lol, I used to go to a summer piano camp at Indiana University waaayy back in the day.

I really hope my teacher doesn't transfer around. There was this other kid I knew who was absolutely amazing and by that I mean concertmaster of all-state orchestra... his college professor moved to three different colleges and he moved with him three different times. Then his professor moved again, and he ended up transferring to West Point. Which is good and all, but he had his heart set on doing music .. :|

If I could pick out of any of those schools based on academics and music programs, I'd probably want to go to Rochester or Johns Hopkins. I can't decide between those two, especially since I haven't been/had lessons with their professors.

double-major ftw.

I'm planning on doing college visits in the fall, after I apply. If I go when they have their preview days I can find out if I was accepted or not instead of having to wait for the letter to come. woohoo?

that seems sort of stupid. i visited the colleges i wanted to apply to the summer before applications and a lot of my priorities shifted. i saved a lot of money by NOT sending out applications to schools i knew for sure i didn't want to go to after the visit.

after you've been accepted, most colleges have an event called "days on campus" or some variation of that... THEN is when you narrow down your choices to the college you end up at from the ones you've been accepted to.

I second that. I'm planning on seeing colleges this summer. I'm seeing Columbia, UPenn, and Williams for sure.
Although all my application fees are going to be waived.. in the end it'll just save me some more time.

After admissions do most colleges pay for your plane ticket to visit?

pay for your plane ticket?absurdddd

not unless you apply for some financial aid thing - even then, i'm pretty sure they don't pay for your plane ticket.

AND YAY COLUMBIA!!

When I was visiting grad schools, they paid for my traveling expenses. But that's because a) it was graduate school, and b) I'm really, really awesome, and they really, really wanted me to come there. No joke.

You make me giggle.

Is that Erin? I saw she was leaving BU on Facebook. Which, actually, makes it fairly obvious that it's Erin, but you know what I mean.

[/random]

Melissa, you're at Columbia?

Man, I miss the whole looking at colleges thing (I'm a freak) but those were some fun days. I'm hopefully going to be giving some tours on open days over the summer, which should be neat... Anyway, I went to look at University Of Nottingham, Cambridge, University of Warwick, university of Essex.

I actually hardly went to any open days, because I pretty much had my heart set on Nottingham from the beginning and was confident of getting in, so it all worked out well.

Yes, obviously Erin. I haven't seen her since probably Thanksgiving, but I facebook stalk and all that.

I actually kind of enjoyed looking through the college books and all that. And I theoretically liked it for the excuse to go visit places (it got me as far as, uh, North Carolina). I didn't go many places or anything either, but that was mainly because I knew UGA was more or less inevitable.

yep.

sophomore next year.

<-- leaving for college visiting on july 4th. REALLY EXCITED! okay, only sort of excited, because it's a road trip. with family. ohhhh boy.

visiting cities...
- st. louis
- bloomington
- chicago /evanston
- detroit
- toronto
- buffalo
- rochester
- cincinnati
- memphis

any must-sees?

^ visiting colleges gets old real fast.

everything starts seeming the same after you've heard it 3-4 times.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a must-see if you're interested in research.

visiting colleges = hearing student guides giving you the same false enthusiasm for your school over and over

Columbia was cool though, they had people wrestling on the pavement during our tour. I'd go to that school based on that.

You could probably skip out on Detroit. I live about 20-30 minutes away from there, so I've been there a lot. There's shady looking people roaming the streets at all times of the day. The only college I know of down there is Wayne State University, which is a nice school, but it's right in the middle of downtown Detroit.

If you're thinking of design (architecture or interior) or musical theatre go to the University of Cincinnati. Both of the departments there are really good. Or if you have time head up to Columbus and check out Ohio State.

And if you see a Graeters Ice Cream anywhere, try it. Best ice cream ever.

I'm looking into NYU. :) I'm applying to Belmont University, but my mom said we'll visit if I get in. I really don't know where else to apply to yet because I wanna go into music business,so I wanna find a school in a city with the major.

and because I'm there, right?

I don't think that music business is generally a major. We have a certificate program for it, but to be honest it's probably not practical to major in as it is. And while Athens isn't really a city, it is at least somewhere it would make sense to get involved with music business.

k, so parents cut the trip in half "because they felt like it" :(
still got to see st. louis university, uchicago, northwestern, and indiana.

probably only out-of-state schools i'll be applying to are northwestern and mayyybe rochester.

really started thinking about psychology and becoming a registered nurse as well as something music-related so that's kind of affecting college choices.

next visit: rice!

can i ask why not uchicago? i'm looking at colleges too, and uchicago is currently on my (quite extensive) list. i haven't considered it seriously yet, so i don't know much about it, but if you could give me a little insight, it might save me a trip out to chicago myself (i live in new york).

i've had my heart set on majoring in music for basically my entire life and uchicago's music program is not nearly as excellent as northwestern. northwestern has an extremely strong academic side as well as a musical side, not to mention i love that campus much much more than uchicago's. after talking to a lot of friends that are already in college, northwestern seems much more competitive academically to boot.

where else are you considering?

since i haven't decided on a major yet, it's been hard to pick schools, but my list of possibilities so far consists of harvard, yale, columbia, cornell, dartmouth, uchicago, amherst, bc, swarthmore, colgate, middlebury.
i'm sure there's more, but i can't think of them right now. i've visited some of those schools, but i'm checking out a few more this summer - hopefully middlebury, colgate, amherst and columbia.

i've heard though that northwestern has a really strong med program, but overall, it's less academically competitive than uchicago...

over the last few weeks i've been to..
columbia, princeton, yale, & NYU.
i know that NYU is a really prestigious school, & some of their buildings are soo beautiful.. but i felt its kinda overrated sometimes.
like they dont really have a campus & the dorms are really small.. so they would recommend students commuting which can be such a dragg..
but the columbia/princeton/yale campuses were soo perfect.
haha the whole college visiting thing makes me worried-- theres a crazy number of smart people all around the world that want to go to the same colleges..

nyu is pretty prestigious; it's also ranked #1 by the princeton review this year for giving out the least financial aid. :(

one of my friends at columbia says that she was pretty appalled by the amount of dumb and apathetic people at columbia... ahah. it does have a beautiful campus though.. i do think there is someone on cb who's at columbia - heartquasm? i think her name's melissa.

pbear, what are you thinking about majoring in?

i mean, i want to do something medical and music (though apparently it's crazy to doublemajor at nwu), so northwestern is pretty ideal to me.

amherst is so pretty! my brother is there.. he loves it. not much sleep though, but he's happy. their financial aid sucks, though.

i'm thinking psychology to go into marketing later, but i'm so indecisive it's bound to change later. :/

Yeah.

Well, about the "dumb and apathetic" people, it really depends on what you're looking at. People have this notion that Columbia (along with other good schools) is filled with people who are very political, controversial, and above all, intelligent. However, while a lot of people ARE very involved, you always get your run of the mill "dumb and apathetic" people who don't do anything but party and get trashed every night of the week. It's to be expected on any college campus.


//edit// - and I read before that you were visiting Rice! I was part of the music preparatory program at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music back in high school. Their music program's pretty top notch. I don't remember what instrument you play, but if you're a piano major - there's this hidden hallway with 5-6 practice rooms and each of them have at least one Steinway grand. :D