College visits before or after accepted

Hi all,

My son is a junior in CA and we are thinking to plan a trip to the East Coast to visit colleges during spring break. He still needs to put together a list of schools that he wants to tour so it will be a bit rush. I’ve heard that it’s a better idea to visit colleges after accepted. What would be your suggestions - 1) Just apply to all colleges that you are interested in and visit after accepted; 2) Tour during spring break to get an idea of the school culture, environment, etc.

My son will most likely choose computer science as his major. What would be your suggestions as to which colleges in the East Coast we should put on our tour list?

Thank you!

The before/after question usually is determined by logistics such as time and money. If those are abundant, visiting before can be helpful, to assist when writing the essays as to “why xxx school”, and to show interest in the school which can help with admissions chances. Earlier visits can also help juniors figure out what kind of school (size, location, etc) they like and to create their apply-to list. If time and money are short, it is fine to visit after acceptances, just do research and show interest another way. Some people also do revisits after acceptances to make the final decision.

It can also depend on things like your student’s schedule…if there are any sports or other activities that make traveling hard during certain seasons/months.

For you, time is very short now for spring break visits, you would want to check to see if the schools are in session and giving tours.

What level of school is he aiming for? Ivy? Urban? etc.

We did both. It helped narrow down the number of applications and started the data collection process that led to an ultimate choice of where to go. After acceptances, we only had to go back to two accepted student events.

I’d recommend it if finances/logistics allow, but waiting until afterwards is certainty an option if not. It just becomes a bit time-compressed.

Visits before and after really depend on what the purpose of the visit happens to be.

If you or your son need (or want) to see a college before deciding whether to apply, then of course a before visit is needed.

If it is a college at which demonstrated interest is helpful, a visit before or after application, but before acceptances may also be beneficial (though not always).

However, if you or your son only want to visit to decide whether he wants to attend a specific college, there is no need to spend time, money, and energy on a special trip just to visit all the colleges to which he may be accepted.

Adding a couple of college visits onto another trip is also possible. My daughter visited Pomona, HMC, and USC when we were at my parents in LA for thanksgiving a couple of years back, and my daughter visited Cornell when she traveled with my wife who was giving an invited talk there.

If resources allow, I would recommend visiting before. I agree with all of the points made in the above posts and would like to add that it helps the student imagine what it would be like traveling back and forth by himself. For example, my son was fine with a direct flight followed by an hour (max) drive from the airport to get to the school. He also did not want to lose full vacation days on travel only. did not want to be in an Uber or sharing a ride for longer than that after his flight. As you know, some airports are easier to navigate than others. We needed to know he would be comfortable doing this for the next four years. It was one of the factors that helped cut down on the application list.

If the OP is in Ca and interested in CS there are probably more affordable and better programs at home state than anywhere else, except at the most selective schools on east coast. If that’s the case visiting or not probably doesn’t make any difference at these schools as they don’t consider interest in their admissions, unless you plan to ED one of them.

We did all of ours (I think 18 in total) before acceptance, starting in Sophomore year, with our last visit in the fall of Senior year. My D20’s senior year has been so busy with her ECs, I’m glad we didn’t wait.

We were able to rule out a few that sounded great but just did not appeal to her in person.

Obviously this depends on budget and available time to travel, but it worked for us.

I am a big fan of worrying about different types of campuses big/medium/small and urban/suburban/rural more than the actual colleges. Out of the 8 schools my DS applied, he only toured 2 prior to acceptance.

We did all of our visiting in her Junior year. DD20 had specific criteria for her ideal school as far as size, logistics, major, possible merit aid etc. so that narrowed it down for us. In addition we decided that we would not apply to any schools that she was not willing to attend if accepted since applications cost money. There were schools that looked absolutely perfect on paper but once we visited DD ruled them out for one reason or another. We did not visit the last 4 that her college counselor added at the last minute due to time constraints but 2 have been eliminated already… Since we have started getting decisions back we have pretty much been doing a process of elimination. We are still awaiting more decisions. Once we narrow it down to the final 2-3 contenders we will do revisits for confirmation.