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outwest
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Posted: Thu Jan 3rd, 2008 04:59 am |
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My D has a very refined list of 8 LACs she is applying to. But, it took a year and a half of visiting and reading and websurfing to get to them. She has specific reasons for each, but along the way numerous schools were dropped. Here are some of the ones she visited and dropped and her reasons (they do not reflect anything but that):
UC San Diego- too big
UC Merced- too new
UCLA - too big
UC Riverside- Riverside?
Cal Poly Pomona- too close to home and too big
University of Puget Sound- too much North Face clothing.
Whitman- students too perky/athletic
Willamette- too much Greek
Colorado College- everybody skiis and snowboards (she doesn't)
Evergreen State- beautiful country, but too wet
Claremont Colleges- loves them, too close to home
Mills College- her sister went there
I think about all the money we spent visiting and out of all that she ended up with only three schools - Occidental, Lewis and Clark and Grinnell that she was excited about. The other 5 schools (Smith, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, Dickinson, Oberlin) we have not visited, but will in the Spring if she gets in and wants to go to them.
The visiting far away doesn't even coun all those alumni interviews, special SoCal days with the college, etc.
I am exhausted. I hope it was all worth it.
Last edited on Thu Jan 3rd, 2008 04:59 am by outwest
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jocelynDAD
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Posted: Thu Jan 3rd, 2008 05:21 am |
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Outwest:
Of course it was worth it, she eliminated places where she was not comfortable.
Just imagine the list was of possible boyfriends that she met and dropped! 
It is better to know early on that you would not be happy then to find out (to your sorrow) that the place is wrong for her.
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limner
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Posted: Thu Jan 3rd, 2008 01:04 pm |
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outwest, your D learned things about what she wants even from schools she visited and dropped--maybe especially from those visits.
My son visited a lot of schools and ones that I thought he'd like were dropped for what seemed to me to be capricious reasons (a snooty tour guide, a boring presentation). But it may have been that his reaction was something he couldn't put into words. And I was the one who told him to listen to his gut on these visits.
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WestrnMom
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Posted: Thu Jan 3rd, 2008 10:50 pm |
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Mine dropped one school based on a poor tour by a silly tour guide who knew nothing about the academic programs but could list every party that year by date and theme. Later he said the school had a very non-academic, party atmosphere and didn't seem like a place for serious students. I found out when I began doing detailed research for him that they have one of the highest percentages of Greek members of all the schools we visited. Could there be a connection?
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HijinksAndSue
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Posted: Thu Jan 3rd, 2008 11:31 pm |
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We only visited two schools (I know, I know, bad) ... she knew she had a prohibitive favorite after the second visit, and the rest of her list shifted several times. By the time she'd finalized the remaining three it was already Thanksgiving. At this point, we'll visit one of them next week when we're in LA, and hold off on the other two until after we find out if she got into her first choice (Jan. 31).
That said, the first school we visited was CalArts and she was just underwhelmed. I think the key turnoff for her was looking at the bulletin boards in the music department and seeing that ALL of the flyers, auditions, newsletters, etc. were strictly either opera, world music, classical or straight-ahead jazz.
It just seemed like there was nothing that was up her alley ... to look at three bulletin boards worth of musical announcements and not see a single event she'd want to attend, audition for or take pretty much summed up the lack of a match for her there. So coupled with the fact that she/we thought the school looked like a dumpy suburban apartment complex, it was definitely not a good match.
It wasn't just about the lack of a gorgeous campus however. She fell madly in love with Berklee from the moment we got there, and there is NO campus there, just a collection of buildings in downtown Boston. And it seemed like every flyer, poster and item we saw on THEIR bulletin boards were ALL things that compelled her.
I guess if there's no "chemistry," it's not something you can force. Just like love ...
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Fireflyscout
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Posted: Thu Jan 3rd, 2008 11:39 pm |
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Interesting topic.
When my daughter was a sophomore, she was certain William & Mary was "it". After visiting, "it" wasn't. She probably would have loved it if this were 1708, rather than 2008.
Another college, which has a lot of things going for it, was dropped because, while she admired it, it just seemed boring. If she had visited when classes were in session, she might have had a different opinion.
Sewanee is a great college, but one you really need to see in person - both for beauty and isolation. Off the list because it is so very, very remote.
She only applied to one college she hadn't visited, and really wasn't too disappointed when she was waitlisted.
I'll be taking my son to visit colleges this summer, and it will be very interesting to see how his current favorite fares.
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CarolynLawrence
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Posted: Thu Jan 3rd, 2008 11:56 pm |
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Thank goodness kids DO drop schools from their lists, or we'd all be basket cases helping them send out hundreds of applications. 
Both of my kids dropped schools along the way. In some cases, their reaction was immediate and they refused to even get out of the car and take the tour when we visited. For my son, it was Vassar - he hated it at first sight, even though on paper it looked like it would be a great fit and he had a favorite teacher at CTY who was an alumni and had really talked it up as a place my son would love.
Both kids also dropped schools from their lists after taking the tour. My son dropped Wesleyan when he decided the tour guides were "boring nerds." He liked Sarah Lawrence immediately after his visit, but after visiting several other schools, it too fell off his list, mainly because he worried about how the 25-75 male-female ratio (this from a kid who loves female attention!)
A similar thing happened with Grinnell - he enjoyed the tour, liked the campus, liked the people he met there, but ultimately decided that it just wanted right for him because of its small town setting. Yet, the very next day he decided he loved Carleton, which isn't in a much bigger town and he also applied to Bard, which is even more isolated in some ways than Grinnell.
Other schools he seriously considered but dropped before we even had a chance to visit were U of Chicago, Swarthmore, Brown, and Rice -- all great schools and good fits for him in different ways on paper. There was no major reason he lost interest in them - he just decided they weren't what he was looking for.
My son visited Reed twice. He visited the first time in Feb. of his junior year, and as soon as he set foot on campus, he fell deeply in love. When we picked him up the next morning after his overnight and sitting in on classes, he had the same passionate excitement in his voice that he would always get when we would pick him up after CTY. My husband told me, "that's where he is going to go." My son never wavered in his Reed-love after that, but we insisted he visit Reed again this past September before he applied ED just to see if his reaction on the first visit hadn't been a fluke. The second visit, overnight, and sitting in on more classes, sealed the deal. While he actually applied to five other great colleges that he really liked and thought he could be happy at (Beloit, Bard, Skidmore, Macalester, and Carleton) none grabbed him in quite the same way as Reed when he visited. But, then, no place else really IS like Reed.
My daughter's "I'm not getting out of the car" school was Franklin & Marshall. She said she didn't like the way the campus was situated, which is ironic seeing as how Beloit's campus situation bears some strong resemblance.
She was all excited about Dickinson before we visited. The tour guide wore pearls and carried a designer handbag and that was a deal breaker for my kid, not just for Dickinson but for all northeastern schools in one fell swoop, no matter how many times I pointed out that the other kids we saw at Dickinson were not wearing pearls. She had a similar reaction to the University of San Francisco. We actually went in, sat through the admissions presentation, and then skipped out before the tour. The reason? One of the kids attending the presentation seemed like a "surfer dude" to her.
Like Mezzomom's daughter below, she LOVE Earlham when we first visited and talked about applying there ED all through the spring and summer. But, by fall, she'd changed her mind. Like Mezzomom's daughter below, my very liberal daughter decided that Earlham's PC'ness might get on her nerves, and she also decided Earlham's crafts-focused art program wasn't her cup of tea.
She flip-flopped about other schools as well. She loved the class she sat in on at Knox College, but didn't like it enough overall to add it to the list. She also liked Lewis & Clark when we visited, because it was the first school where she saw "people like me", but it didn't end up on her final list. Other schools that she considered at one time or another, but ultimately dropped included Hendrix, Wheaton, Lawrence, and Clark U -- all dropped off the list eventually, however, most for relatively minor reasons.
She did a complete flip flop on her drop dead safety school, Humboldt State. She applied grudgingly because I insisted she have some schools in California in the mix. She was admitted by mid-October, but wasn't at all thrilled about it. Then, two of her friends visited Humboldt, came home, told her about it in detail, and she became very enthusiastic. She now says that if she hadn't ended up in Beloit, Humboldt would probably have been her choice. Again, go figure. (The two friends, by the way, both ended up there and are very happy).
Ironically, my daughter didn't WANT to visit Beloit. I added it to the list to break up the drive between Knox and Lake Forest. When the tour guide started whistling while he walked, she started taking a closer look. By the end of the visit, she thought Beloit was a pretty cool place. She ended up applying and getting in EA. She sent in her deposit and put the decal on her car the very next day.
Really, sorting out the options is an important part of the process. This is a big decision, and the kids do need to narrow the list somehow, even if we parents sometimes think their choices don't make sense. I worry more about the kids who never show any real preferences than I do about the kids who drop perfectly good schools from their lists for reasons that might not seem to make much sense.
Last edited on Fri Jan 4th, 2008 12:16 am by CarolynLawrence
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Mezzomom
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Posted: Fri Jan 4th, 2008 12:02 am |
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My daughter never actually dropped a school after a visit, but her list did shift quite a bit. My very liberal, very politically-aware daughter thought Earlham would always be the #1 school on her list. After the visit, which included sitting in on classes, she made two key observations which pushed Earlham towards the bottom of her list: first, she felt the "PC-ness" of the students and faculty she met was a bit overdone. She never doubted it was genuine, but she wondered if it would stifle discussion or dissenting opinions; for a kid who loves a rousing debate, this was unsettling.
Secondly, she was disappointed in the music program. She knew going in that if she attended Earlham, she would NOT be a music major (in fact, she had a different major in mind for every school to which she applied), but she found herself underwhelmed by the commitment of the music students she met. It may be they weren't music majors (she sat in on a non-performance class...I think it was music history), but she came away feeling that she was already well ahead of the students in the class.
None of this is a slam on Earlham; my daughter and I are both very fond of the school for many reasons and recommend it regularly. But the visit did open her eyes a bit to the fact that music is a key part of her identity, and try as she might (and believe me, she did and sometimes still does), she couldn't deny that it's an important part of who she is.
As an aside, I still marvel at the mix of "idealism" and pragmatism that is my daughter. After all of her visits, she thought American was probably her #1...the appeal of DC was very, very strong. When she got the FA package from American and discovered we had been gapped, she intuitively knew that she had been the victim of non-preferential packaging. She wrote the "thanks, but no thanks" note to American on the spot, and never looked back. I asked her if she wanted me to re-crunch our numbers to see if there was any way we could swing it, and she replied, "Nope...it was only my #1 if we could afford it."
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hummingbird
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Posted: Fri Jan 4th, 2008 01:04 am |
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My son dropped American and George Washington University after visiting. Actually, he dropped GWU right on the spot, and American a few weeks later after mulling it over.
He felt that GWU was too urban for his liking. He would have considered it if their more-suburban satellite campus had more going on there.
H and I weren't too keen on American, and while S was initially excited about it, I think he sensed that we weren't, and his enthusiasm lessened over time.
We're going to Madison, Wisconsin to visit UW in a couple of weeks. He's already been accepted, so it's a different sort of visit than the others were. Wonder if it will stay on his list after our upcoming visit?!Last edited on Fri Jan 4th, 2008 01:05 am by hummingbird
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hayden
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Posted: Fri Jan 4th, 2008 02:13 am |
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Interesting thread!
Our S dropped Georgetown after visiting. He liked the school on paper and from reputation; but when he visited, he said the campus was ugly and gave him claustrophobia. He said the view everyone has of beautiful gothic buildings, only applied to one single building, and that the rest of the buildings were ugly brick, too close together, and walking was a pain as the campus is one hill after another.
He also was turned off by the info session, which focused exclusively on international relations, which he did not plan to take.
Ironically, post graduation, he now attends Georgetown, but defends his decision on the basis that he does not go to the main campus.
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CarolynLawrence
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Posted: Fri Jan 4th, 2008 03:40 am |
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| Hummingbird, when you visit UW, do make time to explore State Street. Both of my kids almost were swayed to apply to UW after spending time on State street. My daughter goes up to Madison at least once a month, and says she'd love to live there for a few years after graduation - it's a great little city.
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jocelynDAD
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Posted: Fri Jan 4th, 2008 04:56 am |
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D2 spend four weeks in the summer of 2005 at Grinnell, returning to NJ, we visited nine colleges on the drive home.
Coe College in Cedar Rapids was first, to give her a view of a school in a city setting.
That same day we visited Cornell College outside of Cedar Rapids in a very small town.
She really liked Cornell's campus. The next day we visited Knox College, the tour was great, but the town of Galesburg was depressing.
Next day we visited Earlham in the afternoon.
D2 took notes and while I drove, she would write her impressions of the colleges.
Early the next morning we visited Ohio Wesleyan in Delaware. The Tour guide was the worst one I had ever encounted. While approaching the dorms she discussed the Greek scene and talked about and I quote "the walk of shame" from the Frat houses to the dorms.
That afternoon we briefly visited Denison (where her older sister attended) and went to Kenyon, the next day we visited Wooster and Hiram colleges.
The different colleges, their locations (rural, in city, suburbs etc) the tours, the sights of the campus (since it was summer - few students were around) left their impressions.
Upon returning home she briefed her Mom and I on the colleges.
Grinnell - she loved the setting, the campus, but she wanted to study Japanese and the college only had a limited program - so that was out.
Coe was nice, but too many commuter students (from the Adcom interview) and too local a college.
Cornell's three and a half weeks schedule was interesting, but she felt that it would not be the best way to study Japanese, so that was out.
Knox was academically nice, but the town depressed her and the campus was not as well kept IHO as the others we visited.
Earlham had a great Japanese program and she liked the campus - so Earlham made her list.
Ohio Wesleyan ws a drop from the moment when I explained what the Tour Guide was talking about (Walk of Shame).
Kenyon was just about the best looking campus she had seen, it was very positive and made her list.
Wooster was nice, but just did not appeal to her, although she did like the Senior Paper/project requirement.
Hiram was dead while we were on the tour when the tour guide said had bad the food was at their cafeteria.
So 10 schools counting Grinnell and only two survived on her list.
She did realize that she preferred schools (Grinnell, Kenyon, Cornell) in quiet settings, whether rural or in a small town. She definitely did not want to go to school inside of a city.
Her final list included Earlham and Kenyon, St Olaf and Carleton, Lawrence and Beloit, Scripps, Smith, Mt Holyoke and Bryn Mawr.
I firmly believe that exposure during the summer of different settings and campus give the student the opportunity to gage and develop their opinions about themselves as well as about the setting.
Other schools she visited that did not make the list were Swarthmore, Dickinson, F&M, Gettysburg, Goucher (her M's school), U of Delaware, Drew.
Since her Mom had been taking her to Princeton for Easter Egg Hunts, lunches, Christmas dinners for 16 years, Princeton did not even get a momentary consideration.
Last edited on Sat Jan 5th, 2008 01:53 am by jocelynDAD
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leftcoast
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Posted: Fri Jan 4th, 2008 06:09 am |
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LOL....
2 years ago:
Dropped after visit:
Goucher: "too many trees"
American: "too preppy"
George Washington: "looks like going to school in office buildings"
also... it turns out that Washington DC is "not a happening town".
Dropped before the planned visit & never restored:
Brandeis & Wellesley -- rained out. ("too wet?")
Added after unplanned/unintended visits:
Boston U. : "nice signs"
NYU: "my whole life and future has suddenly become clear" (after a night time arrival, apparently after a single evening's exposure to Greenwich Village night life)
As near as I can tell, my d's #1 criteria for college choice was proximity to subway stops. She did, of course, end up attending the college located nearest to exit of the #1 line at 116th & Broadway.
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scoop
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Posted: Fri Jan 4th, 2008 11:44 am |
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| I love this thread. Just yesterday, my daughter was telling me some of he reasons she liked/disliked certain schools. She has taken tours on two and attended a summer program at another. I don't fully agree with her reasons but reading this thread will remind me to keep the duct tape in place
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Chedva
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Posted: Fri Jan 4th, 2008 12:49 pm |
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Great on paper, dropped from list:
Skidmore: looked too much like summer camp; dance department "looked down on tap".
Goucher: nasty woman in dance department - told d that she "probably" couldn't major in dance since she'd never had modern before, and dept requires dancers to reach advanced in modern - this was without seeing d dance. Disappointed a bit to lose the great, huge mall within walking distance of campus!
Bucknell: "just the other side of nowhere" (kid needs an urban/suburban campus)
Not sure on paper, didn't like at visit:
Haverford: too small; too preppy; didn't like emphasis tour guide placed on "varsity cricket"
Connecticut College: nice but nothing stuck out to her; may have been because it was the last college of a 7 school tour
Visited "just because":
Brandeis: too close to home (refused to apply to any schools in Boston!)
Rhodes: family friend on faculty; too Southern, too hard to get to from Boston (no direct flights)
Looked like a lousy fit on paper, loved it anyway:
University of Rochester: didn't have most of what she was looking for; applied due to pressure from friends and counselors. Went to accepted students day, loved it, and still does! Only regret - lousy dance program.
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hummingbird
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Posted: Fri Jan 4th, 2008 03:44 pm |
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CarolynLawrence wrote:
Hummingbird, when you visit UW, do make time to explore State Street.
Yes, we definitely will. We arrive on a Saturday early afternoon and leave on Tuesday morning, so we have some time. Looking forward to seeing the campus and State St.
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mattmom
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Posted: Fri Jan 4th, 2008 04:56 pm |
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D did not apply to Wesleyan after visiting because her intital favorable impression of beautiful campus and relaxed, warm, down to earth tour guides was totally undercut by pompous admission professional who addressed info session and the Wes student who also addressed the session and seemd to my D to be overly artsy and pretentious,.
D did not apply to Willliam and Mary after visit because tour guide seemed glad to be a senior and close to graduating, rather than being sorry to be leaving great school. We both also found admissions person who addressed info session rather offputting--somewaht boastful about how hard W and M is to get into without backing it up with what else is good about it.
D did not apply to Middlebury after visit either--possily for reason as trivial as finding the gray stone buildings cold-looking and unappealing but I have never understood it--my older child also did not apply to Middlebury and also had no good reason.
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Alumother
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Posted: Fri Jan 4th, 2008 05:07 pm |
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outwest LOL. I chose my business school for the same reason. I had an apartment on Riverside and 104th and just couldn't see giving up NYC.
On our side:
D Dropped
Williams: "This is just like high school." Too small.
Yale: No hook so why bother, rain, hail, sun, snow, all in three hours
Tufts: Too much cement, felt kind of run down.
Boston University: No campus
Brown: Didn't like the no required classes aspect, felt she would want to take everything and that she needed more structure.
S Dropped
Amherst: "This is like the worst of high school" (because all the African-American kids were sitting at one table.
Columbia, NYU: "Just not filling it". That is not a spelling error BTW. Did like New York City, just didn't want to go to school there.
Duke: Didn't like the way Durham interacted with the campus, didn't like the tour guide or the way his friends seemed to harass him, hates Coach K.
As for places he resisted but wound up really liking, Rice. He thought Texas would be awful, wound up loving Houston and Rice both.
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CarolynLawrence
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Posted: Fri Jan 4th, 2008 07:32 pm |
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Chedva wrote: Haverford: too small; too preppy; didn't like emphasis tour guide placed on "varsity cricket"
This cracked me up. The summer before junior year, my son and I drove around the Haverford campus on the way to the airport from CTY. There were a bunch of guys in tennis whites playing cricket on the lawn. That instantly struck Haverford from any consideration, even though I tried to convince son that maybe these were just some locals using the campus for cricket during the summer.
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safisher
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Posted: Fri Jan 4th, 2008 08:26 pm |
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Great stories. With my daughter:
Dropped: Occidental - surrounding Eagle Rock neighborhood looked too much like downtown San Jose, where she attended high school, tour guide blase, and admissions officer acted like he wanted to hit the freeway and make an early getaway.
UC Santa Cruz - too close to home
UC Santa Barbara - over fifty people in our tour group (I kid you not) this was a day after touring the Claremont schools with half a dozen others. Didn't hear a word the guide said.
Whitman - good experience but too remote.
She ended up at Lafayette . . . , well I'm not sure why, but loves it and is having a great experience.
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