The College Tour, 2005

Happy Birthday-plus-four Henrik! Cool/auspicious October 22 events:

1746 - The College of New Jersey (later renamed Princeton University) receives its charter.

1844 - The Great Disappointment: the second coming of Jesus and the end of the World failed to take place, despite the predictions of William Miller, disillusioning many adherents of Millerism.

1924 - Toastmasters International is founded

1966 - The Supremes become the first all-female music group to attain a No. 1 selling album (The Supremes A' Go-Go).

1969 - Led Zeppelin release the classic album Led Zeppelin II, featuring the hit single "Whole Lotta Love."

OK, so I'm back, and my photos are now flooding the photobucket (I didn't compress them or anything - hopefully they haven't turned out really massive like those other ones I posted). Man, it was a crazy trip. Although it was pretty awesome to meet three TASPers! Matt, touring Princeton was great, especially the Princeton Record Exchange, which brought back sweet memories of Wazoo, Schoolkids, and Encore. Henrik, it was a pleasure to hang out at Cornell with you and your dad; someday I'm going to have to come out and see Middlebury in all its glory. Dylan, meeting you for dinner at Harvard Square was a major highlight of the trip (partly because it was the best meal we had all week - excellent restaurant recommendation!) Sorry we had to leave so early : (. I wanted to stay around longer and meet your family and everything, but my dad and my sister were utterly trashed (as I think I mentioned, we spent the previous night sleeping in our car in a parking lot in rural New Hampshire, in the most insane leg of the entire jouirney). But Harvard really won me over, so I may be back in another year or so . . .

Anyway, here's the report (you asked for it, Jason!), with brief notes on colleges and interesting tidbits:

Duke - big emphasis on interdisciplinary studies (i.e. it's really easy to double major), study abroad (engineers get to do it too!) and undergrad research. Academics seem comparable to Ivies; big campus with lots of Gothic architecture. I give it a thumbs-up.

Fun Fact: One of the university buildings is nicknamed The Pickle.


Princeton - pretty tiny school, the smallest I saw on this trip - sounds like they have killer academics, tiny classes, big emphasis on undergrad programs, more than graduate ones, so you can take classes from Nobel laureates as freshmen. Not bad. But I'm not sure I'll apply - there's hardly any Mormon community there, and that's something that's important to me.

Fun Fact: Well, the gargoyle, but you can see that on the photobucket. Um . . . the School of Architecture is generally agreed to be the ugliest building on campus.


Cornell - a little disappointing. Seems like an all-around good school, but nothing specific really stands out. It's also a pretty gigantic school for an Ivy, so you don't get the ultra-tiny feel of Princeton or even Duke. Their engineering program looks strong, I guess . . . it didn't really win me over, frankly. If I went, I would go only for Telluride House (see below).

Fun Fact: somebody once stuck a giant pumpkin on top of the Cornell Chime. They still don't know who or how.


Special Report on Telluride House: Henrik and I took the tour and had dinner with the Cornellers. It was a strangely un-TASP-like experience. Unlike our little semi-monastic thing where we had to stick together all the time, the Cornellers seemed to be pretty much doing their own thing. So there wasn't a real tight sense of community like we had. Also, we had a pretty eccentric tour guide. He obviously hadn't planned any kind of tour, so we just kind of wandered around, with long, awkward silences between his comments, e.g.

"This is the living room."
*long silence*
"I guess there isn't much else to say about it."

However, he did take a break from the tour to tell us all about Eradisz (sp.? some famous Hungarian mathematician) numbers, which are rather complicated and have to do with co-publishing research papers (I can give you full details later if you're interested). Also, we got to see the laundry room (there was a sign on the door that said DO NOT ENTER - SATAN LIVES HERE), where we were shown a two-year supply of laundry detergent and toilet paper. The toilet paper was Main Street brand - according to one Corneller, "the most private of papers in the most public of places."

By this time, my dad was totally weirded out, and I must say I was a little disturbed myself. But we had a really interesting dinnertable discussion, and it turned out that the Cornellers were extremely intelligent and fun to be around, if a little quirky. So . . . it was definitely an interesting experience. If any of you are passing through Ithaca (on your way to, um . . . nowhere?) you should definitely drop by and get a taste for yourself.

Wow, that was a pretty long-winded report. Anyway . . .

McGill - Big and cold, but smack in the middle of Montreal, a pretty ill city. Looks like they have solid academics, programs in just about everything, and plenty of chances for me to ameliorer mon Francais, although, w/ 32000 students, it looks like the kind of place where you could get lost in the crowd. Also, Inexpensive! Well, relatively. I heard you get tuition waived after your freshman year if you're in the top 10% of your class, and even without that, it's less than half the price of American top-tier schools.

Fun Fact: the first president of the University was named George Jehosaphat Mountain.

Harvard - Won me over. Incredible academics (of course), but one thing that really got me was their exhaustive freshman rooming application - you have five pages to fill out about what kind of person you are, what kind of roommates you want, etc., and they spend all summer comparing apps to try and form perfect groups of roomates. I talked to a Harvard student who said this works out wonderfully. One thing that concerns me a little is their tiny engineering program (only 80(!) students), but that may just mean I get lots of tiny classes with great professors. Now I just have to get in . . .
Side Note: There was a Harvard-Princeton football game the afternoon I was in Cambridge, so we went and watched it. The Harvard fans sitting by us were yelling taunts at the Princeton fans across the field: "Safety school!"

Fun Fact: Harvard is a tourist madhouse! There were huge crowds all over the place, snapping pictures, etc. As a result, Harvard forbids any visitors from entering the dorms, many of the buildings, even the library!

MIT - Academics sound great (of course) - they have the best undergraduate research program I've ever seen, they emphasize inter-student cooperation in all homework assignments, they (interestingly) have a great music program which lots of people use for minors, double majors, etc. But apart from all this, MIT is an extremely cool place because it has a quirky attitude - they construct big cartoony buildings on campus, they use a funky logo, all their admissions materials poke fun at themselves. See also the photobucket, the "Secret Laboratory" shot. That's something you wouldn't see at most universities.

Fun Fact:
There are big tanks of liquid nitrogen everywhere in the hallways at MIT. Just sitting there.


So that was it. I still haven't decided which schools to cut from my application list, but that should happen within the next week or so . . . in the meantime, I am hoping jetlag will treat me kindly.

Rock on,

Sam