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Aha! I have returned from another college visit trip!
Let's run over what we know already, first, in the order that I've visited them.
a) Cornell University. It's in a nice town, a little preppy and a little Ivy for my taste, but it seemed like it would be a lot of fun and also had fine arts and communications programs. Life is happy there. YES, I will apply.
b) Johns Hopkins University. I thought it'd be like going home, because they're in charge of my beautiful CTY.
WRONG. It was small, snobbish, and in a rotten area.
Why in the hell are all the intelligent people preppies? More on this at the end of the email.
NO, I will not apply.
c) Boston University. (sigh of happiness) I love it. It had not only a LOT of campus life, cool-seeming people, AND a college of communications... but the campus was beautiful and it was in an upscale neighborhood and near other colleges. I did not feel threatened at all, and ... it was love, love I tell you... YES, I will apply.
THIS WEEK, on the COLLEGE CHRONICLES OF LEAH BUDIN... NEW YORK CITY.
In the order that we visited them. ("We" being me and my dad, and for the Columbia and Barnard, Valerie Howlett and her mom, yes, Ira, VALVAL was there)
a) NYU. Okay, we got there about three hours early, plus we got lost on a really hot and muggy day, so we were sweaty and irritible. We past a bunch of porn/tattoo shops and wound up sitting on the sketchy side of Washington Square Park with all of these scary people who looked like they were just WAITING to hit Dad up for money. (gasp) I was afraid. So anyway, Dad and I went on a quest for lunch, and walked into the OTHER side of the park. (applause) College kids! Children! People who looked like they could be my friends! Hippie skirts! A girl in a NIN shirt! I was home! Anyway, we got a great lunch for under $10 total (cheap!). I was starting to feel it. Getting the vibe, the feeling that if I stayed on the OTHER side of Washington Square Park, things could be OK.
Infosession: Really energetic hispanic-y looking guy (adorable!) who told us that those who didn't go to graduate school had a 98.6% employment rate after graduation, making an average of $43k starting salary. NOW THAT IS WHAT I WANT TO HEAR. Then he went on to tell us about internships (new york times! magazines! one-on-one work with artists in soho!), and how there weren't classes on Fridays so we could go to them then. ORGASM DEATH.
Tour: This poor girl with laringitis had to scream in order to be heard at a speaking voice. Poor dear. The campus is actually kind of self-contained, it is the "short and fat" campus as opposed to BU, which is the "long and skinny" campus.
Decision: Cool people, great internships, classes I'm interested in, almost gauranteed a job? Who are you kidding? You think I'm NOT going to apply here? YES, definitely.
b) COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. What is this crap?
Infosession. The guy, some pompous fellow, goes on about the history for about half an hour. "Alexander Hamilton and John Jay went here." Like we need to know. This had to be the worst infosession I'd ever been to. Then he went on to say it was the smallest Ivy, that it was the 3rd most competitive (after Harvard/Princeton), that about 9% of applicants got in Regular Decision (but about 35% Early Decision? what?). He says, "Well, there's always someone who says 'Is it better to get a B in an AP or an A in a regular course?' I always tell them, 'It's best to get the A in the AP!'" then laughs like this is somehow funny. Like that's easy. So essentially "none of you have a prayer" is the vibe I'm getting from this guy. He used ANNOYING colloquialisms (I can't spell) and I wanted to kick him. I drew a very nice fish in the blank paper at the end of the shiny book they'd given us. THen I look up to the doorway, and THERE IS VALERIE HOWLETT!!!! VALVAL!!! (For the lost: one of my CTY friends).
Tour: Valerie and I laughed about how impossible it was while some ittybitty Asian girl hopped around, lost her sandals, and went on at hyperspeed about all the buildings. The girl was precious and I wanted whatever she was on. She informed us that just about all the students got their well-rounded liberal-arts education at Columbia then went on to grad school from there. The campus was conventionally nice, a lot of green space and big BLOCKISH BUILDINGS, but I'd rather have something more eclectic and intricate. And I'd also like more interesting landscaping. But it was the pure futility and obnoxiousness of the aura that made me make the following decision:
NO. God. Up yours, too. There's no way I'm putting up with the core curriculum for four years in order to proceed to four MORE years of college. I'm going to go to a college that'll give me the possibility of landing a REAL JOB sometime after graduation.
Lunch at a place where the chicken wrap tasted like the way I'd imagine nail polish remover to taste. I have no idea what they put in there.
c) BARNARD COLLEGE. Okay, by this point I was ready to just get the interview and blow it all off. But then I walked inside.
It was heavenly. Really nice. It was like walking into another world, a beautiful, feminine, green world. There was grass, and landscaping, and little stone pathways between the buildings, and trees, and a GREENHOUSE ON TOP OF ONE OF THE BUILDINGS. As I'm sure Jes would say if she were here, "The Goddess was there." (Goddess being of course the pagan "mother nature.") How appropriate. (It's an all-girls school.) We walked into the waiting room and they had cookies and the girls that worked there were giggling and chatting it up.
Interview: It was more like a conversation. I don't know why I was so nervous. I didn't even need my resumé. I think it went rather well. ("Describe... Trucksville?" "Trucksville is a speck off a small town that's a suburb of a city you've most likely never heard of." "What city?" "Wilkes-Barre." "...Nope.") ("Wyoming Seminary is neither a seminary nor in Wyoming, actually...") ("What have you been doing this summer so far?" "Uh, vacation with parents, hanging out with local Trucksville friends, you know, the seeing of videos and .... bowling..." "Bowling?" "Yeah, actually, my friend's applying for citizenship and another friend told her in order to be a proper American she'd have to go bowling...")
Infosession/Tour: This is a good idea, having a longer tour into which the infosession is incorporated. We walked around the adorable campus and she told us about how the cafeteria was UNDER the quad "but the ground slopes so there are actually windows facing out", how there were underground tunnels, how close-knit an atmosphere it was, about their core curriculum(thankfully, considerably LESS obnoxious than Columbia's), etc etc and led us into the classrooms were were small and reminiscent of CTY. (Everyone sat around tables. Why does no one do this at Sem? It's a really great way to conduct a class.)
Conclusion: This gets the ValVal/LeeLee brownie-point thumbs-up for campus and curriculum (they have lots of internships and an "english writing" major, and are actually known for churning out strong woman authors TA DA). Gorgeous campus.
NEW YORK CITY CONCLUSION: As the song goes... "two out of three ain't bad." (I would never use "ain't" out of context, I promise.)
I hate the subway. It's hot, smells bad, and is crammed full of miserable-looking, apathetic people. I am afraid of getting trapped down there and dying down there. I am afraid of catching all sorts of nasty germs from the handrails. It's okay though. I can deal with it if I must.
Even my DAD said I could go to either of the two. "They actually seemed pretty safe." He's MISTER OCD, WORRYWART, AND FREAKOUT; therefore, they're really safe.
So now we're going to sit down. We have: Cornell, Boston, Barnard, NYU.
Putting them in order:
Boston: Still my favorite. Such a nice neighborhood.
NYU: Closer, probably better job, but I just don't love it as much.
Barnard: Beautiful campus, pretty much at a tie with NYU. Maybe a little below because of Harlem (even though it's six streets away), and it's further away from the fun cheap stuff.
Cornell: Not that there's anything wrong with it, but it isn't appealing to me as much as the other three. Still an option.
Comments, questions, yelling?