<p>If he leans towards large universities, we will visit University of Wisconsin on another tour. I've heard great things about it. </p>
<p>This easterner also knows how beautiful parts of Wisconsin & Michigan are. We've toured parts and even done the ferry lake crossing. Sleeping Bear Park is a favorite! </p>
<p>Also for padad above, I did not include colleges around Philadelphia because it is much closer to home. We can tour there easily. Actually, I hope that Haverford &/or Swarthmore will be on his list later on. I also hope that he will qualify for them! Right now, it's too early to know.</p>
<p>Sorry, I'm gonna have to disagree with most of the folks on this thread. It seems to me that doing this kind of tour with a rising sophomore is premature. Kids feel a tremendous amount of pressure around the college search process as it is without starting it a year early.</p>
<p>Sports camps at various schools are also a great way to introduce kids to campus life. Both my daughters did swim camps at Michigan-Ann Arbor. Now, when I tour schools with my oldest, she compares the dorms to what she had at Michigan (which were older, smaller, but -- as she knows from her own experience -- "just fine.")
She also swam in a tournament in Minneapolis which allowed us to show her the University of Minnesota (urban) and take a quick trip to Northfield where she saw Carleton and St. Olaf. Until then, she had no idea what a LAC was. All of this was around 8th-9th grade, and we did no tours whatsoever.
Last year, when she was a rising junior, we did our first real tours at Knox and Augustana. I had her interview at those schools, since these were not really her first choices and she didn't feel a lot of pressure to interview well. There was probably no real need to do that; a year has made such a huge difference in her that now she talks easily to people of all ages (work has really helped her with that). But at least she got to see that the interviewers were not out to "get" her or trip her up. (She also loved racking up driving hours on the highway on her learner's permit!)
This summer, we have been touring some of the Big Ten schools that are within a day's drive for us, and I've got to say -- three of those in one week was too much, even for me. Info sessions definitely all sounded the same. I can't imagine doing 8-6 in one week trips as some of you do.
We are currently on our third revision of her list -- she has gone from favoring small schools to big schools and now realizing that she loves her job as a physical therapist's assistant and may want a school that offers a 6-year BA/DPT option (like Marquette, St. Louis U, Ithaca College).<br>
We've had a lot of fun on our college trips though, and I would do it all over again.</p>
<p>I don't thnk many college will interview before summer of senior year, but in any event, I wouldn't recommend doing so before then. DS1 has gone from the deer-in-the-headlights when talking to a prof last summer to teaching classes and talking to profs all the time. </p>
<p>Folks on CC talked a lot about the growth in their kids from junior to senior year (and even from one end of sr year to another), and I always kind of discounted it. I was WRONG!!! It's like S is a toddler again, when he used to suddenly explode with leaps of maturity and skills. It has been a nice progressive curve for a long time, but now I just don't know what's going to happen next (in a good way)!</p>
<p>I agree about the sports camp option. Also leadership camps for student leaders. There are week-end and week- long camps for just about everything where the kids go have fun doing what they love. The added bonus is they stay in the dorms, eat the food, and get a good general feel for the school. Every kid is different. My college counselor advises her clients to visit as many different types of schools as early as fall of sophomore year, so I don't think you are too early. Incredibly, earlier generations of college students rarely visited the schools and often went off to college having only seen the brochures.</p>
<p>Because you are going to be making the trip anyway, it would be a shame to miss schools that would be difficult to make time for. However, I agree with posters who say it may be overwhelming. Perhaps a visit to a more local school will give you an idea of how he feels about these visits. It may also give him an idea of how many he'd like to attempt. Perhaps a little internet research would help him choose the schools to visit and introduce him to the beginning of the process of what he is looking for in a school.</p>
<p>Make the trip a vacation with casual visits to the colleges on your list- skip the formal presentations, you can get that info online, and use your time to wander about, catching a tour only if it appeals at the moment. He may be underwhelmed by some campuses, feeling they are too small regardless of their academics. He may love/hate the atmosphere at various places- get his comments as he figures out what appealsto him/turns him off. This is a great age to expose him to the concept of college campus variety; when he seriously explores colleges he will be able to know more of what to look for.</p>
<p>Sleeping Bear Dunes got its sand from Wisconsin over thousands of years of winds from the west, our loss is a terrific gain- a great place to visit more than once.</p>
<p>We finished the trip, and everyone thought it was very helpful. An added bonus is that in the info sessions they spoke about what they were looking for, so it's great that my son heard it from the experts and not just Mom & Dad. </p>
<p>A side note -- We were all very impressed with Grinnell. Others too, but that one was a surprise. </p>
<p>The idea was to look at a variety of colleges while on a road trip -- not to do college selection. If you read the thread, you will find more detail.</p>
<p>Drive/walk through -- Michigan at Ann Arbor and Notre Dame
Info Session/tour -- Dickinson, Northwestern, U of Chicago, Grinnell & Bucknell.</p>
<p>We planned to see Kenyon but skipped it because of heavy rains & distance.</p>
<p>We went on a college visit trip this summer, for my S. Younger D (rising Freshman) who is 14 came along, and many tour guides assumed that she was also of college-touring age. As the mom, it is a little scary when people assume your 14 y.o. daughter is 16 or 17.</p>
<p>We will definitely go on some college visits when D is a Sophomore. She is quite interested, so it's not like we'd be dragging her along against her will. That gives us her Sophomore and Junior year to look at schools, rather than trying to cram all of them into one year - or one summer like we did with S this year.</p>
<p>Burb, I think your plan was a good one. Particularly at a young age so the kid hears it from the horse's mouth -- "This is what we look for."</p>
<p>Last summer I drove D & a few friends out to a lacrosse camp at Notre Dame. My obsession with this school is a family joke & D called it the "Notre Dame propaganda tour." A great experience, but for her, the school is just "too perfect" and too remote. She calls it the "utopia in the cornfield." NYU or a similar city campus is more her speed. So I agree that any exposure to colleges is worthwhile. We've had a less organized approach than you, but following the same thought process: pick a few from different categories just to get her thinking about fit. </p>
<p>As for me, I lost my breath seeing the golden dome & the grotto. Oh well, there's always the next kid.</p>
<p>Oregonianmom said: "As the mom, it is a little scary when people assume your 14 y.o. daughter is 16 or 17"</p>
<p>We have also experienced this with our two sone. DS2 is younger, but MUCH taller and bigger than his brother. Noone bats an eyelash when he tags along, and he has been asked on more than one tour "what year are you and what's your intended major." The look on DS2's face was priceless. He'll probaly major in history or polisci -- Caltech's majors would be among the last things on earth that would ever interest him.</p>
<p>I will also agree that "this is what we're looking for" resonates with teenagers when it's said by an admissions parent, not a parent. Esp. with DS2, who knows he knows everything.</p>