Brief back to Stevens College. Had never heard of it so I looked it up. Still won’t be on the radar for the many in the Midwest with so much better flagship U’s that offer so much more… Must be a regional known factor (a few famous people do not make a college better than others). This satisfies the negative criteria for this thread so no need to jump on me. It works for a few students (is small).
@TomSrOfBoston here’s a “didn’t like BU” post. Kids were all very preppy and gave off a privileged, I’m better than you vibe. I don’t like schools with no real campus and BU certainly qualifies. I think what I hated most was when the tour guide said, if you close your eyes, the traffic sounds like waves on the beach. Major eye roll. You are a city school; own it. Couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
@eastcoast101 The sole grassy area at BU is nicknamed the “BU Beach”. It is next to Storrow Drive.
Yes, that sounds familiar. Hated that. Like I said, you’re a city school; own it.
sick burn. I don’t know how that engineer80 will take it. People are trashing my school too. But, hey this is for fun. to each is own.
Interesting to see folks rag on Tufts for being “so far away” from d-town Boston. It’s about 5-6 miles.
UChicago is 7-8 miles from d-town Chicago and I’ve never heard anyone complain about the distance.
Give Tufts a US News top 5 ranking instead of #29 and what do ya bet that 5-6 miles miraculously seems like stone’s throw.
Plus there’s plenty around Davis Square/Somerville.
I don’t like BU either, but the BU beach is pretty great in the spring around the time of the Boston Marathon. So many kids out there soaking up the sun. Looks like fun.
@eastcoast101 I think that’s the joke, though obviously quite a bad one. BU owns the city school vibe as far as I’ve seen. This coming from a Northeastern student 
That one’s interesting - I usually hear that for BC more.
Re Tufts vs UChicago, miles is not an accurate measure often for cities, which depends a lot on layout and transit. Despite the distance difference, public transit time to downtown is the same. I suspect more have cars at UChicago too. The high ranking also attracts people for the school over the city more, while many city schools have a larger degree of their attraction come from location.
People at the University of Chicago complain about the distance/inconvenience of getting from Hyde Park to downtown Chicago attractions all the time.
(I’m typing in Hyde Park at the house I grew up in.)
Faber College: “Knowledge Is Good”.
Stanford was a disappointment for me. The information session was led by an older man who seemed bored and uninterested, with the air of “you probably won’t get in, so why exert myself?” I could have overlooked that, but on the walking tour we were shown an area where students were welcome to write messages in chalk. I was unnerved by how many mentioned sexual assault and no action on the part of the community. This was shortly before Brock Turner.
Way back in the day when my parents took ME on college tours, I passed on some universities for some interesting reasons…
CSU Humboldt State - seemed run down, depressing, and nothing to do but smoke pot
UC Davis - toured during the summer. it was 104 that day. Hot as a mother trucker. Campus too spread out and stunk of cow manure. I was not impressed.
UC San Diego - all the building felt too sterile & industrial. didn’t like the different ‘colleges’ each with their own confusing & complicated general ed requirements. Hard to tell what anybody did for fun. Nobody ever smiled or seemed to actually enjoy being there.
UCLA - too many “fake” people talking all affectedly like they are big shots or something. And it was in the middle of LA and I hated Los Angeles
San Jose State University - depressing urban campus, nowhere cool to have fun, way too many commuter students
UC Santa Cruz - beautiful campus, but at the time I thought that there were way too many trees. And too many tree huggers. Too many pot heads and drug addicts. At the time, UC Santa Cruz advertised itself as a college where you could NOT get any grades…just written evaluations from each professor. I thought that was dumb and would be a waste of 4 years.
Stanford does have many tourists but because the campus is so big and spread out, doesn’t feel crowded or encroaching. Campus wise, I found UCLA and Stanford campus to be nicest among UCs, LACs and privates in CA. Cantor museum pretty nice. During summer, Stanford campus is a money making machine for summer programs or camps.
I disliked the University of Rochester: location, parking situation, buildings. I was glad when some of their faculty wrote a letter telling students not to go there, because it gave me a legitimate reason to tell my kids not to apply there.
S Disliked Duke. Thought it was very pretentious. (I thought it was great but different folks…) Also thought Villanova was very sterile. People were nice but didn’t bother applying.
Villanova was DD’s least favorite. The info session was unimpressive (poorly-paced presentation, boring slide show and speakers and a lot of “it’s really hard to get into our business program and maybe you’re not good enough for us” attitude) Hubby and I and DS (who was just in 8th grade at the time) thought that the tour and campus were fine, but the guide reminded DD too much of the mean girls at her school and confirmed her fears about it being “vanilla-nova”. She did not apply.
@tusconmom Way to spew the disdain and keep this thread on track!
SMU. My D17 said it reminded her of the worst aspects of our current suburb. Thought the students were shallow, vain, and conspicuously wealthy. Did not apply.
The guide’s social justice cause was probably bullying and she was just getting some practice in.