Sunny, not too hot, not too cold

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It is the time of year when high school students pay their first visits to US college campuses and decide where to apply. During my time, we didn’t typically visit campuses because in Germany and much of Europe, university was tuition-free and you chose your university based on hearsay and what you wanted to study. Only extremely popular subjects like medicine had a central register. Students would be offered a place based on a national selection process, and they could typically not choose where they wanted to study.Of course, this was always different in the US, where university is big business and colleges compete for fee-paying students. Plus, nowadays, there are a million university rankings that students can consult to apply to the most prestigious universities they can get into.Yet, what still matters is the feel of the campus. I mean, if you get an application from a graduate of the University of Florida, they are going to have chosen that alma mater probably on different criteria than someone who graduated from the University of Illinois…More generally, it is surprising to see that students choose their application to some degree based on the weather on the day they visit a campus. It’s no surprise that if you visit a college campus on a rainy, grey day, you are likely going to be in a worse mood than when the sun is shining and it is nice and warm. And this mood will likely influence your decision to apply in the first place.Olivia Feldman and her colleagues tested exactly that. What was the weather on the day students visited a college campus, and how did that in…