tell me about colleges that didn't make your kid's list

[Anonymous]

Harvard: not impressed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:WashU and Vanderbilt were both way below expectations.

Like how?

The campuses felt like overly manicured imitations of the kind of schools that they're trying to emulate, without much substance. I'm sure the kids who go there are bright, but there was just something off about both schools.

I get what you’re saying

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP my brothers both went to St. Olaf - loved it!

Is that where Betty White's character from the Golden Girls attended? I just keep hearing her say "when I was at St. Olaf's..."

She was referring to a fictional town called St Olaf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I should add that my DD who didn't like the dorm room at W&M also hated that Colonial Williamsburg was right there. Didn't feel like a college town to her, just a tourist trap. My DS loved it and probably would have ended up giving tours or working in CW had he gone there.

My DS had the same reaction as your DD - he said it felt like he would be going to school in a museum, complete with tourists traipsing through. I was sorry to hear that - I loved it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:WashU and Vanderbilt were both way below expectations.

Like how?

The campuses felt like overly manicured imitations of the kind of schools that they're trying to emulate, without much substance. I'm sure the kids who go there are bright, but there was just something off about both schools.

I get what you’re saying

Great! Could you translate for the rest of us? I went there and don’t understand PP’s comments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I should add that my DD who didn't like the dorm room at W&M also hated that Colonial Williamsburg was right there. Didn't feel like a college town to her, just a tourist trap. My DS loved it and probably would have ended up giving tours or working in CW had he gone there.

My DS had the same reaction as your DD - he said it felt like he would be going to school in a museum, complete with tourists traipsing through. I was sorry to hear that - I loved it.

yes and for all my the feedback from my DD I loved it so i don't mean to discourage anyone but you really do have to visit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Texas Christian University is off the list for very predictable reasons

Which are?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Harvey Mudd - My daughter did not like the 1960s motel-like dorms.

I tried very hard to interest DD in Harvey Mudd, but it is rather amazingly ugly, especially compared to the other 4 schools in the Claremont cluster. We were feeling a little shell-shocked on our self-guided tour between the Soviet gulag-looking dorms and a near-collision with one of the several students on unicycles. A nice lady stopped us and said she was a Pomona admissions officer with a kid at Harvey Mudd, and she made a great case for the school based on her DD’s experience. My daughter, sadly, had no interest in applying there, and she wouldn’t get out of the car at MIT (which DH and I also really liked).

Surprised to hear upthread that a poster didn’t like the area around Macalester. I think that part of St. Paul is lovely.

I agree with the poster who said that Charlottesville is somehow sinister. I went to law school there and enjoyed it (other than the attending law school part), but there is definitely a lot of weirdness, violence, and unresolved racial issues mixed in with the many great things about the area. It has much more of the worst of the south than is apparent if you are just a visitor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Texas Christian University is off the list for very predictable reasons

Such as?

DP. Are you asking for real or baiting the PP above you?

It's Texas, which has just recently swung so far right that women are racing to neighboring states for abortions and voting rights are under serious attack. Not to mentiom the hysteria in school boards over so-called "critical race theory."

I get it -- none of that is IN colleges there. But it's become a toxic environment overall in that state. I wouldn't let my kid go there unless it was sole home to the one magical college that was the only one on the planet teaching the only subject on the planet in which DC was interested. Maybe not even then.

DP. Jeez - you don't sound overly dramatic at all. I was also wondering what the cryptic "predictable reasons" poster was getting at. Not all of us have clutch our pearls at the idea of Texas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Two schools as different from each other as you can possibly get:

UVA --OK, UVA boosters here, I'm not dissing UVA at all. Had a great tour there where it was just our family and the guide! That was for touring just one department (you have to hunt on the web site but such tours existed two years ago!). But UVA overall was too huge and the idea of vast freshman classes in huge auditoriums didn't appeal to DC at all. DC said it would obviously be better once you declared your major and were in smaller classes in later years but the idea of the first two years in huge classes just turned DC off. (Yes, DC is at a SLAC now!)

Sarah Lawrence College -- Yeah, the other end of the universe from UVA, right? Hit all the right notes on paper, plus the visit was on a special "prospective students day" with all the stops pulled out for special tours, events, panel discussions, meal, etc. They did an excellent job and were really welcoming. But the campus vibe was like a prep high school and not a college at all, and it felt insular. No diss on SLC either, as DC has a friend there who loves it. DC had expected to love it too. We were so glad we visited in person before DC made an effort to apply.

Your kid sounds like mine. Where did he or she end up applying to that they liked? Where did they enroll?

Applied to Oberlin, Bard, W&M, Vassar, Kenyon -- did ED 2 at Vassar, got in, withdrew the other applications so no idea if she would have gotten into those other colleges. Says he has zero regrets about not knowing that--she's where she belongs!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Texas Christian University is off the list for very predictable reasons

Such as?

DP. Are you asking for real or baiting the PP above you?

It's Texas, which has just recently swung so far right that women are racing to neighboring states for abortions and voting rights are under serious attack. Not to mentiom the hysteria in school boards over so-called "critical race theory."

I get it -- none of that is IN colleges there. But it's become a toxic environment overall in that state. I wouldn't let my kid go there unless it was sole home to the one magical college that was the only one on the planet teaching the only subject on the planet in which DC was interested. Maybe not even then.

DP. Jeez - you don't sound overly dramatic at all. I was also wondering what the cryptic "predictable reasons" poster was getting at. Not all of us have clutch our pearls at the idea of Texas.

right back at ya. You knew what that PP meant as soon as you saw "predictable." You knew it was about the entire climate there.

[Anonymous]

UPenn. Horrible campus and very cutthroat student body. "Snake-like," as the kids say.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:😆Yes, that dorm room does it for many students & parents!

Now I am worried because we didn't get to tour a dorm room this summer.

New poster. Is your DC still in HS and applying this fall? Check to see if colleges where you toured have an online virtual tour of typical dorm rooms. When we toured the college DC now attends, one dorm room was on the tour, but we were able to see others, in other dorms, thanks to virtual 360-degree videos the college put online. It helped because we knew what to expect when DC was assigned to one of the dorms we hadn't seen. There was a virtual room tour for every dorm on campus, which I thought was great.

except that nothing can replicate the smell of a musty old dorm room on video...

I have not seen that for W&M

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Two schools as different from each other as you can possibly get:

UVA --OK, UVA boosters here, I'm not dissing UVA at all. Had a great tour there where it was just our family and the guide! That was for touring just one department (you have to hunt on the web site but such tours existed two years ago!). But UVA overall was too huge and the idea of vast freshman classes in huge auditoriums didn't appeal to DC at all. DC said it would obviously be better once you declared your major and were in smaller classes in later years but the idea of the first two years in huge classes just turned DC off. (Yes, DC is at a SLAC now!)

Sarah Lawrence College -- Yeah, the other end of the universe from UVA, right? Hit all the right notes on paper, plus the visit was on a special "prospective students day" with all the stops pulled out for special tours, events, panel discussions, meal, etc. They did an excellent job and were really welcoming. But the campus vibe was like a prep high school and not a college at all, and it felt insular. No diss on SLC either, as DC has a friend there who loves it. DC had expected to love it too. We were so glad we visited in person before DC made an effort to apply.

Your kid sounds like mine. Where did he or she end up applying to that they liked? Where did they enroll?

Applied to Oberlin, Bard, W&M, Vassar, Kenyon -- did ED 2 at Vassar, got in, withdrew the other applications so no idea if she would have gotten into those other colleges. Says he has zero regrets about not knowing that--she's where she belongs!

Congrats! Can you share stats (even if not exact)?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Have to say Georgetown was on the list and we love the area but almost stepping on a dead rat on the sidewalk led to some more google research and finding out about the widespread rat and cockroach problem. That was enough for my DS to take it off his list haha

Exact same response for us. Such a shame. When will Georgetown get its act together?
They are starting to build a bad reputation that could take a while to undo.

A reputation for dinginess is not the same as a reputation for everything else that is actually quite excellent. Yes, I'm a parent of junior there and they could not be happier. Believe it or not, smart kids don't care about a little dinginess. Honestly, it just emphasizes that Jesuit vibe. I guess you have to get it, to get it.

The problems there go WAY beyond dinginesd