<p>Great advice from all. Things that worked for my family:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Dad took pictures, Mom took notes and Kiddo asked the questions. You’ll appreciate the record keeping later. Things will be forgotten and you’ll be glad for the notes.</p></li>
<li><p>Kiddo sat in on classes in her intended major. That gave her an idea of what the class would look like but also the students in class. Quiet? Engaging? Friendly? or not.</p></li>
<li><p>We sent out feelers: you’d be surprised how many connections you’ll make once you tell folks your visiting XYZ school. My kiddo was able to meet students on each campus and talk with them over coffee, ice cream, walking the campus. All the students gave their insiders take on the school. She had not previously known any of these folks. This was very valuable.</p></li>
<li><p>Go to the place where students gather and sit awhile. Take in the vibe of the students. I found this facinating and very helpful. You’d be surprised how many students approach you to chat. </p></li>
<li><p>While it is easy to schedule summer visits, I would councel against this. You want to see the student body. You want to help your student envision themself there, or not. It is fairly difficult to really get a “feel” for the student body and the school culture if there are not students on campus.</p></li>
<li><p>Check out the surrounding area. Is the town, city large enough and vibrant enough to keep your student engaged for four years. (Yes, I know they are there to study and learn but they have to go somewhere for fun…) </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Enjoy this time, finding the right fit for your student is really exciting. Have fun!!</p>
<p>Lots of really good suggestions here. A few of the best</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Don’t take the whole family. You’ll burn out the younger kids so they will never want to visit any colleges themselves and it’s a waste of their time.</p></li>
<li><p>Don’t go in the summer unless it’s a large school with something going on. Small colleges will just look like buildings. The vibe will be missing</p></li>
</ul>
<p>*Take a picture of your daughter at every school. Write a little blurb about each one. After just a few they all blur together, but the photo and the blurb will be good reminders. This drove my son a bit crazy, but made for a fun photo collage at the HS grad party and it was cool to have a “first visit” picture.</p>
<ul>
<li>It will take a few visits but figure out what your daughters priorities are and put more emphasis on that when you visit. It took us several visits to realize that how students were evaluated was huge as was the major itself. Everything else was gravy.</li>
</ul>
<p>When my daughter was looking at colleges, she spent a fair amount of time reading on-line bulletin boards (like this one) and chat groups that were centered around colleges. Most of the colleges in which she was interested had active “livejournal” communities at the time. (I don’t know whether that exists anymore; I suspect not.) It was current students talking to each other, mostly, not applicants or parents.</p>
<p>There were real differences college to college in the way students “talked” to one another online, and what they talked about. Over the course of a few months, she got a pretty good idea of what campus culture was like at almost all of the colleges. I won’t say that was THE crucial element of her decisionmaking – she had lots of reasons for making the choice she ultimately made – but it definitely affected how she ranked her possibilities, and how comfortable/enthusiastic she felt about each.</p>
<p>It was a LOT more reliable than visiting, and produced a lot more information.</p>
<p>Good thing he visited and showed interest – American University considers “level of applicant’s interest” to be “very important” in freshman admissions.</p>
<p>Taking the whole family worked very well for us. First, one of our younger children is quite insightful and funny; the post-visit comments entertained us on the way home! Second, everyone enjoyed ranking the cafeteria food; we have a list of best to worst. Third, the younger ones started getting a sense of what they like and don’t like, without the pressure of the spotlight being on them. Fourth, they were often invited to attend the student sessions when the parents and students split up, and they liked getting some attention from the tour guides and older students. Finally, each one has been able to say “I want to visit A, B, and C, but not X, Y, or Z when it’s my turn.” It helps to narrow colleges down for the next round.</p>
<p>That being said, if I had much younger children who wouldn’t be patient during a visit, I wouldn’t take them at all.</p>
<p>Here’s another thought regarding tours/interviews. My youngest had no desire to apply to my alma mater. I believe his one word description was, " hideous" but they were coming to our area for interviews last fall and I made him schedule one even though he wasn’t applying. It was a good experience for when he had a ‘real’ interview as to the type of questions asked. He thought I was joking when I told him they might ask what was the last book you read. Sure enough, he was asked that one… Just from a comfort point of view, it was good experience…</p>
<p>Please keep in mind with online reservations required for tours and information sessions each family member takes a spot of a prospective student who is likely to postpone or skip a visit entirely if tours and information sessions can not be secured. Sometimes traveling with the entire family is unavoidable, however it may be better to have one parent find another activity for younger sibs during that time, or simply inquire at check in if there’s space available on the tour.</p>
<p>Another tip: try to have some fun on the trip. Go see a movie or a show in the evening, have some good meals, see some other tourist attractions if you can make time for them.</p>
<p>As for taking the whole family–we didn’t. I took each of our kids on the college visit trip, while my wife took the other kid on a nice short vacation. If you can afford it, I think this is pretty ideal.</p>
<p>I also echo the advice to take pictures of your kid at each school–we tried to find the weirdest looking thing at each school for this picture (i.e., the statue of Jumbo at Tufts).</p>
<p>I agree with those who say that the campus newspaper is THE source of dirty laundry. Ask in admissions if you don’t see one around campus. You may have to sit there and read it, but I have found it very worthwhile. Things we have learned from the school newspaper:</p>
<ul>
<li>At one smallish school someone had broken into a gay student’s room and painted anti-gay graffitti around the room. There was actually a debate in the school paper about whether this was okay or not (at least one student wrote to the paper defending the breakin). This school came right off the list for my D, who is gay. If this behavior is up for debate, she is not interested in attending.</li>
<li>Another school had the list of campus “crimes” in the paper with dates. It took up a whole page (it was about two month’s worth of dates). About every 3rd entry was about someone smelling pot smoke in a dorm, investigating that, and finding nothing. This is a school with a reputation for drug use, but the administration claims they are working hard to clean it up. Which apparently consists of sending campus police in regularly when someone smells weed, but there were no actual confiscation of any drugs or actually catching anyone. I concluded that the admin may be TRYING, but they are making no progress. And there were a LOT of entries like this, it wasn’t occasional. This school also came off D’s list.</li>
<li>Another school is a public school that gives merit aid to OOS students. There was a discussion in the paper about this, and it became clear that the board is seriously considering doing away with that aid. D would have been OOS, and the merit aid was a draw. She dropped the school for other reasons, but that would have been a factor.</li>
<li>One campus has had a reputation in the past of poor internet access (slow). There was an article in the paper describing the target dates for a project (in process at the time) to upgrade the internet that put our minds to rest about whether this would be an ongoing issue.</li>
</ul>
<p>Not everyone would remove schools for the reason we did. But it sure showed us things that we would not hear on the tour.You will see info on things like funding cuts, relationships with the town, poor teaching quality, etc. in many of the school papers. We also see some good things – what activities are happening on campus, awards received by students, new buildings/campus improvements, etc.</p>
<p>Most student newspapers are on-line and almost all colleges publish their crime logs on-line. So, you can browse these in the comfort of your own home and see many weeks/days worth instead of just the one on the day you visit. (Still pick up the paper one when you visit.)</p>
<p>If you can find any, check out student blogs they can be informative also.</p>
<p>Depending on the size of the town the school is located in, the local newspaper can also be a great source of information. We took to reading the online versions of the student newspapers S2 (and now S3) was considering so we could get more then a snapshot, but often the local hometown paper would give a different side of a story, or some that were never reported. It can also reveal over time when the town/gown relationship isn’t so cosy. No university is going to be perfect, and student run papers are going to have bias’s just like any news media, but just like finding a mate you are looking for what ‘faults’ you can and can not live with…not something perfect. Student comments to articles are often the outliers but can be useful as well. In intparent’s situation it justifiably wiped a school clear off the list for her DD. FWIW, I’d have supported my student 100% in that decision!</p>
<p>You are not trying to select the safety. There is supposed to be something deficient about the safety otherwise it would be a Top Pick and not a Safety. </p>
<p>School visits are a big commitment of time, expense and effort. The goal of which should be to gather information outside of the web sites and glossies to get your enough information that you will be able to evaluate among your top picks. </p>
<p>If you think your are going to be perfect about the campus visit process the first time you every attempt it great for you, but the reality is until you get a few reps in you dont know what you dont know. How great was your first golf swing? Your third college visit will be much better and thorough than your first run. Burning your first attempt on a top choice school is suboptimal. </p>
<p>Something has to be first, so I’d suggest a least likely selection that still was worth visiting.</p>
This is where we are going to agree to disagree. A safety is a school where your student is guaranteed admission (either by posted data or a history of 90%+ acceptance rate at your students stats alone, nothing holistic), and your family can afford it either by sticker price or guaranteed, non competitive merit aid. Nowhere in this equation is there a factor of deficient. The concept is admittance and affordability are a sure bet. Many students view their safety school as one of their top choices, if not their top choice. The two are not mutually exclusive. The world is a big place and the number of students and families that covet spots at top 25 schools is really not that great when you look at the number of graduating Sr.'s every year.</p>
<p>argbargy–a school that is a safety doesn’t have to be your least favorite school. DS’s safety school is his second favorite school-and the one he is likely to attend unless he gets better $$'s elsewhere. There doesn’t have to be something deficient about the safety at all. Top picks don’t HAVE to be expensive either.</p>
<p>Case in point: My D, who fell in love with her safety school during the college visit process, just graduated from said safety. (She was accepted to her “match” schools but chose to attend the safety instead.) Her college experience included graduating summa cum laude with all kinds of departmental honors, having summer internships, making friendships with other serious students and with her professors, and having a great job upon graduation: what’s not to love?</p>
<p>I can see where intparent’s newspaper experience would turn me off- but, except in extremes, it’s one of many things to take with perspective. </p>
<p>My D did have a chance to speak with a prof at the college where she landed- a friend of a friend, with a different academic focus, but in the dept. In addition to the better insider info about who’s doing what, D1 was able to note that sort of interaction in her “Why Us?” It was also a rare chance for D1 to somewhat assess her fit. But, since not all kids know their major- and so many have not experienced more than hs coursework, the basics- I’d say the benefit depends on the student. </p>
<p>There were several visits where the students on campus were friendly and loved the school- and, overall, it was still not the match she was looking for. I think what we’re all saying is that these are all ways we can learn more, not that every tool should be pulled out at every visit.</p>
<p>argbargy, do you have a kid in college?
There is NOT supposed to be something deficient about a safety- there is suppposed to be plenty to LOVE. Glass half full. Not to have the kid id a deficient college, a loss, but where he can thrive despite it not being that perfect dream.</p>
<p>Agree, argy has a pretty limited view of this. My D1 fell in love with her safety, got great merit aid, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa after a great four years. Got a job, too. She got into higher ranked and more expensive schools, but honestly could not see anything in those schools that she thought was better than the school she attended.</p>
<p>Yes, D1’s safeties happened to be her #2 and #3. The selling points included the strengths in her major, the run she’d get for her efforts, (among other good points.) They were “safeties” because we expected her to sail through admissions and be offered good aid. </p>
<p>Of course, this is harder for some kids. But it brings up another good thing to consider: the set of “what if?” questions. What if this major doesn’t work out for you, at this college? What if you don’t get that special opp that draws you to this school? Every so often, we’d run through that: is there enough “else” here? I wish all kids the best in finding where they can be happy, thrive and become empowered.</p>
<p>The implication of Safety it is where you fall back to. </p>
<p>So if you have a school that is comfortably in your range, either academically or financially and you actively want to go there, I’d say it should be classified as a top choice, not a safety. </p>
<p>Regardless of semantics of what you term your categories, you shouldnt make an important school your first ever visit.</p>
She got into higher ranked and more expensive schools, but honestly could not see anything in those schools that she thought was better than the school she attended.</p>