Agree with the two posts above.
Remember - once your child is accepted, it puts them in the driver’s seat more. The school wouldn’t accept your kid if they didn’t want him to say YES. Our experience is they will accommodate you whether it is for a more formal group accepted student event or something that meets with your family’s timing needs.
Colleges care about yield management.
WE had a friend who’s daughter “found her people” on an admitted students trip. We are looking forward to visiting schools with an acceptance in the pocket.
I do think the formal accepted student groups have more resources devoted to them. School clubs held special events at some schools, for instance.
It is a waste of time to book them, what if he doesn’t get in? Tours won’t fill up – if you decide not to go to the accepted days for scheduling reasons (like if 2 overlap), call admissions and see if they can arrange an overnight, sitting in on campus, meals, etc. A tour with the unwashed (unadmitted) masses isn’t what he needs once he is accepted.
@timetoshine Looking back at your previous posts, it looks like one of the schools on your child’s list is VT. It looks like they’ve already published dates of their accepted students event. Kind of surprised such a big school only has one weekend. Anyhow, my point is that I bet others have their dates listed somewhere on the internet. If not, call and ask for your planning purposes.
https://vt.edu/admissions/undergraduate/visit/hokiefocus.html
@doschicos Thanks for that. At this point VT is his top choice. We’ve already spent a few days in Blacksburg. I’ll give that weekend some thought. We would need to fly for that event.
@timetoshine , it is often easy/possible for students to go alone to these, with the school coordinating airport pickups, etc. if your schedule is a complication.
No matter what the subject, if you are asking yourself “am I overthinking this?” you are.
My older kid was a reasonably experienced traveler, and flew to accepted visits alone with no trouble. Younger one less so, so I went along for hers.
Remember that you are thinking of making a big expenditure for college. In the scheme of things, a plane ticket to make sure the choice is solid is probably worth it. Even if you can’t book it until a few weeks before the dates. Also, my kids didn’t go to accepted visits at every school, just their top 2-3 choices they got into.
Sometimes you can ask on ED threads if the accepted students have heard about dates for accepted student weekends.
A few schools my D2 got into offered her vouchers to cover some of the cost of the visit. They were private schools, though.
Already been stated but the Admitted Students day was very helpful to us. S was admitted into 8 schools. We had him cull down to 3 (pro and con list). Saw the schedules and could only swing 2 (annoying that many are on the same day!). Had him knock off the third and visited the two. He would have been happy at either but the day really swung the pendulum to the one that had the best fit for him. It was so clear. Academically virtually identical, but most other things leaned heavily to where he attends. You get a lot more detail at these days vs. regular tours. Get to sit in on classes, eat in the dining hall with current students, listen to speeches by the provost, visit with career services, study abroad, etc. Very valuable.
My daughter has not been accepted to Syracuse yet but we have registered for ‘Orange Preview’ there April 6th. For some reason a lot of tours at Syracuse don’t include the dorms. ‘Orange preview’ does. It’s 3.5 hours away. I was going to take her on a visit in August but both my parents got sick and we couldn’t leave. We wanted to go in the fall but then my mom continued to get worse and died around Thanksgiving. Bottom line: through no fault of our own, one of my daughter’s top choices is a school she has never seen. ‘Orange preview’ happens to coincide with spring break. We are going to need to book a hotel. Decisions come out around April 1. There was no other logical way to plan it. Obviously we aren’t going to commit to a school none of us has ever visited. How could seeing that she is signed up for a tour for after decisions come out (but before we have been accepted) be viewed as a negative by admissions? Any time you visit campus it should be viewed as a positive. It means you are seriously considering that school. And yep! If she gets rejected, we will simply cancel our plans. Far easier to cancel than to scramble at the last minute. This is a HUGE investment. You are the consumer. You and your child owe it to yourselves to make as informed a decision as possible.
I would wait until acceptances come in, then pick 2-3 to visit at accepted students day based on fit and finances.
It is good to go on those days as your child will get a feel for his fellow students and many of the professors will be available.
As luck would have it his top 2 choices are both 500+ miles from home, but 2 hours apart, and have admitted student days the same weekend. I’ll plan for him to attend both of those.
We did a Monday and a Friday of hte same week. Both required flights. Expensive but it was worth it based on what was at stake.
Think about it this way: If a college won’t accept him because he came to visit between application and acceptance, is this really a school you’d want for him? Or that he’d want for himself?
Do what works for you.
There is simply no way any College would think that way. Every visit ups your chances of acceptance. It shows you are seriously consider the School. Planning a visit in no way hurts your chances. YOU are the consumer here. Colleges want informed consumers because they want successful happy students.
Check carefully. D’s accepted student weekend was a whole weekend thing with activities on both (3?) days. It may not be possible to do both programs if on the same weekend (then again you can book the flight and hope one or the other is on the table in March?).
One more thing to check - at one school the admitted student days were different for different majors/programs and you needed to go to the one specific to you.
We found the activities usually spanned about 24 hours. If they are close together he might be able to hit some of each. But probably can only stay overnight at one.