<p>“What’s so great about a free visit to campus? Are there colleges out there charging fees for visits now?”</p>
<p>I believe I paid like $20-$30 for my parents to come with me for a tour at Michigan. We could have wandered around by ourselves for free but participation in the program included a guided tour, chance to meet with advisers from intended program, residence hall tour, and chance to sample the cafeteria food. Though I got all the same at Northern Mich, my only other visit, for free.</p>
<p>Gosh, I didn’t know colleges did that. We have visited at least a dozen colleges - all well-known. Did tours, information sessions, visited housing. Not a one of them charged and only a few required an advanced reservation.</p>
<p>Yeah, that’s a new one on me, too. U Mich must really be fighting off applicants with a stick. Or else their funding situation is so dire that the admissions office can’t cover the cost of running visits without charging for them. (Or both.)</p>
Some colleges will pay airfare for the highly desired students to come and visit the campus for an overnight or a weekend stay. I think a student who is given such offer has much higher chances to be admitted.</p>
<p>I completely agree. To me the only thing really misleading is the O.P.'s notion that a promise was somehow involved. Not even close. They are simply using their data to mine a potential candidate’s interest along with a specific way for him/her to get more detailed and specific information about his/her interests. So, this is completely overblown in my viewpoint. </p>
<p>As for priority applications … this is a great move for a college trying to separate themselves from the pack. Not just for the easy-peasy application process but for the quick turnaround on a response. If a applicant’s reach schools go down in flames, I could see a kid looking quite favorably to a school that gave him his first smile in this whole process. It might also register on the parents that ‘all things being equal’ that a kid might do quite well at a school that really wants him.</p>
<p>I am the OP, and I should make clear that that wasn’t my notion. I have always viewed letters from colleges as invitations to apply, not as promises of admission. (That might have something to do with having studied contract law years ago.) I opened the thread because I had seen earlier threads in which parents seemed very offended that colleges “got my child’s hopes up” too high, and disappointed the child in the end. Perhaps my children are more immune to disappointment, because they are acquainted with some very amazing friends who have not been able to attend their first-choice colleges for various reasons, including not being admitted in the first place. To me, and to my son, the letter quoted in the thread-opening post looked like an invitation to submit an application, subject to all the usual vagaries of the admission process. We didn’t treat it as an offensive or deceptive letter. I thought the language in that letter was somewhat more laudatory and definite than that in some of the dozens of other letters my son has received, so I asked if parents thought it crosses the line of propriety. Differing opinions ensued in the thread. </p>
<p>Agreed with your other statement that priority applications are a welcome convenience to students. Best recruiting tool of all, in my opinion, is a fast response to an application once it is submitted.</p>
<p>To take it a bit further- S1 was sent an email from the CAL alumni association telling him he qualified to apply for their scholarship- This was months before acceptances were out. Now this did get his hopes up…thinking they must have gotten his name from admin. but nope not accepted. (He didn’t apply for the scholarship because the process was so extensive, including interviews for 2000.00 and he was just done, done, done with all of the essays and interviews by then.) Much later, an email was sent disclaiming the offer was any indication of acceptance, but by then he still had his hopes up-although he didn’t want to go, (UCLA for him!) the family has many many CAL grads so he was hoping just the same.</p>
<p>I’m sure the colleges are busy analyzing the results from ‘priority applications’ to try to glean how successful they are for them. As a school with priority applications may also have (1) Early Decision (maybe even I and II) (2) Early Action and (3) Regular Action they are building in complication and likely cannibalizing candidates from other options. That in itself is not a bad thing if it provides overall benefits in the form of students that help build their program. </p>
<p>At some schools where ‘early action’ is on a rolling basis, ‘priority applications’ may be virtually the same thing, just with a more flexible deadline date and perhaps a waived fee. I wonder if any schools have Early Action notification as a hard date and ‘priority applications’ on a rolling basis? That could result in an unintended backlash.</p>
Though I got all the same at Northern Mich, my only other visit, for free.</p>