on their choice. Just not me. My kid applied to several, and nearly attended one; some I’d consider for my other kid. This is just about me and MY (negative) reactions.

Also, not all of these were unexpectedly my least favorites, so not strictly in keeping with the title of the thread. But they are the ones I felt like dissing when we were done. Here goes 
 in order of appearance:

====

Harvard: Wasn’t expecting anything different, but OMG the self-regard. Never a contender, we were there out of curiosity, but we ditched after the info session. Special mention to the humblebrag parents (waving at @CHD2013’s Brown visit here) and anxious prospectives asking how many APs they should be taking or whether an IB diploma counts for more or whatnot. Exhausting just being in the room with them.

CU Boulder: Doofy admissions presentation “What kind of Buff are you?” and highly groomed made-up girls everywhere. (I’d been expecting Birkenstocks and love beads, oops.) Library seemed like a pick-up zone. Guide was a dude in a backwards baseball cap who said everything was awesome. TOTALLY awesome. It was the only word. Dorms featured ball pits. Buffalo-shaped pool in athletic center. Academics did not seem like a central theme.

UMass Amherst: Nothing wrong with the school per se, but seriously worst info session ever. Left with zero idea why one would want to attend, but lots and lots and lots of detail about which specific GPA was required for which specific program (and on and on and on
) Guide was unduly perky, and the whole “triple major” thing seemed fishy to me.

Ohio Wesleyan: Construction everywhere. Student guide wide-eyed with amazement at having met actual students from actual foreign countries and also dutifully regaled us with every tour cliche ever. Other students we met equally wide-eyed. Glossy science research posters seemed middle school level to us. Interviewer fumbled question about discouraging retention rate. Everything seemed worn. Upside: Made everything we visited thereafter look pretty damn good.

Kenyon: Precious vibe, toy movie-set town, admissions office felt like an ever-so-WASPy NE prep school . Pretty for a weeklong spa retreat, but otherwise, not for my kid.

Reed: Paraphrasing some wag, somewhere: All the self-regard of Harvard, only with more drugs, fewer career prospects. School newspaper fully 50% articles about drug use and/or raves. Interiors dark. Graffiti everywhere. Alumni career session featured a combination of lifelong academics and one guy who was an opera singer/bike repair guy. Overall vibe pretty much “constant angst.”

Also, special mention: Brandeis & Oberlin. Great schools on paper, great info sessions, but WTF with the dreary facilities and shoddy upkeep? First prize for most depressing freshman dorms. It’s not as if they’re any cheaper than the others


538

@Ballerina016 No I think we have quite a few yet to cover. Anyone get an appointment to Annapolis or West Point and when they visited got cold feet?

@porcupine98 You win for longest preamble, but when warmed up A+. Those schools probably would have preferred if you had repressed a little more. BTW I never heard , “If you don’t have anything good to say
” from my Brooklyn raised parents. It was more like, “If anyone else has anything bad to say hit them first.”. Hmm, come to think of it that explains a lot about this thread.

539

@porcupine98 Glad to see you dove in!

540

@Ballerina016 Three out of four of our household’s universities have been hit. I am sure it is only a matter of time before we hit the fourth


Actually, I just realized that #4 was praised up thread; a major no no! I am sure it will eventually get dissed.

I would like to join @pantha33m on the search for additional hateful schools.