<p>I think 25 colleges in 7 days could get one into Guinness world record, a call to them might yield something interesting.</p>
<p>I don’t know where OP lives, but if you want your kids to get an idea of rural/urban/large/small/LAC/uni, can’t you accomplish that with day trips from home? Within an hour of my home is a major uni, three LACs, a small uni, etc. We don’t need to make a special trip to see different kinds of schools.</p>
<p>Youdont’say…I agree with you 100%. You can easily group/characterized schools by a few high level traits. Visit some local schools to get you kids sense of “fit and feel”. If they are traveling anyway, they should be able identify a small handful to visit on the way vs. the number the OP is proposing.</p>
<p>As they get closer to college-app time target a few key visits to some that might be favorites or very likely options. I would even suggest saving some visits until after you get acceptences/fin aid offers, to see if the trip is even worth your time.</p>
<p>Also, be sure to inlcude some safety schools - grades and finances - in the mix. Too many folks are shocked by rejections and/or costs after the fact.</p>
<p>Schmaltz - I would not underestimate the maturity growth in kids. We visited Tulane when my kids were freshmen (bc we were on a trip to NOLA anyway, and we had relatives who had gone there, and why the heck not since we wouldn’t be in NOLA again). Honestly, all they remembered was the un-frickin-believable heat and nothing else. Believe me, I’m a jump-the-gun kind of person … I like things DONE and over with … But there is danger in starting too early and turning them off to the process. I pushed the envelope as it was by taking them to 18 or so schools over junior year – and I didn’t even touch the south or the west.</p>
<p>[The</a> Great College Road Trip - Newsweek](<a href=“http://www.newsweek.com/2011/04/03/the-great-college-road-trip.html]The”>The Great College Road Trip)</p>
<p>I think if the OP’s kids are down with it, why not visit as many schools as they can? My D has never had an appetite for extreme college touring, so that’s not been our style. On a recent trip, however, I threw in a couple of drive-bys (one was stealth and another was announced). The stealth one: We were driving from Ohio to Brooklyn, where we were spending a couple of nights on our way to colleges in upstate New York. I determined that we would just happen to be ready to stop for the night in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. “Wait, what? Dickinson College is HERE?!?! Let’s just see what it looks like, honey, since we’re here.” At this point, we’d narrowed the list of contenders, but I thought, what if Dickinson College is just what she’s looking for? (It isn’t, but we had a tasty, cheap meal at a local establishment called George’s Subs.) The next day, as we were making our approach into New York, I convinced the D we should pop into Easton, Penn., to see how Lafayette College is situated in the town. Nicely, IMO. So, now I know. Just in case.</p>
<p>I’ve told this anecdote on CC before, so forgive me if you’ve heard it. When my kids were younger, we once decided on a trip from New York to DC to swing by Princeton and take a look at it. As we were driving down Nassau Street, right in front of the college, a carjacking occurred right in front of us. A woman jumped screaming out of the car, the car zoomed off, other cars tried to block it, etc. My kids were convinced for years that Princeton was some kind of Wild West town.</p>
<p>But I guess I don’t know if this argues against Schmaltz’s plan or in favor of it.</p>
<p>DD went on an organized (bus + consultant) college tour over spring break of her sophomore year. They visited something like two schools per day but did not go on any of the schools’ organized tours. It gave her some sense of what she wanted, but it was mostly a blur. Moreover, she was not psychologically ready to really to focus and analyze her impressions. In part, I think this was because identifying schools was not on the minds of her peers. Her tour buddy was a junior, but even she ended up revisiting a number of schools. </p>
<p>The initial tour jump started the search process, so I don’t think it was entirely useless. However, I think that it is unrealistic to think that an early drive-by will necessarily eliminate a visit to that school down the road. For my kid, the <em>feel</em> of the student body will always trump gorgeous architecture. Perhaps decisions regarding urban/rural/suburban can be made at an early age. However, I can imagine tastes and the spirit of adventure can change fairly radically as a kid ages. . . .</p>
<p>I can imagine Schmaltz writing a humorous essay on his whirlwind tour.</p>
<p>For those who don’t know the worm’s history, he decided to apply as a junior, 2 days before winter break. result–no college visits. He did go to one college presentation, where he saw a film and heard the adcom and alumni speak. He had also spent a few summers doing programs at 3 colleges. One was at Duke, and I figured he would love that area and campus. In the end, he looked at programs and schools with strong CS departments.</p>
<p>When applying for grad school, he finally got to see a variety of U’s.</p>
<p>My advice for the OP is to narrow the schools to those which suit the needs of his oldest, in terms of size, diversity, Greek scene, majors, ease of travel, etc.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the responses. I’m astonished that this mundane topic is getting as much attention as the wedding of the century. To answer a few questions:</p>
<p>I’m sure this isn’t any sort of record. One could easily visit 25 colleges in Mass. in one or 2 days.</p>
<p>If they are any distance off the beaten path, they aren’t on the itinerary (e.g. Colgate and Hamilton are on, Cornell is off).</p>
<p>It’s dawned on me that this approach is sort of a Hegelian synthesis of College Road Trip and Speed Dating. Whoever mentioned that nobody is being expected to pick a college based solely on this trip is right…but I’m sure some will be deleted from consideration.</p>
<p>I agree with Pizzagirl that the archetype approach has some flaws…colleges, like people, have enough idiosyncrasies that it’s quite possible that someone could dislike Dartmouth but love Middlebury.</p>
<p>It’s quite possible none of these schools will end up on the final list in coming years. We’re from the Midwest, and it’s possible they could go to Midwestern schools. But it’s one thing to marry the boy next door because you’ve seen guys all over the country and prefer the boy next door, and quite another thing to marry the boy next door because he’s the only guy you’ve ever seen.</p>
<p>All family members have had input on the itinerary.</p>
<p>The negative comments from posters here HAVE had an effect. The commando raid into target-rich southern Maine has been scrubbed. Also, Allegheny has been deemed too far off the expressway.</p>
<p>There are some must-sees, and some optional ones. We’re all flexible enough to adjust the schedule during the trip.</p>
<p>Schmaltz-Don’t forget to take pictures of your D’s ON the campuses as well as pictures OF the campuses. When my D applied a few years ago, she ended up submitting two arts supplements, one for voice, one for instrumental. On the front of each CD case was a picture of her singing/playing her instrument. On the back of each CD case was a picture of her on the school’s campus. Several schools mentioned the photos. Kinda cool.</p>
<p>We also try to take a picture at each college, preferably in front of a large animal effigy or other weird object.</p>
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<p>Hey, that was MY good point, in post 47.</p>
<p>I have not read all the posts in this thread, but I do have experience with a jam packed college tour. My daughter and I traveled from South Florida to Ithaca, NY and back, 3,500 miles, last spring. We took two weeks and visited somewhere around 20 schools, 8 of which included meetings with coaches. Several of these visits were drive bys or thru. I mainly wanted my daughter to see the different types of schools available to her. We visited a couple of smaller LACs, a couple of large state schools and a couple of medium size privates. We visited schools in urban, suburban and rural environments. We toured 4 Ivys and drove through two more. Personally, I think the experience of visiting these Ivy League schools is an education in and of itself. There is so much history around these schools, they are part of our cultural intelligence. I enjoyed the trip, minus the driving, and so did my daughter. </p>
<p>I will admit that after a while, the schools started to blend together. I ask my daughter all the time what school we did this or that. She seems to remember more detail than I do. The funny thing is, she ended up committing to a school that is the exact opposite of what she thought she wanted before, and after, our trip. She thought she wanted a suburban campus, like UVA, and ended up on a very urban campus, Boston University. But when she was making her decision, I felt confident that she had the info she needed to make a smart choice, because she had seen firsthand what her options were.</p>
<p>@Schmaltz -
not sure if you have a netbook or anything with a dataplan, but, along the ideas of an earlier poster who suggested a digital scrapbook - if any of your kids are writers, it might be worthwhile for them to run a blog on their visits. At the very least, they’d be sharing their viewpoints with peers back home. At the most, it could flourish into a body of work (ie, publishable, marketable, etc). Everyone in the family can participate or not. isites from google is free, easy and has a lot of flexibility for growth.</p>
<p>And, like another poster suggested, find something (ie, bubble tea, pizza, etc) to comment on for most of the stops. Or a couple of somethings (ease in finding a public bathroom, student footwear, attractive landscaping, soccer field proximity to dining, nearest manicurist - you need to find things that appeal to your family) because the same things won’t be accessible at every place (and then THAT becomes a chore).</p>
<p>I’m in the camp that likes drive-by visits. We found value in them. Back when my older D was in 7th grade, she and my husband (prematurely) went to a lecture about the college app process. They came away within one very valuable tip: if you drive up to the campus, and your kid says, for whatever reason: “No Way. Not Happening” just keep driving to the next campus. There are so many schools to choose from, there’s no reason to insist on any school. </p>
<p>We did a road-trip similar to yours, when the girls were too young. It got boring fast for all of us. We adjusted the trip as we went along. No harm. No foul.</p>
<p>And we did experience the added benefit that you mentioned - my younger daughter saw the differences between schools; she actually said, ‘ok, I understand why you want me to do well in school’ - it definitely changed her study habits, etc. Of course, all of that became moot in Sept of her senior year when she decided to pursue a BM instead of a BA/BS…</p>
<p>My suggestion is to keep the trip light and focused on family time together; just as if you were planning a road-trip to experience diner food, or obscure museums. Without expectations of the kids and their college goals.</p>
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<p>midmo - Good for you. Exactly the issue I had about the archetype approach. It never worked for us. Some of us take a “holistic” approach in choosing a college. We don’t have a cutoff in size or in location. Big/small/rural/urban/surburban is OK if there’s other overriding factors. Those other factors are not easy to define.</p>
<p>I found one of the best things for me was to keep a pad of paper with me, write down the name of the college, time, day, and location of the college on it, and then take a picture of the piece of paper prior to any pictures of the campus. Maybe at the end of the visit write down a few impressions on a piece of paper and take a picture of that. Digital photos are free, and this is a great way to keep organized.</p>
<p>Also keep in mind that just because a child may not like a university the first time they see it doesn’t mean they won’t ever come around on it. My brother was a few years older than me and went to the University of Pittsburgh. I’d help move him in/out every year, and each time we wound up driving by Carnegie Mellon. I thought I’d never want to go there (no idea why, I just didn’t want to). After researching colleges and everything, though, I thought the school sounded pretty neat, and after moving my brother in the following year I took a tour and loved the place. Four years later I was a happy alumni. :)</p>
<p>OP, just a suggestion based on our experience: the most value we got from college visits was NOT selecting specific schools; it was allowing the kids to start grappling with the kinds of things they were looking for in a college, the kinds of elements that appealed to them, the kinds of things that turned them off</p>
<p>the closest analogy in our family is whether we’re “looking at” or “shopping for” colleges; if the latter, then the focus is to find one that fits and get ready to make some sort of purchase (e.g., what school fo you want to apply to) </p>
<p>instead we were looking at colleges wiht the delirerable of “what interests you”, not focused on what school you want to purchase; using a clothing analogy, it’s seeing what’s in the stores these days, what fashions appeal to one’s own sense of style; hope I don’t make anyone mad here, but I think you’ll get optimal resuilts using a female style rather than a male style fo shopping (see what’s around vs. looking for what to buy)</p>
<p>Example: the best visit I think we had as a family was at UVA; it unearthed rich veins of discussion re: what kind of school in which kind of community DS was interested; the school wasn’t a good fit and that didn’t matter one whit: great visit!!!</p>
<p>The only thing is - beware of what might be a “no way, no how” first impression. For example, when I brought up the topic of women’s schools, D (predictably and understandably) said “no way, no how.” I got someone I know who had a D attending Bryn Mawr to take D around the campus and host her the day before our “official” visit - and D really loved it, and that opened her mind to women’s colleges in general – we wound up visiting 4 of them and she will be attending one in the fall. My point is – if we’d just driven by the first campus (Bryn Mawr) - no matter how gorgeous it was, she might have still said “no way, no how” without hearing the filter through the eyes of a current student. Do not underestimate the impact of what a peer or near-peer shows them vs what we as parents try to say to them. To that end, Schmaltz, if you do know of any students at any of these places who might take your kids around for a look-see, that might be more powerful than a look-see with mom and dad.</p>