Anyone touring top schools and finding then all to be dumpy and unimpressive?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I will never understand people who tour schools in the summer. You aren't getting to see them other than the buildings. It's a waste.

I don’t understand tours. Just go on campus and enter buildings after people. Ask people on the quad questions. The tour guide is just a student doing their job and giving you lies about the school.

This is not possible at Columbia, Dartmouth, Yale, Penn, Princeton and many more.

We did this exact thing at Penn, Columbia, and Dartmouth. Their security isn’t crazy, just walk behind someone.

Schools tell students and employees to watch for outsiders following them into dorms and other facilities. Many are thieves or otherwise up to no good.

No one has ever told my child this. When we came to campus, people would just open the door for you. Maybe in a crime ridden place this is an issue, however.

Yale, Harvard MIT, and Yale all tell students to watch for followers. Maybe schools in the boonies don't.

If you look relatively like a student going about their day, no one will bat an eye. I (19 years old) have been able to get around Yale very easily with this method. Schools with actual security, like Penn or Columbia, are a different story.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I will never understand people who tour schools in the summer. You aren't getting to see them other than the buildings. It's a waste.

I don’t understand tours. Just go on campus and enter buildings after people. Ask people on the quad questions. The tour guide is just a student doing their job and giving you lies about the school.

This is not possible at Columbia, Dartmouth, Yale, Penn, Princeton and many more.

We did this exact thing at Penn, Columbia, and Dartmouth. Their security isn’t crazy, just walk behind someone.

Schools tell students and employees to watch for outsiders following them into dorms and other facilities. Many are thieves or otherwise up to no good.

No one has ever told my child this. When we came to campus, people would just open the door for you. Maybe in a crime ridden place this is an issue, however.

Yale, Harvard MIT, and Yale all tell students to watch for followers. Maybe schools in the boonies don't.

For all intents and purposes, New Haven is the boonies and the ghetto. So, yes, they need the security.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a rising senior and have been doing the rounds of many top 25 schools (universities and colleges). We started with safety schools last year and then junior year grades came back so this summer we've been touring some top schools. My kid is trying to figure out an ED.
We have a rising junior as well so we have a couple of kids with us.

The more of these schools we tour, the less impressed I am. They're sort of all a bit falling apart, poorly maintained, with pretty odd students (tour guides, summer students and especially touring students alike--don't jump all over for for saying this--being brutally honest), little sense of community, same-old, same-old stuff about study-abroad, etc. Many have very large class sizes, etc.

I feel like we're (kid and parent alike) are supposed to love these schools and want to pay $90K for them and my kids can't find one they really like. I very, very, very much feel like we're being sold a product that we're supposed to want to buy because of prestige and name but when we see the product up close it doesn't look great and I feel like a sheep lining up to say "yes sir. let me put my kid through mental/emotional twister for a 5% chance of being admitted to your school and then I will gladly pay you $90K for the honor. Yes sir." It just feels... gross. Maybe not gross but yucky. My kids are like, "well I didn't really like this or that here but I could probably make it work." They too feel the pressure to LIKE these places. The Almighty XYZ or ABC school! It's supposed to be their dream!

Please don't jump on me. I know it's summer and we're not seeing the universities at their best but ugh. They're all kind of disappointing. I can't be the only one who feels this way? (I'm not going to name university/college names because then this post will turn into a giant thread about whatever school(s) I name.

Hey Debbie Downer,

So nice that you can arrive for a tour and judge everyone you see as "pretty odd" but beg others " don't jump all over me". You know what feels gross? People like you.

-Just being brutally honest.

[Anonymous]

I find it strange that OP tours in the summer…but comments on how “odd” the summer students may be.

First…many of these schools host Summer classes for HS kids…in fact there are more of those kids than actual students. We toured Yale one summer and happened to be there when these kids were checking in…not sure if we had toured the next day we would know who these “students” were.

How could one remotely understand the student body through a cursory glance of who seems to be taking classes there that Summer.

[Anonymous]

We toured in summer and had no problems. Bricks and mortar don’t change. The best info came from the AO session not the student led tour. We liked all the schools we toured except Harvard. I think the more you tour, the better you get at it. And yes, the guides say similar things. We turned “freshmen get to do research which is unheard of” into a drinking game. But, if the tours don’t help you, stop wasting time and $ and just do virtual sessions.

[Anonymous]

Of course they say the same things, colleges are all more alike than dissimilar. Then, you are getting one student from a huge campus who may or may not resonate on their first tour or hundredth. We get more insight from observing what isn't part of the tour...look happy, walking in groups, life in quads, diverse groups sitting together in dining halls, how does the size feel, location feel, etc.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:We toured almost every T15(all but stanford and Caltech) and found them all great, and they all emphasized small classes. All my kids attend a different one of these schools and find them intellectually stimulating with less than 1/4 of their classes over 40, including stem. We never toured any school outside of T25 that was not W&M or VT or W&L, so we did not see the big schools with the pretty pools and fancy dorms we have seen online. We were looking for academics and found the only ugly/dumpy one to be MIT, yet loved the intellectual vibe of our quirky tour guide. similar-vibe tour guides were WM Hopkins and Brown, but did not select the final schools based on love of tour. People do not pick T15s for beauty, they pick them for academics: faculty, peers, smallish classes. To each his own.

Students definitely expect glamor from T15 campuses. Most also have massive classes, all it takes is talking to someone who isn’t a tour guide

My kids are at different ivy/T15 private. They each have friends at others. There are no “massive” classes. The biggest is around 200, none of mine have had more than one 200 person class, even for premed. They have all had the majority of classes less than 30, some less than 10 people. William&Mary is the same that is why it is the “public ivy”.

200 is a massive class for $90k. 30 is a massive class for $90k.

Where do you expect your kid to go and not have 30-200? Or is 30-200 “worth it” when you have a discounted price? And how do you know who is paying $90! Lots of us get need based aid and are not paying anything close to that. One of the best professors I ever had taught 300 person classes : the lectures were so well regarded students who were not registered would audit just to be there. Class size hs little to do with quality.

Class size has a lot to do with quality, are you joking? Would you spend $40k on a private high school with 200 person lecture halls? And before I get accused of “handholding,” no it’s about actually getting an education that you can’t flub and hide behind 200 people. That professor you’re talking about is a showman, not a lecturer

HS isn’t college where 13 year olds need more time and attention than 18+. That said…I doubt anyone would leave Sidwell if they announced tomorrow they plan to double or triple the size of the HS

I would absolutely prefer a lecture from a Nobel prize winning professor with 200 kids vs a random professor with a PhD.

Why are all these schools so highly rated if class size is such a huge criteria?

Sounds like you want a SLAC…so there is a small school for your kid out there (BTW…I assume OP may have visited some top SLACs and they also find them dumpy).

The great thing about higher Ed is that if you go to Harvard or you go to some noname state school, you likely won’t be taking classes from a Nobel any time soon. You’re more likely if you go to Berkeley, but even then, will they be that great of a teacher?

Most people on this thread went to universities. Did you really do research with some industry-defining person or was it a random who happened to have a PhD and had good research output?

I do think a lot of mental health issues and competitiveness spur from big classrooms with cold professors and damaging curves. Now your peers become your competition and your prof doesn’t teach that well, so you have to grind yourself to a pebble trying to beat everyone else.

I literally did take a grad level quantum mechanics class from a Nobel prize winner. He was a massive jerk and wasn't a particularly great teacher. The best teacher I ever had was a TA who later washed out of his PhD program. He seemed to understand exactly where and why students were getting confused and was amazing at addressing it.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:We toured almost every T15(all but stanford and Caltech) and found them all great, and they all emphasized small classes. All my kids attend a different one of these schools and find them intellectually stimulating with less than 1/4 of their classes over 40, including stem. We never toured any school outside of T25 that was not W&M or VT or W&L, so we did not see the big schools with the pretty pools and fancy dorms we have seen online. We were looking for academics and found the only ugly/dumpy one to be MIT, yet loved the intellectual vibe of our quirky tour guide. similar-vibe tour guides were WM Hopkins and Brown, but did not select the final schools based on love of tour. People do not pick T15s for beauty, they pick them for academics: faculty, peers, smallish classes. To each his own.

Students definitely expect glamor from T15 campuses. Most also have massive classes, all it takes is talking to someone who isn’t a tour guide

My kids are at different ivy/T15 private. They each have friends at others. There are no “massive” classes. The biggest is around 200, none of mine have had more than one 200 person class, even for premed. They have all had the majority of classes less than 30, some less than 10 people. William&Mary is the same that is why it is the “public ivy”.

200 is a massive class for $90k. 30 is a massive class for $90k.

I absolutely would leave Sidwell if they announced they were going to double the class size (much less triple it). I pay for the small class size. Lots of research has said ideal learning environment is less than 16 students.

Where do you expect your kid to go and not have 30-200? Or is 30-200 “worth it” when you have a discounted price? And how do you know who is paying $90! Lots of us get need based aid and are not paying anything close to that. One of the best professors I ever had taught 300 person classes : the lectures were so well regarded students who were not registered would audit just to be there. Class size hs little to do with quality.

Class size has a lot to do with quality, are you joking? Would you spend $40k on a private high school with 200 person lecture halls? And before I get accused of “handholding,” no it’s about actually getting an education that you can’t flub and hide behind 200 people. That professor you’re talking about is a showman, not a lecturer

HS isn’t college where 13 year olds need more time and attention than 18+. That said…I doubt anyone would leave Sidwell if they announced tomorrow they plan to double or triple the size of the HS

I would absolutely prefer a lecture from a Nobel prize winning professor with 200 kids vs a random professor with a PhD.

Why are all these schools so highly rated if class size is such a huge criteria?

Sounds like you want a SLAC…so there is a small school for your kid out there (BTW…I assume OP may have visited some top SLACs and they also find them dumpy).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We toured almost every T15(all but stanford and Caltech) and found them all great, and they all emphasized small classes. All my kids attend a different one of these schools and find them intellectually stimulating with less than 1/4 of their classes over 40, including stem. We never toured any school outside of T25 that was not W&M or VT or W&L, so we did not see the big schools with the pretty pools and fancy dorms we have seen online. We were looking for academics and found the only ugly/dumpy one to be MIT, yet loved the intellectual vibe of our quirky tour guide. similar-vibe tour guides were WM Hopkins and Brown, but did not select the final schools based on love of tour. People do not pick T15s for beauty, they pick them for academics: faculty, peers, smallish classes. To each his own.

Students definitely expect glamor from T15 campuses. Most also have massive classes, all it takes is talking to someone who isn’t a tour guide

My kids are at different ivy/T15 private. They each have friends at others. There are no “massive” classes. The biggest is around 200, none of mine have had more than one 200 person class, even for premed. They have all had the majority of classes less than 30, some less than 10 people. William&Mary is the same that is why it is the “public ivy”.

200 is a massive class for $90k. 30 is a massive class for $90k.

I'd absolutely would leave Sidwell if they announced they'd double (or triple) the class. I pay primarily for the small class size. Research shows the ideal learning environment is 16 or less students.

I absolutely would leave Sidwell if they announced they were going to double the class size (much less triple it). I pay for the small class size. Lots of research has said ideal learning environment is less than 16 students.

Where do you expect your kid to go and not have 30-200? Or is 30-200 “worth it” when you have a discounted price? And how do you know who is paying $90! Lots of us get need based aid and are not paying anything close to that. One of the best professors I ever had taught 300 person classes : the lectures were so well regarded students who were not registered would audit just to be there. Class size hs little to do with quality.

Class size has a lot to do with quality, are you joking? Would you spend $40k on a private high school with 200 person lecture halls? And before I get accused of “handholding,” no it’s about actually getting an education that you can’t flub and hide behind 200 people. That professor you’re talking about is a showman, not a lecturer

HS isn’t college where 13 year olds need more time and attention than 18+. That said…I doubt anyone would leave Sidwell if they announced tomorrow they plan to double or triple the size of the HS

I would absolutely prefer a lecture from a Nobel prize winning professor with 200 kids vs a random professor with a PhD.

Why are all these schools so highly rated if class size is such a huge criteria?

Sounds like you want a SLAC…so there is a small school for your kid out there (BTW…I assume OP may have visited some top SLACs and they also find them dumpy).

[Anonymous]

I'd absolutely leave Sidwelll (or any private HS) if they doubled or tripled the size.

I pay primarily for the small class size. Size matters. Research is pretty clear that the ideal learning environment is less than 16 students per class.

[Anonymous]

OP is clearly a private school parent who is used to her kid having the best of everything with a solid dose of elite conformity. We (public school) toured Princeton, Rice, Yale and thought they were plenty nice enough. Did not walk away with the impression they were “dumpy” or that our guides were “weird.” You seem like you need a school that is more focused on campus beauty and student amenities than academic rigor? There are plenty of places like that.

[Anonymous]

OP— did you not go to college yourself? Do you have no memory of what it was like? Posts like yours are so strange.

[Anonymous]

I get the feeling that OP and her kid are dumpy and unimpressive, and are hoping that a glamorous university will somehow transform them. Unfortunately OP, that will not happen. It’s why you are still dumpy and unimpressive and posting the way you are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'd absolutely leave Sidwelll (or any private HS) if they doubled or tripled the size.

I pay primarily for the small class size. Size matters. Research is pretty clear that the ideal learning environment is less than 16 students per class.

Fine…skip all nationally ranked colleges and just pick a SLAC. Have fun because I guess your kid needs the same handholding as 13 year old.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I get the feeling that OP and her kid are dumpy and unimpressive, and are hoping that a glamorous university will somehow transform them. Unfortunately OP, that will not happen. It’s why you are still dumpy and unimpressive and posting the way you are.

If your take is true, you and OP have a lot in common.