<p>Permit me to add my voice to the chorus … NO, it’s NOT premature! This is especially true if your S plans to apply EA or ED anywhere.</p>
<p>re: “How long at each school” I think your S will regulate that. Our family visits ranged from all day to “Why are we here?” No parental input required!</p>
<p>RIT is a special situation for us. Son participates in Project Lead the Way, a pre-engineering program affiliated with several universities, given at select high schools. Our school’s program is affiliated with RIT. The instructor is trained in the curriculum at RIT. Kids scoring well on the post-course exams receive RIT-transcripted credits. While the credits are potentially transferrable like any other transfer credit, if he attends RIT they count. Also, by excelling in the program, he should have a big boost in the admissions process. Bottom line for us is that we would consider RIT to be a safety school for admissions purposes. Whether he actually may want to go there remains to be seen.</p>
<p>We may also check out Univ of Rochester, but I think he may have his sights set higher. Same goes for Syracuse. He’s really an Ivy-caliber student.</p>
<p>Please don’t write off schools like Rochester and Syracuse. </p>
<p>You will need safeties (other than RIT) and matches on his final list and it is a real crap shoot to get admitted to any of the Ivy League-type, top tier schools.</p>
<p>For an Ivy league caliber engineering type, I agree that Syracuse is probably skippable. Ideally you should find two safeties and preferably at least one of them with some kind of early notification. Then you can set your heights as high as you like. U of Rochester is an interesting enough school I’d check it out before dismissing it out of hand - especially if I were already in town to see RIT. My older son’s safeties were WPI and RPI. In retrospect WPI was really too small for him.</p>
<p>Dartmouth is a good choice to visit, as it has summer school in session (due to the D-plan), so there are actually classes going on and kids there to talk to. </p>
<p>I like the remark that it’s like going to an open house when you’re not buying–it gives your kid a chance to ask questions that are less loaded, to get a feel for campuses of varying kind (before he/she starts shutting down–I don’t want a big/small/single-sex/urban/rural), to look at colleges in a healthy, what do you have that I want, kind of way, rather than the this is the place I must must must go. Windowshopping for colleges, pressure off.</p>
<p>And if he makes an early call, your senior year will be So Much Easier.</p>
<p>Nothing wrong with Syracuse, per se, but to me if an Ivy-caliber student doesn’t get into a top school, better to go to SUNY than pay 50K for a Syracuse. Unless they give major merit aid…</p>
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<p>Goaliegirl found the campus to be sterile and uninviting given its very modern/industrial architecture and office complex feel.</p>
<p>Some like that type of campus feel, so it would definitely be worth the time to spend time there to find out how your son feels about it.</p>
<p>You may also find, Chardo, that an Ivy-caliber student could get BIG money at some other fine schools. One of my daughter’s friends got into CMU and Cornell for engineering and followed the $$ to Pitt–as did my daughter. Keep those financial safeties in mind.</p>
<p>Oh, and my DH was teaching ROTC at RIT when we met, so when I hear RIT, my ears always perk up!</p>
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<p>For a campus tour and admissions session, expect to spend about 2.5 hours. Add in some casual exploration near campus and lunch and budget 4 hours.</p>
<p>Maybe the information session discussions re: what it takes to get admitted will motivate him to take a challenging course schedule Junior year and really try his best to do well.</p>
<p>We can tell them the same thing, but hearing it from the actual admissions people might help him actually take it to heart.</p>
<p>oops- #13 already made this point.</p>
<p>He will be taking AP composition, AP US history, AP physics, pre-calc, 4th year Spanish, and PLTW principles of engineering. Pretty challenging for a junior.</p>
<p>Sounds good!!</p>
<p>Just because your kid is Ivy-caliber doesn’t mean that’s where he/she is destined to end up. My daughter would likely get in to most Ivy’s but the only one she will apply to is Cornell. She wants to go to vet school, so an animal science major and/or good pre-vet advising, along with internships, is more important than Harvard or Yale on her diploma. </p>
<p>From our tour of RIT, it sounded like they give significant merit aid to good students, however we both found the campus depressing. Too isolated, too many parking lots, sterile dark brown brick buildings, etc. This is not to sway you re RIT, but to say until you visit a campus, you really don’t know if you will fall in love or not.</p>
<p>I just have to say kudos to Brooklynborndad (post 20)–your Odyssey, indeed!</p>
<p>(When we went to Cornell, we were following a tractor for most of the way in from the interstate–my daughter wondered what in the world she was doing there!)</p>
<p>Ha, the good ol’ days, stuck behind a tractor, for miles.
Then nearly getting killed trying to pass him on a one-lane road.
(at 20 I didn’t have the greatest judgement about these things, or much patience).
Then, waving to “the alumni association”- the cemeteries we passed on the way in.</p>
<p>Makes for some interesting, and evidently persistent, memories, but your daughter needn’t worry unless the tractors actually showed up on the arts quad.</p>
<p>
I respectfully disagree.</p>
<p>D’s first “visit” was a 1-week vocal program at an oos school, and she got to see a campus on her own, but was primarily there for a different, specific, and very time consuming purpose.</p>
<p>On our Jr year visits (2 Fall, 2 Winter, 2 Spring), she wouldn’t have gotten nearly as positive and complete an experience on her own.</p>
<p>Maybe it depends on t
he kid, but my Jr (though super-high achieving and very mature) would have felt uncomfortable, insecure, and nervous if I had just dropped her off. We used our time together to “compare notes,” ask different kinds of questions, and definitely prepare for and role-play interviews.</p>
<p>She did, of course, interview alone (most schools invited parents in for last few minutes). She visited most classes alone, but I was warmly invited to sit in, too, at a couple, so I did. </p>
<p>Our combined reactions, thoughts, memories…discussed on the way home were so valuable.</p>
<p>Next fall/winter, she will do her overnight visits independently at probably her top 3-4 schools.</p>
<p>For her, solo first visits Jr year would have been much less valuable.</p>
<p>Oh those infamous tractors outside of Ithaca! When my parents took me up there for the first time we followed a huge trailer of hay all the way from Whitney Point. To my city raised parents, it was hysterical.</p>
<p>The summer prior to jr year, we visited a LAC near where we were vacationing and it wound up being on D’s list. My piece of advice is – do the tour and info session, grab a bite to eat, etc and then say nothing. Let kid tell you what he thinks and don’t really judge or compare the place to others you know. </p>
<p>We toured a bunch of schools jr year but it was so worth it - my twins are rising srs and we have visited every school on their lists save one. Good luck!</p>
<p>I, too, join the number of folks who say it’s not too early to look at colleges. I decided following my son’s freshman year to take him to two schools in Pennsylvania and one in Maryland. He never had seen a college campus, so we thought it would be fun. Besides, he already had been talking about this college or that college. He was glad we went, because he got an audience at two schools with admissions people who gave him some great advice about his academics, SATs, what to look for in a school, etc. The small school from Maryland made his final list and offered him full tuition for four years.</p>
<p>“Then, waving to “the alumni association”- the cemeteries we passed on the way in.”</p>
<p>This is the same reaction we had on that looooong drive to Cornell.</p>
<p>After DD had looked at a number of schools, I started droppng her off. One professor thanked her for not bringing her parents! (And no, he had not met us.)</p>