College visits - MIT or schools with higher admissions chances?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1

We are in the process of planning college visits for late summer for my rising senior daughter. Her colleges are all over the map geographically while we live in the Pacific Northwest. We definitely can’t get to all of them.

I’d love to hear how you decided to balance likely admissions versus reach schools on your or your child’s lists.

The way I see it: summer is a great time to visit schools that are so far from home. It would be harder to do an extended visit after acceptance and before May 1. On the other hand, if a school is a reach (as MIT is for everyone), perhaps travel time should be spent where admissions is more likely.

I had a kid last year who was accepted by two good schools far from home, but only had time to do an accepted student visit one before May 1st. We were lucky she had at least done a summer visit to the other school. There is a lot going on spring of senior year. It’s not easy to schedule when a school is a full days travel from home.

2

I would focus on visiting those schools that care about demonstrated interest (which MIT doesn’t). Google " Common Data Set". In section C the schools rank how important various factors are to admissions, including demonstrated interest. Visiting those that care, especially coming from a distance, may work in your favor. Good luck!

3

Honestly, I don’t want to have the tail wagging the dog here. Yes, some schools care about demonstrated interest, and if DD is genuinely interested, I expect her to demonstrate it. But, this isn’t a trip about increasing admissions chances, it’s a trip about figuring out where she wants to apply and where she might actually want to go.

4

The only schools we visited last year when DD applied were schools that cared about demonstrated interest as per post #1 above. Unless we were in the area already. MIT was her reach school when she applied and she fell in love when she did more research about it online. Actually she did not like CPW when she attended in the spring due to the number of reasons, but nevertheless this is the school she is attending now.

5

When I think about things that make her reach schools different – one is clearly money. We went to a local presentation from Hopkins and I was blown away by how much money they are clearly spending on the campus facilities and experience there. The other, and this definitely apples to both MIT and Hopkins, is the reputation for being high-stress. I wonder if that would even come through on a summer visit.

But, like I said, I know from experience that spring of senior year can be crazy and I don’t know how easy it will be to get across the country on the college admissions timetable. (Our school calendar is “off” from the typical in other parts of the country.)

6

For schools that were a reach (either for admission or financially, i.e., needed great FA award or merit), we typically wrapped those visits in with schools in the area that weren’t reaches. So, for example, we visited Boston during D’s junior year and checked out 3 schools there. But there were other reach schools that were far away that we did not visit. D was accepted to one of those, but the FA was not as good as another school she preferred, so she didn’t end up visiting. She would have, though, if it was the FA had been better.

7

This is the week of finals and students are leaving at the end of this week. Students you will see on campus in the summer would be those doing UROPs and very relaxed compare to the normal stress level. You don’t need to visit to know that the stress level at MIT is all you think it is X 10. It is hard to the breaking point, but MIT admission is doing a very good job admitting only those who can do it.

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@suzy100 That’s a great approach, but doesn’t work well with our particular school list.

9

We spaced out the college visits. When a school holiday came up, we drove to local (west coast) universities: several safeties and a few reaches, as well as a variety of state, private STEM, and LACs. This started in the sophomore year. We also did a tour of reach colleges on the east coast during spring break of junior year. (A downside to this approach, obviously: it doesn’t jive with changes in a kid’s maturity and tastes that commonly occur during high school.)

By the fall of senior year, we had visited 16 universities and my DS was able to narrow his list to six. He didn’t apply to any schools that he hadn’t visited. Some universities were crossed off for really dumb reasons (Stanford had “too many palm trees”… and too many students at USC “rode single-geared bikes.” Ha.) But, hey, it was his decision about the best fit.

He ended up at MIT and is a freshman now. He is managing the course load well, in addition to being a competitive athlete. Sleep is not an issue. He credits the time management skills that he learned in high school. The biggest challenge for him, it seems, is being surrounded by so many driven students, who often take more classes than necessary to graduate in four years. I tell him that it’s not a race and that he should also have balance in his social life. My impression is that Caltech students “drink from the fire hose” far more than MIT students. “Flaming out” doesn’t seem to be a thing at MIT.

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@aroundhere Dunno what your financial situation is and/or how independent your kid is, but for two schools that were located where we didn’t have any other reason to go save look at the school we let our rising senior do the visits herself. We used miles for one, found a time tix were cheap for other. She red-eyed to one, ubered to campus, toured, walked around town a bit, caught last flite out. Is a bit trickier if the schools are far from airports, but most have some form of transport (since students need it too.)

Certainly something you could do with MIT if you were comfortable with your kid doing the trip on their own. Red-eye. Uber to Campus (or see if they have other cheaper transport). Breakfast. Tour. If interested Harvard is quick uber if they want to check out another campus while there. Back to Logan for last flight of day…

Maybe another kid at her HS wants to tour as well and they could go together. Not for everyone, but it’s a time and money saving plan!

11

We didn’t visit MIT until CPW, my son arrived late and didn’t make great social connections, but decided to attend and loves it (and has great friends). He was deferred in December, so it was pretty shocking when he got accepted in March. For us, it was kind of exciting to just wait and see, visit if he got in. The only problem is, he ran out of time to visit Georgia Tech and Carnegie Mellon. He was accepted to both of those, and they are Top 10 engineering, so I do feel bad he never really got to see them. He is very happy though. I will say, his high school schedule prepared him for the rigors because he took a tough class load and did band/drumline. I was worried about the MIT rigor, I felt like he had worked so hard and kind of wanted him to have fun. I think admissions sees these kids have juggled a lot (sports or fine arts) and recognizes they can be successful. We visited Stanford and Harvey Mudd, he ended up not applying to Stanford and was waitlisted at Mudd. We also visited USC and he was rejected. He got his MIT silver tube and USC rejection letter on the same day, haha.

12

My son did not visit MIT before application. He did attend the local MIT alumni presentation. He only visited 2 schools

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@AroundHere We did not visit all reach schools like MIT, unless they were close to a school that was a target school, but I think not visiting makes it harder for students to write compelling essays about why they want to go to MIT. MIT Admissions Team usually visits Seattle, but check in with them and find out where MIT Admissions is traveling this fall, and that might suffice to get a better idea about who in your area applies to MIT and about MIT directly from an Admissions staff person. Another option is to visit during the fall of senior year.

My nephew was all set to apply to Wash U st. Louis, he visited Carlton College in September of his senior year, and ended up applying binding ED to Carlton only and got in. So the fall visit can work like a charm for some students. It is expensive to fly all over the country from Seattle/Portland area, though as it is for us in Colorado. We also grouped visiting into areas and started earlier with kid number 2. We did visits during spring break, summer and even winter !
Once kid 1 got into an Ohio school, EA, which we had not yet visited, we decided to visit in the dead of winter, during a break, and swung by a school in Tennessee that same February, so that it would count as interest for the Tennessee school. Visits are tied to admissions at some schools but not others. MIT does not care about visits at all.

Its very distracting, I have heard, to visit any college during accepted student days. Pick any other weekend to have peace and quiet and have the attention of students and staff. Those accepted student days are very high energy, and confusing to some students. We skipped them entirely and chose other weekends to visit. Or in the case of child 2, we had already visited his first choice, and we did not allow him to go back again, we felt one visit was enough for each school, for us. Many others on CC will disagree with me, but that was our budget for visits from Denver, it just costs too much. Its not like visiting really changes much of anything. Some students may feel better , others do not really care that much about another day to get talked at by the marketing department/student deans/tour guides/etc.

Also with freshman orientations now costing extra at most colleges , we feel its really a waste of money to also go to the accepted student events, unless money is no object,the school is driving distance, or the student gets into two very similar schools and needs some way to make up his mind, if costs are equal.

In our case, for both kids, it was very clear which school was best, based on cost and academic quality, so extra visits were not needed.