I have visited Notre Dame a number if times. Two things are most memorable:

I visited in the summer, & everywhere I looked I could see workmen touching up the paint, trimming bushes, washing windows, and doing every other conceivable thing to make the place look perfect. That place doesn’t look like it does by accident.

I visited early on a Sunday morning the day after a home football game, & on the grass outside a dorm slept a male student. Apparently he didn’t make it all the way back to his room after celebrating the night before. So close and yet so far.

surprised to like Claremont McKenna. Wasn't a fit for my kids, but it's got a great vibe.

surprised to dislike Georgetown as much as we all did. It literally came off the list.

surprised how I felt about Bing. It's 100% charmless but does a lot for the price tag. I felt great about my tax dollars going there. It's probably what a state school should be like. I think they could spend a little more on design, but okay.

surprised by how "just okay" northwestern felt. after the lake, the campus was a little random. and every kid was wearing sweat pants and slides.

surprised by how much I liked Bowdoin and that whole area. If I had a kid who wanted environmental science, this would be a great place. also, having a local nice hotel is an underrated plus.

surprised in general how much my nyc kids want a 4-yr campus experience. when people here says, "that felt like a boarding school", my kids liked that. they'd prefer medium over small and city access somewhere over none, but they cared about the dining hall. they wanted residential colleges, etc. I wonder if some if it is about Covid ie making the most of everything. (I got my own apartment my sophomore year - I was all about adulting!)

Anonymous wrote:Harvard felt like a tourist attraction.

+1

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was surprised how much I like Fordham’s Bronx campus. They were crystal clear on what made them unique and the campus was absolutely lovely. It was so quiet on campus I couldn’t believe we were in such an urban area.

What I didn’t like was how it was like a fortress from all the bad neighborhoods surrounding it. Each entrance to the campus was carefully guarded and IDs checked.

Yeah, what’s up with that? I mean why WOULDN’T you want random criminals & homeless people wandering around your campus??

Shocked that DC didn't like Duke and took it off the list after the tour.

Surprised that DC loved UMD after the tour.

My daughter also felt like Harvard was a tourist attraction. And we did the full tour, not just wandering around.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UCLA and USC tours on the same day.

Expected to prefer USC but UCLA was more impressive in every way. Blew past expectations

Did you go inside any buildings? That’s where UCLA fell apart for us, beautiful on the outside, government quality on the inside.

Consistent with being a public university.

Then why is Harvard such a dump?

Lmao Harvard isn’t a dump. It’s clear you haven’t actually been inside Harvard

Anonymous wrote:Harvard felt like a tourist attraction.

Tourists don’t go into the campus. Maybe some of the Asian teen groups coming all the way from China but it’s relatively quiet in there.

Anonymous wrote:I was surprised how much I like Fordham’s Bronx campus. They were crystal clear on what made them unique and the campus was absolutely lovely. It was so quiet on campus I couldn’t believe we were in such an urban area.

What I didn’t like was how it was like a fortress from all the bad neighborhoods surrounding it. Each entrance to the campus was carefully guarded and IDs checked.

Harvard felt like a tourist attraction.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UCLA and USC tours on the same day.

Expected to prefer USC but UCLA was more impressive in every way. Blew past expectations

Did you go inside any buildings? That’s where UCLA fell apart for us, beautiful on the outside, government quality on the inside.

Consistent with being a public university.

Then why is Harvard such a dump?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We love JMU’s campus. Not too big and not too small. My son wants to major in business so would spend most
Of his time of the “pretty” side of campus though!!

What's the pretty side? Bluestone quad and Lake or new buildings and arboretum?

I didn't think either side was pretty

Yeah, totally not pretty at all.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We love JMU’s campus. Not too big and not too small. My son wants to major in business so would spend most
Of his time of the “pretty” side of campus though!!

What's the pretty side? Bluestone quad and Lake or new buildings and arboretum?

DP. I think they mean the Bluestone area, which is lovely. But the arboretum is too!

Anonymous wrote:We didn't like JMU. We couldn't get a tour on the day we went so we ended up wandering around campus on a hot summer day on a self guided tour. For some reason, we couldn't find any academic buildings. The highway that cuts through campus was a big turnover.

The climbing wall and the little robots that deliver food were cool though.

You just showed up and expected to get a tour instead of reserving your space well ahead of time? And the academic buildings are all... right there, many around the quad. This seems like a troll post.

Anonymous wrote:One of the most surprising things to come out of this discussion is that Notre Dame seemed like a very Catholic college in the Midwest. Didn’t see that one coming.

Well, you know how clever and intuitive the DCUM crowd is...