Tag: Best Colleges

10 Types of Guides You See on Campus Tours

image If you haven’t yet been on a college tour, there’s something you need to be aware of.  Your tour guide can make or break your impression of a school. After going on dozens of college tours, here are 10 types of tour guides you might meet. You may have better chemistry with some than others. It’s better to be prepared.

10 Types of Campus Tour Guides

Welcome! I’m Davina. I’m a dance major from Rochester. At the moment, I’m working on my senior project — which is an interpretation in movement of an 18th century Japanese feminist tract incorporating elements of African dance, primal scream and pogo sticks. After graduation, I’m hoping to get a job as an investment banker.  Let’s get started.

Hey. My name is Brett. I’m from Arlington. I’d appreciate it if you would keep your voices down. I’m super hungover.

Hi!!!! 🌺🌷💐 I’m Amber!!!!! 🦄🐶🐱🌈 I’m from Orlando, and I’m sooooo excited to tell you about the community service activities I do with my sorority sisters!!!! 💛❤️💙💜💚!!!

Hi! I’m Zell. My preferred pronouns are zhe and zher. I’m from Portland, and I’m majoring in oppression studies. But before we start, I’d like to apologize that our campus is so ableist.  If you’ll follow me, I’ll take you to our first stop — the yurt.

Hi! I’m William. I’m from Boise, Idaho.  I’m an honors English major.  I’m working on my thesis “The Epistemology of Elegy and Essentialism in Frankenstein and Fifty Shades of Grey — A Proto-Feminist Critique.” I’m also president of the College Republicans.

Hi? I’m Maya? I’m from Newport Beach? I’m majoring in marketing? With a minor in fashion design? After graduation, I’m hoping to work for Ralph Lauren? Or as a personal assistant to Kimye?

Hi. I’m Julia. I’m a computer science major from Wayzata, Minnesota. I’m president of the Tri-College furry club. And I play the oboe.

Hi, I’m Rob. I’m an exercise science major from Lenexa, Kansas.  I can bench press 2 times my body weight.  Seriously.  If you’ll hold still, I’ll lift you over my head.

Welcome! I’m Eleanor.  I’m from Boulder and I’m majoring in environmental science and sustainability studies.  Let’s head to the new language study center.  It’s LEED certified and has a vegetable garden and chicken coop on the roof.  We use the produce and eggs from the roof garden in our cafeteria and I sleep on a pillow stuffed with molted chicken feathers. I’m also so excited that we’ve convinced facilities to acquire a herd of goats that will be used for weed control on campus instead of carbon emitting machinery.

Hi! I’m Marcus.  Sorry I was a few minutes late.  I just got back from my internship in Sen. Warren’s office. Anyway, I’m the president of the SGA, so if you want to know anything about student government, I’m your man.  Also, I run cross country.  And I’m doing research on using robotics to stimulate cell regeneration.  And I’m playing Stanley in “A Streetcar Named Desire.” If anyone needs me to do this tour in ASL while walking backwards, please let me know.

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Ten Questions I’d REALLY Like to Have Answered at a College Information Session

info-session

As a veteran of many — probably too many — college information sessions, I’ve come to realize that they’re all pretty much the same. Some of the fine details may differ, but generally, you’ll get a description of the curriculum, the graduation requirements, the application process, financial aid, study abroad and some vague description abou . . .

….

Sorry. I think nodded off for a minute there.  That happened to me a lot during information sessions.

Ahem. Back to business. I can barely remember any of the information sessions Boo and I attended — with the exception of two spectacularly bad ones; one of which left me wanting to punch the pretentiousness out of the admissions officer and the other made me want to stuff a sock in the mouth of another parent. I might have actually done the sock stuffing except that it was very clear that her daughter wanted to do it way more than I did, and I hate to rob kids of their fun.

In any event, the sameness of the sessions made me ponder the questions that I would really like to hear answered during an information session.  What would really be practical information and set the schools apart and give me a sense of what the school is really like? So I came up with this list of the ten questions I would really like to have answered at an information session.

Information Session Questions

1. What is your policy on responding to a panicked mother who has watched too many episodes of Dateline and whose daughter is not responding to texts?  Asking for a friend.

2. Which movie most accurately reflects life on your campus: a) Animal House (party school); b) The Social Network (school full of ruthless/annoying dweebs); c) Revenge of the Nerds (speaks for itself); d) Scream 2 (for God’s sake, are you so stupid that you’re going out by yourself? There’s a serial killer on campus!); or e) Pitch Perfect (awesome a cappella battles!)?

3. Are admissions here rigged?  Because I hear they’re rigged.  Believe me.

4. What footwear am I most likely to find in the closet of a female identifying student: a) Birkenstocks; b) Ferragamo pumps; c) super cute flip-flops (squee!); d) hiking boots; or e) Manolos?

5. Has your marching band ever been disciplined for an obscene or offensive half time show?  If yes, please describe the theme of the show.

6. Is there parking for helicopters?  Again, asking for a friend.

7. Name the alumnus/alumna you are most embarrassed to admit attended your school.

8. Which academic department is led by the craziest person?

9. It’s 11:00 p.m. on a Saturday, where is my child most likely to be: a) a frat party; b) a poetry slam; c) hanging out with friends from high school; d) in the library; or e) passed out?

10. Which of these most accurately reflects the usual level of interaction between students and professors: a) my professor came to a party in my dorm room;* b) my professor and her spouse have her students over for dinner; c) office hours only; d) I’m the person in row 23; or e) what professors — I only see grad students.

*Some day I’ll tell the story of when the Mayor of Providence ended up at a party in my dorm room.

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Your Mom’s Guide to College Rankings

Last week, I spent a whole night refreshing my browser until the U.S News “Best Colleges” rankings were finally published.  It was an evening fraught with terror because — as we all know, the USN&WR rankings are the definitive arbiter of all that is good and worthwhile in a college education.  Also, if your kid doesn’t attend a top 10 school, you are a failure as a parent.

After reviewing the list, I came to the sad, sad conclusion that I’m likely going to be a failure as a parent.  Boo is only bothering to apply to one of the top 10 LACs and none of the top ten national universities. But to all you other failures out there, take heart.  Come cry your bitter tears with me.  I’m saving you a seat at the bad parent table.  We’ll be sullen and weird — just like the Ally Sheedy character in “The Breakfast Club.” Only old, possibly drunk, and definitely cranky.  And none of us will be dating Emilio Estevez at the end of the day.

But then I looked at the methodology USN&WR uses for determining the “Best Colleges” and felt much better.  More than a third of the ranking is based on “reputation” and “selectivity.”  If I were being judged by that criteria, I would perform poorly too.  My reputation is mediocre at best, and I am in no position to be highly selective.  In high school, I was a cross between Tracy Flick from “Election” and Urkel.  As an adult, little has changed.  So if I were a college, I would be well out of the top 10.

Because I think that popularity is a poor way to judge colleges, I have come up with my own methodology for ranking colleges.  I believe my criteria are a much better metric for ranking colleges.  You be the judge.

Your Mom’s Methodology for College Rankings

Affordability (40%) — I doubt that Warren Buffett, Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg is reading this blog (despite its obvious brilliance).  If they are reading it: a) Uh, Hi! Um . . . don’t you have more important things to do with your time?; and b) you can skip this part.  But for the rest of us mere mortals, let’s face it, affordability is really a threshold metric.  There is no point in looking at any other criteria unless you can pay the king’s ransom demanded by most colleges.  Running the net price calculators for Boo’s target colleges sends me into fits of rage, floods of tears, or Ocean’s Eleven style fantasies of robbing a casino.  With George Clooney.  So on second thought, I guess it’s not all bad.

Weather (5%) — I have told Boo that she should go to school in Southern California because of the weather.  In a completely unsurprising turn of events, she will not listen to me.  But I suspect I will have the last laugh on this one. Mwah ha ha!  I have started to practice saying “I told you so” every night in front of the mirror.  Can’t wait to break that out during her first winter vacation.

Beer (5%) — For the record, I hate beer.  Also, for the record, I drank beer in college.  Because college.  Maybe things will be different at Boo’s chosen hippie college.  But I doubt it.  They’ll probably just drink organic free range beer made by mute Tibetan monks instead of regular beer.

Peers (20%) — Yes, I know the purpose of going to college is to get an education.  But now, 30+ years after I graduated, I barely remember my classes.  I do remember my friends — despite the beer.  My college friends had (and continue to have) a far more profound effect on my life than any class I took.  So find your tribe of kind, smart, interesting and diverse people, and avoid the jerks, the mean kids and the phonies.  (CoughHarvardcough). And pray to God that your freshman roommate is not a ticking time bomb.

Professors/Class Size (15%) — This is one of many areas where Boo is showing that she is much smarter than I was at the same age.  She is not having huge lecture classes, inaccessible professors or classes taught by grad students.  Nope.  Not going to happen.  She wants small seminar style classes and lots of opportunities to interact with her professors.  In contrast, I did almost everything I could to avoid my professors — possibly because my freshman academic advisor may have been the single scariest person I have ever met.  Not serial killer style scary.  But scary in almost every other way.  Advantage Boo.

Food and Housing (10%) — Food and housing won’t make or break your college experience, but they can definitely have an effect.  For example, I went to a college where the main campus dining room was called “The Ratty” — with reason.  And during my freshman year, I lived in a cinder block dorm with built in furniture that was so far from campus, it might as well have been in Siberia.  In contrast, High Point University has its own steakhouse (on the meal plan) and its dorms include swimming pools, hot tubs, a first-run movie theater with free snacks, an arcade, a putting green and a free ice cream truck.  In my next life, I am so going to High Point.

Distractions (5%) — This is very much a “choose your own adventure” category.  There are schools that have amazing outdoor adventure clubs and climbing walls.  There are schools where the thrills and opportunities of big cities are right outside your door.  There’s the University of Missouri that has an indoor beach, a lazy river and a grotto based on the one at the Playboy mansion.  And then there was Providence in the ’80’s — a mafia haven with a cesspool of a river flowing through it.  Good times.

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Look for my Guides to the Hippie Colleges of America and the Ivy League here.

Your Mom’s Guide to the Ivy League

There’s an old saying that writers should write what they know.

So what do I know?  I know the Ivy League.  I went to Brown.  I come from a long line of Dartmouth men. (No women back in those days.)  I have friends who have attended each of the Ivies.  And I’ve visited all of them — except Cornell.  Because Cornell is convenient to absolutely nothing.

Of course, I know some of the Ivies better than others.  But according to me, I am well enough informed about all of the Ivies to share my wisdom about them with you.  So here are some important facts I think you should know.  I hope you find them useful in your college search.

Brown University

Famous for: Having no requirements.  At all!  You can graduate without ever going to class.   Or seeing Providence.  Really!  (Please don’t tell my parents.) Also, free tampons!

Little Known Fact: GQ named Brown “America’s Douchiest College.” Finally! Brown won something!   We’re #1!  We’re #1!

Notable Alumni: Me; Hermione Granger; a LOT of minor royals from small countries (bonus admission points to the scions of monarchies in exile); Daveed Diggs (the coolest possible combination of Brown and Oakland, CA.  Represent, Daveed!); JFK Jr. (Yes.  I was in a tiny seminar with him.  And yes.  He was that handsome in real life.)

Columbia University

Famous for: A safety violation that allowed Peter Parker to be bitten by a radioactive spider and turn into Spider-Man.

Little Known Fact: Columbia’s wiki includes a dress code which describes — in excrutiating detail — what to wear from “casual” to “white tie” and when to wear it.  In case you were wondering, “black tie preferred” may include an ascot. Occasion?  “Opening season at the opera.”  Sadly, they failed to suggest something that would be really useful — like an ensemble for going to the grocery store or cleaning my house.  So Columbia’s dress code only gets a C+.  I’m disappointed in you, Columbia.

Notable Alumni: Alexander Hamilton (Go ahead and sing it.  You know you want to.  “Alexander Hamilton.  My name is Alexander Hamilton. And there’s a million things I haven’t done.  But just you wait.  Just you wait.”); Barack Obama (I’m working on an interpretive dance about him.  I think it’s going to be a massive hit!); Meadow Soprano; Martha Stewart; a ridiculous number of spies.

Cornell University

Famous for: Cold, cold, cold, hotel management, cold, cold, Andy Bernard, cold, cold, cold, cold, the Gorges, cold, cold, f**king cold.

Little known fact: The chicken nugget was invented at Cornell.  Which makes Cornell the dream school of every 3 year old in America.

Notable Alumni: Bill Nye, the Science Guy; Citizen Kane (expelled); Sideshow Mel from The Simpsons; Triumph the Insult Comic Dog; the Wizard of Oz.

Dartmouth College

Famous for: Being the birthplace of beer pong.  And the ultra-conservative Dartmouth Review.  I’m sure these facts are completely unrelated.

Little Known Fact: An anthropomorphic beer keg known as “Keggy the Keg” is Dartmouth’s unofficial mascot.

image

(Keggy the Keg on the Green.  Is that you, Rob?)

Notable Alumni: Dr. Seuss; Senator Bluto Blutarsky; Shonda Rimes (Call me, Shonda, I have a fabulous idea about an Obama interpretive dance.  I think it’s going to be a massive hit!); Mr. Rogers; Mindy Kaling.  Bonus alumni — my dad, my uncle, my grandfather and two cousins.  Which makes me the Brown sheep of the family.

Harvard University

Famous for: Being in Massachusetts.

Little Known Fact: Absolutely nothing.  Because it’s Harvard. They know everything.  Just ask them. Also, Harvard murdered its sister, Radcliffe.  (That’s for you @EastGrad!)

Notable Alumni: Fred Munster, the Unabomber, Gopher from “The Love Boat,” Bill O’Reilly (figures); Jason Bourne.

Princeton University

Famous for: Eating clubs and the world’s ugliest marching band jackets.

Princeton University football at Lehigh, Bethlehem, PA, September 26, 2009. Photo by Beverly Schaefer.

(This just in — the fashion police at Columbia think I should wear the Princeton band jacket while cleaning my house.)

Little Known Fact: Bob Dylan wrote a whole song about how much he hated getting an honorary degree from Princeton.  He analogized Princeton to a swarm of locusts.  Really.

Notable Alumni: Aaron Burr (aka the damn fool who shot Alexander Hamilton); Doogie Howser; Batman (dropped out)(WTF, Batman? Doogie Howser managed to graduate and he was only 12); Michelle Obama; Ted Cruz’s roommate, who managed not to strangle Ted Cruz in his sleep.  (Mad respect, Ted Cruz’s roommate!  You are a paragon of restraint.)

University of Pennsylvania

Wait . . . . Penn is in the Ivy League?  (Cheap joke.  I know.  But it works.  Every time.)

Yale University

Famous for: Being the venue for some great love stories — Bill and Hillary Clinton; Skull and Bones; Rory Gilmore and Logan Huntzberger; George W. Bush and Beer.  Upon further reflection, perhaps “great” is too strong a word.

Little Known Fact:  Yalies traditionally play a game called “Bladderball” which is a rule-less game involving much alcohol and a fight for a giant leather orb.  It also has, at various times, included a leaflet drop by helicopter and referees in top hats and tails.  What could possibly go wrong?

Notable Alumni: Montgomery Burns; Lupita Nyong’o (I love saying that name); Agent Fox Mulder; Anderson Cooper; Jodie Foster (who I hope will play me in the movie version of this blog).

Next — Your Mom’s Guide to the Personal Statement.

See my Guide to the Hippie Colleges here, and follow me on Facebook!

Your Mom’s Guide to College

For my popular Guide to the Hippie Colleges of America start here and then move forward to the next entries.  There are reviews of Hippie Colleges in the Pacific Northwest, Ohio, and two trips to the Northeast.

Now new and improved with the addition of:

“Your Mom’s Guide to the Ivy League”

“Your Mom’s Guide to the Personal Statement”

“Your Mom’s Guide to College Rankings”

“Ten Questions I’d REALLY like to Have Answered at a College Information Session” and

“10 Types of Guides You Meet on Campus Tours”

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Your Mom’s Guide to the Hippie(ish) Colleges of the Northeast — Part 2 (Day 8)

Today was a momentous day because it marked the likely end of my part of our college tours.  Which is fine because I’m exhausted.

We had a lazy morning before we hopped on the train uptown for Barnard College, the women’s college of Columbia University.  I liked it.  Boo did not.  Why you ask?  Because while they allow trans women to enroll, they do not allow non-binary gendered people to enroll.  Only people who consistently identify as women can enroll.  That was the reason Boo didn’t like Barnard.  Totally not kidding.

I had one of those “kids these days” moments, and we ended up irritated with each other.  I swear that we hardly ever quarrel but when we do, it’s usually about gender identity issues.  Not her gender identity (she’s totally cis-gendered), but the gender identities of other people.  I often wonder what other families quarrel about.  I’d be willing to bet that very few other families have had a major blowout over pronoun usage like we have.  Seriously, our biggest argument in the last year or two was over pronouns. #firstworldarguments

We managed to reach enough detente that we stopped by the TKTS booth in Times Square for theater tickets. Then we headed back to the apartment for a short rest before we went out for Japanese food and headed to the theater to see “The Color Purple.”  It was absolutely brilliant.  I don’t know if I’ve ever been to a show before that was literally stopped mid show because of cheering from the audience.  By the end I was crying so hard that I was afraid I was going to start audibly ugly-sobbing.

Tomorrow is my last full day with my baby before I head for home and leave her in New York.  Sniff!  I’ll be studiously avoiding discussion of pronouns.

Next up — Day 9

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Your Mom’s Guide to the Hippie(ish) Colleges of the Northeast — Part 2 (Days 6 and 7)

You know those dreams you have where you are in familiar surroundings but everything is just a little off?  Yesterday was the lucid version of that dream for me.

Day 6 of the college tour dawned with considerably less drama than the previous morning.  I found the car keys.  I found the car.  And I found the best parking space ever on College Hill in Providence (no mean feat) — just steps away from where we needed to report for the information session and tour at Brown.  It was as if the gods were making nice for the mean trick they had played on me the day before.

Apparently, many kids these days would like to go to Brown.  I like to think that’s because I went there. The info session was crazy crowded.  Given the massive turnout, I half expected to see Brown alum Hermione Granger leading the info session.

The info session was blah, blah, blah.  Systemically, Brown remains pretty much unchanged from my days except that what used to be called the “New Curriculum” is now called the “Open Curriculum” — a reminder that a few years have passed since my Brown days and that what was “new” back then is now “not-so-new anymore.”  I guess they figured that “open” was a better descriptor than “middle aged.”  Because it is officially middle aged.  Boo’s eyes did widen when they talked about how you can take all your courses pass/fail, but otherwise, she was unmoved.

After the info session, we broke up into smaller groups for the campus tour.  The tour guide asked a couple “can you guess this?” style questions.  I appeared to be a genius by answering all of them correctly until I fessed up that I was an alum — and immediately became less a genius and more an annoying know-it-all.

And while Brown remains systemically the same, physically, I barely recognized it.  There are all sorts of new buildings and even the old ones that I could recognize from the outside have been completely modified inside.  I felt like Alice through the Looking Glass.  They also have electrical outlets in all the street lamps.  If they had that back in my day, I was woefully uninformed.

So what did Boo think?  Her thoughts were succinct — “nice school, too big.”  I agreed.  So it looks like the Barnes family is one and done at Brown.

After our tour, we hopped into the car for the drive to NYC.  We had to drop the car off at JFK and then get into the City, so it turned out to be a 6 hour affair before we made it into the apartment we rented.  We dropped our bags and immediately headed for the TKTS booth at Times Square to try to get tix to “The Color Purple” only to discover that it starts at 7:00 instead of 8:00 on Wednesdays and we were too late.  So instead, we got tickets to a frothy little off-Broadway musical starring Diana Degarmo from American Idol!  Squee!  (Actually, she was very good.)

And on the 7th day, we rested — except for a trip to Kmart to buy some supplies for Boo’s summer at NYU and a delicious Peruvian chicken dinner.  I was seriously tempted to drink the chimmichuri sauce.  It was that good.  I think I may need to move to Peru.

And tomorrow is a momentous day.   Tomorrow will likely be my last college visit.  Unless I can figure out a way to make money by visiting hippie colleges.  Any takers?

Next up — Day 8

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Your Mom’s Guide to the Hippie(ish) Colleges of the Northeast — Part 2 (Day 5)

https://youtu.be/Yz0axHGXJx4

Today’s theme was: you lose; you love; you learn.

So our day got off to a rather inauspicious start.  We packed our bags and started to head out of the hotel room when I suddenly realized that I didn’t have the keys to our rental car.  Commence search.  30 minutes later, I am in a near panic.  We have emptied 3 bags (including a summer’s worth of clothes/linens/etc. for Boo), checked the room refrigerator and our cosmetics bags, stripped the sheets off the bed, made sure that I did not drop them in the toilet, notified the front desk, and checked to make sure that I did not somehow leave them in the car — everything short of squeezing the toothpaste out of the tube to see if they made their way into there.  But they were nowhere to be found.  I had visions of us being trapped in a (very nice) motel in suburban Boston for days while we waited for the rental car company to come rescue us.  But just when I was about to abandon hope all ye who enter here, I realized there was a small opening under the dresser, so I laid on the floor, reached under the dresser (ick!) and found the keys.  I had somehow managed to kick them way back under the dresser the night before.  Miracles do happen.

We immediately hit the road, driving through swanky suburban Boston until we got to Wellesley College.  Despite the fact that we were super late to the information session, Wellesley turned out to be a big hit!  We both loved it.  Super pretty campus and amazing facilities.  And Boo totally hit it off with our tour guide, the reproductive justice activist.  (Just like home!). I couldn’t help but ask whether Wellesley millennials all felt the Bern like most other millennials or whether they were conflicted because Hillary is an alum.  Our guide told me that she was in favor of a revolution, so she had no conflict.  At all.  Anyway, Wellesley soared into the top tier of Boo’s college list.

After Wellesley, we drove into Central Boston for a visit to Emerson College.  Emerson’s campus is right across the street from the Common, so the location is fantastic (except that it overlooks the graveyard in the Common).  It specializes in performing arts and communications and has superb state of the art facilities.  But . . . Emerson’s theater program is a BFA program which Boo has now confirmed is more restrictive in terms of choice and flexibility than what she wants.  So it looks like Emerson is out of the running unless she has a change of heart.

Tomorrow is our last true hippie college — the hippie Ivy (and my alma mater), Brown University.  It’s where our family hippie roots began.

Next up — Days 6 and 7

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Your Mom’s Guide to the Hippie(ish) Colleges of the Northeast — Part 2 (Days 3 and 4)

To paraphrase Dickens — It was the best of times.  It was the time that you were reminded that you are traveling with a teenager.

Day 3 (Sunday) was spent again in Philadelphia on a walking tour — this time of colonial era sites.  Boo tends to get very up in arms when someone’s version of American history does not completely jibe with the version she learned from the Socialist British hippie who taught her U.S. History class.  (Yes, she learned about the Revolution from someone who came from the losing side.  Reminds me of how it’s done in Texas — only with less outright denial of facts.)  Fortunately, Boo had few complaints about our guide to colonial Philadelphia.  He’s probably a socialist and secretly British too.

At the end of our tour, we hopped into the car, drove up the New Jersey turnpike, waved at the skyline of Manhattan, and landed in Wallingford, CT where we had a father-free celebration of fathers’ day. We went out to dinner, followed by watching my ankles swell into cankles while the Warriors lost.  I probably should have just watched my ankles swell.  It would have been less painful.

We got up bright and early for a visit to Wesleyan University.  I was absolutely positive that Boo was going to love Wesleyan.  It’s hippie.  It’s artsy.  It has no required classes.  It has a super-impressive list of alumni.  (Joss Wheedon, Matthew Weiner, D.B. Weiss of Game of Thrones, Lemony Snicket, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Thomas Kail from Hamilton, and of course there’s my college roommate’s husband, Seth.  Hi Seth!  Bill Belichick went there too — proving that no place is perfect. )  There are 10-20 theater productions per semester! How could Boo not love this place?

Well, I’ll tell you how.  She was tired and in a bad mood.  Her interviewer asked her a bunch of pre-programmed questions.  (Q: “What’s your greatest academic achievement?”  A: “Um, I go to a hippie school.  We don’t think that way.  I didn’t even know that my ACT score could affect my college prospects until after I took the test.  Next question.”) The information session was not the most riveting (although far from the worst we’ve seen), and worst of all, I hadn’t heard Boo say something that led to some confusion and got her pissed at me.  That’s how she could not love it.

After that, we decided to skip our “might as well since we’re in the neighborhood” visit to Yale.  (She’s not going to go there anyway.)  Over lunch, after she had eaten and her irritation with me had subsided, she conceded that Wesleyan actually does have pretty much everything she wants and that she knows not to judge a school based on her mood and an interviewer mismatch.  (I HATED my Brown alumni interviewer.  He was a pompous, sexist jerk.)  So I think that Wesleyan will stay on the list — just not as high up the list as I think it should be.  But I’m not the one going to college, so it’s her call.

Even though mother knows best.

Next up — Day 5

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