Previous Poster again. I forgot W&M.

Beautiful campus and smart witty students. We visited for their Fall Open House yesterday. Impressive facilities, too. Dorms were only okay though.

University of Mary Washington: Tour Guides were engaging. They gave us coupons to eat free in the dining hall. Beautiful campus, but ultimately not the right fit for my child.

Roanoke College: Tour Guides were lacking enthusiasm. They did not show dorms or classroom. Everything was either closed or being renovated. It was very difficult to get a feel for the school.

GMU: Admissions Presenter was okay; she was not a good speaker and seemed to just go through the motions without much enthusiasm. Good facilities, but also not the right fit

Virginia Tech: We attended the Open House. Amazing presentations by the admission presenter, professors and student ambassadors. They had a majors fairs which was super helpful and my child absolutely loved everything about the school. Definitely our #1 choice so far

JMU: We visited twice - campus tour and open house. Great campus and dining facilities and we were impressed by the departments leads during open house and the student ambassadors. Great alumni network as well. Right now our #2 choice

VCU: We visited twice - campus tour and Open House. Impressive facilities (especially new College of Engineering and Science). Pep Rally during the Open House was fun and the school cafeteria was the best (I'm sure they probably made extra yummy food for Open House). The Campus Tour Presenter was a bit odd and arrogant. I didn't like that they do not guarantee freshman housing and that there is little campus feel. Some of the areas also seem unsafe and sketchy. But, we felt that our child would get a good education at VCU. Right now #3 choice

CNU: Gorgeous campus. The student ambassadors were amazing, smart, well-spoken and very informed. The campus gave a warm and welcoming feeling and students looked happy. My child loved it, but it is currently tied with JMU for #2 and perhaps even VCU for #3 because it does lack some of the opportunities that larger universities have. On the plus side, they are opening an amazing new Engineering and Science Facility in January 2026.

Still looking to visit ODU and UVA this week. Due to affordability, we are only looking in-state and I would welcome any other tips and suggestions.

With #1 we toured broadly to see a variety of types of schools...

Disliked --
VCU because of the urban environment.
Randolph-Macon because he definitely didn't want a small school
Georgetown - not tour but attended a summer program, another one where he didn't like the urban setting.

Liked -
VT - size, school spirit, green space (ended up there)
JMU - similar to VT, acceptable back up but really didn't have as good a program for his major
U of Delaware - also felt similar to VT/JMU

#2 tagged along on a lot of DS's tours and attended a short summer program at a LAC. After that she was very focused on small schools.

Disliked
W&M - bigger than she wanted, was just something about the vibe that didn't feel right (she was not great at articulating likes/dislikes so we got a lot of the "vibe is good/bad")
CNU - campus felt overly pristine, Greek life felt really dominant (mainly because all the tour guides were in Greek life), felt like business/"leadership" were the priorities, not sciences since none of the tour guides had a science major and none of those facilities were included on the tour. (obviously, they do have plenty for the sciences but this is her impression from the visit)
Allegheny College - seemed very remote, run down campus, too far from home. And touring on a rainy day definitely didn't help.
St Mary's College of Maryland - I was surprised she didn't like this one, I loved it. Too isolated (no town to walk to) and again not the "vibe."

Liked
Washington College - one of her first visits, for an open house. Loved the environmental center. Cute town. It helped that the first visit was an open house so she could see what she was specifically interested in vs. the standard tour since those all start to sound the same.

Juniata College - Liked this more than I expected. Pretty remote and town IMO is meh but she liked the environmental science professors she met, their off-campus ES semester, feeling on campus, school traditions, lack of greek life, music director. Also benefitted from first visit being an open house.

Mount Holyoke - I think she was surprised how much she liked MH, but in the end she decided she didn't want all-women's. Liked all the school traditions, beautiful campus, lake/forest right on/next to campus.

Tour guides definitely matter! I've done 2 tours of Oberlin in the past year and whoa- having a great tour guide who your kid clicks with makes all the difference. Our first tour was a "wow, this is a perfect fit" and the second was "generic tour, nothing stood out" experience. DD also had an abysmal tour at Wesleyan, where the guide went on and on about how they were going to "get out in 3 years" and was completely unknowledgeable about basic info. Their student panel was great, however- if we had just done the tour, D26 wouldn't have even bothered applying. I agree w/above posters on BU, too- that's such an urban campus that a tour is definitely needed to decide if it's for your kid. After 20+ tours over the years, my favorite was Duke- probably because the tour guide was such an articulate, funny kid who obviously loved it there.

Anonymous wrote:We did a bunch of visits during family travels, so not all were ‘official’ with tour guides.

St Andrews- underwhelmed, couldn’t believe what all the fuss was about. Remote, small village. Lots of tiny rundown buildings and apts.

Edinburgh- large, vibrant campus, close proximity to town, though many, many tourists. This would have been my pick of the three Scottish campuses.

Glasgow- best “campus within a city” layout of all the tours, US included. Hogwarts vibes. Happen to be there on graduation day. Lots of happy students and families. Great high street with lots of shops. DC seriously considered it.

UW- visited on a sunny football game day and it really did check a lot of big campus boxes (not really what DC was looking for) and had a nice high street nearby. Lots of walking, it’s kind of spread out.

NYU and BU were both high on DC’s list of “city colleges” but after tours, particularly NYU, where we just walked along the streets and looked at the outside of buildings WITH a tour guide, they were very underwhelmed.

Drexel- quite impressed with the co-op program and campus. It was on the list.

USC- really nice small tour with the admissions director at Annenberg School, personal and interesting with tips for applying. Campus was bustling.

Loyola Marymount- beautiful campus, good location in LA, Palm trees and pacific views. Guessing it’s a backup for students who didn’t get into USC or find Pepperdine too [b]religious.

Vassar - beautiful campus, nice, interesting tour guides. Quintessential NE college campus. Great library. Happy students. Decent walkable small town. New hotel and restaurant across from campus.

Weird comment: Pepperdine is Church of Christ - Loyola is Catholic. Huge difference.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All the people who are saying that UVA tour/ guide was a snob: What exactly did they do on the tour that made you think they were snobby?

Or is that a common criticism of UVA that you then went in and thought while you were on the tour?

Feels like confirmation bias.

It is. Plus you need to know that the university cut ties with all of the student-run admissions tour guides in late August 2024 due to complaints, so if the tour took place before that, keep that on mind. The criticisms ran from inconsistency to no-shows to, more seriously, too much negative woke information being delivered during the tour. No one wants to hear that spiel. Bear in mind that UVA is public so is trying to run a program that competes with the privates on a shoestring - hence they tried student-run tours and that experiment failed.

As to the snob comments, I sure didn’t pick that up in our two tours. Having now had a kid there for four years I’m convinced the “snob” comments come from those unfamiliar with the university whose kids either couldn’t get in or, like one of my kids, wasn’t even a contender. When women feel rejected from a group women will often say “well they are snobby”. When I’ve heard women use this phrase re UVA, I’ve asked them (nicely) to explain - they can’t. Turns out many have never even been on grounds. So, yes, confirmation bias; it’s a protective default position against the chance that the kid might apply and not get in or has applied and didn’t get in.

It's interesting that with other schools discussed here, everyone can recognize that some people had good experiences and others had negative experiences and that's because different people are looking for different things. It's only UVA where people claim that there's something wrong with people who had a negative experience.

We also were turned off by the Princeton AO. At Yale the vibe was "students come here because they're interested in such a cool variety of things, and they love learning from each other, and from the professors here, who are, themselves, also interested in such a cool variety of things"; at Princeton the vibe was "students come here because they're interested in going to Princeton".

UCLA was good — upbeat and helpful info session; funny and personable tour guide; pretty campus. We were there during what must have been one of the last weeks of school, as we walked around campus in the evening and there were several end-of-year club / greek graduation parties, with students dressed up and wearing robes and taking group photos … it gave off a very fun, "college" vibe.

At UVA the student body felt like there were a lot of The Plastics from the movie Mean Girls. Very polished, but not friendly. OTOH, at W&M, students felt like Cady from the very beginning of the movie — bright-eyed, curious, eager to connect. That made a real impression.

Agree with assessments of Georgetown — one of our kids liked it, but we (parents) felt it was a bit run down / didn't live up to expectations.

The MIT tour was good; really appreciated the "certificate of piracy" or whatever it's called that they mentioned in the info session. Kids didn't end up applying there in the end, but came away from the tour really liking the school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just wanted to comment that with all these colleges’ marketing budgets, it is baffling that so many can’t get the tour and info session consistently right. Should be such an easy thing to fix.

I have been on several tours where you could not hear the tour guide some or part of the time. Unacceptable.

I have been on tours where the group never enters a university building (this is post-Covid) except the admissions office. Unacceptable.

And on and on…

Same goes for admitted student days. Both parents can’t come because you are all booked up (top SLAC) so the donut-hole family can’t decide together on a 90k investment? Unacceptable.

Stuffing parents into a crowded room where they can barely move and can’t find where the coffee is because they can’t see it (top 20 National university)? Unacceptable.

This little things matter…

All true but remember the privates can throw endless money at admissions and marketing (hence the person above thinking USC was too “Disneyland”) compared to publics like UVA with budgets

Barnard had an incredibly dumpy admissions waiting area with broken air conditioning (and big noisy fans set up), not enough seats, no coffee or water. By far the worst out of any school we visited, public or private.

Anonymous wrote:All the people who are saying that UVA tour/ guide was a snob: What exactly did they do on the tour that made you think they were snobby?

Or is that a common criticism of UVA that you then went in and thought while you were on the tour?

Feels like confirmation bias.

It is. Plus you need to know that the university cut ties with all of the student-run admissions tour guides in late August 2024 due to complaints, so if the tour took place before that, keep that on mind. The criticisms ran from inconsistency to no-shows to, more seriously, too much negative woke information being delivered during the tour. No one wants to hear that spiel. Bear in mind that UVA is public so is trying to run a program that competes with the privates on a shoestring - hence they tried student-run tours and that experiment failed.

As to the snob comments, I sure didn’t pick that up in our two tours. Having now had a kid there for four years I’m convinced the “snob” comments come from those unfamiliar with the university whose kids either couldn’t get in or, like one of my kids, wasn’t even a contender. When women feel rejected from a group women will often say “well they are snobby”. When I’ve heard women use this phrase re UVA, I’ve asked them (nicely) to explain - they can’t. Turns out many have never even been on grounds. So, yes, confirmation bias; it’s a protective default position against the chance that the kid might apply and not get in or has applied and didn’t get in.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

UGA- Exceeded expectations

It's a very good school with a great campus, and Athens is a very fun town. Their honors program is top-notch, too.

Not sure if true, but I have heard that UGA also has a football team.

Anonymous wrote:We still joke that our tour of Rice was like the Truman Show -- in a good way. Before the college counselor strongly recommended it for our son we hadn't even heard of Rice or ever visited Texas. But when we visited in April, it was warm and sunny and throughout our visit it was like there was someone cuing up really perfect vignettes for our son -- cue the friends playing frisbee and spike ball, cue the student walking an adorable puppy, cue groups of friends studying together outside. We had coffee with a professor that a friend had introduced us to and at least three different groups of students approached the professor to just say hi.

I'm sure that the things I described happen everywhere, it just felt so lovely and perfect for our son. We didn't encounter that same feeling on any other tour.

Rice went to the top of his list, he got in ED and loved his time there. So it really wasn't a "show" and the reality held up to that first glowing experience.

We had a very similar experience at Rice. My kid applied RD (without having visited) and got in. We genuinely thought she'd attend a different college, but when we went to see Rice in April (not for admitted students day, it turned out, but just for our own tour) the vibe was 100% what she had been looking for but hadn't been able to articulate. She's there now and loving it.

Did not like Wisconsin as much as expected. Everyone raves about Madison but it didn't seem all that great and we didn't like how urban the campus felt.

Loved Michigan - I thought Michigan would be more like Wisconsin and vice versa. Loved the campus and loved the town.

UVA - the campus (yes, I called it that) is nice but Charlottesville is way oversold.

UNC - really liked

And, I'm another person who was pleasantly surprised by UGA. But it is a huge campus and we must have walked 10 miles that day!

Anonymous wrote:I just wanted to comment that with all these colleges’ marketing budgets, it is baffling that so many can’t get the tour and info session consistently right. Should be such an easy thing to fix.

I have been on several tours where you could not hear the tour guide some or part of the time. Unacceptable.

I have been on tours where the group never enters a university building (this is post-Covid) except the admissions office. Unacceptable.

And on and on…

Same goes for admitted student days. Both parents can’t come because you are all booked up (top SLAC) so the donut-hole family can’t decide together on a 90k investment? Unacceptable.

Stuffing parents into a crowded room where they can barely move and can’t find where the coffee is because they can’t see it (top 20 National university)? Unacceptable.

This little things matter…

I feel the same way. It is like when I go to a hotel and it feels like the person who designed the bathroom has never used a bathroom before.

Tell me what makes you unique.
Train your tour guides.
Make it so we can hear tour guides.
Let us go in buildings.
Tell us how to eat a meal in a dining hall (extra points for a discount!)
Etc.

Anonymous wrote:Just dropping in to say - this is a great, and useful thread!

I’ll second (or third) that! Like how posters have been allowed to give (what is clearly) their “opinion” and that everyone seems to be keeping it in the Spirit that it was started.

It’s threads like these, that pulled me (an RVA mom) in even before mine were in HS. I have actually learned quite a bit over the years thanks to quite a few genuine posters.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With DC1:

Wanted to Like but Hated: UVA (awful tour, snobby students both on tour and ones we know from home) and Catholic U (it’s DC, way too urban)

Wanted to like and thought OK: JMU, Franciscan

Liked way more than anticipated: Longwood, WVU

With DC2:

No, thank you (wanted to like, just didn’t): Ole Miss and Kentucky

Mom (and School field trip tour) made me do it and still hated it: UVA (after three strikes….you’re out)

Knew it would be liked (and did): VT and Auburn

Way better than we all thought: Tennessee

Still to Come (so advice and experience appreciated!): Texas A&M, LSU, Shenandoah, and ODU (loved hearing positive vibes on the last three from upthread!!)

I’m the poster who liked Shenandoah and ODU. They are completely different schools, obviously. But I hope you enjoy your visits. I think it helped that we visited for a planned event day vs just going on the everyday tour.

Thanks! That’s our “plan”. DC2 really wants the Big SEC experience (can’t you tell from the list 😜 ) but these two in-state options probably appeal the most.

Not sure ODU lives up to the SEC, but we did eat lunch in the football stadium. They have beaten Tech there a couple times

Full disclosure - my child had already attended their dance intensive twice (it was a day program vs dorming), so already knew those facilities. They never took her on a full campus tour, so it was nice to see more than just that one building. My parents own a condo on the Bay, so we are somewhat familiar with the area. The surrounding part of Norfolk isn’t the best, but the campus itself is nice and fairly self contained. The Norfolk waterfront is a tourist area with restaurants and museums. And there is of course a lot to do in the tidewater area.

Shenandoah is a small school in a nice town. Not sure about sports, though. Again, I liked it more than I thought I would. It isn’t for everyone. But it does have a lot going for it and a ton of good programs. Especially good for pre- health, as it has masters and doctoral programs, too. It is only an hour from Dulles, so close but not to close. They are good with merit money and you also can use the VTAG money. I was sad my daughter decided not to apply in the end.

Thanks for that detail. (Hope others indulge the slight derail.)

We are familiar enough with that they made the List! DC’s thoughts were — if they don’t get in or got enough merit $ to make an SEC viable, then stay much closer to home and find a fit at a significantly smaller place so the “oh-so-close” comparisons wouldn’t be as prevalent.

And, love the ODU band. Saw they at a local comp recently and they definitely have the school spirit!