Out and About: California college tour

Way back in the last century, my father, a teacher at Eastern Washington University in Cheney, WA, let me know that I could go to any college I wanted to: as long as it was located in Washington state and was a public institution. With an older brother and sister already attending the University of Washington, we simply didn't have the funds for any other type of choice.

I remember briefly considering The Evergreen State College, but having visited my siblings in Seattle, I was pretty excited about moving to a big city and experiencing all that it had to offer. So, off to the University of Washington I went.

Suddenly, my first-born is 17, a high-school senior and in the thick of choosing a college. Somewhere along the line (that trip to LEGOLAND when he was eight years old?) my son has developed an all-consuming passion for everything 'California.' This has led him to pore over the Fiske Guide to Colleges, along with the website Niche, and the U.S News Best Colleges guidebook. He is planning to study Business in college, and with his determination of 'California' as the place to go to college, he came up with a detailed list of schools he wanted to visit.

His dedication to attending a quality school has also led him to sign up for multiple Advanced Placement courses, take multiple AP Placement Tests, and to spend the past spring and summer diligently studying to take the SAT and ACT exams. He did very well on his AP tests, as well as the other exams, and so we planned a trip to California to check things out.

Our schedule was ambitious and entirely prepared by my son. We flew out of Walla Walla on Wednesday, landing in sunny and hot Los Angeles.

Our first visit was the next morning at Chapman University in Orange, CA. We visited the cute little downtown of Orange that night and had a nice make-your-own pizza and salad dinner at a restaurant populated by college students.

Chapman is a private school founded in 1861 and has 8,000 students. Their business program was highly rated and the campus itself was compact and tidy. Our tour guide was an international student from South Africa who among other things shared that if one sat in the lap of the founder's statue, one could have a perfect view of the Disneyland fireworks every evening at 9:30 p.m.

Our next stop was at the University of Southern California. This tour began in a lecture hall and included a very mannered presentation by a Junior student majoring in vocal performance. He shared details about the admissions process with a wry aside about their recent admissions scandals. The tour itself was quite astounding to this small-town gal!

The hustle and bustle of the campus itself cannot be downplayed. All of the buildings seemed brand new and were all labeled in large signage announcing the names of the donors who supported them. Students on bikes and skateboards constantly whizzed past.

The information shared by our tour-leader was designed to impress, highlighting the many industry connections available at the school (Adobe, Apple, Comcast/NBCUniversal, Intel, Yahoo, etc.) and the many famous donors and alumnae. Particularly impressive was the USC School of Cinematic Arts complex, with halls named for Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. A wall of fame highlighted every Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Academy Awards) winner affiliated with the school. Another rotunda featured every NCAA and Olympic athlete award winner with connections to the school. With 20,000 undergraduates and 27,000 graduate students and an incoming freshman class acceptance rate of 16%, I was more than a little intimidated by the size, glamour and sheer glitz of the place. Of course, my son was besotted.

The next morning found us at Pitzer College, one of the Claremont Colleges. In comparison to USC it seemed quaint and tiny! Their commitment to environmental and interdisciplinary studies, along with the opportunity for students to access courses at the other six colleges was impressive. My son dubbed it "quaint."

Next up was a four-hour drive to Claremont, CA. for a guide-free tour of California Polytechnic University. We arrived on the Friday of Family Weekend and there were plenty of parents and their students walking about. Without a guide to provide information we felt pretty aimless - I did score some free ice cream at a table that I was sure was meant for parents with students actually attending the school.

Our final tour was of Santa Clara University. My son had been unable to schedule a tour in advance, but I encouraged him to let me check in at the Admissions office where we were happily added to a tour that was just about to begin. Lured by its proximity to Silicon Valley, my son had been intrigued by the entrepreneurial mindset and internship opportunities it promoted. Touted as the 5th best Catholic University in the U.S., their undergraduate enrollment stands at 5500. The 106-acre campus included the sixth Santa Clara Mission. The guide told a rather interesting tale of the previous five church buildings from the original structure in 1861, to subsequent buildings lost to floods, and fires. The current building, constructed in 1926, features a neo-colonial style.

Our last stop was a giant shopping mall, where my logo-obsessed boy had his choice of over 200 stores. Phew!

I've yet to properly download his impressions and ideas from this college tour; I did share with him how different my college selection "process" was, and how different my educational goals were. Where my son is motivated by earning a high salary, I was interested in studying creative writing. Further, attending any one of these California schools will involve some creative economic alchemy; his attendance will require a mix of merit aid, financial aid, loans and work study. His "safety" schools in Washington state, may yet become appealing to him.