The Swamp

By all means keep all the commentary coming, but we've settled on an itinerary for the trip in a couple of weeks.

Thursday heading out and doing a session at Washington and Lee (in addition to swamp love, my wife's cousin is in law school there and so it was always gonna be on the list to stop by), hit James Madison on Friday morning, cruise into DC for unofficial browsing at George Washington (which is almost 100% NOT an option...125% more than WLU and JHU) on friday afternoon/early evening then hit Hopkins on Saturday before coming home.

Thanks, guys. James Madison got added stritcly because of swamp help. She looked it up and said she'd be willing to check it out. Didn't hurt that it's pretty much on the way.

The aforementioned niece loved JMU, too.

JMU is a lot of fun, from what I've gathered from grads and kids I know that have gone there. Also a nice little ski resort right there called Massanutten, if she's into that sort of thing.

Nonlinear FC wrote:JMU is a lot of fun, from what I've gathered from grads and kids I know that have gone there. Also a nice little ski resort right there called Massanutten, if she's into that sort of thing.

She isn't, but probably would be if the opportunity arose.

[slaps hand away from keyboard]

A_B wrote:By all means keep all the commentary coming, but we've settled on an itinerary for the trip in a couple of weeks.

Thursday heading out and doing a session at Washington and Lee (in addition to swamp love, my wife's cousin is in law school there and so it was always gonna be on the list to stop by), hit James Madison on Friday morning, cruise into DC for unofficial browsing at George Washington (which is almost 100% NOT an option...125% more than WLU and JHU) on friday afternoon/early evening then hit Hopkins on Saturday before coming home.

Thanks, guys. James Madison got added stritcly because of swamp help. She looked it up and said she'd be willing to check it out. Didn't hurt that it's pretty much on the way.

AB --let me know if you need the W&L sales job before you roll. Will give you some good tips (Salernos for lunch), a few prof names if she wants to meet some of the professors in a given department (benefits of small school where professors rarely leave and the fact that I chaired an alumni advisory board for the school), things you should look out for, and if she is talking to an admissions officer what they are looking for students to know about if they are considering applying (I do alumni admission interviews).

Also not to bad mouth JMU but if you are picking between JMU and UVA go to UVA. C-ville is a bigger town than Harrisonburg and UVA has a better academic reputation. UVA will be similarly preppy as W&L (just a larger scale), so depending on if that is a turnoff, then JMU maybe worth a look. Both are an hour from Lexington, VA and drive from C-ville to DC is similar to JMU (maybe another 35 minutes).

Oh and you can walk between George Washington and Georgetown U(or just grab Capital Bike Share bikes for a 5 minute ride or the Circulator bus)

And if you need anything, I work 3 blocks from GW.

Nonlinear FC wrote:JMU is a lot of fun, from what I've gathered from grads and kids I know that have gone there. Also a nice little ski resort right there called Massanutten, if she's into that sort of thing.

My sister went to James Madison. She was also a ski instructor at Massanutten for a few years and it's the first place I ever skied. Pretty crappy little mountain though (although, to be fair, I haven't been there in nearly 30 years).

Shirley wrote:Pretty crappy little mountain though (although, to be fair, I haven't been there in nearly 30 years).

How's their geology program?

wlu_lax6 wrote:

A_B wrote:By all means keep all the commentary coming, but we've settled on an itinerary for the trip in a couple of weeks.

Thursday heading out and doing a session at Washington and Lee (in addition to swamp love, my wife's cousin is in law school there and so it was always gonna be on the list to stop by), hit James Madison on Friday morning, cruise into DC for unofficial browsing at George Washington (which is almost 100% NOT an option...125% more than WLU and JHU) on friday afternoon/early evening then hit Hopkins on Saturday before coming home.

Thanks, guys. James Madison got added stritcly because of swamp help. She looked it up and said she'd be willing to check it out. Didn't hurt that it's pretty much on the way.

AB --let me know if you need the W&L sales job before you roll. Will give you some good tips (Salernos for lunch), a few prof names if she wants to meet some of the professors in a given department (benefits of small school where professors rarely leave and the fact that I chaired an alumni advisory board for the school), things you should look out for, and if she is talking to an admissions officer what they are looking for students to know about if they are considering applying (I do alumni admission interviews).

Also not to bad mouth JMU but if you are picking between JMU and UVA go to UVA. C-ville is a bigger town than Harrisonburg and UVA has a better academic reputation. UVA will be similarly preppy as W&L (just a larger scale), so depending on if that is a turnoff, then JMU maybe worth a look. Both are an hour from Lexington, VA and drive from C-ville to DC is similar to JMU (maybe another 35 minutes).

For whatever reason she hasn't had much interest in UVA. But who knows. Things may change and this trip is about seeing some different schools in a compressed time frame. She's never seen anything other than UK/Transylvania so needs some perspective to figure out what she likes/doesn't like in a campus/city.

Because she's just a junior, they don't do the interview things. All of the official tours we are doing are info sessions and campus tours. Which is what she needs right now anyway. But good to have these tips in the back pocket! Thanks!

Smart kid. Because UVA grads are cultists.

And, just confirmed, we are taking the daughter down to look at UNC-W this coming weekend. I have Monday and Tuesday off, so we'll spread out and do a little Fall beach action... unless the weather sucks, and we'll just come come home after the visit.

tennbengal wrote:Smart kid. Because UVA grads are cultists.

For the record, I made this joke before I got salty with Dave in the election thread.

tennbengal wrote:

tennbengal wrote:Smart kid. Because UVA grads are cultists.

For the record, I made this joke before I got salty with Dave in the election thread.

Ha!

rass wrote:

tennbengal wrote:

tennbengal wrote:Smart kid. Because UVA grads are cultists.

For the record, I made this joke before I got salty with Dave in the election thread.

Ha!

What about wannabe-UVA grads who never actually went to school there? I guess graduating from boarding school and getting an MBA from Duke is probably close enough, to be honest. I really should own a sailboat and have a sweater tied around my shoulders.

Shirley wrote:

rass wrote:

tennbengal wrote:

tennbengal wrote:Smart kid. Because UVA grads are cultists.

For the record, I made this joke before I got salty with Dave in the election thread.

Ha!

What about wannabe-UVA grads who never actually went to school there? I guess graduating from boarding school and getting an MBA from Duke is probably close enough, to be honest. I really should own a sailboat and have a sweater tied around my shoulders.

That's why they refer to Wash U as UVA-St.Louis.

ONe down! Washington and Lee is realy cool. Totally somewhere I would have loved with hindsight being what it is. Looks like the campus is just about protoypical "college" experience. Things are pretty close together, pretty active greek life, athletics on campus. I liked it. Daugher seemed to as well. This is the first we've done so she is still developing her tastes, but she liked that it looks classic from outside but has been updated and small class sizes.

Didn't make it to Salerno's (we took a bit longer than we would have to get her because I let her drive on INterstate for first time, so that cost us 20 minutes or so. Did grab a sammie at a bakery right next to campus and it was solid. Good pastrami!

Three down. JMU was a pretty solid no right from the start. Did not have the feel she was looking for, plus we were in an information session with about 300+ people instead of the 12 (counting parents) at WLU. Not that that is the be all end all, but it just put her on a sour footing. It was already the weakest academically and I think she just went to humor me. Anyway we bailed on the full tour and drove on in to DC (to a campus right next to the National mall....on Veteran's day) to walk around George Washington.


She loved it. Which sucks because it's probably out of our price range, but I didn't want to kill dreams so I let her look around. It's a really neat urban campus, I thought. Nice mix of new and classic looking buildings. We walked through a couple of Buildings and the library. The floor of the library we looked at probably had as many books as the entire Public library collection in Lexington. And we were only 400-600 in the catalog. Pretty crazy. Felt like I was in Ghostbusters.

The drive from DC to Baltimore was shockingly easy. Right at an hour, nearly no slow traffic outside of a merge or two. Getting out of DC was stunningly easy.

A ton of folks aren't working today in DC. Also, outside of rush hour, 95N btwn those two cities isn't that bad (barring construction or accidents. which.. that's everywhere.)

Curious to hear feedback about JHU.

=-=-=-==

We visited UNC-Wilmington on Monday and it was a LOT nicer than I anticipated. Very nice campus. But I just don't think it's a good fit for The Girl, who I think is gravitating towards a college experience in a big city. Really starts to limit the choices.

You could always do what my mom did on my visit to Duke. Exclaim loudly that the place looks like a psych ward and refuse to complete the tour. I am pretty sure that had 99% to do with the $25k price tag.

Well I loved Hopkins. Really like the way the Homewood campus is set up. Aside from three tour guides not showing up and one guy having to do an 80 person tour it was a great tour. My daughter stayed up front am listening but I was on fringes. Taking pictures but still listening. Guide was good just wish we had less people.

The info session at Hopkins was far and away the best of the three we had(GW was just informal self tour) and really taught me a lot. It was an admissions counselor and a student in tandem. The counselor would say what hey try to do then the student told her how it worked out for her. Very useful.

My daughter ranked them GW, Hopkins, medium gap wlu, big gap James Madison. I'd flip the first two and Washington and Lee would be closer for me, but I have the experience of a large state school already so that really small campus really interested me.

Thanks for all your help so far guys. I'm sure I'll be back soo with more questions.

My nephew visited 'Hopkins this weekend and loved it (and due to a long ago arrangement/benefit where my SIL used to be employed could go for free if he gets in). Not sure if he can get in or not, but I figure if he's close he should be able use the offer of third party payment to his advantage.

My wife had a chance at the same offer oh so many years ago but made the mistake of applying premed and didn't have the necessary grades to get in. She was told after the fact (off the record, her mom called admissions to complain) that if she had applied undecided she would have had a much better chance of getting in.

When was he there? We may have seen him.

Anyone know anything about Arcadia?

A bit. Arcadia University is a private university located in Glenside, Pennsylvania, United States, on the outskirts of Philadelphia. A master's university by Carnegie Classification, the university has a co-educational student population of approximately 4,000 (undergraduate and graduate). The University was ranked 42nd in the Regional Universities North category by U.S. News & World Report in 2017. The 76-acre (310,000 m2) campus features Grey Towers Castle, a National Historic Landmark. Hope that helps.

Off the top of your head even, mr d.! nice.

FUCK ALL YALL.

Oh fuck, that's the old "Beaver College". I drank there once and it was completely uneventful.

If "proximity to Philadelphia" is weighing into this decision as a pro, I'd cross that pro out. Its close on a map but its in no way close, if that makes sense.

Is this whole "going to a smaller, private college" just seem to be a thing for Swampkids or is that a larger trend or neither? I always wanted to go to a larger, public school and given sheer numbers of enrollment at those I don't know if that's a kind of default position for most kids, a result of not having better options or not caring or what.

I'm probably reading way too much into it.

brian wrote:Is this whole "going to a smaller, private college" just seem to be a thing for Swampkids or is that a larger trend or neither? I always wanted to go to a larger, public school and given sheer numbers of enrollment at those I don't know if that's a kind of default position for most kids, a result of not having better options or not caring or what.

I'm probably reading way too much into it.

Well, I think for my daughter it's our current proximity to the large, flagship style school that turns her off. She's in a summer program starting Sunday, and shes been in contact with a lot of the people who are going to be in the program and who don't live in or around LExington, and a great deal of them say UK is their top choice.

My sister went through a few grad classes at Arcadia. It probably doesn't relate well to the undergrad experience and she didn't enroll in a full program.

Most of the large flagships have an honors college. It could be an option if she wants many of the options at the big schools, but the personal support provided by the smaller/private schools.

Considering my HS experience was near Columbus, I never considered a large state school, so turned off by the size of tOSU and the cult around it etc. My oldest never wanted a large school experience either. I am guessing my youngest won't either, but in their cases, it's not because they have a bad taste in their mouth from state schools (unless Towson did the trick...).

A_B wrote:Anyone know anything about Arcadia?

My college lacrosse coach was the head coach there for 1 season in 2015 before going back to Upenn

brian wrote:Is this whole "going to a smaller, private college" just seem to be a thing for Swampkids or is that a larger trend or neither? I always wanted to go to a larger, public school and given sheer numbers of enrollment at those I don't know if that's a kind of default position for most kids, a result of not having better options or not caring or what.

I'm probably reading way too much into it.

We're early in the process and the type/location/major is faaaar from settled for my kid. She is an academic star, so she has lots of options, but really isn't sure what or where. It's gonna get stressful.

My daughter has accepted an offer from Ryerson, one of Toronto's four universities. !0 minute walk to the subway, 9 stations and there she is.

The only relevant fun fact about the school is that their hockey teams play in Maple LEaf Gardens. Or the very top part of the Gardens, as the lower 2/3rds of the place is now a massive grocery store.

Ned?

A_B wrote:Ned?

Bing!

Pruitt wrote:My daughter has accepted an offer from Ryerson

DOWNTOWN YYZ.

I'm taking a web accessibility class from Ryerson currently.

Congrats to her!

A_B wrote:Ned?

FUCK! Again!