Shopping for Colleges

(Raffi & Emily at Starbucks in Hyde Park.  The tea there was excellent, and the barista was so fun!)

Hi Friends,

As I mentioned yesterday, we spent most of Spring Break shopping for colleges.  As hard as it is to believe, my oldest, Emily, is going to be heading off to college in a year and a half.  Yeesh!  I have no idea how that happened!  Emily is one smart cookie, and she works incredibly hard.  Because of that, she has the luxury of choosing from pretty much any college she wants to attend.  Since we were spending the week in Chicago with my side of the family, we decided to check out some Illinois colleges. Emily set up one appointment for each day.  John would load us up, drive us to a campus, and drop us at a Starbucks while he found a parking spot.  It worked out perfectly!  : )

 First up:  University of Chicago.

The University of Chicago is a small, highly selective university located in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago.  We all thought the campus was completely lovely.  The admissions presentation took place in one of their old buildings right on the quad.  The woman who gave the admissions presentation was super-impressive.  Our tour guide was nice, but the groups were HUGE, so it was hard to hear some of what she was saying.  I thought the overall tone of University of Chicago was "serious".  I could definitely see Emily there for med school.

School #2:  Northwestern:

 (Raffi, Emily, & Maddie at the Starbucks in Evanston.)

Northwestern is a small Big Ten University located 12 miles north of Chicago in the suburb of Evanston, Illinois.  Holy cow!  We all loved Northwestern!!  The campus is lovely, and it's located right on Lake Michigan.  Our tour guide, Katherine, was definitely impressive.  She completely sold us on Northwestern.  As of right now, it's Emily's first choice.

 Northwestern is a nice mix of old, impressive buildings, and lots of new technology.

 And the views of the lake and the city are beautiful:

 We had lunch at Edzo's, per Katherine's suggestion.  It was so good.  I highly recommend the buffalo fries.

Day #3:  Loyola University.

 (Raffi & Emily at the Starbucks inside of the local Dominick's.)

Of the four schools we toured last week, the only one Emily isn't interested in at all is Loyola.  We went to Loyola not knowing much about it and discovered the admissions standards are a little lower than Emily is looking for.  On the plus side, the campus is even more on Lake Michigan than Northwestern.  Gosh!  It was so pretty there!

Maddie really liked the feel of Loyola--she loved that it was built right into the city.  Maybe she'll end up there one day!

Day 4:  University of Illinois

Okay, okay.  I know Emily didn't really need to do a campus visit at Illinois (John & I both graduated from there, and she's been on campus dozens of times already), but I really wanted her to do an official visit, so we headed down to Champaign on Thursday.

 Hands down, Illinois had the best admissions presentation of the bunch.  I was so proud of everyone who represented my Alma Mater.  I don't think Emily is going to pick a huge university (Illinois has 35,000 undergraduates), but I'm glad she got to hear and see everything that was available in case she decides she is interested.  The Business School at the University of Illinois is one of the best in the nation, so I'm trying to convince Raffi to study abroad there when she's in college.  I'd love it if one of them ended up there!  : )

The bonus of our day in Champaign was that we got to see our friends, Tony, Denise, and Isabella.  Jack and Maddie skipped the campus tour to play with Isabella.  Denise treated us to Papa Dells for dinner.  It was a perfect day.  And just in case you thought I didn't take any pictures of John and Jack this week, here's one of my guys wearing their Illini gear:

Hooray for campus visits.  In case you're keeping score, Northwestern is definitely in the lead.

XO,

Vicki