Schools you toured that you were surprised you liked or didn’t like?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Takeaways from this- (have just seen multiple people report in this thread)

Schools that surprised people in a positive way:
Pitt
UMD
Columbia

Schools that surprised people in a negative way:
Tufts
Carnegie Mellon
Duke

Schools that went both ways- both exceeding expectations and falling short for different families:
Chicago
Northwestern
VTech
William and Mary

Takeaways from this

1. Schools that spurned my kid were much worse than we thought when we toured.
2. Schools that admitted my kid were just wonederful and much better than anticipated. Kid loved it!

BRAVA! Especially true re UVA bashing .. no surprise.

Why are criticisms of other schools valid but criticisms of UVA are bashing? It's ok that not everyone likes every school.

Baffled with this too. People are different. For example, my 10th grader really liked UVA and my 12th grader wasn't crazy about it.

To DD, UVA just gave off this creepy party-school vibe, which she didn’t get from her other top choices we toured (Michigan, Carnegie-Mellon, Case Western, and Pitt.

You should do another visit. My DD's first visit at UVA went poorly but it was because it was summer, hot, few students and the tour guide was having an off day. Second visit was the opposite. She loves it there.

I'll never understand why people put so much weight on the quality of the tour guide. Why would you assume that the tour guide is representative of the school? Or that a poor tour guide means that the school must be poor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are only considering Harvard, Yale, MIT and Stanford. Of the 4, surprisingly, Yale's campus stood out. Not enough to win our business, but we will see.

I guess you don't subscribe to the whole Reach, Match, Safety philosophy of college applications.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:We are looking only at rural/suburban SLACs, but we were just blown away by Sewanee. Beautiful and great vibes, great tour.

I went there and loved it. It was a wonderful place to spend 4 years.

+1 i have several wonderful friends who are Sewanee grads.

I do too, and I'm not sure there's a college or university in America that is as loved by its alums.

PP here. I think Davidson does, but I know Sewanee is very special and beautiful with great alums! Have been there many times to visit friends who have a cottage there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most impressed by Colorado State. Great campus, kids seem so happy, pretty town and area plus it just has a fun vibe. I can't explain it but we visited it on vacation randomly and now we compare all schools to CSU.

I loved that school, too. I wish one of my kids had attended. Do you see the aquatic center?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Vanderbilt--had high expectations but the information session was terrible. 3rd year did the entire presentation and talked in a robotic voice. Tour was also terrible (even though campus is pretty), tour guide did not seem to know basic things about the campus and we did not go inside any academic buildings.

Duke--we had a picture perfect day and fantastic tour guide and information session. Students hanging out outside, playing frisbee, and just generally being social which my daughter really wants.

Elon--had no idea about the school and visited on a whim but was really impressed with how intentional the information session and tour was . (their tour guides are paid though).

I think all tour guides are paid now - it's a campus job. It's not the 90s anymore; students are paid for their work.

Some student tour guides are not paid, our vanderbilt tour guide specifically said it was a volunteer position. It is a contentious topic at universities where tour guides are not paid and I think they absolutely should be. Definitely notice a difference in the quality of paid/unpaid.

https://georgetownvoice.com/2023/02/18/increasing-equity-at-georgetown-begins-with-reforming-blue-gray/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I'll never understand why people put so much weight on the quality of the tour guide. Why would you assume that the tour guide is representative of the school? Or that a poor tour guide means that the school must be poor.

Because these are the students that the Admissions Office picked hopefully as being excellent representatives of the school. If this is the caliber they put forward, maybe it's a one-off but it makes you think.

IMO this is why if it's possible it can be good to visit twice or find ways to engage with other students during your own wandering around campus. Sit in the cafeteria. Maybe stop a student and ask them for directions, see how they react to you. Get other perspectives, because if that tour guide is your only impression of the student body it can say something.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I like parts of Nashville, but Vandy is for a very specific kid.

Please describe the specific Vandy type. Thx.

I’m sure it’s changed, my sister went there in the 80’s. We grew up in a Boston suburb. She hated it. Turns out, northern girls hated Vanderbilt for the same reason that northern boys loved it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I'll never understand why people put so much weight on the quality of the tour guide. Why would you assume that the tour guide is representative of the school? Or that a poor tour guide means that the school must be poor.

Because these are the students that the Admissions Office picked hopefully as being excellent representatives of the school. If this is the caliber they put forward, maybe it's a one-off but it makes you think.

IMO this is why if it's possible it can be good to visit twice or find ways to engage with other students during your own wandering around campus. Sit in the cafeteria. Maybe stop a student and ask them for directions, see how they react to you. Get other perspectives, because if that tour guide is your only impression of the student body it can say something.

For my kid's top schools, she reached out to the leadership of clubs she was interested in and arranged to have coffee with them when she visited. Those conversations were a great complement to the official line.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are only considering Harvard, Yale, MIT and Stanford. Of the 4, surprisingly, Yale's campus stood out. Not enough to win our business, but we will see.

Surprisingly? wtf? Yale has always been known to be absolutely stunning. It’s New Haven that people don’t like. And my mom is from New Haven. It got hit hard in the 80s crack epidemic and never really recovered to its former glory—-everyone left at that point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Takeaways from this- (have just seen multiple people report in this thread)

Schools that surprised people in a positive way:
Pitt
UMD
Columbia

Schools that surprised people in a negative way:
Tufts
Carnegie Mellon
Duke

Schools that went both ways- both exceeding expectations and falling short for different families:
Chicago
Northwestern
VTech
William and Mary

Takeaways from this

1. Schools that spurned my kid were much worse than we thought when we toured.
2. Schools that admitted my kid were just wonederful and much better than anticipated. Kid loved it!

BRAVA! Especially true re UVA bashing .. no surprise.

Why are criticisms of other schools valid but criticisms of UVA are bashing? It's ok that not everyone likes every school.

Baffled with this too. People are different. For example, my 10th grader really liked UVA and my 12th grader wasn't crazy about it.

To DD, UVA just gave off this creepy party-school vibe, which she didn’t get from her other top choices we toured (Michigan, Carnegie-Mellon, Case Western, and Pitt.

Omg. Same! I thought my boys would love it. They both hated it. We were there on a Thursday-Friday in April admitted day (not spring break) and our hotel had a pre-sorority mixer going on and everyone was sh@tfaced. The corner was a mess. Now, personally, I loved the vibe (lol) and I’m a Hokie. But- my kids did not. They preferred the mid-size schools in Urban areas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I'll never understand why people put so much weight on the quality of the tour guide. Why would you assume that the tour guide is representative of the school? Or that a poor tour guide means that the school must be poor.

Because these are the students that the Admissions Office picked hopefully as being excellent representatives of the school. If this is the caliber they put forward, maybe it's a one-off but it makes you think.

IMO this is why if it's possible it can be good to visit twice or find ways to engage with other students during your own wandering around campus. Sit in the cafeteria. Maybe stop a student and ask them for directions, see how they react to you. Get other perspectives, because if that tour guide is your only impression of the student body it can say something.

This!

If it was a school that I really wanted to carefully consider, like our state flagship maybe I’d visit twice. Absent that, there are thousands of schools, giving each one multiple looks just in case they didn’t put their best foot forward is impractical and not a reasonable expectation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I'll never understand why people put so much weight on the quality of the tour guide. Why would you assume that the tour guide is representative of the school? Or that a poor tour guide means that the school must be poor.

Because these are the students that the Admissions Office picked hopefully as being excellent representatives of the school. If this is the caliber they put forward, maybe it's a one-off but it makes you think.

IMO this is why if it's possible it can be good to visit twice or find ways to engage with other students during your own wandering around campus. Sit in the cafeteria. Maybe stop a student and ask them for directions, see how they react to you. Get other perspectives, because if that tour guide is your only impression of the student body it can say something.

Agreed. Tour guide is supposed to be a representation of the school. A tour is an important way to get a feel for the campus and the vibe. We had a tour guide at one school who completely lacked energy. She did not use her microphone and we could barely hear her half of the time. There was another tour at the same time and we crossed paths with them on a number of occasions. That tour guide was energetic and engaging. When we could, we would listen to his spiel instead of ours. Unfortunately, we were in a two family tour group and couldn’t peel off. This was at Pitt and we had heard a lot of people liked it, but a good tour would have been necessary to help my kid consider an urban school.

Georgia has already been discussed enough times, so I will contrast Pitt with U Miami. The tour guides there were energetic and engaging. They shared personal stories and made you feel like you could understand what it was like to be a student on the campus. We had no expectations going in to that tour, but it aligned with some travel. Based on the on campus experience, it became one of DC’s favorite schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Takeaways from this- (have just seen multiple people report in this thread)

Schools that surprised people in a positive way:
Pitt
UMD
Columbia

Schools that surprised people in a negative way:
Tufts
Carnegie Mellon
Duke

Schools that went both ways- both exceeding expectations and falling short for different families:
Chicago
Northwestern
VTech
William and Mary

Takeaways from this

1. Schools that spurned my kid were much worse than we thought when we toured.
2. Schools that admitted my kid were just wonederful and much better than anticipated. Kid loved it!

BRAVA! Especially true re UVA bashing .. no surprise.

Why are criticisms of other schools valid but criticisms of UVA are bashing? It's ok that not everyone likes every school.

Baffled with this too. People are different. For example, my 10th grader really liked UVA and my 12th grader wasn't crazy about it.

To DD, UVA just gave off this creepy party-school vibe, which she didn’t get from her other top choices we toured (Michigan, Carnegie-Mellon, Case Western, and Pitt.

You should do another visit. My DD's first visit at UVA went poorly but it was because it was summer, hot, few students and the tour guide was having an off day. Second visit was the opposite. She loves it there.

I'll never understand why people put so much weight on the quality of the tour guide. Why would you assume that the tour guide is representative of the school? Or that a poor tour guide means that the school must be poor.

Because the school hires these students to BE representatives of the school. This is who the school has chosen to represent it. So I think it bears SOME importance.

[Anonymous]

Hated Boston as a whole. Such a dirty, dreary, depressing city.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Georgetown

+1. I'm class of '95. My wife is class of '97 under grad and class of '01 for grad school.. My father went there for undergrad and law school and my FIL taught medicine there for 27 years. Five diplomas between us all.

We took our son there a dozen times over the years since we live in Arlington. Did the official tour, and, I'll take heat for this, but he felt very out of place as the only white boy in the 20 person group. It came across more like a business presentation than a campus tour. So bland and uninteresting. Our son left completely underwhelmed. He applied anyway and was rejected, which floored us given the huge legacy.

So, screw Georgetown. They'll never see another dime from any of our families.