Are summer college visits worth it? Would visiting during spring break (when colleges are in session) be more useful?
Also, how many schools can you reasonably visit in a week?
I think seeing the full, regular student body on campus is the best, most legitimate impression a kid can get of a school, but time constraints don’t always allow it. We’re going to check out a couple places on our way to our annual vacation destination. I think it will be better than nothing, especially to get a feel of the size of the big state U we’re going to see.
Depends on how much time and money you have to spend on the effort. It is always better to see schools while class is in session to get a feel for the students. However, in our case, S wanted to go to the opposite coast for school (and it was where the majority of his programs were), so we had to do a lot of Summer work just to get a feel for the campuses and the environment. We did mostly summer tours and did a whirlwind Spring Break trip Senior Yr after admissions returns were in to see and “feel” the top 3.
However, if you can drive to the majority of schools, I would recommend going while school is in session for the richest experience. Also, some schools have very active summer terms so you can get a good idea, but it’s school by school on that one and YMMV.
We have done both summer visits and spring break visits. Generally, yes, it is better to visit when the college is in session but some of the colleges we visited on our kids’ spring break were on their own spring break and we visited one college last summer that had a fair number of kids on campus because students are required to spend one summer on campus (Dartmouth). If you are going to visit schools in the summer, I think you are better off at mid size to large universities because they generally have kids who stay on campus to do research plus summer programs. Some of the smaller LACs we visited last summer were pretty empty. Over spring break, we had 5 days and fit 8 schools in which meant that on three of the five days we saw two schools (one tour and info session in the morning and one in the afternoon). I don’t think we could have done much more than that. It also depends on how close/far apart the schools are located. Easy to fit two schools in if they are located in or near a big city. Also, there were some schools where they offered specialized tours in addition to the regular tour that required a full day and we did that for one or two schools.
If time and money allow, I would avoid summer visits and visit when classes are in session.
Summer is tough because campus is empty and you can’t get a good feel IMHO. We always tried to go during the school year, but we have done some in the summer. It’s just a different experience.
I agree with the consensus, it is best to tour when the school is in session. An empty campus can really color your perception of the school - or a school that should be buzzing but isn’t… maybe fewer on-campus residents than it says on their web-site.
I would also add, you don’t need to tour them all. You can use opportunistic tours during sophomore and Jr year to help figure out what kind of schools your student is interested in. 30k undergrad commuter in major metro area vs 15k rural college town vs 6k private. One will feel more like home, focus the applications on schools you can afford with a similar profile . I’d only pay to travel to see a school my student had been admitted to.
While I think it is good to visit schools with classes and students in session, during the summer the faculty staff may have more time to actually talk to you. We visited one school during the summer and the head of the department that DS was interested in spent a few hours with DS talking about the department, classes, research, DS’s interests, motivations, etc. He gave a tour of tour of his lab. Overall, sold DS on the school. DS also talked to other faculty from different departments. No other school during the academic year was able to provide that kind of time to connect with faculty.
This school went from just “on the list” to “top of the list”. We did make another trip to the school for accepted students day and DS sat in on classes and did a dorm overnight.
He graduated from that school last month!
We visited schools in the summer, as well as during the school year. I would not allow a child to enroll at a college he or she had only seen in the summer, but…Colleges do care about students’ academic performance. Missing school to visit colleges is a risky venture, if you miss too much school it will threaten your GPA.
Many colleges do care about “demonstrated interest.” You are not only visiting a college to get a feel for the college, but also (for those colleges which care) to demonstrate interest.
Many colleges and universities do have summer sessions. If you plan the trips carefully, you can see colleges in the summer with real college students.
I have looked at colleges in the summer as well as during breaks. I got screwed out of visiting 3 colleges due to snow (1 inch) in the Virginia/ DC area in February lol. (Im from Long Island) I could get a good picture of the campus in the summer, but in the fall Im going to visit my top choices to get a better picture.
Our D has visited colleges both in and out of session, some with and some without us. Because they are all on the opposite coast, we did a family tour in the summer out of necessity. I will echo Chowdycat-we found that at some of the colleges without summer sessions, EVERYONE had more time to talk to us, tour groups were either smaller or we got personal tours, and got lots of inside information not on the tours from the people we talked to. At one small school even the president of the college invited us into the office!
D’s application list includes an almost even number of schools from the “in session” and out-of-session" groups. One is the school where we met everyone from a recent grad in her major to the president, and I feel completely confident that she would be fine there even though we did not see the full student body. In fact, none of the out-of-session schools would be crossed off if D applied. Not everyone can even visit colleges at all before they attend. We did the best we could.
One piece of advice is to think about saving intense (meaning sitting in on classes, stay overnight in Dorm etc) type visits for extreme reach schools (ivies etc) until after acceptance. When admissions numbers are in single digits (even for super qualified kids) it can be smart to be careful about falling in love with one “dream school”. Conversely, spend some time at safeties, so that the kid can see that it IS a good choice.
Also- don’t stress too much if you can’t do big visits for every school. As sseamom says, do your best.
- It is good to visit schools if you can.
- You don't want to miss school to visit colleges.
- It is useful to visit while school is in session as you get a feel for the students.
- If summer is what you can do, then do it. If you are about to become a senior, definitely visit now. If you are going into Junior year, then I would spread visits over fall/spring break.