25 Insane Reasons Why Kids Don’t Like Certain Colleges

While parents work the waitlists, high school seniors all over the country are agonizing about where to send in their deposits. Students dutifully go on tours at Admitted Student events in hopes of achieving the clarity they need to make lifechanging decisions. But instead of checking out the seminars taught by Nobel winners or evaluating the neuroscience research opportunities, they tend to focus on the prep/goth/nerd quotient or whether you can use your meal points to order a thin crust marguerita pizza.

Here are some of the ridiculous reasons that kids dismiss some excellent colleges:

1. Dislike of archways

2. No Chipotle within walking distance

3. “I don’t know anyone there.”

4. “I know too many people there.”

5. Aversion to tour guides’ footwear (five-toed multiport sneakers) or headwear (Sherpa cap)

6. Tour guide too smug (“In my spare time I’m a midwife, and since returning from Uganda, I’ve started an NGO that installs solar panels in orphanages.”)

7. Annoying bell tower

8. Too many Harry Potter references during info session

9. Not enough/too many vegan options in dining hall

10. Aversion to architecture: too Georgian, too Gothic, too Taco Bell

11. Too many mentions of how Oceanography course changed tour guide’s life

12. Tour guide’s resemblance to Justin Bieber

13. Too many homeless people

14. Professors look like homeless people

15. Aversion to upstate NY (“Upstate NY is for camp, not college”)

16. Tour guide’s repeated mention of a cappella groups and/or squirrel clubs

17. Rain

18. Woodland creatures: deer, raccoons, skunks

19. Aversion to school colors

20. Townies reminiscent of characters in Deliverance, Big Love or Jersey Shore

21. Mean parking attendant

22. Long line for the ellipticals at the gym

23. Lame Latin words in school motto

24. Emma Watson transferred out

25. School is parents’ first choice

 

Comments

25 Insane Reasons Why Kids Don’t Like Certain Colleges — 6 Comments

  1. While applying, my senior daughter’s friends would say things like:”I didn’t like the ‘vibe’of the campus”, “too urban”, “too big”,”too small”, “bad weather”, “too hot”. I’ve always been intrigued by these comments, as we were going for the best schools that offered the major my daughter was looking for, period. Now that plenty of those friends, all brilliant btw (at the number one HS of the state), were rejected or are waitlisted at their top choices, they forgot all about their comments,are going after the big names and regret not applying for the “too urban”, “too big” schools. My daughter applied (and was accepted) to Cornell, NYU, BU, PennState, UDelaware. Going to Cornel, the one her friends didn’t apply for because it is “too cold”, “in the middle of nowhere”, “weird dorms”. Now they wish they were her.

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