As some of you may have seen on FB, we did our first college tour this weekend. We chose Conn College, as it's close to home and a NESCAC school (which is the kind of school I see Elizabeth attending). She has NO desire to go to Conn, so we used this as a practice run - see what a tour is like, start figuring out likes and dislikes, etc. It was a great first experience! The tour guide was great and if she couldn't answer something, she directed us to the section of the Web site that would give us our answers. The campus seemed quite quiet - we hardly saw anyone other than other tours - so I don't know if they were on break or kids were all just in their rooms (it was a snowy Saturday afternoon). And very gray, as the majority of the buildings are granite (and again, a gray snowy day). That being said, it got us all a little more excited (especially Elizabeth) and a little less anxious (us!) about the process and college in general.
We tour UConn Avery Point this afternoon, which is high on E's list (she's leaning towards marine bio/marine sci), but again - it's really close to home and I think we all see her going away to school. We'll see how it goes!
Quick follow up after the Avery Point tour. This is definitely not the school for Elizabeth. She quickly realized she doesn't want to go to a commuter school. Also, a stark difference in the tour quality vs. the one we had at Conn College. This tour guide was very low energy and possibly thought it was a tour for accepted students, as his focus was on a lot of nitty-gritty details (how to get a parking pass, how to sign up for gym time, how to get tickets to basketball games at Gampel, etc). The highlight was definitely seeing the beautiful marine sciences building and having a professor come out of her office and chat with the group, but overall, we left disappointed.
This is all great info! We are touring Roger Williams University, URI and UConn during Spring Break. I wish Avery was interested in going brother but wants to stay within 2-3 hr max. Same interesting in major as E so this was but good to stay in touch.
