<p>We are at the very beginning of this college application process. I have a son who is a sophomore in HS. In April we would like to visit a few colleges. Does my son need to contact the Colleges and make the arrangements or can I do it? What I'm asking is will it be held against my son if he doesn't do this himself? He is in school all day of course and then has activities after school so many days he is not home till after 5. Thank you.</p>
<p>Parents probably do most of the arrangements for college visits…</p>
<p>And…BTW…these days, many of the arrangements are done online - electronically - so no one knows WHO is making the request.</p>
<p>And…for the colleges that take phone arrangements, the person taking the requests probably has nothing to do with the acceptance process.</p>
<p>It’s fine for parents to do that. In general he is still young and most colleges will not do interviews or arrange professor meetings and those sorts of things. But to sign up for a tour will be just fine. Many times it can be done on-line and then you could “let your son” do it just for the experience of getting in and navigating college websites.</p>
<p>It will be fine for you to arrange the visits. Usually you just have to make a phone call to let them know you are coming,reserve a spot on the tour, get directions for parking etc. It will not be held against your 15/16 yr. old student that he didn’t call.</p>
<p>He can do it by email. Best to encourage your son to be fully invested into the college search from the get-go. He’ll be taking responsibility for the process, and rightfully so.</p>
<p>YK, I asked this very question, and now we’re doing a combo of me doing some and my kids doing some, simply based on logistics. I’m taking two kids (twins) to roughly 18 colleges, and if it’s an awful thing for me to send the email that says “We’re coming in X date and would like to sign up for the tour at 2 pm,” well, then so be it.</p>
<p>At this stage, not a problem. When he’s a senior and seriously looking at places, he should do it.</p>
<p>These days, most of the arrangements are done online, or it’s just a “show up” kind of thing. It’s always good for students to take ownership of their own process, this is their future after all, but there are logistical issues, as you say. Probably go for a middle ground approach – Have your son research on the school’s website what is involved in a campus visit. Do you just show up for tours, and if so, what time? Can you meet with a professor or a coach and do they have to do something special for that? Is there an info session (and if so, what time)? If there are actual arrangements to be made (calling, scheduling, etc.) you can do those, but have him help out too.</p>
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Exactly. The people who are fielding the calls (and emails) and making the scheduling arrangements are probably mostly student employees; I seriously doubt that they are instructed to make a note that the parent made the contact so that they can record it as a black mark against the student’s maturity.</p>
<p>We did most of the visit arrangements for our son; he’s busier than we are, and we’re more accustomed to travel planning.</p>
<p>Thanks so much all, this is extremely helpful!</p>
<p>He should contact the colleges – or in any case, the contact should come from his e-mail address (and if he has a silly one like <a href="mailto:bigstud@whatever.com">bigstud@whatever.com</a>, now is the time to create a new one that isn’t silly).</p>
<p>However, you should deal with the hotels. If you are traveling with him, make the reservations in your name. If he will be traveling alone, specifically ask the hotel whether they will accept a reservation from a teenager; some won’t.</p>
<p>I did a lot for my senior son (and his dad) in terms of the logistics for college visiits. I sat S down a couple of times to oversee an email because for someone who gets 5s on AP english lit and 800s on SATs his first request for an interview/visit in an email was in shorthand code that , to me, came off as flippant and rude! He also saw how I did my “folder” system that I use for all of our travel. I arranged all of the visits and tours (mainly using websites) and then put all relevant documents for a particular visit in one folder–maps, contact info, flight stuff, car rental, hotel–S went on visit with dad to 3 schools…three folders --one for each school/day of trip. Worked perfectly so they didn 't miss a single interview, portfolio review, tour…this for two ADD males was quite an accomplishment!</p>
<p>For his first visit to a college on his own…I handed him a folder and dropped him at the airport. Now another is coming up so I asked him to put the folder together but I checked…sure enough some critical pieces missing …Hopefully lessons are being learned-either you develop a system or you marry someone with a system (husband’s solution). Yes it is their process but a good parent tries to teach by example and support rather than “let them fail and they will learn”…the latter works perhaps more quickly and effectively but the price is very high. There will be no help for grad school or job interviews so hopefully the lessons from this process will carry through…I fantasize that he will develop my folder method…but he will probably come up with something that generally works for him but is less A-C.</p>
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LOL! That was my solution, too.</p>
<p>Lord yes, the parents can arrange them. My '11 D is working so hard in AP classes and ECs that she has very little time to sleep. If I told her she had to arrange a bunch of visits, I think she’d snap.</p>
<p>I think I did the vast majority of the tasks related to the college visits. DD and I would look at our schedules and try to figure out dates/times and if she wanted to sit in on a class. All of the visits we did were scheduled via online systems, with the exception of some invitation events. For those, she emailed to say she was coming. so it was just easier than waiting for her. </p>
<p>For a lot of the visits, we had to do an overnight or leave at the crack of dawn plus DD is in school all day and then has a major EC that came into play during the time of most of her visits. Since I was the pilot, it was a lot easier for me to just sit and figure out what the best options were based on the travel situation. </p>
<p>Now for college apps, I never even saw an essay. I was just involved when it came time to pay the app fee or send scores. So involvement in booking visits does not necessarily equal over involvement in the college search/app process :)</p>
<p>I don’t think there is anything wrong with you providing a good deal of help at this point, but nonetheless, I think a lot of good comes out of the students figuring out how to do this stuff on their own.</p>
<p>Both of my kids wanted to arrange the visits themselves by the time they were juniors, and I was willing to accommodate them as long as I was certain it was getting done. My son was no problem. My daughter required a fair amount of follow-up on my part. I did need to ask to see the confirmations for the tours, remind her a few times to get in touch with faculty if she wanted to talk to any, to set up interviews with honors administrators in a couple of cases, and to print out the parking permits and the schedules before we left home. In the end, she got much more responsible and knows how to go about these things, now.</p>
<p>I suppose a few people would say, leave it entirely up to them, and if it doesn’t get done, then they are the ones who lose. Well, I had no intention of flying or driving many hundreds of miles, paying for hotels, etc. and then discovering all she was lined up to do was go on a tour that didn’t even require advance notice.</p>
<p>As for the students’ after-school schedules, visit arrangement seem to all be done online now, and unless something is not working right, no day-time phone calls will be required.</p>
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<p>Midmo: you are absolutely correct about that, but since I usually had to take a day off for the visit, it was helpful to get it done when I was logged in on my calendar at work. That part is really all about me :)</p>
<p>It’s the concept of being responsible / taking ownership that I think is the important part, though … not the ability to do the actual logistics. Because really, I had and have no interest in my kids making hotel reservations and car rental reservations for us.</p>
<p>Up until this year, when D and I basically doing just the info. session/campus tour visits, I was the one who arranged the visits(along with any needed plane tickets, hotels and/or car rental). Now that she’s a senior, and her visits are little more specialized (and may just involve her traveling by herself), she’s been taking the lead on scheduling the school visits.</p>
<p>Just an additional opinion pro parents arranging visits.</p>
<p>I did, don’t think it hurt his chances anywhere, as he was already accepted to each college he visited.</p>
<p>While it might have been a good exercise for S to make the arrangements, I would have no hair left on my head since I would have pulled it all out, and what little there may have been left of it, would have been gray.</p>