<p>During our spring break tour last year we found Colgate to be extremely friendly and welcoming. The tour guide was great and very honest about where she had been accepted and NOT accepted. The ice cream in the admissions office wasa nice touch. We also found Penn very welcoming (somewhat to my surprise, being a native Philadelphian). We were a little late for the info session due to parking and pouring rain, and they had a student escort us over to join the main group. At Princeton we were a little late and got yelled at and my coffee drink was almost snatched from my hand lest I were to CONSIDER taking it into the historic building where the info session was being conducted.<br>
Penn was a friendly place all the way around, come to think of it. The coach directed H and me to a great food cart where we could pick up some lunch while he visited with Wild Child. The boys who hosted my son on his official visit were really friendly and fun (and knew of great parties…)</p>
<p>Wesleyan is famous in certain circles for tour guides turning off prospective applicants with their take on the college (perhaps accurately, donno).</p>
<p>Nicest: U of South Carolina. Since acceptance in November, DD has gotten mail or phone calls or emails from them every week. They had nice touches…a student called to congratulate DD on her acceptance. The folks on the phone are terrific, polite, responsive, supportive. This school is big but they are really reaching out.</p>
<p>Least responsive: Santa Clara University. It’s DD’s top choice. She spoke to them frequently before her acceptance and they were terrific. But since her EA letter in December, she has heard very little from their admissions office. The music folks have been VERY nice (especially since DD is not majoring in music).</p>
<p>Preapplication: (with apologies to Xiggi…sorry…)- Claremont McKenna. DD (and we parents) thought the tour guide was very very full of herself. It did not give us a favorable impression of the school overall. After our visit there, we never heard from them again…nada.</p>
<p>I have to concur with what others have said about Pomona. We visited in Feb. 2004. The admissions visit/tour was oversubscribed; the room was packed and they made no effort to accomodate everyone who was there. The Admissions person giving the lecture was very haughty. They put down the other schools in the Claremont system with respect to Pomona student’s ability to take courses from other Claremont colleges - kind of sniffing that very few actually do. We toured Pitzer the same day – my daughters were the only students on the tour - it was hard to believe that these two schools were part of the same organization. The Pitzer guide said that Pomona students frequently register for other Claremont courses - quien sabe? On the same trip we also visited Occidental - they couldn’t have been nicer. In retrospect I think the positive contact with Oxy made Pomona seem all the more unapproachable. After my daughter declined admission to Oxy, she received a nice handwritten note on the bottom of her letter assuring her she would be very happy with her choice of Grinnell.</p>
<p>Grinnell was where she felt most comfortable and at home – and their niceness extended to move-in day, when they had squads of students on hand to unload our car and carry all her stuff to her room.</p>
<p>We had a nice tour and free lunch at Pomona, even though it was some sort of weird California holiday the day we were there. The other Claremont colleges didn’t even bother to accept visitors that day or conduct tours, but we looked around anyway.</p>
<p>"(with apologies to Xiggi…sorry…)- "</p>
<p>Haha, no need for apologies. Even in a small sample like this one, patterns of randomness start to appear. Compare my comment about Penn and MOWC post about the same school. I did not visit CMC before being accepted but I remember that the amount of attention during my junior year was great and phenomenal post application. </p>
<p>I also believe that people taking the same tour on the same day might leave with different impressions. A friend of mine was positively underwhelmed by Harvard because the tour guide used the expression THUS FAR twenty-one times -she had counted them. </p>
<p>PS Daderoo, the emphasis on leadership by CMC is not an afterthought. At the risk of being offputting, the visiting officer was straightforward and direct about whom they want to apply to CMC. Please check the application supplement: </p>
<p>“Leadership is a constant theme and emphasis at CMC. In fact, one of the ways we describe CMC students is Leaders in the Making.
Identify and discuss a person, fictional or nonfictional, who has helped shape culture and thought. You may select someone from any field: literature, the arts, science, politics, history, athletics, business, education, etc.”</p>
<p>When I applied to schools Macalester made me send a teacher rec 3 times, and finally it was faxed… I ended up not getting in.</p>
<p>Off topic a little. Xiggi, do you remember that really funny post last year in the discussion about the aesthetics of various campuses where the poster was talking about the Claremont colleges architecture and the person who designed the restrooms along the beach bike path? Not that I agreed with his view of the Claremont schools, but it was really funny. Do you have a link?</p>
<p>3 years ago we had mega-bad troubles with a person or two in the admissions department at Rice. It was so bad that DD did not want to apply. Luckily I persuaded her otherwise, and she is there and loving it. Please remember not to take the admissions department as being indicative of the feel of the school. Once you matriculate you will have no further contact with the admissions department!</p>
<p>I must request that you put MIT on the “highly selective” “nice” list. Their Admissions folks go out of their way to keep in touch with, and woo, their EA admits (holiday cards, valentines, phonecalls…), and everything they do on their blogs, on their web portals, and even here on CC is designed to provide information, alleviate stress, and encourage applicants to believe in themselves and be successful, regardless of their admissions outcome. They make a very stressful process and time into one that’s much more human and manageable. Sample quote from the online decisions portal that just debuted this week:
And the cool thing is, I’ve met many of them, and they really mean it.</p>
<p>Brandeis was especially welcoming (fresh-baked cookies, after all), and the info session leader was memorably enthusiastic, in a genuine and humorous way. Almost all of our college visits have been positive - I hope the trend continues with daughter #3. We’ve liked all our tour guides too, who have always been bright, well-spoken, and pleasant. I still wish I could have fixed one daughter or another up with the young man who led the tour at W & M.</p>
<p>Worst info session: DUKE!!! “Aloof” is putting it mildly - the adcom was snotty and condescending, and I couldn’t wait to get out of there. We’d been to info sessions at peer institutions and never caught a whiff of that kind of superiority complex. I was certain my d would be ready to leave before the tour (I certainly was), but she wanted to stay, and the tour guide and atmosphere on campus completely reversed my initial unfavorable impression. The guide was a young woman with outstanding credentials who was understated, warm, and approachable. She even brought us up to her own room as part of the tour, which I thought was clearly going above and beyond. </p>
<p>Friends who’ve run into the same adcom have said the same thing. One woman wanted to raise her hand during the Q&A and ask, “Did you know that there are kids in this room who are going to turn you down?” and walk out. She didn’t, of course, but I’d like to have seen it.</p>
<p>Pomona’s admission office seems to be not as well run as others. We had a very hard time setting up an overnight – very poor communications – and the day before we were set to arrive in LA, we finally got a call with the details. Also, when my son sent letters to schools withdrawing his application because he had been accepted ED elsewhere, Pomona was the only school that did not send an acknowledgement and a month later sent a letter with a link for checking his application status.</p>
<p>The most impressive admissions offices were Yale, Chicago and U Michigan. My son ultimately decided not to apply to Chicago and received a lovely letter from them. Yale sent a personable letter when he withdrew his application.</p>
<p>And, Swarthmore’s admissions office was wonderful, from the visit forward.</p>
<p>The absolute worst: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. They lost Son’s entire application file, and were quite surprised that we were upset about it. Good thing he applied to eleven schools!</p>
<p>I keep hearing about Duke being unfriendly, not so much admissions as the campus environment. Kids all with their noses up in the air. No one greeting each other, etc.</p>
<p>Fordham has been a disaster for us. My D applied EA to Fordham and ED to Dartmouth. She got into Dartmouth on 12/8 and withdrew (confirmed!) her application to Fordham that day. Just before Christmas she got an acceptance package to Fordham with their Dean’s (I think) scholarship. The package also included another girl’s acceptance letter. My D called that girl and gave her the happy news. MY D sent the post card included in the acceptance package saying “I won’t be attending” Last week my D got a post card from Fordham saying “Your application is complete.” We’re betting on a 2nd acceptance. D can’t wait to find out her Fordham dorm and roomate assignment.</p>
<p>Reasonabledad, </p>
<p>Go figure! By far, my Ds best experience has been Michigan. They were responsive when visiting, during application process, and particularly after acceptance. I have been very surprised with the personal attention. D will not be attending; but I know that she has had a tough time saying no. </p>
<p>With so many applications, I guess the process can be extremely unpredictable.</p>
<p>Justanothermom ~ I think this sort of variance in the experience may be very common at the big state schools, where they have a lot of applicants and (I imagine) limited budgets to process the paperwork. But we were certainly surprised to discover the reason that Michigan was unresponsive to emails and telephone requests for ID to check their website was that they no longer had an application file from him. If the school had told us earlier, we would have applied a second time, but the school delayed answering us for long enough to make this option unworkable.</p>
<p>Best: Denison Univ, SUNY Geneseo, Skidmore</p>
<p>Nothing great: Vassar, Kenyon, Holy Cross, </p>
<p>Poor: Case Western, Loyola Baltimore, Oberlin, Fordham</p>
<p>Best: Allegheny (really great!), Tulane
Good: Southwestern, Macalester, Carleton, Hamilton
Nothing special: Bowdoin, Davidson, Rhodes</p>