Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Anonymous wrote:

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Many top schools keep older conditions for the allure of alum. When I was in college, a few of us got together and protested for renovations of our dorm at a very well known private in New England that had rats, mold, and ventilation issues and cramped conditions that would not be legal to build today.

The school told us no, because alum get angry at about returning to the school and seeing the experiences changed. One even contacted me to give their “grievances”

An freshman dorms don’t have AC.

My kid and I have been impressed with all the schools we’ve seen, some more than others, but each one has its strengths. We’re not looking at $90k schools.

First of all, nothing in the T25 is a safety school.

Second, you could spend a few minutes doing the virtual tour to decide if you want to invest time and money in the in-person one.

You ARE being sold a product. They know they don't have to work too hard to get the best. Maybe find some schools down a tier or two. Your kids should focus on schools that they know they can get into and not go chasing the impossible.

We only toured schools during the school year because the one we saw in the summer was so dead.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Everyone’s perceptions, preferences and prejudices are different.

You would need to identify the schools you are talking about.

What schools?

You know you’re paying for access to expert in dozens of fields for your kid, right? That’s expensive.

But if you value amenities so much, go to High Point and call it a day.

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.