<p>My son and his dad are leaving today to visit colleges. Being men, they have no checklist and done no prep of any kind. Does anyone have some sort of checklist that they felt was helpful, or any tips for them?</p>
<p>Thank you!</p>
<p>Have them take notes so they won’t mix up places when trying to remember things!
Also ask students what they do in their free time. Someone I know asked that and the student said they mostly played cards and just studied and watched tv. That person didn’t apply there.</p>
<p>I didn’t come up with this… taken directly from another CC thread: “Down the left hand side is the list of colleges, and across the top are about 10 criteria - school size, academic reputation, friendly environment, cost, housing availibility, presitige, location, etc. The kids can give each college/criterion a score from 1-10, multiply by the relative importance of each criterion, and get a final evaluation total for each college.”</p>
<p>Here are some questions you might want to think about compiled by ACT:</p>
<p>[Questions</a> to Ask on a Campus Visit - Parent Resources from ACT](<a href=“http://www.act.org/path/parent/college/visit.html]Questions”>http://www.act.org/path/parent/college/visit.html)</p>
<p>Several things that we did enhancing visits greatly. Check out the college newspapers to get a feel for the college and find out thing going on during the visit. Wander about on your own and in particular, go the the building where the department of your student’s intended major is located. You will usually encounter a professor or department staff willing to speak with you and sometimes even give you a brief tour of the department facilities. This happened to us at RPI, Rochester and Case. The Case prof even invited us to the department picnic that afternoon outside Olin Hall. There will also be departmental bulletin boards with interesting info and sometimes research poster board displays. I was a college prof for many years and can assure you that most colleges welcome such interest.</p>
<p>Go to an open lecture, concert, or performance if time permits. Its usually cheap and you get a feel of campus life sometimes. Go to the student union for a meal and also the college bookstore. </p>
<p>Our son slipped into large frosh lectures to observe and even got a compsci question clarified which cropped up in his APCompsci hs class. Typically a schedule of classes are posted on line to find one suitable for this.</p>
<p>In addition to the suggestions already posted:
Pay attention to the posters and notices about student activities, clubs, etc.
If there is time, check out the adjacent college town. I liked to have a meal there to check out the vibe.
If you are attending an info session, ask how AP credits are handled.
Ask about scheduling, class availability, and their impact on 4-year graduation.</p>
<p>Don’t bother with having them take notes or do a checklist. They won’t do that either. Have them call you after each college they visit, and tell you about their visit. You take the notes. And don’t bother with the questions that can be easily answered by checking the school’s web site (like how they handle AP credits)… Stick to the questions that really matter: are the classes interesting (go to one)? What’s on the bulletin boards? What kind of graffitti is in the bathroom? (You wouldn’t believe the stuff in the philosophy building at Reed.) How’s the food? Does the campus feel good? Do students go away for the weekend (which you can tell from the number of “looking for rides” signs on the bulletin boards)?</p>
<p>^^ All good ideas!</p>
<p>Take pictures at each college you visit, to have a frame of reference.</p>
<p>Also, we ate in a dining hall of every school we visited. You can casually talk to the students around you. They’re usually very willing to answer questions.</p>
<p>We’ve always made sure to have at least one meal in a campus dining hall and at least coffee or a meal at an off-campus hangout. We eavesdrop on conversations around us. We try to strike up conversations to see how friendly students are, and to ask questions that get other than canned answers from admissions staff.</p>
<p>My S and I had a simple checklist that we both scored 1-10. What do you think of the campus? How about the surrounding town? Is the food good? How cute were the girls? No spreadsheets, no final score. What it did do was give us something to talk about and laugh about on the long rides between schools.</p>
<p>Thanks all.</p>
<p>dmd…you’re right. What was I thinking? ;-)</p>
<p>I do pick up the newspapers and look at bulletin boards. And hanging around the on-campus coffee/pizza joint is useful. Don’t always get a meal, but it’s nice to do. I appreciate it when the campus organizes tours and info sessions so that you get more than one student. So far bathrooms have been spotless and Brandeis had duel flush toilets in one of the newer buildings.</p>
<p>S took extensive notes at every college we visited. He said he didn’t see why a student would NOT take notes! </p>
<p>We’ve visited 6 colleges now. S was the ONLY person I saw taking notes out of all those kids. No, he’s not a nerd, either! A professor actually stopped our group at one university to commend him for it.</p>
<p>We always counted the squirrels on campus too.</p>
<p>There is a website devoted to campus squirrel listings.</p>
<p>I was the one who posted the original checklist quoted above in post #3. It came from a handout that the high school counseling office gave each junior. S2 is about to embark on a 5-day, 8-college tour, checklist in hand, so we’ll see how effective it really is.</p>
<p>I like the idea of a call home every night to debrief Mom on the colleges visited.</p>
<p>I’m also going to ask S2 to be aware of the students on campus, and ask himself if he feels like he’d fit in with them. A very general question, to be sure, but I think gut feel counts too, along with more quantitative measures.</p>
<p>As far as asking questions easily answered on the school’s website, I just spent 15 minutes clicking through S1’s school’s website and could find nothing on how AP credits are handled. No doubt it’s there, but it’s so buried as to be invisible. Check the website first, certainly, but some relatively obvious questions might not be so easy to find answers to.</p>
<p>Take notes about what you liked at the school to use later in your “Why College X?” essay.</p>
<p>You know your DH/DS best. I’m sure there are those out there who would return with lots of detailed info in the form of notes/spreadsheets/whatever. For our visits last year, I always took pictures, mostly to share with family members who weren’t along, and at the end of each visit I’d get the yes/no vote from my DS. It was either “still on the list” or “no way”. (BTW, this was mostly from his sense of the students on campus. It was either a group of kids he felt like he’d be comfortable with or not.) He applied to each of the “still on the list schools”, and after acceptances/aid offers were all in, he picked his top two choices, which we then made a second visit to. Came away with a clear preference between those two. Check and done.</p>
<p>Ds wrote three pros and three cons after each visit and then a sentence or two about overall impression. If he wrote more than a sentence or two I knew the school had made a strong impression, good or bad.</p>
<p>Must link to the squirrel sightings! This could be a determining factor for ds.</p>
<p>For engineering students:</p>
<p>Is AP credit considered for engineering majors?</p>
<p>IF 3/2 programs, exactly how many student have completed the program in the past 3 years (you may find that 3/2 is PR only.)</p>
<p>How much hands-on engineering and sample problems and projects are included in first and second year classes. </p>
<p>Are there competitive teams, which ones, how large, and are fresh and soph eligible (to gauge the likelihood of your Fresh/soph years participation)? </p>
<p>Is there some place to work on your car?</p>
<p>Percent of teachers who speak understandable English?</p>
<p>What do other engineering students do to keep Fresh/soph year from resembling being locked in a windowless cubical doing long division 10 hours a day? How do they spice it up?</p>
<p>Do people share homework/old tests/texts, have group homework sessions and study groups? </p>
<p>Are classes graded on a curve, making your good grade possible if someone does worse?</p>
<p>Are the professors around? Available? Obsessed with their research? Good teachers? </p>
<p>Does the campus culture resemble “revenge of the nerds” with engineers on the social fringes or are engineers part of the “cool” culture?</p>
<p>FOR WOMEN STUDENTS: contact the local SWE chapter and take offer to take a starving female engineer to a good dinner. All manner of candid info may be forthcoming.</p>
<p>some Q&A today from a NYT blog
[Guidance</a> Office: Answers About the End-Game, Part 2 - The Choice Blog - NYTimes.com](<a href=“Guidance Office: Answers About the End-Game, Part 2 - The New York Times”>Guidance Office: Answers About the End-Game, Part 2 - The New York Times)</p>
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