I decided to sleep on this and wait until morning to reevaluate in case my judgement was just clouded by fatigue of a day long campus visit with miles & miles of walking. I wake this morning, cup of coffee in hand & well rested, to realize that I'm actually more upset today than yesterday. I would really appreciate some advise & opinions from other parents who are going through the senior college visit gauntlet as well as seasoned veterans!
We visited a college campus yesterday for an invitation only event that was supposedly for high achieving students who were looking to apply to this particular school in order for the seniors to have access to faculty, staff, and departmental knowledge sources to answer any specific questions they may have. I'd rather not name the school at this point simply because my questions apply to any school that's visited & not just this particular one.
After the midday presentation was over, the schedule opened up for students to explore different areas to ask questions directly to the people in charge of those areas such as Honors, pre-professional pursuits, financial aid, etc. as well as to ask any of the presenters present any questions they had. My child stayed behind to speak with an associate dean who was also an academic advisor for the department that's pertinent to the major being considered. The student that was already speaking with the assistant dean had what appeared to be a pleasant conversation, smiles & head nods sprinkled throughout the 5 minute exchange. Noisy as the environment was we couldn't not hear what all was said but snippets came through & sounded similar to what my child was wanting to know. Not wanting to seem like we were butting into someone else's personal conversation or eaves dropping, we didn't crowd in to hear but rather waited out turn. Once our turn came, my child stepped up & ask his question. The assistant dean/academic advisor rather curtly answered in one sentence & basically made it clear that there was no further discussion about it necessary as he began to turn away. Unfortunately, the answer didn't clarify things for us beyond what we would have assumed. At this point I stepped in and asked a clarifying question only to have the same answer repeated with a look of exasperation. For the record, my child was polite and handled himself properly during the entire exchange and did nothing to bring this rather rude response on & has been treated by everyone during the entire college hunting endeavor at every college with nothing but helpfulness thus far.
Needless to say, this irritated us. We just gave up, said thank you, & just walked away to find clarification elsewhere.
This school had made its way to my child's #1 choice despite the fact it is the lowest overall nationally ranked school on his list. It's still a very good school & is very well known for excellence in undergraduate education, advising, and faculty involvement in helping students achieve. However, after the curt, dismissive way my child & I were treated by the assistant dean of the Arts & Colleges department (who had invited people to approach anyone to ask questions during a day my child was INVITED to attend to ask questions), I have serious reservations now.
I'm not one to usually trumpet race issues either, but in this instance, I'm also wondering if that may have been a contributing factor. It's just seems extremely stupid for anyone to alienate a high achieving minority applicant (for this school) at a school that is seriously lacking ethnic diversity & who claims to be attempting to increase diversity. Even in the lecture hall that the presentation was being given (looked to hold about 150 people), I only saw 3 families (including ours) that looked to be non-Caucasian. So again, very odd that my child & I were brushed off regardless of how many times the presenter had answered the same question. I'm just at a loss as to WHY my child was treated so rudely & the race thing is just a grasping at straws to try & figure this out.
Should I just brush off this incident as a fluke or should this be considered a red flag???
My own knee jerk reaction is to call or email this person and ask what was done that offended him or caused him to respond so curtly. Obviously, I'm not going to do that! Lol. But my natural instinct is to confront issues, not ignore them.
How should we follow up to alleviate our now present concerns that maybe there's a reason the school is lacking ethnic diversity?
Sorry for the long post! I'm just floored right now & not sure what to think.
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