Having a genuine business bias and feeling an association with Penn coming out of the fact that Jon Huntsman, once Utah's richest man, is a graduate of Wharton, I expected to be impressed with Penn. I also hoped Dayton would be.What we got, was a somewhat underwhelming showing. The school is a great school on paper, but the campus's little enclave in West Philly doesn't have a traditional campus feel. Despite the avowed diversity of the student body, we also saw a lot of people from the Philadelphia area.
The campus visit will only be one factor in Dayton's considerations. He likes the location in Philadelphia, not being a real fan of small town campuses. He remains very interested in applying to Penn, but won't likely apply for early decision. We also visited Princeton today. (We saw another family working the same schedule doing the tours and information sessions with us at both campuses.)
Having never been to Princeton and not being able to name a single person I know who attended there, I didn't have a well defined image of Princeton. I couldn't have been more impressed. The campus and the town are beautiful. Dayton liked everything he heard, including information about the oldest debate program in the country, dating back to the days of James Madison. He also liked that the faculty is required to teach undergraduate courses. He was not scared by the senior thesis requirement, but seems genuinely excited about it.
It is too early for Dayton to decide, but he's thinking about applying to Princeton on the early decision cycle this fall--if not, he'll certainly apply on the regular schedule.
Do you have any tips for Dayton or feedback on his first impressions?
Get online and talk to other people about their experience there. Get the real story. even if it is a great school with great education, you may not really "fit" at a place you think you might fit.
My good friend thought he was going to end up at Columbia, so he went to New York to visit. He also visited NYU and the people there. He walked around that part of town, etc... He came back and just felt like he fit with NYU.
It sounds like he was intrigued by Princeton.
Posted by: Russell | July 21, 2006 2:19 PM | Permalink to Comment