A Leisurely Sunday: Three Colleges, Seven Hours of Driving, Hundreds of Cows and a Lot of Snow

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After a low-key weekend in New York which includes Spring Awakening, the Tenement Museum, several dinners with friends (who, curiously, all recommend Bates College), a hunt for a faux Goyard bag and Earth Hour with three dear cousins, it’s time to hit the road.  We decide to make up our hiatus by driving through three states and seeing seeing three colleges in one day. 

9:00 AM – We rent a silver Subaru Outback at Hertz on E. 90th Street. 

10:00 AM – First stop is New Haven, where we have breakfast with one of our favorite college students. Visiting Yale on this trip is like going househunting and looking at properties that are $1 million above your budget.  Other than the wind chill factor, everything lives up to the hype, especially the dorm suites with fireplaces, and to CJ’s delight, foosball and ping pong in the lounge.  (But my omelette was disappointing.)

12:30 PM – A peek at Trinity College.  In spite of the College Critic’s low-IQ report (see previous post), the campus has an appealing vibe – some wonderful Gothic architecture, several lively sporting events and such perfect almost-spring New England weather that even Hartford seems inviting.

2:00 PM – Tour of Amherst College.  Although CJ is fairly certain he wants a large or midsize school with multiple fraternities, he wants to check out a tiny Liberal Arts College where he can play Division 3 soccer.  Amherst is supposedly harder to get into than Yale, but he has actually received a letter from the coach and had set up a meeting with a soccer player.  This is supposed to be college Nirvana, but because there is no coffee available on campus on Sunday, I am not as impressed as I expected to be.  Our tour guide here seems like a normal Ugg-clad, acappella-ish girl from New Jersey, but as an Amherst student, we know she is one of our country’s best and the brightest, destined to be head of Goldman Sachs, the next Maya Lin, or Chelsea Clinton’s Secretary of State.

3:30 PM – Amherst soccer player invites CJ to watch an important March Madness basketball game with the freshmen members of the soccer team.

3:30-5:00 PM – After an hour in the bookstores and cafes of Amherst, I decide to retire here and begin looking at real estate.  CJ calls every half hour to say the game will end in "ten more minutes". 

5:00 – 9:00 PM – An inspiring drive through the Berkshires, passing many of the spectacular spots where my family used to vacation when I was a child, and I probably didn’t appreciate then: Lake George, Stockbridge, Jacob’s Pillow, Tanglewood.  CJ and I share some incredible bonding moments and even sing "Up on Cripple Creek" together.  Sadly this is short-lived because he manages to get loud, staticky basketball reception. The last hour of our journey our GPS guy loses his mind and sends us onto sixteen back roads instead of taking us on an obvious direct route that we discover later when we look at a map. But every moment of the drive is fun, and I hope we get to do it again when CJ is looking for graduate schools.

Now in the picturesque town of Hamilton, NY, covered in a blanket of pristine snow.  It could be the quintessential Christmas card if it weren’t almost April. 

Next: Colgate and Cornell

NYU Comes of Age

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I have a high school friend who dropped out of three colleges, spent a year following the Grateful Dead around, then enrolled at NYU.  In those days, you did not have to apply because it was a commuter school with a 100% acceptance rate. You just filled out a form, sent in your money (a comparative fortune) and you were good to go. 

My friend is now a guidance counselor at a prestigious high school in New Jersey.  She has her NYU diploma framed on the wall in her office, and the students who she advises beg her to help get them accepted at her alma mater, which now has the most applications of any school in the world.  Last year there were 33,949.  And next year there will be even more NYU hopefuls because it will be the most difficult year to gain admission to a college in the history of the universe. 

No surprise that our information session at NYU was Standing Room Only – Here are the reasons: 

- The school is located in one of the most vibrant neighborhoods in the world’s coolest city.  And it is gradually taking over the whole metropolitan area, like the collegiate version of Donald Trump.  Soon there will be NYU flags on the Statue of Liberty and Bergdorf’s.

- At NYU you don’t have to study an esoteric liberal art like Philosophy or English.  Instead you can choose a program that will prepare you for a fascinating career as a Music Producer or Sports Agent or Documentary Filmmaker or Restauranteur. Then, in four years, after spending $200,000+ on your education, you are guaranteed a $10-an-hour internship in your chosen field.

Most Obnoxious Question Asked by a Parent at an Information Session

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Transcribed verbatim at the NYU information session:
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Parent: "I know you mentioned you had a four-year language requirement, but my son has taken every language AP and also every other AP offered by his school.  So, what if he had an oppportunity like…okay, I’ll tell you what the opportunity is…to be the head anchor on a local news show, and the entire program revolves around him….would that be okay rather than the required four years of a language?  And could we list that opportunity as a special award?"
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NYU Dean of Admissions: (cutting her off) "Sure.  That would be fine."

Jesuits are Nice, and They Know How to Name a College

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We were’t prepared to like Georgetown because two years ago, a couple of girls from CJ’s school got in trouble for passing Coffee Nips to each other during the information session.  The admissions officer actually called the high school to complain, and needless to say, the girls were not admitted to Georgetown.  (Luckily the infraction did not affect the girls' chances at other colleges – they now attend Yale and University of Chicago.)  However, we were concerned that the Georgetown admissions people would remember the incident, and left our Altoids in the car.

But instead of a place full of Mint Nazis, we found Georgetown to be lovely, an oasis of interesting people investigating worldly pursuits (and playing serious basketball) in the middle of the most liveable part of our nation’s capital. 

And it has the best name of any college we have visited.

. 

- Vanderbilt sounds too elitist.

- Duke should be the name of Labrador retriever rather than an institution of higher learning. 

- The George Washington University has a pretentious, annoying “the” in its title.  What other college uses a definite article? Just imagine: The Princeton University or The Notre Dame. 
- Colgate – They’ve got to be kidding.  Is it in an athletic league with Oral B University and Listerine State?

- Northwestern – The "North" part has some logic for a college located in the northern city of Chicago. “Western” might have worked in 1867, doesn't quite cut it today.

But Georgetown is a fantastic name.  It sounds like Downtown or Motown or Funkytown – a theme park of sorts inspired by our favorite founding father, where you can join the ultimate Frisbee club or get an internship at the Mongolian Embassy.  The name looks fabulous on sweatshirts and girls’ boxer shorts.  (Yes, even though this is a Jesuit school, there is a girls’ underwear section in the campus bookstore.)

Applying vs. Pledging

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We are visiting The George Washington University (yes, there is a "the" in the name). CJ is now out for his third night of college partying in a row, even though today is Wednesday and the real play-hard stuff is supposed to happen on Thursdays.  He has reunited with former teammates at every school and is currently wandering around the edgy streets of DC at 11:47 PM, making me wish we were back at one of those closed campuses with blue emergency phones.

Found out how you pledge fraternities.  You check off your choices and perform wacky, but not cruel tasks for several weeks. Then you are GUARANTEED acceptance into a fraternity on your list.  We believe CJ will do very well in the fraternity admission process.  He would add to the diversity of any chapter because one of his parents plays in a symphony orchestra, and no member of either side of his family has every been a Brother or a Sister, in the rowdy sense. And, because CJ attends a progressive, arts-oriented high school, choosing to join a fratenity demonstrates his individualism and willingness to think outside of the box. 

So we are hoping that CJ can find a school where he can skip the stressful academic admission process and go straight to Greek life, which will offer him pretty much everything he is looking for in higher education.