I recently completed a six school in five days college road trip with my younger daughter and had a few eye opening moments. Due to her desired major it was an odd grouping of schools: North Florida, Florida State, UGA, Coastal Carolina, UNC Wilmington and George Mason. Here are some of those observations:
One additional observation is UGA (Athens) was the only school even close to PSU as far as being a college town. Really enjoyed the downtown restaurants, bars and stores.
- Colleges have more money than they know what to do with. Every place had major construction going on building new dorms, new academic buildings and new athletic facilities. CCU just put in a brand new "teal turf" for football and expanded their baseball stadium.
- If any school has a "sports culture" problem it is FSU as they have an entire facility just for their women's volleyball team. The name on the building confirmed this.
- Kids are spoiled rotten these days as everyone either already has all "suite style" dorms or they are converting to them. What's wrong with 20 kids sharing one bathroom on a dorm floor? It builds character!
- Some of these schools are borderline resorts as one of them (UNF) has a lazy river running through one of their dorm systems.
- PSU nickle and dimes you to death by making you pay for the work-out facilities, swimming pool and higher than average cost for athletic events. Every college had free access to gyms and pools and either minimal (FSU & UGA) or no cost for athletic events.
One additional observation is UGA (Athens) was the only school even close to PSU as far as being a college town. Really enjoyed the downtown restaurants, bars and stores.