Everybody needs a straight man, @OCDaddy. Work with it. 
Goats would be a plus with my kids.
I unexpectedly didnât really like Harvey Mudd. Felt way too small and claustrophobic, considering most of the classroom areas shown during the tour were underground. And the tour guides looked odd in an unpleasant way and didnât sound too cheerful. Ours showed us her dorm room which was a stuffy mess (however, she was a decent tour guide in general).
Son liked HMC though, go figure. I guess nothing feels claustrophobic to him after his high school, which is basically a huge cave.
Mudd is, well, different. Isnât it.
@OHMomof2 I feel the same way - I want to go on more college visits so I can add to the discussion. Makes me annoyed that I have loved every school we have seen so far! :))
Letâs talk about Bucknell, NOT in New Jersey but close enough. Took D14 there with my niece (13). Our tour guide had on most of a shirt and a big bow in her hair, right on top of her head. The bow had more fabric than her top. My take away from that tour was that the kids could live in a Harry Potter house and play intramural Quidditch. Also, the tour guideâs favorite hallway on campus was by the geology classrooms because it had pretty rocks. I expected at some point that she would utter the phrase âfire badâ but the opportunity never came up. The campus itself looks like a place for corporate retreats.
*disclaimer - I am sure the tour guide was very nice, loved her mother and was kind to animals. There are probably some very smart people who go to or have gone to Bucknell. This is in no way a blanket condemnation of the school or student body or the intramural Quidditch team. Your mileage may vary.
Read this already a few times, but yes, Harvard felt like a tourist attraction.
Some of you are being a bit mean. The tour guide is usually a 19-22 yo fin aid student trying to make a few extra bucks so maybe they can afford to go out to lunch with friends. Sometimes they have a bad day, sometimes theyâre shy and hiding it, sometimes theyâre hungry and irritable, sometimes they have an exam they should be studying for.
Does it make you all feel big to attack them for not being some super charismatic professional Broadway star? Further, the whole being turned off by a tour guide (or something equally trivial like the cafeteria food that day) makes your child sound like an immature brat who wasted your weekend visiting a college they were never serious about.
âSome of you are being a bit mean.â
This IS the snark thread.
âmakes your child sound like an immature bratâ
Well, Iâll ask you your own question: âDoes it make you all feel big to attack themâ?
I also donât understand why parents keep picking on tour guides. Iâve been on many tours and never had one that was dreadful. Even the one who called the astronomy department âastrologyâ was charming, and embarrassed by his mistake. They are young, but I guess nothing builds character like having a job working with people.
OK, going back to the west coast⊠We toured schools in almost every corner of the country and D liked most of them (and applied to a very large #). The âsurprisingâ one that she did not even apply to was University of San Diego. Beautiful location, weather, views, buildings, etc. but we walked away from the lackluster tour pretty disappointed. It checked so many âboxesâ but didnât make the cut.
@writermom2018 Schools should train their tour guides and give them guide lines and basic scripts. There should be a dress code or a uniform. I didnât say she killed babies, I said she was a terrible tour guide because, she was a terrible tour guide. I expect 19-22 year olds to know how to speak to groups and dress appropriately, they are adults - if you did your job right.
FWIW my daughter loved Bucknell. I wrote my opinion about my experience. My Dâs success as a Division 1 scholar-athlete currently putting herself through school would knock your socks off, and no, sheâs not on the Quidditch team.
http://www.complex.com/style/2013/09/ugly-college-campuses/
Hampshire is #16. BTW for those of you who remember the kidsâ book The Phantom Tollbooth, the author, Norton Juster, was one of the campus architects and a longtime professor of design there.
SUNY has 5 campuses in the top 15!
Johns Hopkins â seemed med focused, disliked campus and area around it
Harvey Mudd â weird, unattractive - saw in summer âlooked bleak
UC Berkeley â nothing awful but crowded and overall not attractive / inviting
Cal Tech - kids were miserable, too small and nondescript but love the pranks with MIT and caliber of academics
Tuftsâ not feeling it. Dumbo mascot
UT Austin. Too crowded.
I think I made a couple of negative posts about Lehigh way back earlier on this thread. Just wanted to update. We made another visit and I liked it much better.
Even the first time we visited I had no complaints about the academics or the kids. The campus and town were what bothered me. I found both much nicer on this second trip. We explored a little more and I got a much different impression.
I still wouldnât want to deal with that hill, but my daughter doesnât mind it at all.
If anyone has been turned off by the comments of others about Lehigh, I would say make a trip and see what you think. People seem to love it or hate it.
@Old_parent I might have missed this earlier in this thread- but what were you doing in college for 12 years?
And I too have a daughter who calls all the time- especially while walking home from classes or grocery shopping. Itâs lovely butâŠ
@myjanda Yes what was I doing?
@WalknOnEggShells Weâre going to have to have an intervention! Taking back a negative post! Really? On this thread!! Is your daughter putting you up to this or is your conscience keeping you up at night? BTW, I have a cure for thatâŠjust count goats jumping over yurts, or read posts about Stevens.
@crepes Nice link! My jaw dropped to the floor when I saw the names of the architects that contributed to some of these campuses.
UCSD wasnât ranked nearly high enough in my opinion. I did a drive through while in SD for work one day. Bars running from the ground to the roof over the windows of buildings that looked like they might be dorms! Made we wonder if they were to keep the students from breaking in, or keep them from breaking out. The Theodor Geisel library looked more like the lair of a James Bond villain than a building honoring Dr. Seuss.
I LOVED Faber College! Sorry to be positive. Fraternity Row was pretty nice except for one house, which had a broken window and a mannequin on the lawn. Those kids looked like they were having fun though. I didnât care for Emily Dickinson College at all, but all-womenâs colleges arenât my cup of tea.
@crepes I find it hard to believe that Boston University didnât make that list.
@Lindagaf Thank you for the laugh!