Consumer Escapes - College Visits

This blog has been dark for awhile. Why? The key escape, vacation. But as we've all come to learn you have to jam in a bunch of work before vacation. Try to escape when on vacation. And then pay the price in emails/mail/voice mails when you return. Unfortunately my blog got shoved aside in the process.

So what was this vacation? I billed it as an epic college tour. A chance to expose our two high-school daughters to some great schools and great settings. On day one we left our home in Michigan and drove to Ithaca, NY with a brief stop on the way to ride the Maid of the Mist at Niagara Falls. The next day we took the student tour of Cornell University. More than just naturally beautiful Cornell comes across as a friendly and approachable place to be tested academically.

Next we were off to Saratoga Springs, NY one of my favorite places for a true "daily double." We had effectively a private tour of Skidmore College followed by a day at the races. Skidmore presents itself under the banner "Creative Thought Matters." I love that theme and how it intersects with today's world of media arts. We put our theories into practice at the track and proudly lost every race.


Back roads took us across the Berkshires to bucolic Williamstown and Williams College. Here the old (1793) is beautifully integrated with the new (see Paresky Student Center.) Williams was a great representative of a classic small, New England liberal arts college.

Just when I'd though I'd never seen so much purple, a short drive on Friday took us to Amherst College. Oh my lucky daughters as they got to take in another premier institution on a picture-perfect day. I will let the words of an Amherst past president paint a picture:

“The college is called liberal… because the instruction is dominated by no special interest, is limited to no single human task, but is intended to take human activity as a whole, to understand human endeavors not in their isolation but in their relations to one another and to the total experience which we call the life of our people.” 

— Alexander Meiklejohn, President, 1912-1924

 My portion of the tour ended on Saturday in Hanover, New Hampshire at yet another world-class institution, Dartmouth College. Dartmouth's noon tour drew so many students that the walking tour was students-only. I'm a proud Penn grad but have to admit that the Dartmouth environment and facilities were very attractive.

What a week. I was able to relive my youth a little bit while watching my daughters take in the possibilities of where they might go to college. I say possibilities as my daughters found delight in every one of these schools while calmly recognizing that only a small fraction (say 10%) of applicants are admitted. For a year now I've been blogging about great escapes. Add a big one to the list and go visit a nearby or far away college campus. For those who graduated decades ago - even the food is great.