<p>DS attends a school with a very specific campus culture (all male) , so everyone stresses college visits. The merit aid is dependent on attending at least one visit day (though they will help get you to the school). There are some places that have to be seen.</p>
<p>“Tip of the iceberg. If the admissions office cannot find and train appropriate tour guides, why should you assume that the rest of the school is run competently?”</p>
<p>This wasn’t a bunch of tourguides that were bad, it was ONE admissions person being inconsiderate. I think you could find somebody having a bad day at EVERY college. Does that mean EVERY college is bad?</p>
<p>Granted, nobody likes to be treated rudely, nobody likes bad food, few people like snow or rain. But those are not all the same types of problems… it would seem prudent to be able to differentiate between things that are a problem for a few minutes, and things that are going to be a problem for 4 years; between things that are isolated occurrances and things that are indicators of an overall bad school. I don’t see how the rudeness of ONE admissions person in ONE 30-minute situation qualifies as either a 4-year problem or an indicator of overall poor quality.</p>
<p>My friend rejected U of Chicago because the football coach at the school was rude to him and decided to go else where (I’ll keep that private). However after reading more posts I don’t see the value if the schools you looking at don’t consider interest.</p>
<p>“I don’t see the value if the schools you looking at don’t consider interest.”</p>
<p>They are a waste if all you want is info that’s on the college’s web site, or if you want to ask a specific question that could be done over the phone. Or if you’re going to let that day’s weather or an isolated rude person ruin it for you.</p>
<p>But there are certain things you can pretty much ONLY get from a visit, like your gut reaction to the campus and the buildings’ appearance (schools always look different from their photos). Or how compact a school is (you can look at a campus map, but it’s not as good as being there). Also, the surrounding neighborhood and the proximity to stores and restaurants are tough to get a feel for until you actually go there. It’s also tough to tell how hilly a campus is without actually being there (I’d bet Lehigh has a few freshmen every year who wouldn’t have enrolled if they had known how hilly it is).</p>
<p>I think my visits helped a lot with my final decision. Seeing how the campus is laid out and interacting with current students helped me see the kind of experience I would have. Plus some schools offer a program where you follow a student around during a school day and see what classes and dorms are like. I did that at two different schools (my top two choices) and I ended up switching my preferred school to the one I didn’t think I would go to.</p>
<p>I think kids these days are over pampered. Years ago, getting a college education was all that mattered. Now, parents have too much money to spend. There are too many choices for today’s kids and so many “must do things”. These visits are sheer luxury in my own opinion just like Ipads etc. No offense to anyone JMHO.</p>
<p>@Ajaxma
I have to disagree with your post. How can you say parents have too much money to spend when more student loans are being given out now than anytime before? There are certainly spoiled college students today, but I think it’s too much of a generalization to compare college visits to an iPad. Post after post on CC are honest queries from parents and students alike asking for financial aid outlooks and scholarship help. I am forever thankful I have the opportunity to attend college, and I also do not own an iPad. <em>;)</em></p>
<p>You (and perhaps your parents) should visit any college you are seriously considering attending. Viewing literature online is totally different then seeing the campus in person. Perhaps that isn’t important for some, but it would generally be a huge mistake to see the college for the first time the day you are moving in.</p>
<p>Visiting colleges is expensive. We had guidelines for our 2 losers ones that WE set. They had to visit a large state school, small state school, large private school and small LAC their junior year. Just to see and feel what those campuses looked and felt like. After that, they could pick a few “dream” schools. We combined college visits with vacations, trips across state to see family, etc. I also did many trips where several moms and kids went on trips together to save money on hotel rooms…those were my favorite! We even did one trip where 8 of us packed into my Pilot and did a quick trip to visit 2 schools on an overnight. It was so much fun! I truly think those visits helped my girls decide on the kind of college they wanted to go to…small liberal arts was what the felt most comfortable with. So by the middle of their junior year, they knew what they had to do to get in…study, be involved, and get lots of experiences to make them well-rounded individuals!
It’s funny…one school that my oldest thought was going to be a top runner she nixed for what I thought was the silliest reason! the breakfast platter had the chocolate muffins mixed in with the banana muffins, thereby tainting all chocolate muffins with the hint of disgusting banana. She said “everyone knows you can’t do that, I’m not going here”</p>
<p>Funny moonpie–we LOVE banana chocolate chip muffins here :D</p>
<p>Lol!! Just re-read my post…not losers! Oldest daughters! Cracked me up!
Also disagree with a visit being a waste of money…if your child gets there, hates it, and is miserable and wants to come home at midterm, or after the first semester, you loose a LOT or money and scholarship opportunity. It happened to 3 friends last year, and almost happened to my own!
She visited, and 2 were her best fit…loved them, but ended up choosing the school that gave her the most money, even though she didn’t love it. Ended up being miserable and having a horrible year. Now she is at her dream school, but had no opportunity for merit aid because she transferred.</p>
<p>We tried to group visits as much as possible so no one visit cost any more than the other’s really. We usually hit 5 or 6 schools in a trip, maybe doing some drive throughs as well. Didn’t cost any more to do that and who knows if one of them turns out to be “the one”. If one of the kids found a school they wanted to visit, we looked for schools in the area that had similar offerings that matched their criteria and set up visits to those schools as well. I just can’t see applying to a school you haven’t visited but not everyone feels the same.</p>
<p>I’m another in the definitely visit camp. One school in particular looked great on paper. Everything seemed in line with her check list. It’s a beautiful campus, in her target area, with sunny weather and her major. And then we visited. </p>
<p>The campus vibe was just not what my daughter was looking for. And I was relieved because I felt it too. More of a country club than a university. So now it’s off her list of possibles.</p>
<p>My interviewer at Dartmouth was really impressed when I told her I had visited the campus since I was one of the few she had interviewed who had and was able to talk about how much I loved the campus and show that I still liked the school after seeing it in person. At Harvard it was almost a non-issue since they get thousands of visitors every day. I think it really dependsthough for your own good, I’d say visits are definitely a must before you decide to go to a college. You get a much better feel for the school than any other way, and the decision ultimately comes down to you and your comfort level on campus.</p>
<p>
I think visits are very helpful from a very pragmatic viewpoint. After our house each of kid’s educations will be the most expensive thing Mom3ToGo and I purchase … and it’s not close. Spending $200+k without looking at the item in person when it could be checked out seems pretty nutty to me. I get if visits are too expensive or logistically challenges … but skipping them when they are doable seems odd to me. How many people bu a house, a car. or choose a mate site unseen?</p>
<p>Although we will visit colleges with our children when the time comes, I think the impressions from a college visit should count for less than other variables, such as </p>
<p>(1) whether the school has a program in the student’s intended major
(2) cost
(3) the SAT score range of matriculating students
(4) what students say about the college in books such as “The Insider’s Guide to the Colleges” or in forums like this one, since those students have spent years, not hours, at the school</p>
<p>It would be interesting to survey high school seniors about the factors that were important to them in choosing a college and then track whether they stayed beyond the freshman year at their college and ultimately graduated. My guess is that students who give the most weight to their college visits rather than other variables are a little more likely to be disappointed with their decision, because a great tour guide, an interesting lecture in an audited class, or beautiful weather on the day of the visit are not predictive of the 4-year experience. I could be wrong, of course.</p>
<p>A general question this thread raises is how one makes decisions and whether one trusts intuition. I am wary of intuition and prefer to use a decision rule when possible, assuming there exists enough data to create such a rule. I think there may be a sex difference in the extent to which people make decisions intuitively.</p>
<p>Not being combative here, Beliavsky, since in general your approach is pretty close to mine. But my strong impression – without having tried to be systematic about it – both from real life and from reading kids’ and parents’ narratives here, is that there is a high risk of dissatisfaction when people choose based on (a) money only, (b) prestige only (i.e., something pretty close to your SAT score range), or (c) a particular program it turns out they no longer want, or isn’t as great as advertised. Also (d) failing to appreciate what distance from home meant, (e) failing to have a realistic plan for financing, and (f) completely changing your mind about what you want to do. Getting a false positive from a tour on a sunny day with a cute tour guide is so far down the list, I’m not sure it’s even on the list. (My own grumpiness about visits comes much more from a concern about false negatives than false positives.)</p>
<p>Understand that, when I say “highest risk,” that doesn’t mean a whole lot of risk. Although transfers are certainly up, they still represent only a small percentage of the overall college population, and many transfers (perhaps most) have little or nothing to do with dissatisfaction with the transferred-from college. The vast majority of people who choose colleges based on cost only, or prestige only, or the presence of a special program the student winds up not taking, nevertheless wind up having a great college experience at their original institution.</p>
<p>I think visits really helped my kids figure out what they cared about and didn’t care about. I can’t imagine having gone through this process without the visits. </p>
<p>Many people think that this process is about finding a college. That part can be done without visiting. However, visiting forces the student to consider what matters to them, and to carefully think about who they want to be. They learn about themselves in a way that they couldn’t have otherwise. </p>
<p>Big vs small, pretty vs ugly, flat vs hilly, fratty vs hippie, urban vs suburban vs rural, football vs hockey, open vs distribution vs core, laid back vs intense, near vs far, academic vs social, preppiness, diversity, snow, sun, coed vs single sex, noisy vs quiet, etc. </p>
<p>What really matters to THEM? It’s never what they initially thought. </p>
<p>There are so many things that might or might not matter. </p>
<p>I’m think that visiting helps the self-discovery process. If cost is a big issue, visit colleges nearby that have these kind of distinctions, apply, and visit the top candidates at decision time.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>A 2011 study [Completing</a> College: Assessing Graduation Rates At Four-Year Institutions](<a href=“http://heri.ucla.edu/DARCU/CompletingCollege2011.pdf]Completing”>http://heri.ucla.edu/DARCU/CompletingCollege2011.pdf)
found that students were more likely to graduate from a school they had visited before matriculating</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>According to Table 12, if I read it correctly, choosing a college because you wanted to live near home increased the chance of graduating in four years by 4.9%, consistent with your reason (d) for why students are dissatisfied with their college choices.</p>
<p>both of those points could also be attributed to the level of family support a student has.</p>