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Alright, we are home from a crazy whirlwind trip to Chicago to look at Northwestern, U of Chicago and DePaul. We happened to drive by Loyola too, by accident, so we covered four schools in one day!
Northwestern is a definite thumbs up. She loved the campus, loves what she hears from the tour guide, etc. In fact, our tour guide was Greek. I didn't get a chance to ask her which sorority she was in but I think she said she's on Panhellenic Council too. She said good things about Greek Life. We both liked the Evanston area a lot too, what we saw of it. We had an official info session and tour and Northwestern. We were a little late because we arrived at the car rental place only to find THEY HAD NO CARS. How ridiculous is that? We had to race several blocks to another location that had cars and wait in line, then got stuck in Chicago traffic with construction on I-94. Ugh. I was pretty stressed. She held it together pretty well.
Then we headed to DePaul and had lunch at a cute pub type place called El's Kitchen in the Sheffield Garden District. What a cute little area, even if there is NO parking! We had some great ribs, brisket and chicken- smoked. Yum. We drove around DePaul a little bit but didn't get out of the car. It's a safety school for her and she just wanted to make sure she wouldn't hate it. There were students hanging out all over and it looked like a good atmosphere.
On our way to the University of Chicago, we passed by Loyola. We're counting that as a 4th college visit in one day. It wasn't really on her list and driving past it didn't change her mind.
So we got to the University of Chicago. I can't put my finger on it, but I had a weird vibe about the area and the school itself. We parked and walked around for quite a while. We only saw about 20 students on a beautiful, sunny, Saturday afternoon. Where are all the students? The old buildings were incredible.. we thought we were at Hogwarts. Then we saw the very modern looking dorms and library and it seemed like such a strange dichotomy. Honestly, I was totally creeped out by some of the older buildings and just felt really unsettled walking around there. Some of it was pretty, some was really creepy. Then the almost art deco type dorms were weird. We heard cheering coming from a stadium and hypoallergenic said "So that's why we aren't seeing anybody! They are at a football game! It's not so weird then." We drove by that stadium and it was actually a soccer game, from what we could see. The stands weren't that full. We're still not sure where the students were. Do they all go home on weekends? She is very on the fence about that school. She isn't sure she should even apply, but then there are things she really likes. I think it's safe to say it slid pretty far down the list.
Right now, the top of the list seems to be a tie between Barnard and Northwestern. She said if she got accepted to both, she'd have a really hard time picking between them.
Brown is up there, Columbia is up there.
The bottom is a mess... lol. No idea whether she'd go with the University of Michigan over U-Chicago or even DePaul over U-Chicago.
She'll be finishing up her early action apps over the next two weeks.
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