Forgot to mention Georgetown and GW. Georgetown surprisingly secluded from Wash DC noise. Better than I expected. GW is right there in the city, not much campus feel.
JHU the last good university I would attend for 4 years because of surrounding area. If Yale is like that, no Yale for me.
With GWU I couldnât tell where campus was and where DC was. Can be a good or bad thing. 
Once Georgetown gets its fabled metro stop it will be even more popular.
@doschicos I disagree. While the campus itself may be safe, Baltimore is not. Iâve spent quite a bit of time there over the years and the decline is obvious. I would not send a kid to a city like that where they are not free and safe to go off campus.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-0301-crime-20180228-story.html
D and I both hated Miami (OH). The buildings are too matchy-matchy, pink brick everything. Female students exiting the gym were in full hair and makeup. The tour guideâs story about how many Miami couples got married after stepping on some seal in the quad was really tedious. The town had a few cute shops and restaurants but after that couple of blocks it was nothing but straight up cornfields for miles in every direction.
(I hope that makes up for my part in the recent tangent)
@cleoforshort donât hold your breath that JHU is going to leave town. There are plenty of bright kids undeterred from attending. As someone who drives into Baltimore on a daily basis, I disagree that Baltimore is unsafe. Are parts of it? Sure, just like any major city, there are dangerous and depressed areas. Obviously we all have our own levels of comfort. Iâm actually happy I pulled my son out of his hoity toity private school to drive 45 mins to a high school that happens to be in what is considered an âunsafeâ area of Baltimore. When I hear some of the things coming out of the mouths of his former classmates and their parents, it only reinforces my decision to broaden his world. Of course it probably wouldnât surprise you then to know I attended college in the South Bronx during the crack epidemic so the neighborhood around JHU doesnât bother me.
I thought I had already put my snark in on this forum, but a search showed I had not! So happy to get back to the dislike! Oh, wait not happy!
George Washington U The Information session was such a train wreck that I didnât even want to go on the tour. A student was leading the info session and she kept saying how she was graduating and didnât have a job! Her major was International Relations - the one my son was considering. Note to Admission Staff current students talking about how they do not have a job lined up is not the way to persuade parents to part with their $. It hard to describe how disjointed the information session was. We did a tour and the young man giving the tour redeemed the school a bit. However, DS didnât like the split campus and I was not a fan of the Urban Campus feel. It did stay on the list, but thankfully he was admitted to his first choice.
@websensation - No Yale for my D eitherâŠnot feeling the urban campus in general and New Haven in particular.
D was even less of a fan of urban schools that lack a defined campus â (e.g., GWU, NYC, AUP (American University of Paris). Georgetown, U.Chicago, and Columbia, with more defined campuses, were somewhat more acceptable, but she did not like the fact that despite its defined campus, she perceived that Columbia lacked a campus feel as it seemed that most students view the city at large as their campus (and sheâs not a big fan of NYC).
@LoveTheBard My S was the same: he wanted city but a defined campus and a campus center plus lots of âstuffâ around campus (pizza, coffee, etc.). Some schools hit this (McGill, Penn) and others did not (NYU).
Hamilton
Beautiful campus. Bad vibe.
Sometimes, you step on a campus and it just feels right. This was the exact opposite. Totally intangible thing. Both my kids said same thing without being prompted.
@sahmkc I felt the same on some tours where the Admissions staff was largely comprised of recent graduates of the school. Rollins College in particular comes to mind.
JHU main campus is fine. There are million dollar homes just blocks from campus. There arenât a lot of stores or businesses because it is a residential area, with million dollar homes.
Now if you want dicey, go to JHU medical school or the U of Maryland @ Baltimore professional schools. THOSE are in rough areas (especially at night). If you donât like danger, donât go to a city school .
@4kids4us I was kidding about JHU leaving Baltimore. And youâre right itâs not within my comfort zone. I applaud you for moving your son from the hoity toity private school to widen his world. Around here the kids are sent for a few years and then pulled so they can be the top of their class at the (much) less competitive public school in order to gain entrance to a more selective college.
I just visited 5 colleges with my junior and hoped to come back with all sorts of fun tales, but we actually had pretty great visits. A couple anecdotes.
Just starting the process with my younger but my older (D16) did not like GW at all, and discovered there that she preferred a school with a more cohesive campus. She said that the school felt like a place where people went to work during the day, and returned to their respective homes at night --in other words, too much like the adult world. Plus, students had very mixed things to say about the Mt Vernon campus, and as a cherry on top, the student newspaper the week we were there was a real downer. It came right off her list.
My D18 was super excited to tour JHU because her cousin, a recent alum, had been raving about her experience. Well, our tour started with some confusion where our energetic student tour guide had to be swapped out for a less than energetic guide. More than that, D18 noticed the students didnât look happy and she didnât notice âgroupsâ of students. When we left campus, we turned off into a somewhat rough area. D18 never applied.
Understand perfectly about why people donât like GW campus. Three things I did not like about JHU to be specific:
UCSD campus is also not good given their fabulous location.
@websensation can you say more about UCSD? S applied but we havenât visited yet. I think another parent said it was a bunch of concrete buildings, which wasnât very attractive.
@shortnuke Thatâs so funny about Rollins. Itâs been DDâs favorite college so far. I will say the big difference I noticed between the young Alum at Rollins versus GW almost grad was that she was really articulate and presented the material professionally. If GW almost graduate interviewed they way she presented, I 100% understand why she did not have a job.
We did not like UCSD either. Lovely, lovely location, but the campus was like a concrete jungle. We parked and walked around for a few minutes but did not stay. Great school - just not for us.
Canât resist on the geography. Did you know most of Maine lies south of parts of well populated Wisconsin and Michigan (much less the western states with the 49th parallel for a northern border)? Map projections skew things.
The Midwest- a teen from southern Indiana didnât think Wisconsin was in the Midwest. Huh? Where else could it be- the Upper Midwest, North Central is all I can think of.
re Wash U. Looked it up when knew people going to go there. No comparison to our flagship- UW had so many more versions of chemistry and many other course options not to be found, plus much better UW rankings for several grad school departments. Agree with its upscale image. So many better choices, but a lot depends on how good your stateâs flagship is.
At the time looking at IUâs website they listed their grant money rankings for different categories among the Big Ten (only 10 schools)- near the bottom in every one. Why would a school want to advertise how other schools in the region got so much more? Also noted that that state must be money stats conscious since the school district I checked also paid a lot of easy to find attention to teacher salaries et al.