^^Well said. It is much easier to judge when you don’t know the whole story.
@hanna Maybe she didn’t actually want a roommate – she wanted an extra bed for the snake.
Carnegie Mellon. Everything felt wrong.
@biscuithead Please say more! My S applied to Carnegie but we won’t visit for another week (waiting to see if he is accepted).
We stopped at LeMoyne while we were in the area visiting other colleges. It was a maybe on our apply list but we didn’t make it past the gate. DS took one look and said no way. Buildings reminded him of a prison.
@MACmiracle Brought me to tears. Rant all you want.
@lovespink Let me preface this by saying CMU was my dream school 30 years ago when I thought I wanted to study architecture. As you know it is a top school for both arts and sciences. The campus and buildings seem top notch. The setting is urban, there are plenty of shops and restaurants nearby. My D is an MT candidate and fell in love with a CMU professor at a summer program. We knew it would be a long shot for her to audition into the program, but still we made an 16-hour drive to visit. We did see the final night of Ragtime, which was the best college production I ever witnessed. So, plenty of good stuff. But the following day on the tour, we felt our group was hustled through like cattle. In talking with current students, there was more advice on what to do when you don’t get in than what to do to get in. We learned much of the faculty would soon be changing. We had a pre-arranged meeting with a professor who moved us from his office to a busy food court, and then seemed to try talk my daughter out of the program. Maybe that’s a good thing. In our case, it just wasn’t going to be a good fit. You situation may be completely different. Wishing you the best.
@suzy100 thank you for sharing my Notre Dame shade party. I feel bad being critical but…
UChicago.
Went overboard trying to con the room into thinking GPA and test scores don’t matter, which is sleazy as hell. And talking about milk shakes and how you’re like so quirky (in your $1,000 Canada Goose jacket) was cringe.
My daughter’s biggest disappointment was Harvard. She did a summer program there before her senior year. Her dorm was the only one that had been remodeled since the 80’s, but even though the rooms and bathrooms were very nice and clean, the social areas were very unappealing. It was 5 blocks from Harvard Square, and the surrounding areas do not feel like a college campus at all. Harvard Square is a tourist attraction.
@bisquithead I walked off a tour 36 years @CM. I guess I wasn’t an urban setting person.
“Harvard Square is a tourist attraction.”
As is the university itself. http://www.trademarktours.com/harvard-tour/
UChicago, on the other hand, was love at first sight. The day we visited the first time (we visited 3 times before committing), everything was perfect: it was a spectacular summer afternoon, we met Jim Nondorf at the admission office with all his energy and charm, the guy who gave the informational session was clever and funny, and the tour guide was an energetic and passionate girl that showed us the best of the magnificent campus. Since that day - two years before applying to colleges - everything was about my daughter’s love for UChicago. Now she is a happy freshman.
Nobody looked happy at UChicago outside of the forced smiles of the admissions team. Basically Columbia without the prestige, international jet set trash or culture/excitement of NYC. Beautiful architecture though.
UChicago was a complete turn-off for my daughter. The tour guide spent the entire tour talking about how hard everyone worked, how everyone he knew was doing a double-major which was nearly impossible to pull off, how no one had time for sleep, relationships, etc. He seemed very proud of the school’s “where fun goes to die” reputation. And he looked and sounded perfectly miserable. These are selling points? Sounded like a bunch of hyperachievers who thought they were Harvard material but were humiliated when the big H rejected them, and now were now trying to redeem themselves through extreme academic self-flagellation. There was a competitive aspect to it, too—an entire campus, or at least a major subset of it, vying for bragging rights as to who could endure to most work and misery.
^^ U of Chicago, like Lake Wobegone, where they are all above average.
^Go UChicago haters!
This is a phenomenon that deserves a sociological study. I have never seen in CC a group so passionate about its hate for any other school. It is so pathetic that it is almost funny.
32.000 applicants and 7% admission rate this year by the way…
The interesting thing is that they’re not all haters. One of them posted about how much s/he hated the UChicago tour then immediately posted in the UChicago forum that s/he was just accepted and was asking about majors! Guess it’s a love/hate thing?
I kind of get it. There was one top 20 school that we had an awful info session and tour at, but I suspect that was AO driven and still know it’s a great school.
Chicago is Duke with colder weather, less attractive (and uncharming) students, and no Coach K.