<p>I have some schools on my list that I think I would like, but have not been able to visit. My parents say they can maybe do one more visit, but that I should wait until I have been admitted and then visit my most likely school to make the final decision. This makes sense.</p>
<p>But also, I am worried about applying to schools I have never seen. How do you make that decision? Washington and Lee is still on my list. I know very little about it, other than what I have read online. I think I should seriously consider Davidson. I am unsure though. And Georgia Tech has been mentioned to me many times. </p>
<p>I can qualify for financial aid and need financial aid. There are some schools that would give great financial aid, which is why I think I need to still have them on the list. But, I cannot afford to visit. </p>
<p>As my user name says, I am an undecided major. I am leaning toward math and linguistics though.</p>
<p>We are having our daughter do this with several schools. She had already applied to 3 safety schools she has not yet seen. We will be hitting these this fall and there are some reach schools that we will not be visiting unless she is admitted. Of course, she wishes we could have visited all of them prior to applying, but it was not possible.</p>
<p>My DD is applying to schools all over the country. We are in CA and simply will not be able to visit most of them before acceptances are in. We’ll see where she gets in and then decide what to visit after she narrows down her final choices.</p>
<p>Personally, I attended U of Az sight unseen. I grew up in Mass. This was in 1977. Back then, we didn’t even have the internet to do virtual tours. Got off the plane at Tucson Int’l at 3 p.m in August. In those days, they didn’t have tubes and you walked down the portable stairs onto the tarmac. I nearly seared my nostrils and lungs with the first breath. Must have been 130 degrees. This is one of the most memorable moments of my life. What the hell (literally) had I got myself into? I survived the four years, left Tucson, and have never been back. Tucson was great in the winter, horrible in the late spring, summer, and early fall. I stayed for summer classes one year and vividly remember what I would say was one of the worst days of my life: my roommate and I moved to a new apt. across town. It was 114 degrees in July. All we had for transportation was his GMC Gremlin, which is a tiny car. The A/C was broken and we had to make about ten round trips to move our stuff.</p>
<p>Would I attend U of A again if I had it to do over? Definitely not. And I have no desire to ever live in the desert again either.</p>
<p>DGDzDad–We must have been at Arizona around the same time :). I went to UA sight unseen as well, although I was an Arizona girl. Back then it was pretty much a guaranteed admit if you were in state and in the top 50% of your class. And tuition was CHEAP ($275.00 per semester).</p>
<p>I had a great experience at Arizona–but being a music major had a lot to do with that !</p>
<p>azcatz - If you were an AZ girl, maybe you were used to the heat. But at least it was a DRY heat. Yeah, right… I don’t remember what the OOS tuition was back then, but it was cheap. Much cheaper than Tufts, which is where I was planning to go until my dad told me that I would have to live at home and commute. With three younger sisters, I wanted to get the heck out of the house. Yes, I chose U of A over Tufts.</p>
<p>Our ds only visited two of the six colleges that he applied to for a variety of reasons. </p>
<p>He ended up receiving a broad variety of financial aid packages, and we are glad that we didn’t visit all of the schools; the aid was so little from some that we would not have been able to afford them anyway. Two offered packages which would incurred significant debt - he decided against those, as he did not want to have a huge amount of debt when he graduated. He was all set to go to our main state school. He then received a large package to a school that we decided to visit for a Spring Acceptance Day, and he decided then and there to attend that school. He will have some debt, but not a crippling amount, when he graduates.</p>
<p>It was actually kind of a “nice surprise” as he was grappling with the disappointment of not being able to afford the school that his heart was set on (that he had visited) and here he saw a school that he could really imagine himself attending. It has been a great choice.</p>
<p>With our dd, we are visiting a few very different types of schools to help her just get started with “what size” and “what type of environment” then narrow the list down and try to visit closer ones, but not stress out if we cannot visit all until it is time to make a decision.</p>
<p>With our first daughter, we naively felt that she had to visit each school to determine if it was the right fit before applying. Hundreds of miles, and many hotel rooms later, we realized that wasn’t necessary. Second daughter applied to many schools, sight unseen. She did research them online, but didn’t visit until she was accepted and considered it a strong contender. We liked the second approach better.</p>
<p>My dd didn’t get to visit many schools, our one OOS trip was for the EA school prospective student day. She picked 3 more OOS sight unseen and 3 instate UC system, toured one. Went to from West Coast to East Coast sight unseen. It was a great match. Just learned about it from Fiske guide, online and from the admissions officer talk at school.</p>
<p>When I arrived on campus with all my stuff in the fall of 1980 it was the first time I had ever seen the college. Worked great for me.</p>
<p>It’s funny how kids today, with all the Internet resources and videos and forums and reviews available to them, feel it’s more necessary than ever to visit a college before deciding. We neanderthals who dragged our knuckles off to college before the Internet made our decisions based almost entirely on glossy college brochures and we’re just as happy with our decisions as this generation is with theirs.</p>
<p>My daughter applied to a couple of schools she’d never seen. She visited after acceptance, and ended up going to one of them, rather than the schools she’d previously visited.</p>
<p>My middle son is attending a school he applied to last minute (last minute for merit aid anyway) and visited after acceptance. He’s quite happy there.</p>