25 Insane Reasons Why Kids Don't Like Certain Colleges

While parents work the waitlists, high school seniors agonize about where to send in their deposits. Students dutifully go on tours during admitted student events in hopes of achieving the clarity they need to make life-changing 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 margherita 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

 

 

 

Follow J.D. Rothman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/neurotic_parent

Comments

[irees]

03:02 PM on 05/14/2012

I'm on my fourth semester of college now, and I can actually vouch that these are real reasons. It's very much like when you're shopping around for a house. Even if it's a small thing, it can just upset the whole balance. You're spending four years at this place, doing practically everything and anything, at that awkward phase of transitioning into the real world. You better be picky about it.

[OliviaBolivia27]

06:16 PM on 04/25/2012

Most of these are not "ridiculous" at all. You're going to be spending four or more of the most formative years of your life there—not to mention a huge heap of money. You'll do yourself a favor by being picky and choosing wisely.

[Tovena Dan]

07:24 PM on 04/24/2012

Aversion to architecture is a valid reason. If you don't like your surroundings, you wont like your school. I hated NYU, because it lacked any aesthetic. A completely ugly place. Once I transferred uptown to Columbia, I felt much better. Although Columbia is no UVA or Princeton, at least it does have a campus.

[clarabellum]

02:54 PM on 04/24/2012

Emma Watson didn't transfer out, she just took a year abroad. Come to brown! We have a chipotle within walking distance and a moderate number of arches!

[Dom Saunders]

02:09 AM on 04/24/2012

Most of these reasons aren't insane at all. Before doing any lofty college shit you should at least LIKE the campus you're at first. The rest will follow over the years but that won't happen if you find the place dreadful. Just because a campus had several of its former students go on to become president doesn't guarantee that you would particularly like living there or taking classes there.

[Mites]

10:07 PM on 04/23/2012

I see your thinly veiled reference to Haverford College. People like black squirrels, dangit!

[wb052]

11:15 PM on 04/23/2012

my school had one to

[Herbert The Sack]

09:42 PM on 04/23/2012

#8 was definitely university of chicago. "we have a quidditch team" "we have houses" "we call our students 1st years-4th years instead of freshmen-seniors" "we modeled our dining hall after the same room the harry potter filmmakers did" to name a few...

[xrepublican]

04:50 AM on 04/25/2012

But Indiana Jones taught there - a total coolness factor that makes up for the Harry Potter references........

C H - Chicago, C H - Chicago - What's C H stand for? ......Methane....... any school with a cheer that nerdy has my respect.

[redwings1340]

08:10 PM on 04/23/2012

I think a lot of these reasons are more valid than you think. If you think about it, lots of colleges will give you very similar educations, so it's not like one choice is absolutely necessarily better than another. If you decided purely academically on colleges, then you would get deadlocked because there are a ton of good ones. In the end it is these intangibles that will make your decision, because if the education at 2 places are pretty much even, I'd rather go to someplace that has good food and nice weather than someplace that doesn't have these things. As a freshman now ending my year, I went my first year without knowing people and it really hurt. As a shy person, Its hard for me to get to know people, so going to a state college with my current friends may have been a better choice for me.

Then again, I decided against Saint Mary's because their tour was at 10:00 in the morning. This meant they were completely blind to student needs because they didn't realize that forcing students who lived an hour or more away to get up at 8:00 or even earlier was completely unnatural for the student. I also officially decided against UMBC (I already probably wasn't going to choose them) because their password requirements for their website was ridiculous, which means that they were run by an insane beurocratic system that cared way too much about security and too little about convenience.

[Warren Albee]

01:24 PM on 04/24/2012

A Modest Proposal. Well played , Sir. Journalism or Poly Sci major, with a minor in sacasm...I take it ? :0

[redwings1340]

02:37 PM on 04/24/2012

Um... actually, everything I said there is the complete truth. Nothing was meant to be sarcastic at all. My decision making about what college to attend is humorous but still actually true. Basically what I'm saying is that because there often are a lot of colleges you will succeed and be happy in, even the best thought process won't necessarily make a much better decision than a bad thought process. The speaker on my University of Maryland tour decided on UMD because it had the best donuts (or something like that, it was some food item) out of any school he toured. He is finding himself extremely successful at UMD and he loves the school. Bad reasoning won't necessarily make you make a bad choice, and you need to make a choice, so using silly reasons as a tiebreaker is not a terrible way to go.
Also, I have no idea what I'm majoring in. By the end of my third semester I will have taken 3 religion classes, 3 comp sci classes, and 3 sociology classes, so yeah, I don't really have a plan.

[clarabellum]

03:02 PM on 04/24/2012

This is so valid. I mean, no one is going to choose to go to community college over Harvard just because they don't like red, but once you're comparing college that are all on the same intellectual plane, the little details matter. I crossed Swarthmore off my list because the dining hall was in a basement. Seriously.

[James Shaver]

02:55 PM on 04/23/2012

you forgot, "the students are too pretty or not pretty enough" and, "ugly clothes at the school bookstore" if you don't have nice swag for prospective students to buy then you're out of luck, they want to flaunt more than anything.

[ManuOB1]

06:02 AM on 04/20/2012

No. 15 could only have been answered by New Yorkers who think "Upstate" means Yonkers.

No. 20 puts throws doubt on the entire list, as I'll bet not one of the students ever heard of, much less watched "Deliverance".

[Jen Voci]

06:42 PM on 04/25/2012

Your first statement is so true.

[standard]

05:11 AM on 04/20/2012

"Aversion to school colors."

School colors are something you'll live with for the rest of your life. Folks select schools for even more-insane reasons: because they have low nominal tuition (without considering the financial assistance available or the added earning power and ease of landing a job with a degree from a better school), because they have winning basketball teams, or because they have curricula designed to preserve (not challenge) their students' existing beliefs. Not making maroon and gold or lavender an indelible part of your life if you don't have to strikes just me as just as reasonable as selecting a college because it's someplace sunny or nearby.

[MamaBird62]

09:40 PM on 04/19/2012

My son is a guide-in-training at his school, I'll have to share this. That job might be more important than he realizes!

[Arrive2 net]

07:14 PM on 04/19/2012

Because they called me a "kid"?

[Ppenguinator]

05:41 PM on 04/19/2012

Not knowing anyone and lack of vegan food seem like pretty good reasons to me.

[MamaBird62]

09:38 PM on 04/19/2012

The point of college is to make new friends and expand your horizons. My son knew no one at his college and now almost at the end of freshman year he's happy as a clam. As for the food, obviously your health needs must be met but food will never be the thing that matters to you 5 or 10 years after your graduate.

[imokit]

10:55 AM on 04/23/2012

If you can't eat food you like, then that has a major impact on mood and happiness. Maybe its just me, but when I've lived far away from shops with veggie food I like (tofu etc), I find life harder.

[LALine]

04:46 PM on 04/19/2012

Friend's daughter refused to get out of car at one because someone honked at her mom in the parking lot.