<p>My D is very eager to do some college visits. After visiting colleges with her older brother, she's excited about it, much more than he ever was. Since she would like to visit several colleges that are a long distance away, we've decided to spread it out over a couple of years.</p>
<p>This spring break (hers, not the college's) we are heading south to the Los Angeles area. She would like to visit Occidental, Pomona, Pitzer, and drive/walk through the USC campus to take pictures for a friend. We also plan to spend a few days at Disneyland while we are there. :)</p>
<p>Anyone who has visited colleges this early, were the colleges welcoming to your student? She could pass for 16 or 17, so they might not know or care that she's "just" a sophomore. I wouldn't push it if it wasn't her idea, but since it is her idea, I figure we might as well go for it. We can do some more visits in her junior year - she's thinking about Kenyon and perhaps Denison.</p>
<p>It's fine, and makes sense to start this year if you're planning on visits to different parts of the country. She'll be younger than most students, but you'll mainly be on group tours which are pretty casual. Kids vary so greatly in their maturity level and their interest in college; if yours is into it, I say go for it, just link it with some other activities and have fun!</p>
<p>S made his first college visit on Good Friday (no school) the spring of his sophomore year. He toured MIT to get a sense of what college was all about; he could get there by public transportation from our house. He also met with a faculty member in the Media Lab as well as with his grad student, plus had lunch and toured the athletic facilities with the wrestling coach who used to coach his HS wrestling team.</p>
<p>Since your D has been exposed to the college visit experience already (S was the first), I see no reason not to start early especially if she initiated it. Given that you're investing some time and effort, she may want to sit in on classes, etc., while visiting. (D is a senior at Pomona, so PM me if you have any questions.)</p>
<p>We did some of this - especially if we were already traveling near a school. Just keep it light - don't worry about "majors, decisions" etc. Keep it very broad.</p>
<p>I think having a picture of "what's to come" in the future - college - can also be good motivation for them to try hard and be successful in high school.</p>
<p>She would love to sit in on classes! We will definitely plan to arrange that. I know that Oxy and Pomona have that option. We might not have enough time at Pitzer since we'll go to an afternoon info session on the same day that we visit Pomona in the morning, but we'll see.</p>
<p>If she's interested I see no problem. There are worse ways to spend your breaks! My older son was not interested, he felt his summers on CTY campuses told him all he needed to know. I dragged him to a few junior year, he remained pretty uninterested so we waited for the accepted student events and he went then with much more of a sense of purpose. Younger son was an 8th grader for those college visits. He hasn't expressed much interest in visiting, but I've warned him at least some of spring bread will be spent looking at a few colleges.</p>
<p>We visited an interesting college with my tall, mature looking daughter in January of her freshman year while we were travelling for fun. No one quizzed her on her age. It was a great experience for her, because she was interested in the idea of visiting colleges.</p>
<p>I started taking my daughter to visit colleges the summer after her sophomore year. It definitely motivated her to excel the remainder of high school! While the colleges were welcoming, they were geared more toward rising seniors.</p>
<p>We did our first visits/tours the weekend before goaliegirl started her 10th grade year and then followed it up at the end of the year with a 12-campus tour on the way home. It think it makes the discussion of what you want in a school much more meaningful later on when they have a small idea of what different types of campuses are about.</p>
<p>We've done college tours with our D beginning in the summer before her sophomore year, and we're very glad we did. This was all in conjunction with travel we were already doing in the vicinity of the colleges, so there wasn't much additional expense involved. D was highly interested and highly motivated. A few of the schools we visited early remain on her "interested" list now that she's a junior; others went into the "reject" pile for a variety of reasons. We added in a special-purpose trip to visit some additional colleges just before the start of her junior year, which was highly productive. I think we got a lot more out of the junior trip because we had done some earlier visits.</p>
<p>I think if your student is interested and you've got the luxury of time and money for college visits, it can be a real benefit to start visits early, for several reasons. First, it's very low pressure at the outset; you have an opportunity to do a coarse screen, nominating some candidate schools for further investigation without any anxiety about needing to narrow (or create) a final list. Some may drop off the list later, others will be added, but that's an organic process that will feel much more settled and well thought through if it's not a last-minute, rushed, pressured affair. Second, with the right kind of constructive parent-child dialog, it can help clarify what criteria your student is looking for in a school, a valuable self-reflective exercise that will help immensely when the search begins in earnest junior year, and in many ways a valuable step in preparation for the transition to college. Third, I think a few early visits build a good experience base for later visits: learning to distinguish the standard boilerplate of every college tour from what's truly unique and interesting about this school, developing the confidence and clarity to be able to ask telling questions of student tour guides and admissions officers at info sessions, getting comfortable with being on a college campus and visualizing what four years might be like on THIS campus, etc. Of course, it's not for everyone: financial constraints, time constraints, and the level of the student's interest are all critically important factors. I definitely wouldn't push it with a student who's just not interested yet. But if you've got the time, the money, and the student interest, I say go for it.</p>
<p>D2, now a hs jr, visited a number of colleges as younger-sib-in-tow with D1, who is now a college soph. D2 thoroughly enjoyed tagging along on D1's visits - -especially rating the food-services at every school.</p>
<p>This past summer, b/w soph and jr years of hs, we took D2 on 2 college trips. She attended an info session and toured at UVM during a 2 day mini-vacation (she had a couple of days off while working at at nearby camp) and we did a drive-by of Bennington - - it was after a full day at the beach/lake and she refused to get out of the car. Even though D was initially luke-warm about UVM, she now speaks of it as a "definite" uni to which she will apply next year. She is also willing to actually visit Bennington this summer.</p>
<p>I think touring as a soph is fine, is the student is up for it. At UVM, D was asked to fill out a prospect card, including her year of graduation - - but we left the card with the receptionist; neither the adcom conducting the info session nor the tour guide was aware of or asked about D's age.</p>
<p>After actually visiting a campus, D was able to articulate what she dis/liked about each school: UVM was a good size, Bennington seemed too small; you can walk from the campus of UVM right into Burlington, Bennington is a much smaller town and the college is outside of town; dorms at UVM were really cramped, she didn't see a dorm at Bennington, but the campus as a whole is quite spacious. I hope that, having gotten past the, "Wow, college" moment, she will be able to focus on more than physical or social aspects of college life (ie: academics, beyond whether the school offer her intended major) as she tours/interviews in earnest later this year.</p>
<p>Ditto for my son. After summers at LMU for CTY, S feels he knows the small school environment and, after attending some dept faculty/family events at USC (and watching the football team on TV), plus attending a summer computer class at UCLA, he feels he gets the big school gig. Obviously, his understanding is at a superficial level. S is a junior now, and so we expect to make a few more serious visits to other places over spring break or during the summer. He'll do the three hour USC tour (includes an optional visit to a department) next month.</p>
<p>Oregonian Mom,
This is just a note to let you know that a person cannot drive through the SC campus. Students there walk or bicycle. The campus has many courtyards, fountains, tropical plants and flowering trees.<br>
There are fairly short tours available by calling ahead. The famous School of Cinematic Arts building is certainly worth a visit. George Lucas assisted in the design and it is brand new.</p>
<p>^Thanks Georgia Girl. Can we just park our car somewhere and walk around? They only offer tours to sophomores on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which kind of limits our timing on everything else. She really just wants to see it so she can describe it to her friend (he is interested in the film program).</p>
<p>We have made a habit of visiting colleges (not always the organized tours) much of the kids life- just because we enjoy it. It really seemed to motivate the kids much earlier than most of their peers. In addition- they have had lots of time to mull things over about what they like and dislike. We also made sure that if they liked a school in the summer (or spring) that we had time to go when the weather wasn't as lovely! When we went on the duke tour last year (my boys were getting ready to start junior year) there were more sophomores than juniors. Anyhow- it's a fun family oriented thing that makes for lots of good conversations. We visited schools even if they weren't on our radar if we happen to be near them (CalTech for instance)- I guess I feel like the more they see of different schools and areas, the better they are to make these choices. Some people think it's silly- but with the kind of investment that college is- I just think it's wise for everyone. Enjoy!!</p>
<p>My son, who is now a senior, asked me at the end of his freshman year if he could tour a few schools. He was thinking, at that time, of graduating early. So I took him to a few schools. One landed on his list as one of his top choices. Another is a safety. If anything, the tours and chats with college students made him more aware of what will be expected of him academically. My youngest, who is just 11, loved the tours, and there were schools he really liked that his brother didn't. There is nothing wrong with taking a few tours as a sophomore. They do help students get a sense of what is important to them -- for example, my son is looking for a good chem department, but also wants a good econ program. The youngest just wants good food!</p>
<p>oregonianmom-- for the eager kid, I agree its great to start early. Suggestion- make sure you scribble down for later reference where and when you visited, and in some cases with whom you spoke. Some schools, like a few of the Claremonts for instance, ask if and when you visited on their application. This is a little detail, but sometimes hard to recall 1.5 years later, after visiting numerous other schools. While one might think in junior year or the following summer you'll get back to visit those you've already covered to check things out in more detail, my experience with 2 kids is that revisits rarely happen. So write those dates down! (demonstrated interest)</p>
<p>Biggest problem with visiting as a soph is that most schools will not want to interview anyone but a rising junior or older (summer after soph year.) I found its important to secure interviews while you can, and if the early visits include schools that are long-term keepers for the senior list, you might want to consider returning for an on-campus interview.....only for those where interviews matter, like some LACs. Early & often interviews also help develop the student's awareness of what colleges are looking for & in the case of the reluctant student (not your case apparently) can help increase interest in the college selection process.</p>
<p>ps....if you can while at Pomona & Pitzer, suggest you hit CMC as well for "compare & contrast" purposes.....also good because you'll get a broader take on how the 5-college system works there. My D visited those 3 summer after soph year, and I thought for sure she was going to love the Pomona and not like CMC, but she ended up liking CMC and Pitzer much better....eye of the beholder.......CMC and Pitzer are currently on her app list.</p>
<p>Took S2 along with S1 to visit WSU a couple weeks ago. S2 a 10th grader, is not yet sure what to study, but he did like what he saw and is eager to jump in and eventually find his dream school. Recenlty S1's counselor came in to his class and asked the class who had started looking at colleges. S was the only one in the class and he is a senior! I feel bad for the kids who don't have a clue and wait until the last minute! S2 is going to have a real edge by the time he is ready to apply!</p>
<p>D was eager to start visiting schools as a 10th grader, in part because a friend had gone on a college tour between 9th and 10th grade. Hard part for us was guessing what tier of schools made sense to tour because she's an overachiever who doesn't do standardized tests well. We picked one near Philadelphia that seemed to have some advantages given her interests and had reported test scores that seemed likely to be within her range to combine that with a Spring Break trip to Philadelphia. She hated the school when she saw it--too small, too rural for her tastes--but that in itself proved to be valuable information because those tastes remained consistent. We did not visit any other Philadelphia colleges because it didn't seem that she'd be likely to apply to any of them, and it was much more fun to tour the historical and cultural sites in the city. It turned out to be a very nice combination of activities to give her a taste without being too much too early. And, as it turned out, she tested well enough that the college would have ended up being more of a safety than a match anyway.</p>
<p>Papa Chicken makes a good point. We visited several schools w/ soph D - - but only those schools that were easy trips, where we could easily return for an interview. For schools farther afield, we always included interview, visit w/ coach, etc.</p>