<p>Most campuses are beautiful and 3 hours of stopping by is worth your time. Attending the tour and info session may help you learn a thing or two about the school or applying to college in general. But I probably don’t do the visiting campus trip the summer before junior year.</p>
<p>Enjoy the road trip! You might think about adding the U of Rochester if you’re in that city anyway.</p>
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<p>10 char</p>
<p>Do a little prep work beforehand. There’s not a lot of purpose in taking your child to a school where you won’t get any merit aid, and FA won’t be enough to attend. Get a grip on what you can afford to spend before visiting.</p>
<p>Look for the unique things about a school - at Cornell, visit the Ice Cream Store and take a hike through the gorge. These are so much better in warm weather! You can also take a gorge walk to Collegetown for lunch, which I would encourage. You know your kid best, so, especially with a student of this age, look for signs of disinterest and feel free to skip some parts of the visit, or scratch the college visits entirely if the first one or two don’t register.</p>
<p>Good points midwesterner^. Some of our most enjoyable visits were when we were able to take the time to visit the adjoining town and just look around at the surroundings. I think we really got a better idea of a place when we did that instead of just doing the college tour. It’s easy to get caught up in the academics and getting the facts, when it’s often the feel of a place that makes the long winters more enjoyable.</p>
<p>Fortunately we can afford any school he chooses. It just becomes a question of value. 50K for most privates, 20K for SUNY, or X for private with aid. A topic for another thread (or many).</p>
<p>“…at Cornell, visit the Ice Cream Store …”</p>
<p>Well it may depend which “ice cream store” you have in mind to visit.
D2 dropped a news flash on me a while ago, it seems The Dairy Bar on campus is going to be closing [soon? already?] for three years, due to major building renovations. She did not know about a substitute in the meantime. </p>
<p>On the other hand, Purity Ice Cream,downtown near Stewart park, is still alive and well.</p>
<p>BTW Ithaca lays claim to creation of the ice cream sundae.</p>
<p>We just got back from visiting the NY/Philly area for family events and had decided to throw in a few college visits for our disinterested but very academic rising junior son. We saw 4 schools total, 2 in NYC and 2 in PA. The trip was very worth it. It definitely got my son thinking about what he wants in a college and what is important to him. This may be very useful this coming year as he trods through a ridiculous (to me) junior year schedule (that is worse than the OP’s son).</p>
<p>Again, each kid’s wants/needs are different, but we spend virtually no time exploring the towns/surrounding areas. Maybe because D wants small LAC in non-urban environment.</p>
<p>Other than being non-urban,she really doesn’t care what life/environment outside the campus are like. She won’t be there.<br>
She’s a library-music-building-theatre kid who tends to study a LOT. She sees herself on campus exclusively, or else coming home for a quick visit.</p>
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<p>I strongly suggest this, especially for a self-motivated student. In my experience, that student has a pretty good idea what he or she wants to know about a school and will get a better answer w/o the parent(s) in tow.</p>
<p>Agree on letting the kid do the tour alone. Mine is far more engaged when I am not present, and asks the questions she wants answered. If you are at a place which has more than one tour guide going out at a time, split up.</p>
<p>My rising junior son has visited two schools this summer, both of which were admissions / financial safeties, so no pressure - just getting some ideas of what he likes. The first one he visited a few weeks ago with his 20 year old sister. The second, the TwoKids_ and I visited together.</p>
<p>He liked the first one quite a bit; he said he was surprised that he liked it as much as he did and that for him, it set the bar (for admissions / financial safety schools). Our state flagship is also an admissions / financial safety and both the flagship and the school he visited early in June have great academic programs in several areas he is interested in, so we have the recommended two safety schools. Check!</p>
<p>I loved hearing that - without me on the trip - he perked up at “full in-state tuition scholarship for ACT score of 32 or greater” and noted to his sister that he had to be sure to get at least a 32. (He wants to save us money - partly to be nice but more, I believe, because he is thinking if MidwestMom and MidwestDad don’t have to spend much on tuition we are fairly likely to continue to pay for his car insurance and gas and cell phone without complaints - and that is probably true. 
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<p>We will try to schedule visits throughout his junior year and have all visits done by junior year spring break. I am hopeful.</p>
<p>And when I go on tours with him, I pledge not to elbow him when the information sessions turn to talk about merit scholarships.</p>
<p>momofsongbird, Have you had a child in college before? I ask because I’ve had two kids graduate from College, and they both found that the location of their colleges really had more of in impact then they thought it would. My son was an avid hiker and enjoyed being outdoors, but it turned out that my daughter also enjoyed doing many things outside - much more then she ever did in HS and she was the one that ventured further afield and into the nearby city. I’m not trying to say that location is a number one priority but that it should be given some weight.</p>
<p>“There’s not a lot of purpose in taking your child to a school where you won’t get any merit aid, and FA won’t be enough to attend.” </p>
<p>Not sure I agree. When we toured with our oldest, we didn’t know about CC and we didn’t know that the top school only had FA (no merit $). Still it was useful to see Cornell and Amherst that year… it helps understand what attributes are appealing. In our case, oldsest stayed in state and the “baby” will go far away. </p>
<p>All of the tours from both kids helped educate us. The difference was that the second time around we knew enough to say that the expensive schools could only stay on the radar if outside scholarships came through. But we had an extensive sampling to enable educated analysis of pros/cons. And heck, it was fun to get away with the kid a few times before he flies the coop for good.</p>
<p>Since S has an unusual top choice (all-male college), we started our campus tours/visits this year. I want him to be sure that he truly loves this unique experience since it will be up against a “normal” college experience. After scoring poorly on his ACT taken sophomore year, I was hoping that talking to the admissions officer would encourage him to study, but he was told that his scores are good enough for merit aid now…not the encouragement that he needed to hear. We plan to hit the state flagships as well as several colleges in the Chicago area to make sure that he really understands what he wants in a college.</p>
<p>Hi Kathiep, thanks for the suggestion. This is my first (only) child, so no, we don’t have experience “at” college yet. Still, this is a dyed-in-the-wool “indoor” kid who knows very clearly how she likes to live…mainly frequenting the facilities that house things she is interested in (books, music, plays). We are 2 hrs from Chicago, so we do go downtown for music/plays, but she plans to get that “fix” at campus music & theatre events.</p>
<p>She IS very firm about the 4-hour-drive-from-home radius she set, because she wants easy logistics for getting home. She’s also quite firm about climate – MUST be cold and snowy with long winters. I’m not kidding. We are a bit west of Chicago, and she’s looking mainly at schools colder/snowier than here. She just loves winter…but from inside.</p>
<p>My rising Junior and I are in the middle of a New England sweep, with the starting point being a family vacation and the end point being drop-off at a New England LAC for a summer program. So far it’s been a good thing. She’s getting an idea of what she likes, what she doesn’t like, and where she can see herself. </p>
<p>I agree with Desliu about giving some independence on the visit. So far I’ve been attending the info sessions with her, and then she’ll take the tour without me, and I can ask individual questions pertaining to her special application issues without holding anyone else up. Most tours return to admissions, but it’s a good thing I know Harvard well enough that I could meet up with the end of the tour, or we’d have missed each other. (I know, that’s what cell phones are for.)</p>
<p>This trip is just to get a taste, so we don’t want to over-do it.</p>
<p>I intentionally took my son to a school I was pretty sure he wouldn’t like (too small, too rural) just to make sure that he knew what he was crossing out. The school had other plusses (small classes, serious academics, required senior thesis, interesting externship/abroad options) so he learned a lot even though it (and other similar schools) stayed off the list.</p>
<p>We visited two schools Feb break junior year (two hour drive from us one day), two spring break (in Boston - four hour drive), and three as an extension on to a Labor Day weekend trip to DC. Spring senior year he visited the four schools that accepted him - one for the first time (Chicago) the other as repeat visits.</p>
<p>When my daughter took off on her own, I went to the bookstore or some other local establishment and asked questions of the employees there. They are full of all kinds of useful information and many have lived locally for years and are very willing to share their insights.</p>