<p>Call us NUTS but we actually did two “college” trips with each kid. BUT the first one for each coincided with visiting family that lived a distance away. In both cases…the trips were 10 days. We just “happened” to be near a number of colleges and we went to visit. That first trip was ONLY to give our kid a feeling for different types of schools:"urban/suburban/rural, public/private, large/small. In both cases our kids did apply to ONE school from that first visit…but not the others. However, that first trip DID give both of our kids a better idea of what THEY wanted in a college for four year (both wanted a more urban setting…one wanted large, one wanted small…neither cared if it was public or private). </p>
<p>The second trip was more specific to the schools the kids really wanted to see. In DS’s case, some of his schools were actually a day drive from here…and we did those in long weekend trips. We did take one more lengthy trip to two schools that were farther away (that happened to be near each other). For DD, we took a 10 day trip to California so she could tease out which schools she would actually apply to. Again…we are fortunate to have relatives all over the place so at least we weren’t spending a fortune on hotels.</p>
<p>I do agree…go when school is in session. Re: spring break…you need to check your HS schedule with the college schedule. College spring breaks happen at a variety of times. If your kiddo has a March break, it is very possible the school will not be in session but then…it might be…depends on the week. Re: Easter week…many schools in our experience have adminstrative and academic holidays on Good Friday. So that would cut that week short by a day. If you are looking at schools affiliated with a religion, you may find that school is not in session more days around Easter. Again…depends on the school. </p>
<p>I agree that the student run tours are good. Once you hear one info session, they really all start to sound the same. BUT the tours are different. Also, we felt the info sessions were “canned”. The tours were sort of canned but the students would candidly answer questions IF they could.</p>
<p>My only other bit of free advice…if you are going to multiple schools…do your traveling from place to place in the afternoon/evening so that you can BE where you want to be in the morning. Driving to a college and THEN going on a tour the same morning isn’t much fun. Better to do it after having a night’s sleep and a decent breakfast WITHOUT a drive too.</p>
<p>I would echo the advice to pick up a student newspaper. On a recent trip to MIT, I grabbed the school paper on a tour and put it in our son’s backpack. On the airplane ride home, we got it out. His face turned beet red when he saw a column about why women should “swallow” after oral sex. It was allegedly written by a women with the byline of “M.”</p>
<p>That part of MIT culture was definitely not mentioned in the info session or student tour.</p>
<p>Now there is a link on the CC MIT page about a detailed sex survey conducted by the same paper. Really? Aren’t there much more interesting things happening at MIT?</p>
<p>It’s interesting that so many posters here find the tours more useful than the info sessions. I’ve heard some boring info sessions, but usually I think they’re more interesting than the tours. The tour guides seem (to me) to talk mostly about things that can be found on the college’s web site. Here is our new science complex… here are the art studios that are open 24/7… here is language-themed dorm… etc. Even the informal Q&A with tour guides seems to often pick up on things you can find out by reading. I do appreciate being able to ask tour guides why they chose the school, what they’ve done for work/internships, whether they’ve had any trouble getting into classes, and that kind of thing. But it’s only one person, so it’s a very limited snapshot.</p>
<p>Here is the best advice I received. After the tour do not say a word about the visit. Let your child be the one to start the dialogue. I had a hard time holding back, but the insights my child offered were well worth my silent suffering.</p>
<p>Calreader…I’ll give my opinion. For those info sessions…I got tired of seeing and hearing basically the same Power Point Presentation (with a little slant for each specific school). My kid wanted to SEE those buildings, see the kids on the campus, get a feel for what being on that campus would look like…not just sit in a meeting room watching a Power Point. That’s why my kids liked the tours better. AND best, they liked the schools that separated the students from the parents on the tours. Some did that.</p>
<p>We toured almost 30 schools. At least the tours were different…can’t say that for the info sessions. After a while, they all sounded the same. Of course that was our experience… and our opinion,</p>
<p>agree with thumper: info sessions all seem to sound the same…</p>
<p>and if a kid is really looking for “fit”, while the tour is not perfect, it certainly is a better assessment of “fit” than the info session…at least one can see the other kids on campus that are enrolled (rather than prospective who may or may not attend)…</p>
<p>and to add, the best tours have been either during the week, late morning/midafternoon, or if they have to be on Saturday, definitely later rather than earlier…if you’re going to make the effort to travel to the school, best to see it when there are other students around…</p>
<p>I like touring a lot - seeing buildings, walking around. I guess you need the tour guide to go into some places, so that’s good. Maybe it comes down to the tour guide for me, and how willing they are to go off script.</p>
<p>The boring info sessions I’ve been to are also like the college web pages. But good info sessions try to bring to life what is distinctive about the school in a way that can be helpful, especially when added to other information sources and points of view. Even marketing pitches are informative when they tell you which aspects of a college’s competitors they’re most concerned about :-).</p>
<p>rodney, your point about fit is a good one - students pick up much more of that from other students than from the info session.</p>
<p>Our older D refused to tour anywhere and refused to consider away from our region (SoCal), and made up her mind at 16. She applied early to one school, got in, and is now a happy sophomore there, so it worked out.</p>
<p>Younger D (a HS junior) is the opposite. Adamant about being back east, so we must limit tours to vacations. We did a big tour last spring break and saw 7 schools, and now every single one of them is off her list. But it wasn’t a waste, because the experience really helped her focus on what she wants. She was only a sophomore then and didn’t really know much. So this spring break we’re seeing a whole new crop, 7 schools in 9 days (with two days off for fun in NYC), and I feel sure that at least a few of those will be good fits. </p>
<p>Lessons learned from the first trip:
– What Kajon said! Zip your lip until your kid starts talking about what they thought.
– Don’t do the trip with another family-- we did, and it wasn’t great to get caught up in another mother-daughter dynamic. Next trip it’s just me, my D, and my mom (I’m having health issues so my mom is now coming in case I can’t manage it all, and fortunately she and my D adore each other).
– I agree with other posters about many info sessions being boring, but sometimes they made a difference. For instance, the one at Trinity was led by a senior, a most impressive young woman, and she added warmth and personality to what is often a dry session.
– Try to tour tours in the late morning or, best of all, early afternoon. Campuses tend to be deserted first thing in the morning. We visited both Drew and Trinity first thing in the morning and got NO sense for the student body, because we saw about 5 students overall.</p>
<p>This time we are making sure to allow time for lunch on campus every time, and at a few schools she will sit in on a class and/or have an interview, and at two schools, we’re having dinner with current students who we know, and she will probably spend the night in the dorm with at least one of those girls.</p>
<p>After sitting through four of the info sessions I could stand up and give one (and do a better job in most cases). Skip 'em, or go to one and memorize it. They’re a time sink. </p>
<p>Don’t forget to have your student sign in, and keep track of what date you visited. Some schools actually asked for the date when D applied the following year, and I scrambled to reconstruct the itinerary. </p>
<p>Tours take you (generally) through the shiny and new. Make sure you take time to visit some of the buildings where departments are located in particular subjects your kid is interested in. I like to make note of what’s on the bulletin boards and faculty office door areas, and I’m curious to see whether there are people around at times when I’d expect to see some life in the department. </p>
<p>While kid is off doing something (like the tour, which I didn’t always do) find a campus newspaper and read it. I learned some pretty interesting things that way, including information on repeated assaults and burglaries in a campus dorm facilitated by criminals who had keys from the past – and a college administration that neither notified the students nor changed the keying until the student newspaper raised the issue. You also get a good feel for the kinds of activities and events available, and whether the school is really focused on the campus itself or whether there are some interactions with the community.</p>
<p>Take screenprints of the college’s visit site that show specific local directions and what parking lot to use – even if you have GPS, it often treats the campus as a single point, and with a lot of colleges if you go in at the wrong entrance you can’t get to the place you want easily. If time is tight that just adds to the stress.</p>
<p>Eat at the dorm if possible. The food court food is almost always more appetizing, but unless your kid is going to go with a lot of extra money (or the school has liberal policies on how food credits are used) the dorm food will be important. A few schools gave D vouchers good for a dorm meal.</p>
<p>Hi All - my first post here at CC (guess… am getting the acronyms), hope you will go easy on the rookie ;-). </p>
<p>We just did our fist college tour during president’s day at local Westcoast liberal arts college… and that got my D’ interested to go and see others. Since I am planning to be in Boston for some work week following spring break, we thought may not be a bad idea to head out w/my D from west coast to do campus tours of Ivies + some of top colleges in East during spring break. Unfortunately this is only time available for both of us so will have to do it… so even if gets busy. </p>
<p>In our first campus tour, we didn’t do that bad… and in fact followed most suggestions you had (scheduling visit, research prior, picking student mags, eating at student cafe etc), and definitely agree that those really helped make it productive. I will keep in mind some of the others suggested. </p>
<p>But here are few questions to all of you experienced folks…</p>
<p>We did a Mass/Conn tour two years ago – the most helpful thing was to make up a master schedule showing what times tours were at every college we were considering for the specific week we were visiting. (They can and do vary schedules on a week by week basis – some weeks there is a Saturday tour, others not, some schools give a Friday afternoon tour, others stop Friday morning. Some have special tours intended for students with certain interests, or access to sitting in on a class only under certain constraints.)</p>
<p>From that master schedule, we got out the AAA map that has driving times and plotted our schedule.</p>
<p>We flew into Boston, but later learned that Providence would have been cheaper and probably more convenient.</p>
<p>February break is also a good time to tour schools and is often less crowded. In this area you can see how schools deal with snow removal and ice. My son really enjoyed the first couple of info sessions, but then found them repetitive. However, even the repetitive ones would occasionally drop a nugget we hadn’t seen elsewhere. And some schools have a student or two as part of the info session which is nice. We always tried to eat on campus. I’m always interested to see what options there are for vegetarians, gluten free etc. My son liked hanging out at the campus equivalent of the coffee shop and just looking around at the students. Some had more solitary students than others. </p>
<p>I could never get him to ask questions. </p>
<p>NY school lasts forever so early summer doesn’t work, but we did visit a bunch around Labor Day. </p>
<p>I like looking at bulletin boards and always check out the toilets. Clean? Graffitti? (Cool green duel flush toilets at Brandeis!)</p>
<p>Parents should not be shocked that campus newspapers–even at MIT-- have frank columns about sex. Even geeks need it. And for many of them college is their first taste of it. Many college papers have a sex oriented columnist. Otherwise there always is Liberty U. No worries there.</p>
<p>my sons each did one overnight…I don’t think they are really necessary for getting a feel for a college unless it is a top 2 college on your list and you aren’t certain about it or you need to understand the college much better in order to proceed with a viable application…ie…if you are from the south and need some reassurance you can be happy in Maine…perhaps an overnight is good…but even those can be arranged in April of senior year usually. </p>
<p>What I recommend is moseying around and eavesdropping…check out the coffee shop banter and our son ate evening meals in the cafeterias…even though I picked him up in the late evening and he headed to the library to get more of a feel of college life when everyone is about their business.</p>
<p>I think attending a class or two makes a huge impact…more than a tour. After all, most college campuses are quite visually available online and we can all get a sense of things online. </p>
<p>never place too much weight on the person who is our tour guide…this is akin to allowing your cab driver into NYC to color your entire impression…the tour guide is in no way representative of the broad experience of a college</p>
<p>Better yet, skip both and have your prospective student sit in on classes. My D found that to be the most useful part of the tours. She frequently skipped out of the information session to attend a class. While attending class, she sat in the back of the class and quietly observed:</p>
<p>1) how students interacted with professors,
2) how students interacted with each other, and
3) how they interacted with her.</p>
<p>Student publications: we were touring during spring break one year. As usual, I had picked up a student paper and was looking it over that evening at the hotel. OMG. The paper concentrated on the most bizarre string of acts of vandalism in the dorms. Pranks that were unbelievably immature. Eeeeeew. Oh…just then noticed that it was April 1. :)</p>
<p>Please remember to make arrangements to sit in on classes. Most, if not all schools do not welcome strangers into classes anymore. These class visits must be arranged and agreed upon prior to just showing up. Even if your student has a friend in the class…they should ASK the professor. </p>
<p>Some schools have whole programs for accepted students and these often include a class visit or two. At Santa Clara University, there is a program called Shadow SCU which pairs a prospective student with a current one. I’m sure other schools have similar arrangements.</p>
<p>Tee hee hee. I watched “Hud” last night. Lots of sexual tension. Also “A Serious Man” with the sunbathing liberated neighbor. I was bummed when they were interrupted. He had no luck at all. (spolier alert)</p>
<p>We have sent my daughter to visit two colleges without us and will visit two more with her this April. The first visit was a local school, in which she did have some interest, where the Hillel was hosting a prospective students Shabbat. We signed her up for it and they arranged for a current student to host her in the dorm, take her to services, meals, classes, and an information session. </p>
<p>Last month we sent her to spend the night with her camp counselor from last summer, who is a sophomore at a local school that is high on my daughter’s list. Again, she got to spend the night in the dorm, eat in the dining hall, attend a class, and her counselor also arranged for her to meet the rabbi at the Hillel. I envision we will go to some kind of parents information session and tour in the fall.</p>
<p>She has another former camp counselor who will host her at one of the out-of-town schools we are visiting in April, who will take her to meals/services/classes. And at the fourth school, we have a friend on faculty who is glad to have her sit in on a class; her overnight host will be the daughter of one of my colleagues. Networking has worked well for me in identifying people to talk to in each school. We have contacts for the departments that interest her at both schools and I will have her email these professors when the trip gets a little closer. We have reservations for tours and info sessions at both schools but are leaving plenty of time for her to just get the feel of the campus.</p>
<p>The only other school on the list is our local public flagship. I hope to be able to attend a parent information session but “Junior Day” was on President’s Day and because of snow/general life disruption/schedule conflicts, we didn’t get there. I hope they’ll have another. </p>
<p>I did all my college visiting on my own–I know that was a generation ago and things have changed. A friend of mine and I spent the night with my sister in her dorm, with HER sister in HER dorm, and with a friend of theirs in his dorm, covering three schools over the course of our spring break. We traveled alone by train and bus. I don’t think my parents saw my school until move-in day!</p>