Re Reed: Also graffitti everywhere.
We had a few schools that we liked but had some suspicions might not be good fits but visited them anyway, which immediately confirmed our suspicions (Notre Dame, Villanova and Northeastern).
However, hands down the most disappointing visit was Duke. We had some initial doubts about North Carolina schools due to the nutty state politics, but we had to transfer through Charlotte on an international flight so decided on a side tour to see the big four schools. We had a great visits at Davidson and Wake exceeded our expectations so we had high hopes for Duke. We liked very little about Duke. The constant mention of the basketball team (at least 5 times during the info sess plus tour) was a real turn off for DD. (Yo Duke, you are not the only top 20 school with a good sports program!) Also, we did not like the campus (too isolated and too much like an exclusive southern country club) and the distance from classes to the freshmen dorms. DD felt that she had little in common with the students she met and our tour guide did not seem very bright (although he probably was).
We were also disappointed with Williams. The kids really liked Dartmouth and to a lesser extent, Middlebury, so they seemed okay with the whole âisolated NE college sceneâ. Williams was a disappointment. The town seemed run down and the students seemed arrogant, which we did not find at the two other schools.
@craspedia I think you deserve this threadâs special prize for The Scrounge Table post. Googling it and reading more would be good for anyone on a diet.
Ok, I couldnât resist, I had to Google the Reed scrounge table. Hilariously, a 2016 edition of the student newspaper describes it thusly: âToday the Scrounge is a cafeteria quirk praised for reducing waste while feeding hungry students who donât have board plans. But this source of free food was not always so favored, and for many decades scrounging was considered a questionable and even disgusting practice.â
I love the fact that it USED to be considered a disgusting practice. Umm, yeah, pretty sure that most, if not all, parents would still consider it a disgusting practice today. Iâm hard pressed to reconcile the germaphobe, helicopter-hovering, special snowflake parents that have largely populated my kidsâ educational experiences with people who would let their college-age kids become the virtual equivalent of dumpster divers in order to feed themselves.
So whatâs to stop students from deliberately taking more of a certain food than they want in order to feed their friends? Their friends could even pay them (way cheaper than a board plan, I guess).
I wonder about health code violations for a dining hall?
And, yes, the food provider is most definitely subsidizing this practice no matter which way you slice it, which really means that all those who have purchased the dining plan are subsidizing those who havenât/wonât through higher costs.
If it is about not wasting food, students should only take what they will eat (one reason why many dining halls have eliminated trays). Plus, at other places they utilize ways of using food leftover from table scraps for compost and unserved food to feed the homeless. See what Colorado College students devised: http://www.bamco.com/blog/olorado-springs-food-rescue-bon-appetit-work-together-feed-people-landfills/
If find it sad but not disgusting. I would be the student getting a full plate in order to leave for others.
@bookworm I know itâs sad, thatâs why I understand the point of it, but I had the feeling that at least let the scroungers take a half-eaten plate back to their table. No. The rule is you must stand in the scrounge area and eat off the tall tables. Kind of humiliating, if you ask me. There were folks taking a bite of this, a forkful of that.
I like @doschicos Colorado College method of dealing with leftover food better. More sanitary, less humiliating. Also at Reed, you pay by the item, itâs not all-you-can-eat for a single swipe. So it doesnât seem really financially practical to load up and then leave full plates of untouched food on the scrounge.
@craspedia sounds like Reed needs a Scrounge Lounge 
Craspedia, sounds awful. Why donât the students protest? Why should people be humiliated because they donât have the money to afford a meal plan?
@ Hanna, your thinking is soooooooooooooooooo reactionary. Anarchists are not that organized, and Communists are suspicious of profits.
@JerseyParents wrote
Nah. Thereâs way too much irony and sarcasm floating delightfully about. Pretentiousness usually includes a stunning lack of self-awareness with regards to the statement. We all know itâs all just ridiculous.
Oh, in case you didnât know, itâs all just ridiculousness.
Walking on grass-youâre REALLY not supposed to walk across the cut here. You can walk on it, sleep on it, play frisbee with your dogs on it, but youâre not supposed to cut across it, ever. I get it-once a pathway exists in the dirt, itâs hard to eradicate, and itâs a gorgeous swathe of green. I like gardening-I wonât usually walk on the grass if there isnât an existing pathway.
The Scrounge Lounge makes me shudder with horror. Thatâs a mono/flu outbreak waiting to happen.
RE: stinky buildings. Our art studio smells like a dead cat. Because thereâs actually a dead cat mouldering under the floorboards that nobody can extricate. You wouldnât think youâd relish the smell of mineral spirits and turpentine, but yeah, we do.
@craspedia I was at Reed a few weeks ago with my daughter for a Full Day at Reed on a Friday AND the Junior Visit Day on Saturday and probably saw the same student panel, from the description you gave. My D loved Reed and everything about it. Thankfully, we didnât see the Scrounge Table but I imagine the kids who participate are either trying to save money or trying to be cool as disgusting as that may be.
The Scrounge Table and yurts are the two funniest things on this whole thread. I am super annoyed that nothing funny ever happened on any college visits D and I did.
However, I do have a joke: A cheerleader with a super annoying and bubbly personality from North Dakota, (wearing truly hideous strappy sandals with leather tassels), a hipster dude with bright red nail polish, and a jock with his arm in a sling all gave us a group tour at Brown University andâŠthere is no joke. This actually happened. D loved Brown, but I am still bitter and twisted because they rejected her. Jerks.
Syracuse University⊠Our entire family wanted to love it! So, we really gave it an extra look but no one liked it at all. And, itâs nothing the college did. The staff and students really went out of their way to make the day a great one for the open house attendees. Free meal for all in the cafeterias, nice tour, the business school had snacks, drinks and free swag. We stayed at the hotel on campus so it was all positive. The surrounding area was a downer. Very depressed and at 7pm the city of Syracuse is closed. No joke. Streets are empty. It may as well have been 3 am. It was bizarre. Didnât help that we went for ice cream after dinner and walked across the street from campus and were approached by someone asking for money. The campus itself has beautiful buildings and we even took in a womenâs basketball game in the carrier dome. All good stuff. Son was going to apply but after the visit has no interest and I have to say we agree.
Morrill and Lincoln Towers at Ohio State are about as brutal as Brutalist gets.
It doesnât help that Jeffrey Dahmer once called Morrill homeâŠand currently haunts the hallways.
@Pivia1 âThis began to immediately feel like a hostage situationâŠâ.
Coffee meets screen. 
Syracuse U needs to build a big dome over the whole campus, with its own sunlight and weather and a fake pleasant town with cheerful employed residents next to campusâthe full Truman Show treatment.
Re Jeff Dahmer-- I hear he was a nice guy before being exposed to BÂźâ+@ÂŁ!$+ architecture. (Thatâs why you should never even say its name.)
We awoke to a glorious North Carolina day, perfect for touring. On the day that turned out to be our unexpectedly least favorite campus visit, we had two tour guides: an experienced guide and a noob guide. Experienced guide âBiffâ was channeling Tom Cruise from âRisky Businessâ that day. Biff impressed with his perfect shades, shoes, and matching attitude. Hmm, I thought I had left that DVD at home. But the clincher was the noob guide, âMr. Wonderful.â Mr. Wonderful was from Ostentatious, New Jersey, and he was currently taking 6 classes with âno great difficulty.â This at a school where a full load is 4 classes per term (4 to 4.5 in engineering), and everyone works hard to get through them. Even with his 24 credit hour course load, Mr. Wonderful had plenty of free time to volunteer for the admissions office that day. On paper, and from a facilities and resources perspective, the school itself is magnificent. But look at the mess Admissions has created with their student selection outcomes. To her credit, D saw right through it all and wanted no part of a school where kids like these were representative of potential classmates. You know the school.
âYou know the school.â
Those Appalachian State students are so full of themselves!