D did summer camp at Macalester one year. The dorms were old and faded looking. the dresser looked like it had been painted white 20 times, but not for quite a few years (thick peeling paint). D also found the food boring (“I don’t want hamburgers every day”) and the campus too too small. Would not even consider applying.
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@Dustyfeathers Spot on! when d #4 was at Barnard I think the dress code was pjs and uggs. This thread has kept me up nights, at times laughing so hard I nearly fell out of bed. I thought I was going to be immune from having to do the college tour thing with D#5 since Ds 1-4 had all stayed in State attending Fordham, NYU, Cornell, and Barnard. They said “Mom it’s been 10 years and things have changed so you better go” Yeah things have changed and IMO not for the better. I don’t know if it was me because I’m older but I remember seeing a lot more happy faces when I toured these same schools. The kids giving these tours looked like someone had just woken them up and told them your it! Not to mention the chip on their shoulders if someone dared to ask one of those first time parent questions. Thankfully D5 had no intention of going to any of these schools, she’s of the opinion that she’s not doing anything they did. Life is funny, the one school she applied EA and we visited, I wanted to hate was Pace PV campus. I’ve been surprisingly impressed with everything from the campus, student life, students and staff. Looks like Pace 2021 and I’m officially done touring.
They built a large and fairly impressive admissions office, as you probably know. Giant windows facing the lake, high ceilings, attractive modern furniture scattered about, blond wood etc etc.
I’ve completely forgotten the info session. D and I really didn’t like the tour, at all. Our tour guide was a polar opposite of D in terms of interests, he was a drama guy and she’s a math/science kid. It was cold, no one was walking around. The campus didn’t feel cohesive at all. The student center was virtually deserted. I wanted to like the place but we left feeling really “meh” on it.
I love the idea of going to school on a beach (Lake MI is amazing on the other side, in summer) but the truth is you can’t really use that beach during the school year and it’s not really swimmable except possibly in late summer when the wind/currents are just right.
OTOH, we liked Chicago (the city, not the college, she hated the idea of the core).
The end of college touring is such a bittersweet thing. Yeah, it’s a pain, but it really brought our family together. We went on 5 major road trips, and they have provided us with memories good & bad. We tended to stay in motels that were the cheapest places I could find on the internet that didn’t have a serial killer vibe. The water pressure was often weak, necessitating the occasional late-night search for plumbing supplies. Eventually, I made the suggestion that among our luggage we include a violin case containing a “plumber’s helper,” but that was voted down by a chorus shouting, “Daaad!!”
Oh I don’t know. I rather like the motels with the serial killer vibe.
We like to play “name the shape” in the stains on the carpets and/or try to figure out what the stains are from.
Expert tip: If you want your kid to love a school, stay in a cute, cozy hotel. If you want them to hate it–like the expensive school that you can’t afford but also can’t quite say no to–stay in that town’s crappiest hotel.
Good point, Dusty…I guess that’s why my kids ended up going to colleges we didn’t even get close to on the road trips.
But I must quibble with you on your cheap-motel taxonomy. While there is some overlap, the serial killer ones aren’t necessarily the same ones with the carpets by Rorschach. The former tend to be mom & pop outfits in neighborhoods near abandoned factories. While the latter tend to belong to motel chains that apparently have as one of their bylaws, “Sixth Commandment? What Sixth Commandment?”
I can hate any school given enough time but I concocted a special type of loathing during my daughter’s final college visit. She was invited to a Society of Women Engineers event at UCB last weekend. When we checked in on Friday morning D was swept into a day of getting to know you events, a formal dinner with upperclassmen and faculty, culminating in a sleepover with upperclass engineers. Meanwhile, parents were subjected to 6 hours of presentations. The morning sessions were positive affirmations of our good sense as parents to consider Berkeley. Even though there were way too many questions from parents worried about their daughters getting into medical school, I didn’t feel like I needed to shoot laser cannons out of my eye sockets. After lunch things changed. I will spare you the gory details but if a school thinks that they should subject prospective bill payers to 3 hours that include, Berkeley induced stress, a talk about financial aid that ignores that none of the students were receiving any, and ending with a talk from Campus Police, there is something wrong with at least their salesmanship. As we ran from the safety talk, my wife and I discussed how if D gave off any ember of dissatisfaction, we would fan it into a flame.
As things turned out, we met D the next morning on campus and she was grinning from ear to ear. She said that she realized that she would be stressed out in any engineering program and it might as well be at the place she liked the best. She’s been smiling and has no buyer’s remorse a week later.
I’ll just shut up and write the checks from now on.
That is so interesting. When we visited 2 weeks ago we got lunch in the dining hall and couldn’t figure out the display of mugs next to the hot beverages. They are donated and fun and you can use whichever. D and I stood there baffled and the NICEST senior came to our rescue, explained the situation and then connected w/ D, offered to get together later and we have been asking questions on Facebook where we r new friends. On our tour we felt everyone knew everyone and my daughter actually felt it might b too small for her because everyone was saying hi to everyone. It was a beautiful day which might have affected how outgoing and friendly everyone was and maybe that senior was the exception, but our tour guide was super sweet and bright…
Above comment on Kenyon…new to this, sorry…
^^^I was reading your first post and thinking you were talking about Berkeley and was like, “What, that happened at UCB, too small???”
And since you are new to this, we will cut some slack for your first violation, but this thread is only for posts that give negative, frustrating and icky details about schools. These things really make us all happy.
@blueskies2day At last. For some reason I didn’t want to pick on the Cal Poly dorms myself unless someone else did, so I waited.
When I took the tour of those dark little triplets, I whispered to the other parents, “Just like prison cells!”, and they nodded in agreement. Crossed it off my list, but DH said it wasn’t a big deal and insisted both boys apply anyway. And this from someone who roomed in an old mansion that was converted into dorms back in his day!
@Old_parent My older sister was helping at the events for prospective engineering students last Saturday! They played a game where they stacked cups using rubber bands.
I know and we may go back for another visit for my D2 this summer. It was really a disappointment for our last visit. They have started the construction when we were there last time which made the parking problem even worse. Now hopefully the dust has been settled and it may change our view. Nevertheless, my D2 is less likely to get in so it may not matter afterall. 
This thread has been my “go to” thread for stress relief…laughter is good! I will add a comment on Reed. My friends visited a few years ago. They reported seeing the “naked tree”…kids sitting in a tree naked. They were led to believe that this was quite normal.
Sitting naked on tree branches…I gotta ask: straddling or sidesaddle? (And please, people, no jokes about squirrels and their favorite food.)
@lalalander111 Wake and Duke have very different vibes.
@NCMOM24 How so?
A complaint about post # 637. Jeffrey Dahmer reportedly tortured animals as a kid- brutalist college architecture had nothing to do with his problems…
Anyone interested in Humanities could easily be turned off by that brutalist architecture building at UW Madison. It needs to be replaced! Eventually to be done, but decades later than it should have been. The rest of the campus is great.
Well, this was not a surprise to the parents, but it was to the kids. On a California college tour we dutifully went to the usual suspects, including UCB. We arrived at about 8 pm in a rainstorm (our first of the 10 day trip). Checked in to our hotel to hear a little kid screaming in a nearby room that wafted of pot smoke. Yeah.
Too tired to brave an actual restaurant, we opted to online order pizza and have DH and DD, age 13, go to pick it up while the rest of us watched Comedy Central on the motel TV. No parking at the pizza place, so DD went in with a credit card. She had to climb over the homeless man under a tarp INSIDE the restaurant. Two pizza orders with the same last name (what are the odds???) so she had to go back to the car to check with DH. Watched a drug deal go down in the middle of the sidewalk on her way to the car. Squared away the order from Dad, and went inside to pay with CC. Stoner (completely high according to teen) took the card and handed her the pizza. Came out of restaurant to two police cars with lights swirling. No idea why until the next morning when DH saw that two sexual assaults had taken place the night before in that area (hence the police cars).
Kids BEGGED to not go on the tour after all this. They HATED UCB before even setting foot on campus. Mean mom that I am, made them all go anyway. Didn’t want ANYONE applying there, so needed lots of ammo to make the campus unappealing. Was not an issue. DS17 did not apply, and doubt DS21 and DD21 will either.
Weed–er, I mean Reed. Could not get DS17 to even look at it despite being 2 blocks away in Portland. “I am not going to college to get high.” Well, alrighty then. Moving right along…
Best I got. Thanks all for the guffaws and giggles I have enjoyed. DH says I’m a cheap date, but he hates yurts. Thinking of applying him to Hampshire just to irritate him. This is my favorite CC thread yet!