A Tale of Two Interviews

This, as the title suggests, is a tale of two interviews: one disastrous, one quite good.  It's a bit unfair of me to say disastrous; after doing the requisite pre-interview research, I knew for a fact that I was not going to Reed College.  Their Physics and Religion departments leave a bit to be desired.  But even setting that aside, the interview was pretty bad.  But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Preparing for the Interview!
A vital part of any college admissions interview is preparation.  At the very least, you need to know the goal of the interview.  So far I've only done admissions interviews, so they've all been evaluative; the people I've talked to are trying to figure out if I'm the right fit for their respective colleges.  Interviews come in one other flavor: informative.  These are more for the student to figure out if they're the right fit for a given school on their own.  These interviews, from what I can tell, are usually administered by alumni.
But there's so much more to prep.  Firstly, know thyself.  Seriously.  I went through my life story and reminded myself how awesome I am.  Ostensibly, this is to prepare you to answer questions like "what are your academic/extracurricular passions?" and "how do you see them extending through your college experience?" but this step is also a nice ego boost, which - if you're an anxious wreck like I am - is really nice to have.
Secondly, know thy school.  Mostly, go back through the books and read up on the numbers.  You don't want to be asking about class size or about how many books are in the library.  That shows you're not engaged in the school and, quite frankly, makes you look a little silly.  Prepare some decent questions about the school.  Mine are:

• What is your study abroad culture like?
• Did you attend [insert college/university here]?  If so, what did you like most/least about your experience?
• If not, from an administrative perspective, what do you like most/least?
• What was the most controversial issue on campus this year?
• If school is urban: What is your relationship to the city you are located in/near?

They show preparation and interest while being useful.  Personally, I like to know the answer to the first and last questions already so I can pay attention to how the interviewer answers the question.  For example: with regard to the urban question, I know I want a school where the campus life is focused on campus.  If the interviewer stresses the proximity of the city too much, it's a warning sign for me.  But I'm a little crazy, so there's that...

The Interview!  Reed College
Reed was my warm up interview.  The representative of the college: Crocket Marr (I got his name wrong on my last post).  I managed to avoid calling him by name for the entire interview, so I think that was a note of success.  All in all, it was kind of a weird interview.  Of the 45 minutes I got to spend with him, 20 were spent talking about neutral hydrogen transfer and radio astronomy (both very interesting topics but not particularly relevant to the focus of the interview), another 15 were spent reading his senior honors thesis on Plato and Egyptology, and 10 were spent talking about Reed College.  I know I did not come away from the experience any more informed, and I'm pretty sure he didn't either.  Note to self made: try not to mention anything too interesting that I've done until later in the interview.  I'll call it a mitigated disaster and move along.

The Other Interview!  Swarthmore College
This one went a lot better.  Of the hour, Ruby and I did not get heinously off topic.  This was a plus.  We had a lovely conversation about religion, astronomy, stage tech, grammar, historical context for literature, fencing, and sororities.  All in all, very useful.  Swarthmore stays very true to it's Quaker roots, which is one of the things I love about the campus.  I always leave wanting to create world peace.  30 minutes on the New Jersey Turnpike usually cures me of that desire, but it's the thought that counts.  In any event, Swarthmore is incredibly inclusive.  This manifests itself in a particularly interesting way in their attitude toward their club fencing team and toward sororities.  Swarthmore's Fencing team is ridiculously good.  But they're not varsity. They're a club team, and they plan on staying that way (as far as I can tell from the interview).  The team benefits from very serious fencers, but novices can pick up a blade for the first time and join the team if they are so inclined because it's a club team.  Becoming a proper varsity team would require a degree of choosiness with regard to skill level, and that's just not the Quaker way.  Similarly, in the 1930s, Swarthmore abolished it's one sorority because that particular organization had a policy against admitting Jewish students.  The administration realized that didn't jive with the college's values, and sororities haven't had a presence on campus since then.  However, they're revisiting the issue now because there's a certain degree of curiosity in the student body.  There are two fraternities on campus and about 6% of guys participate; and the girls realized that, if they were inclined to join a greek organization, they had no outlet.  Because of this discussion on campus, the administration has decided to allow one sorority on campus starting next spring.  Clearly, the interview was informative.  All of that was completely new information for me (check here for my previous impressions of Swarthmore).  So total success.

I have interviews with Washington and Lee and The University of Chicago scheduled for September, so look forward to those posts.  I'm leaving for various foreign countries tomorrow and I will be without internet; so look forward to a whole mess of blogging the day I get back.

Actual Final Visit

Remember how I said I had finished the college visit circuit? I lied.

Yesterday my dad and I drove into the City (which is to say New York City) for an info session and tour of Columbia University.  Now I know Columbia is a good school.  That's just a fact.  But it's also not for me which is kind of unfortunate since I know some really cool people who go to Columbia or who are starting there this year.  Que será, será I suppose.

I am relatively confident I have not met "the one" quite yet, which is to say that I have no idea if and where I might apply Early Decision.  Early Decision is kind of scary because it's legally binding.  My college counselor told me that, as the weeks progress here in September and the beginning of October, some schools are going to re-rank themselves as I figure out what I really want out of a school.  After my Columbia visit, I know there's one major thing that would make me simply say no to a school: academic rigidity.  I know that, at the very least, I want to study Religion and Astronomy.  I can't go to a school that's going to lock me out of certain classes.  The way Columbia's core curriculum works, Columbia prescribes about 6 classes that you will take at certain times.  I am not willing to sign up for that.  On a semester system in which an average student takes 4-6 classes, I am not willing to blindly give up one of my classes to the core.  Don't get me wrong, I like distribution requirements.  I also probably wouldn't function well at a school like Brown where there are no Distribution requirements whatsoever.  But I know I don't want to be told what classes to take when; that reminds me too much of my high school experience.
There is, however, one requirement at Columbia that I think is pretty cool: swimming.  Back in Alexander Hamilton's time (he's an alum of Kings College, which became Columbia), there was a minor concern floating around that the British might invade.  Completely unfounded, right?  Anyway, the college decided to add a swimming requirement to their core curriculum that would mimic the distance across the Hudson River to New Jersey.  If the British did in fact invade, Columbia students would have to be able to swim to safety.  More recently, the students of the Engineering college pointed out that they wouldn't have to swim because they would build a boat or a bridge or a catapult or something in real time so the engineering students don't actually have to pass the swimming requirement.  Personally, I think they should have to pass a time trial for catapult design to prove that they wouldn't need to swim, but that's neither here nor there.

Today I'm gearing up to take the next step in a college courtship: interviewing. I'll be heading into the City later on to meet with Crockett Marrow, the assistant dean of admissions at Reed College.  This is the one school I haven't actually visited in person, simply because of distance, so I have a lot of questions prepared for Crockett (I don't actually plan to call him by his first name; I just think it's hilarious that he's named Crockett).  We'll see how it goes...

Final First Visits

Today I ostensibly finished visiting the colleges and universities on my list that I'm seriously interested in.  The only two schools that remain are Reed (which I will very likely not be visiting because of the prohibitive distances between Harrison, New York and Portland, Oregon) and Columbia (which is literally 45 minutes away so I can really decide at the drop of a hat to go).

My dad and I started the day off at Skidmore in Saratoga Springs, NY.  It's waking up at 4:30 to drive upstate that reminds me that the state I live in is actually quite large.  Three hours on the dot later, I was in the middle of opening day at the Saratoga Race Track and about 15 minutes later I was at the admissions building.  Skidmore is an incredibly welcoming campus.  It says something about a school when someone tweets back at you to welcome you at 7:26 AM in the middle of summer.  Skidmore did that.  It was nice.  They also seem dedicated to bringing you resources at Skidmore.  Of course they participate in the Interlibrary Loan System (like every college), but they also make it doable to get a non-Skidmore study abroad program vetted and approved.  Our guide was working with the administration to get a U of Chicago program approved so that he could study history in Istanbul for the fall of his Junior year.  Generally speaking, they're a very encouraging and welcoming bunch.  Facilities seemed modern and clean (by contrast Colby's labs seemed a little dingy and Bowdoin reminded me of a horror movie insane asylum in its architecture) and rooms looked comfortable. Skidmore meets basically all of my criteria for a college/university.  Is it at the top of my list? Probably not.  I think I would be very happy at Skidmore, but it seems to lack some major resources.  For example: a Middle Eastern Studies professor.  Our guide said that the college was working on getting one since it's such a popular field of study, but it strikes me as odd that there wasn't already someone with that focus on the faculty.  It's little things like that.  But like I said, I think I would be very happy there.  It's very welcoming and encouraging and seems to have a good attitude toward it's students.

My dad and I also visited Williams.  These campuses could not have been more different.  We essentially made this trip out to Williams as a favor to my mother who has not been able to join us on any tours because she heard the campus was pretty.  Which it is... kind of; the Berkshires are beautiful, Williams not quite as much.  The campus gives off a cold, competitive vibe that could not have stood in starker contrast to Skidmore. Even with no people on campus in the summer, Skidmore was a more welcoming campus.  Williams still had a bunch of students, but it seemed somewhat hostile.  While I admit it might have had something to do with our catty, preppy guide, I basically stopped listening to her after 15 minutes and still felt ill at ease.  She actually described the typical Williams student as an aggressive, over-achiever.  I consider myself an achiever, but I would not consider myself an over-achiever.  I do not achieve for the sake of achieving.  I do what I do because I like it and because I am interested.  I'm not the kind of person to join 20 clubs to put them on my college app.  That's more or less how a typical Williams student was described by our tour guide.  I think that's a little unhealthy.  There's no denying the cachet of Williams.  It's a very good school.  But it's so combative.  Most of the school's I have liked have described themselves as collaboratively excellent.  Williams is cut throat.  You can feel it in the campus.

So that's it.  18 Campuses later, I get to start filling out the common app on August 1 when it opens for the 2012-2013 season.  Fun fun...

Waterville and Medford

In case you're wondering, my dad and I did actually make it from Colby to Tufts in time for tours at both. The answer to your next question is yes, we are completely insane.

Colby was nice.  I really can't say much more than that.  It seems like a perfectly pleasant place to go to school.  Class rooms look nice; buildings look older but not so old that they look like they're falling apart; and housing is apparently good.  Like Bates, Colby provides almost entirely Cross-Sectional housing with the exception being some senior-only apartments.  My concern is really only their obsession with environmental sustainability.  Those of you who read this blog will be familiar with my High School's commitment to empowering women (for those of you who don't, I refer you here, here, and here).  Similarly you will be familiar with the fact that I have gone to the same school since Kindergarten and have been told to be empowered every step of the way (see: 4th grade project on important american women before 1850.  Looking back on it, that project taught me a lot; specifically how to cobble together a research paper with zero resources available).  Colby kind of takes that attitude toward environmentalism.  Don't get me wrong, I like breathing clean air and not dying of heat exhaustion in February, but any topic that is treated the same way my High School treats empowering women will get under my skin.  That's really my only major concern.  Flipping through the course book, I was not disinterested in any of the courses and the people we saw there at 9:00 AM on a Friday during Summer Break seemed happy to be there (they were mostly there because they were tour guides or because they were doing research).  So as I said, Colby was nice.

We did have to leave the tour a little early to get to Tufts, but I really don't think I missed anything and I think it was totally worth it.  Tufts is located in Medford, MA a suburb of Boston and treats the City in exactly the way I like an urban/suburban school to treat a city: it's there if you want it, but there's always plenty to do on campus.  Tufts really was a great experience.  My tour guide happened to be a religion major and he spoke very highly of his experience in that department and of the advising process that brought him to his major.  He also spoke very highly of the performances that the school puts on throughout the year, but - when he found out that I was interested in theatrical design - introduced me to another guy in the tour guide group who works very closely with the theater.  Cole, the other guy, showed me pictures of past shows that he had worked on and ones that he hadn't, which was really nice for me to see.  As he said, if you can design lights for theater in the round, you can design lights anywhere.  Housing at Tufts is different from the ME schools I looked at in that it is only guaranteed for 2 years, but our tour guide said that getting off campus housing isn't too difficult and the university will help it's students out.  He also featured Tufts' theme housing on the tour, which wasn't really mentioned much on the ME tours; if you so desire, you can live in a Spanish Language house, a LGBT house, or a house with basically any other common interest.  Our tour guide had a friend who spent a semester in the Russian Language house to prepare for a trip abroad, which is pretty cool.  All in all, Tufts was really cool.  Everyone there seemed really happy and I could not foresee any problems for me with the school itself.

Boston is another matter.  My dad and I have both have a pretty good sense of direction, but Boston confounded both of us.  Never had I seen an intersection with two "One Way" signs facing each other but I was treated to that sight a number of times in Cambridge. Honestly, the place was designed by a drunken monkey.  Every suburb has it's own Harvard Street and none of them intersect.  Our plan was to drive by Harvard and MIT just to look at the buildings, and we managed to drive by Lesley, Harvard,  and Boston University.  MIT was hidden within the terrifying maze that is Boston urban planning.  My dad and I did get to take a picture in front of the sign that says Harvard Law School, which was awesome.  For those of you who don't know why this is funny, watch this.  Now.  Anyway, I cannot emphasize enough how stressful it is to drive in Boston.  If I end up going to school there, I know I won't have a car, but I feel like walking or biking would be stressful in that city.

So that's the trip.  I have three schools left on my list that I'm seriously interested in, so look forward to three more of these "first visit" posts, but I'm getting closer and closer to revisits, overnights, and class auditing at the schools I liked.  Look forward to that I guess.

Yes and No

It's awesome when you can drive twenty minutes between schools and go from one extreme on the spectrum of interest to the other.  It really makes you value the schools you're interested in that much more.

Since my school called a "snow day" (we haven't had any all year so we had a day to burn), my dad and I hit the road to two of the schools I'm interested in that are within driving distance: Haverford and Swarthmore in Pennsylvania.  In my opinion, they are as different as night and day.

Haverford says no.  It is incredibly difficult to double major according to the students there.  It is very difficult to find a study abroad opportunity outside of those the college has vetted (the college itself does not sponsor any abroad programs).  The students begrudgingly chain themselves to the library desks come finals week with dreams of being in Philadelphia since there is apparently not enough to keep students on campus.  If the college does not have a resource you are looking for, they will ship you off to one of the Quaker Consortium schools (Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore, and UPenn in that order of likelihood).  There are all kinds of things wrong with that.  If I wanted to go to Bryn Mawr, I would apply to Bryn Mawr; but I don't, so I won't.  I will apply to a school for the resources they offer, not for the connections to other colleges with those resources.  They are academically stringent without the resources to support it.  On the plus side, the campus is beautiful.  It's a nationally recognized arboretum.

But if you want a nationally recognized arboretum coupled with a positive experience, I would suggest you drive 20 minutes to Swarthmore College where the people say yes.  Yes, double major!  Yes, find the opportunities that best suit you!  Yes, willingly study because when you're a freshman you can have the department heads as your seminar teachers!  Yes, party on campus at events like Screw Your Roommate (set them up on a themed blind date where they have to find their complementary other based on costumes) or Pterodactyl Hunt (this is a thing)!  If Swarthmore does not have the resources you're looking for, they will bring them to you.  Sure students go off campus, but it's to visit the art museums in Philly to compliment an interest in art history or to go to Chester and help a struggling community.  Visiting Swarthmore makes you want to change the world.  Also, they have twice as many species of trees as students.  At Swarthmore, they do more than pay lip service to their Quaker roots; they embrace their students and want to nurture their interests across seemingly disparate departments.  They believe in activism and consensus decisions and sharing.

So, long story short, I loved Swarthmore; it was totally worth the visit.  Haverford? Not so much.

Why I Probably Should't Write a Post about UVA

This is the first campus that I have simply walked off of.  This school is not for me.

I could probably end the post there, but I feel I owe it to you, dear reader, to explain myself a little better.  Firstly, it's huge.  I've been looking at schools with between 2,000 and 11,000 students; UVA has 21,000 students on campus.  That's all in round numbers, but I think the difference is significant.  That kind of number severely impacts the campus ambiance.  Which is to say that UVA feels really impersonal.  Admittedly, I had just come from a tour of Duke with a very popular freshman and from W&L where the Speaking Tradition mandates that you say hi to everyone you see; but it is still ridiculous to me that one wouldn't say hi to people.  That's just who I am and I saw none of that at UVA.  The info session leader talked about an Honor Code at UVA similar to that of Davidson, Wake, and W&L, but I don't believe that it could possibly be implemented on a campus that size.  Why?  Because people suck, that's why.  Out of 21,000 people, there are bound to be a few bad eggs that have never been caught before.  They'll get in, and they'll ruin it for the rest of us.  The info session was also really uninformative.  I sat in for 35 minutes of a 45 minute info session, and I learned nothing useful about the college.

So, yeah. That's pretty much it.  I will not be applying to UVA.

Eruditio et Religio

Go Blue Devils!  Tuesday saw a visit to Duke University, a fine example of gothic architecture.  In fact a very familiar kind of gothic architecture.  James Buchanan Duke was told by the Princeton Administration that he could not simply buy their university, so he went and built his own in Durham, North Carolina.  That is not something you learn on the tour; that is something you learn from an alumnus.  An alumnus like my dad.  And he is proud of it.  Which is slightly adorable.

Anyway, I really liked Duke.  We started off with a very informative info session, which was followed by a very passionate walking tour. Our guide was a freshman, so he was maybe not the best informed; but boy could you tell he was excited to be at Duke.  Personally, I don’t feel like I missed out on much because my dad was liberal with his asides to me regarding his college experience. 

But I do have to get something out of the way before I extol the virtues of Duke’s academics and athletics. Well, two somethings.

1.  They have the original lemur from Zaboomafoo.  For those of you who also grew up watching that show, you understand why that’s awesome.
2.  THEY HAVE A HOLODECK.

With regard to the second point, it’s technically an immersive virtual environment not a holographic environment; but I don’t care. Duke has a holodeck.  That makes the trekkie in me very, very happy.

With regard to less nerd-tastic aspects of the campus, I’m going to throw down a statistic and be done with how excellent the academics are.  99% of applicants to law school from Duke get in.  There is no pre-law program. I know, you’re thinking to yourselves “What is this madness?!”  Duke is just that cool.  Athletically, just Google Coach K, I’ll wait.  Note, you probably don’t have to, because if you haven’t heard of Duke Basketball you’ve been living under a rock for the past 10+ years.   When my dad went to school here, Duke was the best school no one had ever heard of.  But he was class of ’76. Things have changed since then.  Now everyone knows Duke is awesome.  A few of my friends hadn’t heard of Wake and Davidson; they had all heard of Duke.

By Providence, I Find Myself in Providence

Continuing my saga of college visits, this weekend I found myself on the campus of Brown University.  Beyond that, I find myself lacking for words.  The thing is, and it pains me to say this, I didn't really like it.  Some of that may have something to do with the fact that I had the weirdest campus tour ever (more on that later), but I generally didn't get good vibes from the campus.  And it feels awful to say that because I really wanted to like the campus.  Brown has a really good Religious Studies program, and that is something that I am definitely interested in studying (my plan is a double major in RS and IR, and then go into international law if that makes any sense) so I was really hoping to like it. In any event, the campus itself was a little odd.  The students seemed all too focused; people didn't say "Hi!" to each other the way I've seen on other campuses.  It really gave the campus a cold, forbidding feel.  The architecture itself was odd too.  Most campus have one or two requisite modern monstrosities, but, generally speaking, they have a kind of look to which even new buildings conform in the general sense.  This is not so at Brown.  I wish I had pictures because all this would make so much more sense with them, but Brown's campus does not have a contiguous look and it lends a disconcerting sense of being lost to waking through the campus.  It's hard to tell where the campus begins and ends because it looks like a random collection of buildings.  I suppose it fits in with Providence the city, but it doesn't feel unified.

The campus tour matched this disconcerting sense of being lost too.  Our tour guide almost didn't seem to go to Brown.  Most tour guides will intersperse the fact based portion of their tour with personal anecdotes to make the tour seem interesting and to lend a sense of what it's actually like to attend their university.  Our guide did none of that.  Sure he threw in some interesting stories about the history of Brown, but I didn't here him tell one story about his personal experience attending his university.  He seemed apathetic and like he too was visiting the campus.  Additionally, he managed to go through the entire tour without mentioning athletics or student social life more than to acknowledge their mere existence.  Now I am by no means an athlete (in spring and fall I dance and in winter I am the captain of the Brunswick Girls Fencing team of which I am the only member), but I still like hearing about the existence of that kind of stuff.  I'm not going to join a team, but I plan on attending games to support my school.  And of course, there must have been other people on that tour who would be interested in playing sports.  Likewise, based on that tour, I have no idea what the social life of the average student is like.  I'm not talking about parties (although that would be good to know about), just basic social interactions.  I know I need a college where there is an active social scene on campus, i.e. the student body doesn't disperse into the city to entertain itself, otherwise I won't make friends.  And I'd like to make friends.  All of this is really tied into the fact that I don't think our tour guide used a single "I statement" in the entire tour, but I think the thing about the athletics and the social scene is especially weird.

All in all, I can't recommend Brown for myself.  Even setting aside the weird tour, it was objectively a little strange and just not for me.  But I have heard wonderful things about Brown from other people, so you really should go check it out for yourself.