UC Berkeley is a craphole idk why it is necessarily a “surprise” to people at this point though.
I’ll throw some snark about the Stepford campus aka the University of Washington in St. Louis. Lot of Ivy wannabes…and after the first midterms for Chemistry and Calculus, kids were crying about their grades from the posts in the FB Parents group. Soccer parents wanted to complain to the administration. My schadenfreude was at an all time high.
We went to a local Wash U presentation. About 200 kids and parents showed up at a local hotel to hear about the school. The student they paraded out to give part of the presentation was so full of himself that our son and his friends still talk about what a jerk he was. If Wash U thinks having a second year student dressed in a very expensive suit and a Rolex is something that will make 16 year olds want to apply to their school, they are mistaken. Even the parents were turned off by him. You would think parents would like to see accomplished students but he was so arrogant that the whole presentation ended up being a giant turn off. I’m sure many planned trips to St Louis were cancelled after that.
And more snark-son attended a Northwestern presentation for our area. The recent grads they had talk were all unemployed and/or living with the parents. Mom took the kid there and was very disappointed.
Nothing more enticing than a bunch of unemployed grads telling you how awesome it is to spend thousands of dollars to go to their school. That wasn’t a solid plan. 8-|
Just a shoutout to @blueskies2day for the bullet point including vomit. Great job getting the team back to hating and criticizing!
"We went to a local Wash U presentation. About 200 kids and parents showed up at a local hotel to hear about the school. The student they paraded out to give part of the presentation was so full of himself that our son and his friends still talk about what a jerk he was. If Wash U thinks having a second year student dressed in a very expensive suit and a Rolex is something that will make 16 year olds want to apply to their school, they are mistaken. Even the parents were turned off by him. You would think parents would like to see accomplished students but he was so arrogant that the whole presentation ended up being a giant turn off. I’m sure many planned trips to St Louis were cancelled after that. "
Their admissions office must struggle to accurately assess the students they pick for tour guides or to act as student ambassadors. When DS and I were there, the student portion of the presentation was the exact opposite of what you describe, but sadly was equally unappealing for different reasons. The student speaker was so unpolished and repeatedly described how clueless she was and how many hours she spent with her advisor that it was difficult to imagine how she was admitted to college in the first place. The tour guide was very sweet but also came across more like an awkward, happy 12 year old than a student at a top 25 college. Maybe the AO heard the feedback about Rolex boy being a turn off and went too far in recruiting students that the AO felt were “relatable”? I know, given how competitive the admissions process is and from having friends’ children who attend WashU that many/most of the students have to be smart and surely a few of them are well-spoken in an appropriate way as well? But the info session and tour featured students who appeared to be a better fit at a friendly private middle school/junior high - unfortunately a big turn off for us. Just like the poster above mentioned that her son and friends still talk about what a jerk Rolex boy was, my son still brings up the hopeless, but sweet, bumbling dweebs that they trotted out during our tour.
Looking at USNWR rankings, WashU was not the most highly ranked or the lowest ranked college we visited, but by far the students WashU featured in the info sessions and tours were by far the least impressive we met during any of our tours. Hopefully at some point, the admissions office will figure out they need to refine whatever methodology they use to recruit students for info and tours because I have to believe most of the students as WashU are more impressive than the ones featured.
Just for the record I hate all the schools my kid got denied at, and two she got accepted to, LOL.
The one thing WashU has in its favor is the freebies that the kids get during their visit (reusable bag, lunch voucher, bookstore discount). My alma mater is too cheap to even give the students bottled water during the visit. And the Pope is a Jesuit!
A general dislike - any school that gave bottled water to my students would be immediately off their list - they know to bring their own bottle to any campus and not kill the environment with bottled water. Actually any of the free stuff from schools is such a waste, even if they end up attending that school, know one actually wears the free t-shirt or carries the free bag - it’s just not cool. And any glossy handouts that is just info that can be found on the website, just more trash and a pain to carry around on the tour.
Not by anyone on campus. They hardly pay attention to Harvard, or any school on the east coast. Really, none of the west coast schools seem to measure themselves against east coast schools.
Regarding Vanderbilt, it was an interesting campus because it’s an arboretum and has all kinds of vegetation, but when I was walking around it looked like the vegetation wasn’t being trimmed and maintained, and it had a bit of a jungle feel to it. The medical center absolutely doesn’t fit on campus. Lots of vegetation, and them BAM, a big concrete and brick medical complex. The Peabody Campus across the street was gorgeous.
I lived in VA for long time and drove around JHU in MD with my mom out of curiosity. I had a 2 star out of 10 stars reaction. First, bad surrounding area with many homeless. More homeless on campus street signs. Second big road cutting through campus area created an impression that it was not a good campus to walk around without crossing streets. I definitely didn’t like the campus feel. From the campuses I visited:
Disappointing: JHU, CalTech, UCSD, Berkeley, Harvard. Fell below my expectation. To CalTech’s defense, I could not tell when I was entering or leaving it’s campus. Seemed to integrate to Pasadena area pretty well.
Good to Impressed: UCLA, Stanford, Cornell.
Pretty ok: UC Davis, UCSB, Auburn Univ in AL, Santa Clara, UCSC, Columbia.
Just so-so: UC Irvine. GATech. Entire Pomona/Claremont campus. NYU.
I think way back on a page in the single digits, I said I would hate SUNY Binghamton, which I hadn’t even visited yet. I forgot to tell you all that I didn’t hate it. I know liking a college is against the rules, but you can all hate on me for lying, which is probably just as satisfying.
@Lindagaf I think you can dislike a college for one child, but like it for another. Then there are some you hate for all! Those make for the fun posts!
Re Johns Hopkins, there was a crazy person on our tour. She was well-groomed and expensively dressed, so presumably not homeless. But during the info session she sat alone in the front row and asked strange questions. On the tour, we noticed she was not attached to any potential student. And she was collecting sticks as the tour moved around the campus. Ended up with a whole bag of them. Middle-aged woman. Weird.
@Lindagaf I’d like to say that we are equal opportunity haters but can’t figure out how to punctuate the statement so it doesn’t sound that we hate equal opportunity.
Hopkins does have a nice, manicured campus, but its surrounds are unsafe and or ugly. I grew up in Baltimore, so I can say it…it ain’t DC. Although Gtown may be ranked lower, my two students who both got into Gtown would have chosen Gtown over Hopkins any day.
It may be worth the money for JHU to pack it up and move to Pennsylvania. I would never send anyone I love to Baltimore, it’s just not safe and it’s not going to be anytime soon. The same for Catholic - the area hasn’t been safe for years.
But, obviously Baltimore and JHU are safe. Thousands of students attend yearly without incident.
My son went to Hopkins for a cross country camp and two visits. He felt safe enough there though he said the area by the track (east of campus by where Memorial Stadium used to be) gets a bit dodgy. What he didn’t like was that there was almost nothing around the campus to walk to. There are few stores a block off campus but after a week he said “I can’t do this. There is more in the Center (of our town) than at Hopkins.”