College Shopping

My son turns eighteen in two days. To celebrate his entry to adulthood, we’ve begun visiting colleges.

Correction - we officially started last March, when we attended our first open house at a small private college in Maine. Their brochure showed an idyllic campus on a hill overlooking a lake, and described a vibrant community of collaborative learners.

We arrived to find a small, hodgepodge assortment of modern buildings, and a lake nowhere in sight. If there hadn’t been a sign announcing the institution’s name, I would not have guessed it was a college. It was cold, and muddy, and everyone was wearing a perfectly plastic open house smile.

That day students matter-of-factly explained that athletic seasons are brief because of cold, field labs are limited due to ice, and Biology majors mostly study “dead animals.” As we walked the campus and my skepticism mounted, a car roared up next to us, radio blaring, and a young woman hopped out, smoking from a hookah. We retreated to the dining hall for lunch, and when my cheeseburger-loving teenager realized all the offerings were vegetarian he exclaimed, wide-eyed, “I don’t think this is a fit for me.” I tried to convincingly ask “Are you sure, honey,” taking his arm and heading for the car.

A line of bearded men on motorcycles sped past us as we exited, and I wondered aloud where they were going. A few minutes later we rounded a bend in the highway and noticed all the choppers neatly lined up in the parking lot of long, single story building with a sign that read, “Topless Coffeehouse.” Until that moment, I didn’t know such a thing existed, particularly not in a small, seemingly idyllic college town in mid-state Maine. But it does, and you won’t read about it in any brochures.

So last week we re-started our college visits and where did we go but…back to Maine, the day after its residents voted down the right to gay marriage. Why gay marriage is clearly wrong but a topless coffeehouse fine escapes me.

This time we drove even further north, and when we arrived on campus, a cold gust of wind blew the car door shut before I could get out – an omen? We walked around, and once again found ourselves shivering in the cold amidst a small hilltop collection of academic buildings. This wasn’t an open house, but a visit we had personally arranged so that we could sit in on classes, observe faculty and students during a regular school day, and attend a soccer game.

At this school we learned that Marine Biology majors had rescued at stranded (living) porpoise from the shore the previous evening. We saw plenty of animal remains, too, notably the skeleton of a 40-foot humpback whale whose carcass a professor had hauled in from the beach. Even though it was early November, and the temperature was below freezing, the soccer team practiced, outside, and invited my son to play with them. And the dining hall offered plenty of non-vegetarian options. As we returned to the motel that evening, my son said, “my head is spinning,” but he was beaming.

We were still treated with marketing smiles and glowing statements about how great the school is. But I highly recommend doing your college research in person, rather than relying on pretty pamphlets, the dog and pony shows sponsored by admissions offices and even the data on www.collegeboard.com. Maybe all my journalism classes have gotten me thinking that everything needs to be fact-checked, but once you start the college application process as a parent, you quickly realize that colleges are corporations and admissions officers its sales reps. And eighteen year olds, as experienced as they are, still need some help with their shopping.