<p>
</p>
<p>I can just imagine the frustration. The process is time consuming and stressful enough already. No fun to have to deal with that!</p>
<p>UNC - Chapel Hill – RUDE
We went for a tour and during the introduction the ad rep was so rude to the group that several left before the tour. It really turned my D off as well. BTW the whole group was OOS.
On the other hand, we have a friend who is a freshman there that had a totally different experience. So I guess it depends on who greets you that day. </p>
<p>Elon was very nice. I really liked how they keep you up to date on application and credentials received. It is nice to know that they received things like scores and transcripts.
Penn State did that as well.
Most others were just what you would expect.
No lost papers thank goodness.</p>
<p>Mootmom-
Completely accurate on the MIT contact for EA admits. All the things you mentioned and more. They are very good at what they do!</p>
<p>Kat</p>
<p>My son has applied to 9 schools:</p>
<p>Best: Oberlin,Macalester, Brown, St. Mary’s</p>
<p>Adequate: NYU, Univ. of Maryland, Carnegie Mellon</p>
<p>Worst: JHU and Haverford.</p>
<p>These two schools have made little to no contact to acknowledge that my son is an applicant. There’s no sense of a personal approach. Not so surprised by JHU…more surprised by Haverford.</p>
<p>From previous experience with older S, CMU was absolutely dreadful. Unresponsive, uncaring, snobbish. He went there for three semesters, the school was worse than the admissions office. Univ. of Maryland and JMU were gems, returned calls, if person answering the phone didn’t know the answer they found someone who did.</p>
<p>From younger S experience so far, NYU couldn’t have cared less. Actually lost stuff, and wouldn’t except duplicates. Columbia has been responsive, Univ. of MD top notch. Too bad he doesn’t want to go there.</p>
<p>Friendly, well organized tours and info sessions: Pitt , Penn State and Washington & Jefferson</p>
<p>Personally neutral, but lots of good mail contact: Case and Cornell</p>
<p>A mixed bag: CMU (some very nice individuals, but some quite rude, arrogant and disorganized people in Admissions and Financial Aid)</p>
<p>Absence Award: UVa (Virtually no contact or communications until the acceptance letter. Also, they completely lost our financial aid application, making it difficult to reasonably consider them)</p>
<p>Best big school-Ohio State. Ohio State is trying to increase it’s selectivity and boy are they doing it right. My S has received phone calls from students since he showed interest in the school. He still is receiving calls, both from general students and engineering students. From the engineering dept to the admissions office to the Honors and Scholars program, an amazing amount of contact for such a big school. They are marketing themselves right. Great engineering tour, great general information session, the best tour guides of any school we have toured (by far the most informed, amazing considering the physical size of the school), great admitted student day. I’ve talked to other parents on the Ohio State board and they say the same thing.</p>
<p>Best small school-Michigan Tech. If you make the effort to visit this school, (and it has to take the prize for the most out of the way school) they were the most welcoming and friendly. They sent cards and e-mails and work on keeping this school in consideration. This school started to slide down on my S’s list but is slowing going up due to continued contact. He has even received a call from a Dean asking him to apply to a Honors program.</p>
<p>Worst big school-Purdue. It might be us and a bad visit but no one in my family liked this school at all. Very arrogant (we are Purdue, come and you might graduate) and the tour guide bragged about his SAT’s scores the whole time. Did not like the co-op program and thought that it wasn’t pretty and the people were not friendly.</p>
<p>Worst small school-Rose-Hulman. Nice school, very small, I’m sure that it would be perfect for some kids, my S just wasn’t one of them. Students seems arrogant to us and comments from a pair of students really turned off my S.</p>
<p>IMHO and experience the more competitive plus the more applications a college receives, in general the more aloof they may be.</p>
<p>UVA – pretty aloof – What is interest there? You just fill out a tiny card there when you visit.</p>
<p>Duke – aloof for the same reasons…large applicant pool.</p>
<p>Nicest: Elon – handwritten note to D thanking her for visiting.</p>
<pre><code> Tulane – friendly people in admissions.
James Madison -- User friendly campus tour and admissions
folks.
</code></pre>
<p>Best: williams (I really loved the folk at williams), Dartmouth, Amherst, Bryn Mawr, Barnard, Mount Holyoke</p>
<p>Good; Tufts, Brandeis, Brown, Ursinus, Juniata</p>
<p>OK: Columbia, Dickinson</p>
<p>worst: NYU, Harvard, Cornell</p>
<p>
I agree. The individually signed cards were a really nice touch. MIT does a great job of marketing itself by making the process very open and friendly.</p>
<p>Would add Cooper Union to the worst list. Think their theory is if you get in tuition is free, so they don’t need to treat you well.</p>
<p>Smith was the best ALL AROUND for me ever since I first stepped on the campus in the summer before my junior year. They allowed me to spend two overnights (I don’t know if they even looked at the records…LOL). At my first info session, the admission woman sent us home with TONS of stuff that kept me busy from Northampton to Boston on our drive!!! It was just great having the admissions remembering my face from my previous two visits when I came in April “just to be sure.” They were always courteous to my mom who made the phone calls for me and I think they offered something or two.</p>
<p>I just remember feeling very welcomed and warm. Even my tour guide (who I still remember her name) was sweet enough to take us all around, including her unfinished-paicked room in Chapin on my first visit. She was more interested in showing me parts of the campus of the things that I would like to do/study (we were the only visitors).</p>
<p>Ithaca was just okay.</p>
<p>Hobart was pretty good- liked everything a lot but… just not impressed the area around the campus!</p>
<p>American University-just felt that the admissions officer who led the session was… too forthcoming in her tone and attitude. Just not very relaxed unlike my interviewer. So mixed reviews there- I even stayed there for the summer for my internship in DC. Definitely mixed reviews about their offerings and services and the people.</p>
<p>We haven’t had any really bad experiences(but we’re still doing some visits). Grinnell was a very positive experience. Reading everyone’s comments about tour guides reminded me that our tour guide sent my D a personal note after her tour. The admissions person who interviewed her had a great discussion with D about books and movies and again sent a note . (She also sent a note after D received her letter of admissions) Those things do make a student feel wanted!</p>
<p>We also has a wonderful experience with Smith. The President of the College called - she’d actually read my d.s supplemental essay and listened to her musical submission (an opera based on a play by Yeats) and actually wanted to talk with her about it. They bent over backwards to see whether they could construct the right paid research assistantship for her (they were amazing!), and on admitted students days, the entire faculty was in their offices for the whole day to meet with prospective students who might want to study/work with them, and attended poster sessions of their current students.</p>
<p>They also did something which I thought brilliant. They scheduled their minority students weekend (I don’t know what it is called) to coincide with the presentations of senior research, as well as the 5-College Anthropology Consortium, and invited all the minority prospects to attend. This was the only “minorities” weekend we saw anywhere that placed the interests of minorities as students and as scholars first, before anything else.</p>
<p>
Ditto from a Katrina mom wrt the handling of “admitting” the Gulf Coast students. Sine qua non!</p>
<p>Our worst experience, last year, with admissions was (surprisingly) Rice. Gruff phone manner, no matter who answered the phone. Wouldn’t let rising Seniors interview prior to submitting Part 1 of app (no matter that we were travelling 2000 miles) and wouldn’t let us know when the Part 1 would be available. When we, at the last minute and in desperation, FedExed the prior year version, they rejected it even though the only difference was the 2008 vs. 2009 pre-printed in the upper right corner. Finally, day before our trip, they provided the correct form. We FedExed that! Guess what - when we called to make the interview appointment, they told us no one would be available on that date! We had discussed scheduling with them weeks before and could have re-routed our trip back then; too late now! Grrr! I hope Rice has changed the culture of the Admissions Office because I feel certain this does not represent the culture of the school itself.</p>
<p>In the not-so-selective category, very helpful at U New Hampshire and U Maine. Endless willingness to track down missing documents/scores for gS; helpful advice on handling his “underprepared” high school curriculum etc.</p>
<p>“IMHO and experience the more competitive plus the more applications a college receives, in general the more aloof they may be.”</p>
<p>Funny, we didn’t have that experience at Stanford, Princeton, Brown, Chicago, or top LACs.</p>
<p>But, our Yale tour guide was a graduate school Architecture student who thought his job was fine arts docent and didn’t do his job for college applicants.</p>
<p>Having now completed the second go round, the experiences with DD were certainly a breath of fresh air when compared to those with S three years back.</p>
<p>Our visits with S included most of the Ivies, Amherst, Williams, Wash U, U of Chicago and Northwestern.</p>
<p>At Penn the Admissions reps actually told our rather large group “if you think you’re good enough, apply” and tour guide walked 10-15 steps ahead and didn’t wait for group to catch up before what amouted to an information dump, then turned and walked to the next stop. S couldn’t wait to leave. Princeton was a 180 as was Yale. Dartmouth and Brown were both good but not as well orchestrated as Y or P. Amherst and Williams both were very personal and attentive. The Dean of Admissions at Williams engaged S in a conversation and upon hearing where he went to school, started talking about grads of his school who were either currently enrolled or had attended Williams. S was very impressed. Of the midwestern schools, U Chicago’s efforts were head and shoulders above the others and made ME want to go back to school.</p>
<p>Our experience with D was so very different. Her schools were mostly mid-sized to larger schools in the SE. All were friendly, attentive and welcoming and we really didn’t have a “bad” experience at one. As thumper mentioned, South Carolina was and has been amazing with follow-up and personal attention. Auburn (our first stop) actually had an admission rep come out for a 30 minute one-on-one, walked her and us through the entire process, gave her tips for things like scholarships and housing and actually opened her file that day. Every encounter with Auburn since then has truly been amazing. EAmom and I have both said that if it comes down to that, it will be hard to tell them that D is not coming because they have been incredible from the onset. Thye could give other schools lessons on personal interaction both in-person and on the phone. “War Eagle!”</p>
<p>We had the very best info session ever at UGA. Within 15 minutes the person conducting the meeting knew the name of every kid (a pretty good sized group I might add), where they were from, and for GA kids, what high school they went to. She held a truly interactive session calling on kids and injecting humor into the process while being a virtual trove of information. We were very impressed with the quality of info sessions, tours and overall welcoming feel of all the public schools and were honestly very surprised with the level of attention and effort put forth by schools of that size.</p>
<p>Our absolutely worst experience was at Cal (Berkeley) where the tour guide blatantly informed the group that he didn’t care whether any of them applied/attended Cal because he gets paid for the tour no matter what. His lack of attention to the group juxtaposed with his frequent hailings of friends he met in passing left us and others in the group feeling, why bother then? A similar attitude of condescension was encountered in the informational session.</p>
<p>Cal had huge bureaucracy and unworkable numbers – perhaps it can’t be helped. The tour guide was condecending and the tour itself the least helpful to an applicant of the large number we experienced.</p>
<p>Speaking just from FAO experiences over the phone…</p>
<p>FANTABULOUS: Dartmouth! I called 3 times and each time, a wonderfully helpful person assisted me. And gave me more information than I sought (a good thing lol).</p>
<p>OK: Columbia. I called 2 or 3 times. It was always a very diplomatic but tired voice answering, not too enthusiastic. But I got my issues resolved.</p>
<p>EH: WashU. Pretty long wait time and an answer that I could have gotten off of their website.</p>
<p>TERRIBLE: Stanford! They REALLY wanted to get rid of me. Also, the regular admissions office isn’t much better. They lose parts of applications (just like any other school), but don’t give you the chance to re-send it!</p>