^ Well it’s was on 60,000 kids radar screen.
Took my son to Chicago to visit UChicago and Northwestern. The trip was mostly designed to get him to forget about UChicago. He fixated on it early in his search but it was way way down on my list. With a single digit acceptance rate and a reputation for being “gratuitously brutal” as one CCer put it, I thought the sooner he moved on from it, the sooner we could start focusing on other schools. Didn’t work. The tour guide was like a carbon copy of DS. He loved everything about the place. I don’t think he even noticed the beach and sailboats at Northwestern later that afternoon.
Well, great for those 60,000!
" One thing I didn’t like was their tradition of throwing toast at football games. Having seen many homeless people on the drive to UPenn and considering the poverty in Philly wasting that much food was a little unsettling. "
Then perhaps do a bit of research on how much time and money Penn students and staff and faculty spend on the homeless. Judge not lest you be judged.
“supposedly elite” in the title bothers me. When it comes down to it, just because a school is highly ranked on USN&WR or other places, or an Ivy, or says they are great, it doesn’t mean they are lying because you or your child thought their campus or the tour sucked.
We did an unofficial tour of Carnegie Mellon and my son did an official tour of it. Really dirty city atmosphere, dirty inside buildings. Yes, CMU is most definitely an elite school. No, he didn’t want to go there because it felt way too city, and very close by were city elements that frightened us.
MIT creeped out my brother, and he went from definitely a yes to no way.
“real feelings” about “highly touted” colleges might be a better title. The elite schools are still elite, just not a good match for your child or you. And there are non-elite schools who really push their reputation and campus environment, and students, and the real feelings are much different than they push, regardless of their average entering SAT scores.
Issues with the thread title aside, I do think it’s a good basis for discussion. So, mine (some of which I’ve mentioned scattered here and there amongst other threads):
[ul][]Penn: This was totally at the top of my oldest’s list (she was born while I was finishing up grad school there, so she has fond non-memories of it and all), but hated the info session enough to kick it off her list. (The tour was simply generic.) There were the parents who appeared to see the whole college admissions process as a zero-sum game (and therefore everyone else, including my daughter, was a hurdle on the way to their child’s greatness), but also that the people leading the session said (as it reads on their website) that they don’t track interest from things like college tours, so as to encourage people who might not be able to afford to come visit to apply and let everyone be on a level playing field—but then they encouraged everyone there to mention their excellent tour experiences in their “Why Penn?” essays, because the admissions committee loves that.
[]Georgetown: She loved the school, but didn’t like the way the buildings smelled. I didn’t catch an off odor anywhere, but hey—it’s her nose and she’d have to spend four years there, so it seems a reasonable one to me.
[li]Macalester: It remains on her shortlist (currently finishing her junior year, so now finalizing which schools to apply to), but we were both bothered by a vibe of “We have lots of money, so look at all the cool stuff we can do!” (Well, except for the dorms. Seriously, if your dorms look like that, don’t take students into them.) Interestingly, her very small high school regularly sends students to Macalester (a student every year or two, with graduating classes of about 30), and parents we know who sent their kids there say they didn’t get that feeling. Makes me wonder if it was a reaction to what was then the ongoing Sweet Briar fiasco?[/ul][/li]And as always, YMMV. @rhandco #23 said Pittsburgh is a really dirty city, but my family adores it, and it was painful for my daughter to take Pitt off her list. (CMU doesn’t offer the majors she’s interested in.) That’s kind of the simultaneously fun and frustrating thing about making a list of schools, really, you know?
Aren’t you always saying that people should be looking past the list of top 20 schools? NYU comes in at #32 in US News, but that’s too low? Or do you just disagree that’s where it belongs?
I think the amount of toast thrown at football games fades into insignificance in comparison with the amount of uneaten food that has to be thrown out by the dining halls on a daily basis.
Since we are talking about impressions and not necessarily the reality…
I only know 2 people who went to Macalester and they fit the lots of money look at what we can do vibe. I know it is probably unfair to judge a school by such an incredibly small sample, but it is a turnoff.
Then again, I have no problem with NYU. 
The way a school smells is huge.
Whenever I see more than a few of the Lily Pulitzer/Vineyard Vines crowd, I think, “My kids would not be happy here,” elite or not. Boat shoes and pastel colors are used to demonstrate class elitism that would not sit well with my egalitarian kids (sorry, parents of the Hamptons set, just not our tribe). The pictures from the Kentucky Derby party pretty much rule out Dartmouth for S2.
S2’s best friend has immigrant parents and started college at 16. His second best friend is the son of a corporate lawyer, his third best friend gets free lunches and bags of groceries to bring home from school. In a group, you couldn’t tell them apart.
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I sent D2 to visit Yale 3 times, 2 out of 3 times she was traveling from outside of the States to visit, and each time she said it wasn’t for her.
D1 visited Harvard, BU. She didn’t like Boston and didn’t like major streets running through the campus.
Both of my kids visited Colgate (my alma mater), thought it was beautiful but really small.
D2 visited Stanford, thought it was too Disney like, with perfectly manicured campus (they were power washing the roof when we were there). She also visited Berkeley at the same time and liked the vibe a lot better Than Stanford.
Neither one of my kids considered applying to UPenn.
@magnetron pastel colors are used to demonstrate class elitism
Really? You don’t think that is a bit of an oversimplification?
My daughter grew up a few miles from Wellesley College. Because we passed the campus driving almost anywhere, and because it was so accessible, offering many summer programs to high schoolers, she thought of it as a friendly community college. During her junior year in high school, she expressed an interest in Scripps College, so I encouraged her to also look at Wellesley. She attended an open campus event that spring and came away shocked–utterly shocked!–I had never told her that 'Wellesley is actually a GOOD school, Mom! Hillary Clinton went there!"
And after hanging out in Harvard Square with a friend a few times one summer, she declared, “Why would anyone want to go to school at a tourist attraction? There are literally dozens of tour buses full of people gawking at Harvard all day long!”
My point in recounting these stories is that people’s preconceived ideas about what a college is or should be are very seldom the reality. It is natural to be proven wrong.
“Aren’t you always saying that people should be looking past the list of top 20 schools? NYU comes in at #32 in US News, but that’s too low? Or do you just disagree that’s where it belongs?”
Beats me if that’s where it belongs. I assume USNWR ran the numbers right so if it’s 32, it’s 32. It just is so NOT on the radar screen here at all, and it looms so very large on CC. I never said there was anything wrong with NYU, and my D actually lived in NYU dorms doing a summer internship in NYC and had a great time.
"Whenever I see more than a few of the Lily Pulitzer/Vineyard Vines crowd, I think, “My kids would not be happy here,” elite or not. Boat shoes and pastel colors are used to demonstrate class elitism that would not sit well with my egalitarian kids (sorry, parents of the Hamptons set, just not our tribe). "
No, they are. They are shoes and clothing. If you want to project that people who like / prefer certain clothing “must be” elitist and superficial, that’s on you, not them. You’re the one doing the stereotyping and projecting here.
I don’t know where you are from but in parts of the east coast, boat shoes are just that - casual shoes. They don’t “mean” anything different from sneakers.
And please, anyone can wear or not-wear pastel or bright colors as they so choose.
Ok, I’ll admit Carleton was the one where, at the Boston road show, someone asked about career services and the rep hemmed and hawed and said, well, we’re building a center. That was it. So incredibly odd since I’d guess they had something good, even then (maybe 8 years ago.) And she brought two gals who had graduated maybe a year before. One unemployed, one very under-employed. Just a crazy impression, overall.
D1 had the same impression about H, the hordes of wannabes. I know, I know, I say, “Look deeper.”
I know it’s not universal but is a useable marker. Most of my family’s clothing is functional rather than fashionable and, from a distance, the pastel dress shirts are the most easily recognizable portion of that uniform. You all know the look - flat front bright green shorts that end 5" above the knee, a pastel long-sleeve dress shirt or polo, boat shoes with no socks. We tend to see this style travelling in packs on campuses. It’s not a judgment on the kid (one of my nephews dresses like this), just an unlikely social fit.
Our most social kid is the one in the marching band. Our D watches anime, does not drink or wear jewelry, and has never been to a party at college. S2 has started thinking about college but is probably the least social of the three. None of them are shoppers, wearing hand-me-downs and J.C. Penny clothes.
@rhandco I’m aware that UPenn is involved in social justice and community service (never said they weren’t) and in fact that was one of the things that initially attracted me to the college. There were various other aspects besides the toast that made me feel like it wasn’t the right fit for me. I just thought I’d share one of the things I didn’t like about an elite college, as others are doing in this thread. As someone who has many family and friends living in poverty and who is lower working class I didn’t see the toast tradition as the quirky harmless thing the tour guide made it out to be. YMMV
My son really didn’t like BU when he did the tour.
I agree with the Harvard thing, tour buses going through. Get that vibe from Princeton too.
I’m from NYC suburbs, and boat shoes = preppy = pretentious. There is a certain je ne sais quoi about “the look” - that is - wearing stuff that looks like it was bought last week, having hair that looks like it was cut last week, not having a tissue or change in your pocket.
When I went to Penn, more people dressed like me - jeans, T-shirt, don’t wear something nice unless you are looking for some action or have an event. There were certainly preppies, but they gravitated to certain fraternities and sororities.
I do think the tour can change your mind about the school. I don’t think Pittsburgh is dirty, it is lovely to look down from the top of the cable cars. I think CMU is dirty, especially with the food trucks parked but not open over the weekend.
The amount of walking on campus can really turn off a student as well, and having tall buildings with wind tunnels between them are a turnoff. Rutgers with the engineering school dorms far away from the classes was a turnoff. If you have to take a bus to classes all the time, that’s not what I’d expect from a college experience.
And one of my friends from Penn is from Philly and used to steal bikes from campus. I certainly have poverty in my family, my dad was stealing food as a kid. I agree 100% with there is more food thrown out from dining halls at colleges than could be rationalized - most dining halls are all you can eat, and some people grew up not cleaning their plates.
Boat shoes=pretentious. ?? Really?? I can see an LV bag being pretentious or a Rolex, but boat shoes are basically a sturdy, moderately priced, casual shoe popular in coastal states or areas near water. And most of the time when you see them they look worn and broken in, not bought last week. Maybe more like bought 10 yrs ago! Plus they are not very expensive. Most sneakers cost more, and some sneakers cost 3x as much!
Clothes have been one of the indicators of social class…for centuries and centuries.