I’m beginning to suspect that you own stock in U of H.
Loved it: a small community, well connected alumni. A school with History (this is their bicentennial year). Far from home, snow in the winter. Challenging academically, but gave me the option to explore a lot of different academic areas - I changed majors 3 times. I got out from my older siblings’ shadows and learned who I was. I gained a lot of confidence in myself.
Hated: COLD winters. Waterville, Maine is not exactly (or wasn’t, in the early 90s) a hotbed of any kind of diversity. Expensive - I’m still paying student loans, and I’m almost 20 years out.
Would I do it again? Maybe. With grad school I learned that the huge state schools are not the scary places I thought they were, if you have a community within the university. Of course, learning that at 30 was easier than learning it at 17 might have been. But financially I’d be better off if I’d gone to a less expensive school.
University of Wisconsin for the win! I graduated in 2000, El Hubbo in 2001. I graduated with a BS in English, Technical Writing minor (or certificate, in Madison language) and currently work as a technical writer; El Hubbo graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering and currently works as an automation engineering consultant. So perhaps we’re outliers, but what we studied closely matches up with what we’re currently employed doing.
Love, love, love Madison. I started my college career at Marquette University in Milwaukee, which I do have a soft spot for, but Madison’s got my love. World-class academics, really excellent Engineering department, all in a town that has delusions of grandeur - Madison’s not that big, but likes to preen like it’s a big city. So if you’re from a smaller place, Madison’s big enough to feel like “the city” while still being small enough that you’re not lost in it. The school itself is big, to be sure, but there’s lots of opportunities to find your niche and not get swallowed up.
Lots of activities to get involved in. Lots of beautiful places to relax. Lots of fun to be had. Just lots. The liberalism can be a bit much - a friend of mine transferred to UWM in Milwaukee because she couldn’t take it - but it didn’t bother me (probably because I lean that way already).
Middle Tennessee State University stinks.
Teaching/Nursing/Business.
Nickname: Apathy U. We’d move up to a better football conference, but the student body is so apathetic, they actually could not give away enough tickets to fill the stadium to 25% of capacity. The place is a ghost town on weekends. Even the campus bar is empty, everybody goes home.
In Winter, the second nickname, Marshy Tundra-Swamp Uniformly applies. Inadequate drainage turns soil to soup, & frozen ice on top of mud cuts through your socks like a razor. Draws blood.
I can’t recall the school colors, and I graduated from MTSU.
But hey–it’s cheap.
I went to Kansas State (http://www.k-state.edu/) and that was my experience. I loved it.
I majored in medieval and Renaissance literature. I’m kinda-sorta using it now as a technical editor for software, or at least the fact that I had an English degree got me in the door. My parents were both language teachers, so I’m pretty good with a blue pen!
Well, my undergradute university was in West Texas, and while I liked it, I would not wish Texas on anyone, especially that corner of it.
I went to Louisiana State University. I loved it- a great big school with a surprisingly pleasant campus and a pretty diverse student body. The Greek culture is there but it doesn’t dominate- maybe 15% or so of students are in a fraternity or sorority. It’s also pretty inexpensive (or at least it was in the late 90s), even for out-of-state students. A lot of Texans enrolled because LSU was cheaper for them than UT.
I think undergrad doesn’t really matter much, to be frank- if a student gets excellent grades at pretty much any school, his or her prospects afterwards, whether for graduate school or for work, will be good. I’m glad I picked a school that didn’t break the bank for my folks, and didn’t rack up debt for me- as well as giving me a good mix of the social and academic life that I needed.
I liked my university. I liked to hang out in the bar and do my homework. The downtown campus is very beautiful. Even sometimes now, I like to go back there and lie in the shade of the tulip tree.
I haven’t used my music degree for all that much, but I did enjoy studying at McGill.
The University of Chicago, where fun goes to die. I went there, and it was OK for fun. Too bad your daughter missed out on the Lascivious Costume Ball years. Oh, a quick check of wiki shows that it is back in business as of 2008. A bit toned down, though.
+2. +1 for Michigan, +1 for the RC. 
U of C - proof that hell really does freeze over. The self hatred there matches that at MIT, so I liked the place immediately.
I could go into detail about may days at California-Berkeley, but very little about what it was like when I was there (hint: the phones in the dorms still had dials) still applies - for example, while I was a Computer Science major, back then it meant “everybody sits in front of monochrome terminals where the ‘graphics’ were whatever you could make from the characters on the keyboard” and, with three of four exceptions, everything was done in Pascal.
However, one thing is still true: if you are pretty much any sort of physical science major, most of your classes will be uphill, especially if you live in the “popular” dorms. (There is one dorm where half of the rooms look over over San Francisco Bay without any other tall buildings in the way.)
Then again, if you’re not a California resident, the tuition is rather steep for a public school.
I went to the Illinois Institute of Technology from 1993-1997. Hated it. It was a school geared towards post-graduate education, so that’s where the vast majority of the resources went. Awesome if you are there for a Master’s degree or Doctorate in Engineering, not so awesome if you are just a lowly undergrad. Not that they didn’t charge you any less!
Hopefully things have gotten better over the years.
I go to a community college, which is (presumably) a far-cry away from the public Ivy that I almost went to after I graduated from high school.
I have no opinion about my school; it’s a community college, and it’s cheap, and that’s all that really matters to me.
I’ll tell anybody to disregard college names and prestige and whatnot and always opt for whichever school will cost the least amount of money. When I finish school altogether in a few years I might have a different POV, but I doubt it.
My own college experience was too long ago to be of relvence, however I recently went through the process with my son. The whole process is incredibly more involved than in my day. (I don’t recall my parents being more than marginally involved other than to set cost parameters).
We visited a variety of schools of varied size, type and geography. One good bit of advice we got was to try visiting some close-to-home schools -even if not interested- to get a sense of the “type” small/large/public/private/urban/rural and help narrow the field.
After a few trips and my son fell in love with Duke. We visited, he visited a few times, stayed with some kids and thought it was perfect. He got in early decision, we shipped him off in August and by the time Christmas rolled around he was so miserable that I felt awful sending him back for Spring semester. I know that kids often have trouble adjusting to school initially, so we gave it some time. I could get into specifics - if you’re interested - but suffice to say it was just not a good fit after all. So, as a “team”, we did all this research and travelling and provided support – and “failed”.
Lessons learned: Your child will never really know until he/she gets there; Medium sized universities are still awfully big compared to high school; It’s hard to get the lowdown on the social life over a weekend (it all looks like fun to a kid); Don’t be afraid to admit a mistake.
After a lot of discussion, he transferred to Kenyon College this past fall (small liberal arts college) and is much happier. Counter-intuitively, he’s found greater diversity of intellectual thought and stimulation in a small rural Ohio town.
Depends. A lot of companies have lists of schools they recruit from, and if you go to a school not on that list getting a job there is going to be a lot more difficult.
It also depends on your goal for going to college. If it is getting a degree with the least amount of effort, it probably makes sense to go cheap. If you are interested in a bit broader education going to a school with well known professors may pay off - they do actually talk to undergrads, though you need to try hard.
Lots of top schools have amazing alumni networks. State schools especially have this - there seem to be some people who are alumni who will give preferential treatment to fellow alumni.
Some schools have halo effects also, and the average person will give you extra credit for graduating from there. I’ve seen this a lot. In fact I got a good assistantship in grad school pretty much because I went to MIT, not because I was so brilliant there.
I don’t like to give out too many personal details, but I went to one of the Patriot League universities in the Northeast. Basically they are private universities with a similar “scholar-athlete” culture to the Ivy Leagues. Or IOW they are slightly less prestigious than the Ivy’s and they suck at most sports compared to schools in major sports conferences.
It’s been about 15 years, but I would describe them as relatively conservative with a homogenous entitled preppy white affluent fraternity jock culture. Sort of like a cross between Animal House and a Bret Easton Ellis novel. Very pretty campuses. Lots of drinking and minor drug use. Kind of the place where you go to be yourself with people who are just like you.
Florida State University. You get far more of a 4 seasons climate than you will in other parts of Florida.
I majored in economics and political science. I’m using the economics degree to work in the financial markets.
Back when I went, there was a disconnect between students who lived on campus and those who didn’t. I never lived on campus, but I understand they’ve upgraded the dorms.
I was very interested in politics, and being in the state capitol certainly helped. Many of my freshman classes were taught by TA’s but as I learned the names of good professors, I went out of my way to register for their classes. My adviser was pretty high up in the College of Social Sciences, so he could help you out if you had a good reason for wanting a particular course section. If you wanted to take a class by professor X, that was considered a good reason.
There wasn’t much culture in Tallahassee, but I had friends involved in music and art. I enjoyed the college life more once I turned 21, there were plenty of bars around with cold beer, and the Thursday-Sunday party life was common.
I tend to believe the negative people in this thread rather than the positive ones.
Mr. Q graduated 20 years ago and still wears that T-shirt.
I also went to Chicago and don’t disagree with what other posters have said. I think I went to maybe 4 honest-to-god parties during my college career and didn’t have a drink until about 10 days after my 21st birthday because I just had too much going on until then to take time to celebrate. That was all fine with me. I enjoyed my classes, made some good friends (including the one I married), was involved with some extra-curriculars (swim team, mostly), and loved living in Chicago. The biggest con for me was that I had trouble going from being one of a handful of bright kids in HS to being one of a whole campus full of bright people in college. Other people might not like the fact that there aren’t any “practical” fields of study - it’s all liberal arts (no engineering or business or whatever) - but as an academic snob, I was all about that.