Harvard. Felt more like a tourist attraction than a college.
Northwestern. My son likes there to be a center of campus where people hang out. We never saw that at Northwestern (though I loved the idea of being on the lake). When my son asked, the tour guide said âyou are in itââŠa cement area with something kids paint (rock maybe?) trapped between two buildings.
NYU: I thought he would love it but 20 minutes in he wanted out. Again, didnât like the feel.
UCSD wasnât D2âs cup of tea. Yet, Pepperdine in Malibu is gor----geous!
Villanova. It was as if we were walking inside a monastery.
While having a vacation in San Diego just recently, we decided to revisit UCSD since some 20-30 years ago. Ugh⊠The campus is now hardly recognizable; itâs a concrete jungle. We almost got lost driving around the campus only to escape into a long line of traffic out of the campus and onto I-5.
@TiggerDad â and UCSD is poised for yet another major expansion. The undergraduate population alone will grow to some 40K - 45K students, if memory serves. This will provide a glimpse into what the future holds:
http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/feature/changing_the_face_of_campus
For DS it would have been Bridgewater. Students told us they could not get into required classes. They told us they were hungry because the food plan was terrible so they would go to the food pantry down the street.
For my d it was William & Mary. Beautiful school (almost too perfect!), excellent tour guide, presentation was fine, academics sounded great, and itâs an hour from the beach. But we visited in the summer, and my d just couldnât get past Colonial Williamsburg.
The new and old campuses just didnât mesh at W & M. We loved the old part, but couldnât get used to the newer modern buildings. Still, a good college. It is far from DC however.
Well, I will not go anywhere near that campus! :-S
The worst student tours my d and I had were at MIT and UVAâa big turnoff at both schools!
At MIT, our student tour guide said that visiting students will sometimes ask if they can hang out with her to see what everyday campus life is like. She said that wouldnât be very interesting because all she ever does is study! It seemed to be a very stressful atmosphere. During a tour of the CS/EE department, a different student said how all the students go way beyond the requirements for a class (putting in many more hours than really necessary) and professors keep trying to rein them in but with little success. She talked about the pressure to always do more when everyone is such an overachiever. She ended every negative comment with, âBut itâs really great!â Also, the admissions person was the worst public speaker of any college visit.
At UVA, our tour guide kept talking about how she had really wanted to go to Middlebury and what a fabulous school it is. But after discussions with her parents, they decided that in-state UVA made more sense financially. And then she talked about how she didnât really fit in at UVA at first because everyone seemed so preppy and sheâs more bohemian. And her roommate situation was bad, etc., etc. She eventually got around to saying that she found her group of people and really likes the school now (a good point that a student can find their place at a school they might not see as their favorite), but there was such a long litany of gloom and doom before she got to that point! It makes you wonder how schools select and train their student guides.
Columbia for our child - cannot even describe how âaltâ the tour guides were (purple hair was just the start) - and childâs explanation afterward was that it was to make sure that âaltâ students knew they would fit in. But child ultimately did not like the country club over-privileged feel outside the center of NYC, while I loved standing in the Physics building where the first atom was split.
Also W&M - was signing on to comment on W&M and see that others have commented about that - child really doesnât like it after having been there for various ECs about 4 times so far.
And â can I add W&L - very underwhelmed, having known some alums and knowing the rankings. Just an odd little place in an odd little town.
TCU for ds1
Macalester for ds2
The only odd things about W & L is that it is southern, conservative and conventional. Lexington has the same traits. Not really odd since it is in a very traditional southern place.
Columbia and Middlebury.
Middlebury was depressing. I even googled suicide rate while I was on the walking tour. At Columbia, no one seemed very happy. It just wasnât at all cheerful. It was depressing in a different sort of way.
For my daughter, it was RIT. I think that was when she decided she needed a campus with âcharacterâ.We thought she would love it as she is STEM focused but she said RIT felt like a bunch of buildings and labs were just plopped down and she didnât feel like it was a real âcampusâ. I felt like the students were bursting with RIT pride thoughâit was definitely an odd visit.
UVA, terrible guide, grass was a foot tall, seemed run down, shockingly!
Roanoke College as itâs in the middle of nowhere much more than we thought & buildings not as maintained as we would like. And they have the most ridiculous red brick contemporary church, ugly doesnât even touch it. It sticks out like a sore ugly thumb next to all these light colored brick, traditional nice buildings. I do t think Iâve seen an uglier building in my life. let alone a church. You see it from everywhere, it was so ridiculous it was funny.
S1: Caltech (tour guides were miserable there and vocal about it)
S2: Haverford (underwhelming class discussions), CMC (tour guideâs attitude towards the housekeeping staff â who cleaned rooms weekly-- was offensive)
UVA was run down, there is a difference between historic and old. UVA felt old. It was one of the better info sessions - top 3.
Duke didnât mention their athletics at all during their info session but went on and on about their new dance major. Three boys with lacrosse t-shirts walked out of the info session or off the tour when we were there. My son was one of them. In their own way they made it known they werenât looking for boys like my son. The tour guide went on and on about how she and her advisor or house parent used to swear at each other. Hated it. UNC Chapel Hill had a much better vibe and friendly kids.
We liked W&L but Lexington seems like a ghost town - very weird and Twilight Zoney.
Haverford was dirty and the campus was not kept up. The banners announcing a capital campaign made us feel like there were financial issues.
Wellesley needs to buy a lawn mower and hire someone to update and paint the common areas. It also seemed like there may be money issues. However I was expecting it to have a militant feel and it did not, the students we ran across were lovely.
Princeton, beautiful but soulless. I said this to a college counselor at my D17âs school and she laughed and said one of her colleagues had just gotten back from a visit and said the same thing. We visited three times and just couldnât get past that feeling.
Donât get too influenced by a bad tour guide. We had an underwhelming tour guide at Stanford and great tour guides at UCLA and Berkeley when we visited, but at Admit Weekend at Stanford we had a great tour guide. Yeah, Harvard definitely has too many tourists. I was pleasantly surprised by UCLA campus. I always think top colleges should spend more money to make their dorms and food better but heard UCLA food is second to none. UCSD campus is underwhelming but very near the beach.