Harvard. The admissions rep strode up and down the stage giving a great impression of arrogant superciliousness. My son had already taken a strong dislike to him. Then he tells us during his presentation: “no-one expects to get into Harvard”…turns to the (freshman) student who’s there to give her perspective and asks… “do they?” And she shrugs “well…” (because she did expect to get in). In retrospect I suspect she was a recruited athlete (she did talk about swimming), but that wasn’t obvious to the audience. My son couldn’t get out of there fast enough!
I thought my kid was the only one who didn’t like Harvard! He was totally turned off by the fact that he would have to wear green or pink preppy shorts, a sweater, and deck shoes. LOL!!
The CofC dorm I saw was a (first year) suite with 4-6 bedrooms. It had an open kitchen (with the stainless appliances), a living room and individual rooms off a hallway and 2 bathrooms. True the hall had no windows but the rooms and living area did. Not much historical character or anything, but seemed nice to me. I think the building had previously been a hotel.
Best part was definitely the location though.
The dorm thing was a real turnoff for D18 when we visited UMiami. The one we were taken to was like a prison cell or submarine room. That’s probably a good thing because D18 wouldn’t have been able to concentrate on her studies! UMiami had the highest number of “OMG, did you see him!” moments between D18 and DW of any college tour. That was further reinforced back at home before the UM-UWis bowl game when ESPN did a little story about WR Braxton Berrios (he had plenty of hair, most of the online photos show him with a crewcut).
@klbmom18 Laughing about sleeping during Columbia presentation - we were in NYC over Thanksgiving break, vacationing w/ my mom (D’s grandma) and decided to tour Columbia. My mom literally fell asleep in that auditorium - like snoring asleep!
OMG I finally got to the end of this thread; the tone has changed since the beginning; many posters have gotten soft or defensive! I’ll try to maintain the original spirit.
Youngest is now a senior in high school, so we’ve been through more than 30 schools over the course of 3 kids. Here are the schools that turned me off the most:
Yale–the buildings are apparently too precious to let the masses inside to see any of them and I hated all the locked gates for every courtyard. Also, I believe Yale has more blue safety lights than pretty much every other school combined. They were in such excess that they did the opposite of offering a sense of security. Ate at a “nice” restaurant near campus with mice running around the floor and at a sushi place that was ridiculously pretentious. We did manage to find a good breakfast place, but that was not enough! I kept wondering if anyone would send their kid there if it wasn’t an Ivy.
Harvard–just like Yale, with no entrance into any buildings allowed. We were herded around some older, somewhat unkempt exteriors of buildings and I mostly remember watching out for the wasps that were all over the many mud flats where grass should have been growing.
Illinois Wesleyan–first college tour for my middle child, when we were in Bloomington for a baseball tournament. We asked the tour guide, a senior, what he would miss about his school. He replied that he wouldn’t miss a thing and couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there. Nice. As many have said, tour guides can make or break an impression of the school. I cannot recall anything else memorable or endearing about this school.
Kenyon–visited in the summer, which isn’t ideal. Tour guide looked like she had just rolled out of bed at noon and forgot to do laundry; hair askew, sweat pant cut-offs, non-Kenyon t-shirt, flip-flops. Her speech was dominated by “um’s” and “uh’s”, which undercut positive or intellectual impression. The Middle Path was not appealing, especially the ancient stone gates. We were told that if you walked through those gates at the stroke of midnight on a full moon, you would be transported straight to Hell. They were so creepy looking that I actually believe this story. Many ghost stories were shared with us on this tour. Finally we were brought to a first-year dorm. It had crazy angled halls, which was because the dorm was built after the Kent State riot, to decrease the chance of direct confrontation between students and police. The whole place smelled, had crappy furniture (upholstered lounge furniture cushions were grungy and completely flat), concrete block walls and was infested by little flies. The town was unappealing as well. No on all counts for us. On the plus side, I picked up a collection of their many ghost stories (from Admissions) and read them at my sons’ next campout.
I also don’t like schools that use fast food in lieu of cafeteria food (Bradley University), and those that have bad food quality in their cafeterias (many). The quality of food is a measure to me of how much the school values students and their health.
@droppedit =D>
Leaving tomorrow with my youngest for three days of college visits. Is it awful that I hope at least one of the visits will provide fodder for this thread? >:)
@SwimmingDad, I just did my first college visit with S19 tho I’ve been thru this once before as my oldest is freshman in college. Since we are at the beginning with him, nothing really to say in this thread yet tho I admit I was thinking of these CC college tour threads in the back of my mind as we did the info session/tour. The only negative from our tour Wednesday was that the woman leading the information session kept pronouncing FAFSA as FAS-FA. I thought maybe I misheard her until she kept saying it that way. I’m sure she must use this acronym regularly in the conversation amongst her colleagues, as well as with prospective students and parents, so I was surprised no one has ever corrected her!
@SwimmingDad , you need to dig out the old Bingo Card to keep the tour interesting.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1837440-college-tour-bingo-p1.html
If she is the boss of the office maybe no one dared correct her.
@TomSrOfBoston, no, she was an admissions counselor. The only thing I could think is that maybe her brain hears or processes the acronym differently because surely even if no one has ever corrected her, she hears other people saying FAF-SA all the time, rather than FAS-FA. My college roommate always pronounced one word wrong - I wish I could remember it now. It was something that ended with -tion but she always added an extra syllable -ta before the -tion. We would correct her any time she said it but she just couldn’t get it right. She was an English major but could not spell for anything which we used to tease her about b/c she wrote more papers than any of us. We always had to proofread them for her as this was before computers/spell check (well, I’m not that old, there were computers in the computer lab, but we all still used typewriters and white out).
Nucular?
Ha. Also leaving for a trip to visit 5 schools over the week. We will be watching for fodder for this thread
@4kids4us We also had the misfortune of hearing financial aid “officers”, as well as my daughter’s guidance counselor, pronounce FAFSA as FASFA. It made me wonder (a lot) about their competency. Drove me crazy and was one of my pet peeves last year when we were looking at colleges. As such, I was very happy to hear the acronym pronounced correctly at admitted students day of the university she is now attending.
I bet it has more to do with difficulty of pronunciation than not knowing how to pronounce it correctly or knowing the actual acronym. FAFSA is more difficult to get out of one’s mouth that FASFA, especially if you’re doing a lot of talking and saying it repeatedly. Say each one 5-10 times quickly and you’ll see what I mean. FASFA rolls off the tongue more easily, for sure. I wouldn’t discount a school for that.
@4kids4us My oldest is a first year at McGill and my youngest (HS junior) got dragged along to almost all of it. (He missed out on a Chicago trip.) He feels he already knows what he wants (McGill is number one; U of Vermont is number two) and sees little reason to go through this process. (He will apply to UMass Amherst as our in-state option…maybe Concordia as a back up Montreal option.) I finally get him to give in and we will hit three schools in two days this week…and maybe (?) a few during April break week. He, too, mentioned Chicago but I think it’s because he wants to visit the city…nothing more.
Re FASFA, many years ago it was called the FAF, but nobody said “faff” - just the initials F A F. More often they said “FAF form,” which drove me nuts. The second F stood for “form.”
@SwimmingDad We are all waiting to hear reports of trashy dorms and trashy students, hurry up.
My husband is in NYC for work this weekend, and since it’s a long weekend for my junior, he offered to take her with him and she could take advantage of the “free” midtown hotel room and look at some colleges. She said no because she’s a tad burned out (last week was midterms) but now I’m thinking, we should have strong-armed her into going. 1. she could have caught up on her sleep on the plane and 2. I could have possibly have something to add to this, my favorite part of the forum here!