I was trashed upthread as being the mother of a brat because my kid refused to get out and tour Stony Brook, which he thought was hideous. I agree. We only went there because H, a grad, insisted. It’s STILL ugly. The same kid thinks Albany and Bing (two other schools on this list) are hideous as well. I haven’t been to either, but I have a friend whose D refused to get out of the car at Bing. She wound up at New Paltz and her brother at Albany.
Slightly off topic, but SUNY Fredonia is a pretty campus and Plattsburgh isn’t that bad, either.
I made a joke at that point in the tour about how much I had to zoom in to get a picture of Boston’s skyline from there
We liked that area very much (though it was a drive from Tufts, not a walk, so it didn’t pull Tufts off the “no” list for me). We had a great lunch and did a little vintage clothes shopping.
D liked Tufts, FWIW. She didn’t apply in the end because of supp essay burnout. It was ME that had such a negative reaction to it.
I was going to post about UCSD and saw it’s already been done, but I’ll add my 2¢ worth. My D did a drive-by visit when visiting a friend’s family in La Jolla. UCDS was always something we though sounded like a good idea, but she came home and reported that it was off her list. She said it was all big, ugly concrete buildings interspersed with some eucalyptus trees.
Oh, and she really liked Tufts. I guess it’s really a hit or miss place. And someone upthread thought her favorite (which I have visited 3 times and think is one of the most beautiful campuses we have ever been on) ugly. But I’m not going to sit here defending it. So yeah, go see for yourselves since we all obviously have very different opinions.
It certainly violates the spirit of this thread to discourage criticism but my all time favorite complaint was about the long unkempt grass at Wellesley. Honestly, I think the college undersells its beauty on its website.
“Wellesley’s 500 acres include a private lake, a golf club, groves of conifers and hardwoods, and winding paths through open meadows. Stunning brick and stone buildings rise from wooded hills. From almost every window on campus, the view opens out to an inviting vista—through pine trees to the shores of Lake Waban, down sweeping lawns to century-old oaks with magnificent gnarled branches.”
My biggest problem with UCSD is it could have been Wellesley. It sits on one of the most beautiful stretches of San Diego coastline, and it has wonderful weather (in the 70s today). Instead they built that! I want to revoke the architects’ licenses every time I’m on campus.
The recent posts from @TomSrOfBoston and @PengsPhils on this thread remind me of their epic generosity, knowledge, humor and graciousness. Last year they helped my son so much that they should be compensated by Northeastern! Love you guys.
And for the much-maligned Tufts (my child ended up there) on this thread: The strength of this school is evidenced in the incredible student body.
If you let info sessions influence you, you are doing it wrong. Encourage your kid to reach out to the people who are walking to class or relaxing on the quad. Go off-script and have her/him chat with actual students. That is what made the difference for my student.
And while I am at it: hands-down the best, funniest tour guide was at Northeastern. He should just drop out of school and become a comic with a Netflix deal.
@homerdog Too bad about Oberlin. We had a great tour guide there - a completely unpretentious, down-to-earth nice girl. Maybe somebody should phone in an anonymous tip to the admissions office …
@tucsonmom I must share the story of my UC Santa Cruz tour from 1981. Third day of a four day bus tour of colleges from my public high school in Southern California. We had just had a lousy breakfast in a UC Santa Cruz cafeteria which everyone was grumbling about. The Vice Principal, Mrs. Green, was standing outside a three story dorm admonishing us. As she is talking, a window right above her opens, an arm holding a bong comes out, and the person dumps his/her bong water on Mrs. Green. We all just died laughing. (She did not.) I think 2 or 3 students from that tour eventually enrolled at UC Santa Cruz…I can’t say the bong water incident is the reason but I sure as heck like to think it is.
Kenyon. Beautiful campus. Nice library. Great theater. Horrible admissions & the students were hungover. Impression was that it was a giant prep boarding school for very preppy kids. Seems as though it would be difficult to spend a full three or four years on a such a small campus with less than 1700 students. But this was a decade ago. Still too small, however.
I loved what I saw of Kenyon on our tour, but my son disliked it intensely for the small size and isolation. Oh, well, if he’d rather go to Big State U than a near-elite LAC, that’s his decision to make.
MIT. After some tantalizingly appealing club and combat training posters in the hallways, and a pretty good info session, we were grouped with the tour guide from hell. The poor thing! I was just happy she was still standing after a year at MIT once she recounted her saga while traipsing between MIT’s postmodern buildings, occasionally mustering some enthusiasm for a prank story. Not only had she been on academic probation, tutoring, and a full slate of incompletes, but she got a nearly life-threatening respiratory condition requiring length hospitalization from her first experience of cold weather, and then was able to move mid-year into the Spanish dorm so as to try to reconnect with her own culture and alleviate her alienation as a Latina. We were eyeing the other Californians in the group mouthing “Caltech, anyone?” Once the inevitable rejection rolled around we all felt a huge stone had been lifted.
Speaking of MIT pranks… I was playing on one of their outdoor tennis courts one summer about three decades ago when we were bombarded (literally) with water balloons from a nearby frat house. They apparently decided to try out their water balloon catapulting device – on us. Soon enough our court was splashed with so much water that we had to stop playing tennis, not to mention the fact that trying to dodge the incoming water bombs wasn’t all that fun, either. Sure, for them and perhaps to others who read this now, that was pretty “harmless” and “fun.” To me, though, it wasn’t so much the loss of tennis playing opportunity at that time as the thought of this glaring absence between those kids’ action and its consequence. The thought that a group of MIT students couldn’t make that connection between their actions and the consequences is what made me pause to connect the incident with their future potentials.
UCSD. We live near UCSB, which is ranked about equally with UCSD.
Our local kids tour UCSD expecting it to be similar to UCSB–surfing, happiness, and light. They come back wondering why the students there look depressed compared to those at UCSB. Maybe it’s the architecture.
Mudd’s architecture is a little odd with all those “warts” on the buildings. The curriculum was enough to keep it on DS’s list, though.
Everyone has their own choice. And if you don’t like the behavior and the campus why will you go to admit your daughter there. For me, I didn’t do that ever.
@Veryapparent we had a great tour guide at Oberlin too - and it was the reason my daughter ended up choosing the school. It does make me upset to hear about people who have negative experiences on tours - at Oberlin and anywhere. Admissions officers need to know that tours can be very powerful “make or break” factors.
Another place we had a fabulous tour was Hamilton. They allowed the students to choose their guide based on major and extra curriculars and my daughter found someone who was very well aligned with her. Hamilton was a beautiful campus and showed well. She would have chosen it as her ED2 if she hadn’t gotten into Oberlin.
On the other hand, she really didn’t love our tour guide at Bowdoin and became less interested in the school. I wish she had loved it but I understand the need to feel a good fit!
Agree about Bowdoin. Unusual in that we spoke with the assistant director of admissions for about 45 or longer minutes while standing up in the admissions entryway & were never offered a tour or even a cup of coffee–weren’t even offered to sit down.
