2014 Kyle College Visits in CA

Roxanne, Tim and Kyle made the trip to California to visit a couple of Kyle's prospective colleges. Kyle made a list of three schools he really wanted to visit and we filled in the week with three more. Don't get me wrong, we did a number of things for fun which included Magic Mountain and cheering on the Wisconsin Badgers versus the Arizona Wildcats in an Elite 8 NCAA tournament Game!

The most unexpected thing from our trip was that Kyle was able to experience his first earthquake! A good 5.1 jolt gave him a good idea what an earthquake was but it wasn't too bad as to cause widespread damage. The downside of that was that we couldn't spend too much time with a friend of ours from Fullerton who works in the city water department; he was busy for days fixing damaged water mains from the quake!! The epicenter of the quake, in La Habra, was not too far from where we were staying in Placentia.

UCLA

Our first campus visit was to the University of California – Los Angeles. Tim always loved the UCLA campus and poor Kyle had to endure the story about Tim taking ONE night class on campus just fulfill his bucket list….sorry Kyle! I don't think we could have ordered a more perfect day for a tour and we snuck onto a tour without a reservation. I don't think that things could have worked out better for us.

Stanford

The second college we visited was after our long drive north to the San Francisco Bay Area to visit Stanford. This is the college that is high on Kyle's list and Rox/Tim sure agree after our visit. What a beautiful campus with a ton to offer a college student. It may now be the 'dream college' for us all. We dropped in early, got on the wait list and ultimately took a campus tour which was great.

While it may be the dream college, Kyle certainly has some work to do just to be considered as only 5% of applicants to Stanford are accepted.

Berkeley

While in the Bay area, we also visited the University of California, in Berkeley. Berkeley sure has a similar feel to the University of Wisconsin without the snow! We did get rained on for much of the tour but we had a great time. I couldn't help but love the small grove of Redwood trees right on campus!

The photo is from the top of Sather Tower. After our $3 elevator ride to the top, we did get a gorgeous view of the Berkeley campus, the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz.

While we liked the campus, I don't think it will make it onto Kyle's top 10 list for colleges to apply toward.

Magic Mountain

The drive back south to LA provided us the chance to stop at Magic Mountain to spend the day with Tim's god daughter, Emily for her birthday (oh yeah…and Todd, Jen and Olivia too!) who happened to be vacationing in California at the same time.

We had let Tim's brother know that we had planned to meet up at Magic Mountain but we didn't tell Emily. We had a lot of fun surprising her as she walked off of Goliath to greet her as we were shouting "Happy Birthday!"

The stop at Magic Mountain was also a welcome relief for poor Kyle as he had been enduring days of time alone with Mom and Dad! He got to hang out with Olivia and Emily and just be a kid (I should probably include Todd in that list too!).

Cal Tech

Not all college visits turn out to be what you expected but the visit to Cal Tech was none-the-less useful. Cal Tech is located in Pasadena and also a beautiful campus although it is likely too small for Kyle. With a freshman class of roughly 250 students, Kyle certainly decided that this was too small for him.

USC

I think of all the colleges we visited, the University of Southern California (USC) was probably the biggest surprise for Roxanne and Tim. In an odd juxtaposition, the public school of UCLA is located in the Westwood/Beverly Hills/Brentwood area and the private school of USC is located in central/downtown LA. Rox and Tim had been near the USC campus several times when they lived in the LA area but never really spent any time there. We really liked USC!

Tommy Trojan bid us farewell from the campus tour. Oddly enough, Tommy is not the official mascot of USC…..some horse is!

The USC Hall of Fame apparently has the only place in the world where you can "touch" a Heisman trophy. Why we chose to take a picture of OJ Simpson's may be beyond me but here you go…..

Go Bucky!

Tim had purchased our flights to southern California before realizing that the Badger would be playing the Sweet Sixteen game in Anaheim. When we found that out, I tried hard to get tickets to the basketball game (found those) and re-arrange flights which ultimately was too expensive. While bummed, we were excited when the Badgers won Thursday night and we bought tickets to make the Elite 8 game against Arizona at the Honda Center in Anaheim (formerly known as "the Pond") on Saturday. What a great overtime win (64-63). Go Bucky! We'll need to cheer them on in the Final Four from our living room, however.

Kyle was able to have fun and visit the following colleges:

1. Harvey Mudd (one of the Clairmont Colleges)

2. University California – Los Angeles (UCLA)

3. Stanford

4. University of California (Berkeley)

5. California Institute of Technology (CalTech)

6. University Southern California (USC)