Any other parent is the same boat as we are? Child was planning on a few more visits to schools he was accepted to before deciding what school to go to in the fall. Carefully planned and spread out trips between January and early April.
Now all those admitted student days are cancelled and he needs to select without “all the information”. Sure, there is good information online and virtual tours, but we all know that is not the same as going to a school in person.
Ugh.
@HappyNJ - We also were looking forward to making a few visits while my daughter is home (from Boarding School) for spring break and it’s not going to happen, had one cancellation yesterday. I think that everyone took a different approach to applying to colleges (whatever works for their family) and I am so glad that we took the approach that we did. We visited every college (except for the last minute 4) during her junior year/Summer to ensure that if accepted that she would be happy and willing to attend. I didn’t see the point in applying to schools that she may not want to attend if accepted. That way we were able to rule out a few schools (that looked perfect on paper & the website) prior to applying. She also did a 2nd visit to a few schools due to fly-ins and was able to spend the night and get to know some of the students. To date, we have not received all of her acceptances but have ruled out a few of the ones that she has not visited due to insufficient merit or FA. Hopefully the final contenders will be schools that we visited already but we did want to attend admitted students days as well. You are correct, you can not get “the feel” based on online tours and the website. You can only make the best decision we can based on what we have to work with. I’m hoping that this blows over sooner than we thinki it will so we do not have to wrestle with this.
I don’t know how closely connected your parent community is, but in S’s school, we’re trying to work up a list of families with current college students or very recent grads, who are willing to talk with seniors about their schools. Might be worth a try if you have an easy way of keeping people in touch. (We’re using a private FB parent group we started years ago for this grade.)
Also, if your student hasn’t already done this (maybe out of a no-jinx mindset 
), follow every single official social media account the accepted schools run - sports, performing arts, and so on. If your kid’s an athlete OR interested spectator, they might want to be following the twitter accounts for the conferences the schools belong to. What does the school think is important enough to post? They can watch videos of the teams, the choirs, the musicals - whatever kinds of activities your student cares about. If you look just a little outside the range of what is officially posted on the website - though you should definitely look deeply into that, too - you can learn a lot.
We were planning to visit 3 colleges during spring break next month. I didn’t see the point of visiting out of state colleges unless she was accepted with a merit scholarship. I didn’t want her falling in love with a school that wasn’t financially feasible. We are in California. We visited Oregon State earlier this month, but were planning to visit Ohio State, Indiana University and Miami University. Still waiting for UC decisions, but she was invited to the top applicants reception for UCSB, so she is in there. Her winter guard season was just cancelled, so she is devastated. Not a happy time for seniors. I don’t know how she will decide now.
With many schools going to online instruction over the next month are any colleges making those online courses available for accepted students to "sit in’ on? Would be a great way to see an actual class, perhaps an opportunity not offered at all college visits?
We had planned on the next 2 weekends being away for admitted students day, both have been cancelled. However, I have one hotel booked through hotwire that is nonrefundable, so we are going to go and walk around campus. Understanding we won’t be able to go in anywhere but just walking around seeing it again I think will help.
We agreed tonight with my son we would visit the one campus he did not see in person. He is off for 2 weeks anyway with his HS on a 2 week break.
I will be interested how he ranks it after this visit.
We also have lined up conversations with the department heads of his major at the 2 schools we can longer tour.
Not so long ago, most kids didn’t visit. FWIW, most international students don’t visit. My D knows plenty of kids who didn’t visit before move-in day.
Do your homework using sites like Niche, CC, and College Data. Look at retention rates. Kids stay at their colleges when they are happy.
While the admitted students days might be cancelled, the schools may still let you tour. At my daughter’s school they have cancelled everything except graduation (students only, no guests) and prospective student tours! I think they’ll take small tour groups and show them the library, labs, facilities, etc. I really doubt there will be many taking tours. The campus will look different because there will be few students or faculty on campus.
All Penn State accepted student programs are cancelled at all campuses through April 5 at a minimum. Keeping in mind that the worst of the illness curve is yet to arrive, that is likely to extend to May. All tours of any kind, appointments with departments or admissions…all cancelled.
The primary worry is well intentioned people showing up at departments and Admissions anyway. All the staff but a handful volunteers in-office (some work can’t be done remotely) have been sent home and there are no tours of any kind. So people who show up are concentrating the risk on a few staff even though parents have been asked to …not show up.
There are signs posted everywhere to please reconsider your burning need to walk around and demand service from people who have bigger worries than whether you have seen the inside of a building or have questions that could have been sent via email.
It won’t be the same but we will probably visit a few schools. If nothing else we will drive around the campus and the surrounding area to get a feel for the community.
Three years ago when my older D was applying, there was one LAC that looked great from everything we read online. However, once we visited and saw the surrounding run down community, it was taken off the list.
DS has a significant merit scholarship to an out of state school we haven’t visited. We’re scheduled to visit mid-April. Current plan is to drive instead of fly, and potentially go during this school shutdown, in case domestic travel bans happen as time goes on. Thinking just me, DS, Lysol wipes, gloves, hand sanitizer, quick trip in and out, self-guided tour. I hate for him to pass up an opportunity because we haven’t seen the campus or city, but don’t want to force anyone on campus to interact with us either. As long as we’re respectful and limit interactions, it will have to be enough. Best we can do I think.
@CTCape
I was thinking of doing the same thing with my D. Just drive through and walking the campus quickly to get a feel for it. Looking at pics online and virtual tours is not the same as seeing the school and area in person. When I toured a school 3 years ago with my older D the school itself was ok but as soon as you left the school walls it seemed pretty sketchy and my younger D is not the type who wants to spend every waking hour on campus. She’s more of a explore the town type of person so for her I want to make sure the town/city itself seems safe.
@jmsstb Agree. Still waiting to decide what to do, though. Hoping CofC will extend decision day to 6/1 to give us more time to get there under less stressful circumstances.
I would recommend not going to far out of your way to do a drive through of a gated campus without confirming (call non emergency campus security) first. At my daughter’s campus you need to show proof of an appointment to security at the gate to get on campus right now even if your a current student. It was so eerie being there with no one walking around and very few cars on a nice day. She was on spring break when they closed so they are doing appointments to allow students to pick up a few things (no need to empty rooms yet).
^^^ This. Many campuses have security out, and they are going to want to know what the heck you are doing.
If you are curious about the surrounding areas, you could look on Google maps to find the campus, go to a street view of a building near the edge, especially on the way to wherever your student might be walking, and follow the arrow down the streets in the neighborhood. It’s not the same as being there, but it does give a different perspective than the carefully cropped grassy quad photo on the school brochure.
So we are not going anywhere. Obviously things are rapidly evolving, and clearly it’s important just to stay home at this point for everyone’s benefit. DS, like everyone else, will have to adjust to making his decision with the info he has.
Fiske is a great resource too. Overall, I would say that it was by far the best at summing up what my kids’ colleges are like. In fact, it was reading the description in Fiske that made one of my kids decide to apply to her college.
On a similar note: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/22653197#Comment_22653197