<p>How do you guys find time in schools schedules to visit? Do you go during breaks? The only time I see for us to visit is during the summer since my son’s community college classes start in mid-August, before most schools begin.</p>
<p>sbjdorlo, I think your plan of a few different kinds of colleges within a 2-3 hours is a good starting spot. I wonder if there is more going on than him thinking he won’t be able to get a feeling so why visit, though. Maybe a pretty deep resistance to the idea of growing up and going away manifesting in a “don’t care” attitude. If he really refuses to discuss major, you may want to keep some larger colleges with a lot of majors on the list. </p>
<p>We had a copy of Fiske. D1 pored over it like it was a shopping catalog (which it sort of is). D2 had no interest in that activity. I asked if her I could mark some schools I thought would be a fit and we could discuss them, and she agreed to that. I put post-its on the ones I could see as a fit, marking them as safety, reach, match. We talked about each and I have her a quick summary of what I saw as the pros and cons as we went through. We settled on a list to visit, and from there she was able to pick where to apply. It was sort of like being her personal shopper. :)</p>
<p>We started visiting colleges when my older son was a Sophomore and younger son was a Freshman. We went to the local universities on their student free days off during the semesters and took longer trips during Spring Break. Most universities shut down during Winter Break. I was lucky that they both wanted to stay in-state. I know my younger son was not very enthusiastic about the visits so early in his academic career but it did help eliminate several choices.
After my older son decided upon his choice last Fall, we took the younger son on 2 more visits to colleges which interested him and he was able to make a very good list of Safeties/Matches/Reaches.
My niece whom is a rising Senior has not visited any colleges yet and really doesn’t have a clue what she wants to major in or where she wants to go. My sister is scrambling this summer trying to fit in some visits.<br>
I am a very proactive parent, so I felt that spreading out the visits throughout the last 4 years helped my sons get a better perspective of the choices available without overloading them with too much information at one time. They both revisited their top 2 choices before making the final decisions. I highly recommend to fit in the time to do the visits.</p>
<p>Inparent, thanks for the tips. I just ordered a college guide and I might try that. One thing I did do, which I thought was great but my son’s not totally on board, is make a list of colleges that <em>might</em> has his unusual majors of game design, animation, and industrial design, and I made a notebook with degree and course descriptions. He hardly looked at it but did find one, UC Irvine, that he said looked interesting. Should I be happy about that? :-p Guess we can visit UCI! LOL</p>
<p>Yes, some of it is the growing up thing and the other bit is just his personality. He’s not a bubbly, get excited kind of guy. He’s an introspective, realistic guy. I have to find a balance since I am a hyper extrovert. </p>
<p>We had a good family meeting which included my dh, also an introverted, practical guy, who, I knew, would be able to give us good input even though he’s pretty uninvolved in the kids’ education.</p>
<p>Ok, so even if school isn’t in session, I’m thinking we’ll take a couple quick trips in early June (maybe UCs are still in session) and then early August. He’s busy with a college class and working as a cellist for a local theater production in June and July, so no mid-summer travels. </p>
<p>As far as PhD applications are concerned, in certain subfields, there really only are reaches and non-reaches. Then again, planning to visit even two schools (Dartmouth and UPenn, two Ivies but, unlike undergraduate admissions, sometimes Ivies can be non-reaches at the PhD level) can be quite painful for my parents.</p>
<p>@sbjdorlo , gamepro magazine and Princeton Review publish a top ten list of game design programs which might help in your list making. </p>
<p>@bookworm, University of Denver. A bit weak in CS but at least they have an option to focus on game development and a couple of profs working in that area, and are improving. Small classes, lots of study abroad opps. And the aid (merit and need-based) was fantastic.</p>
<p>@sbjdorlo, look at UC Santa Cruz, Univ. of Utah, USC, Drexel, CMU, for starters. If high-financial-need (low EFC) and stats are middling (for CC), DU.</p>
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<p>That’s assuming that the college visit is made in a vacuum. In D’s case, she has a very targeted list of colleges that she’s researched online before we visited. Her stats make her a legitimate candidate for all the schools we went to. The visits included tours, information sessions, discussions with faculty, staff, and students, and, in some cases, sitting in on classes. Visits and impressions were discussed in-depth before, during , and after the fact.</p>
<p>It’s not about “wanting to feel important and adult.” This is her life and, ultimately, her decision to make. Getting a “feel” for the campus is something that is important to her. I respect that.</p>
<p>It might not be helpful for everyone, but for D, it has clarified her thinking not just about a particular college but about what she wants for the next four years and beyond. Not a waste of time. YMMV.</p>
<p>I think the importance of visiting at least one safety/match cannot be underestimated. It can be a real confidence builder for kids to have at least one school “in the bag” as they turn their attention to other less likely choices.</p>
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<p>Huh? So the real “vibe” or characteristics exist only in the imagination? dm2017, why don’t you come back when you are a parent yourself and have something relevant to add.</p>
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<p>Wow, I think some of these comments completely misrepresent what a college visit can accomplish. If you JUST go on the tour, you may not get much out of it. My kids spent at least half a day (and often a full day) on every campus they visited. We did do a fair amount of research ahead of time to knock unsuitable schools off their list. But they usually did the following:</p>
<ul>
<li>Attend a class</li>
<li>Go on the tour</li>
<li>Eat in the cafeteria – not just about the food, but watching and listening to other students interact</li>
<li>Sometimes visit with a professor in their major.</li>
<li>One was interested in playing a sport, so we met with some coaches</li>
<li>One is interested in art, so we went and looked at the studio art building & work at each college (not on the normal tour)</li>
</ul>
<p>We didn’t always manage to go when school was in session, but often enough we did (spring break and long school weekends are good for this). This was invaluable to my kids’ process. A school in person just isn’t the same as on paper or the web.</p>
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<p>When I started reading this, I thought I had already posted! </p>
<p>DS16 has ZERO interest in touring, in any capacity. He says he’ll be happy no matter where he goes, as long as it isn’t too big, and is within 3 hours of home. We don’t have the kind of money it takes to go any farther anyway. </p>
<p>He wants to be able to come home when he wants without any big hassle. So I have researched everything within that travel time. Everything comes down to the SAR. If nothing materializes in that area, he has the Community College, or the Commonwealth Campus of Penn State. </p>
<p>He plans on entering Computer Engineering.
I </p>
<p>Sorry, i have to disagree. For example, the vibe between U of Chicago vs. Swarthmore vs. Harvey Mudd vs. Carleton (my D2’s top choices, she was admitted to them all) is quite distinct. And she did get into all of them, so we weren’t wasting our time. Now for a kid who doesn’t have the stats, I get it – I don’t think spending a lot of time OR application energy on several reaches is a good idea. And some schools just really don’t allow that type of visit (eg, Stanford shuffles you through in a big tour group and on out the door). But I completely disagree on matches and safeties. Spring of senior year after acceptance is too late to visit, and it puts a ton of stress on to “wait and see where you get accepted, then we will visit”. You get just over a month to decide, and unless they are close by, it is really hard to get to them then and make up your mind. I am really glad we visited early and were able to get a feeling for each campus. All colleges are NOT created equal, and all colleges are not right for every student – you can only get so much information from a printed page or website.</p>
<p>OP, I think it depends on the kind of kid you have and how they’re thinking about their college search. If they have their heart set on a bunch of reaches, campus visits may be a good way to have them realize that not all these schools are really what they want. If they are like sbjdorlo’s kid and don’t seem to know what it is they want, visiting a good diversity of different campuses would be a good way to help them narrow down what they really want in a school. My D1 had no idea what she wanted until the third school we visited, at which point she said “I really like this place!” Sometimes it takes a while.</p>
<p>I think probably the most important thing a student can get a sense of from a campus visit is the student body. This is not something a college guide or website can tell you. For example, I remember reading on a thread here that one poster’s daughter immediately crossed Duke and Vanderbilt off her list after visiting and seeing all the girls wearing full makeup and carrying designer bags to go to their 9 a.m. classes. Maybe your daughter doesn’t care about that one way or another, but to many girls that would signal either “yay, my people!” or “what fresh hell is this?”</p>
<p>My sons and I have found visits enjoyable and enlightening. Where possible, we combined them with other vacation activities. Some colleges were taken off their lists, others added or boosted, based on our impressions. Anyone who belittles students and parents for this is way off base. I think students should get to see the greater community, the resources, the accessibility (ie. transportation logistics), etc. I went through the process with two very different sons, and neither would have attended a college without at least one visit. I was occasionally surprised by the colleges that my younger son preferred over others, but it’s his choice. We were both surprised by some colleges we liked much more than we anticipated. Somebody mentioned the Claremont colleges: I had no sense of their proximity, or what the town of Claremont was like, until I visited them. I did not expect to like UC Davis, or its town, as much as both my son and I did. If budget and time allow, I encourage families to visit as many colleges as possible. If nothing else, these visits may be some of the last road-trips you’ll make with your soon-to-be-adult children, and should be cherished as such.</p>
<p>sweetbeet and sudsie,</p>
<p>I’ve definitely got a few of those schools on the list, but I am really trying to keep only affordable colleges on the list, and I don’t see CMU ever being affordable. My son’s stats are good (over 2200 SAT and only one B), but he’s your typical Caucasian male with some exceptions, and thus, hard to know if he’s really competitive or not. </p>
<p>With my oldest, in retrospect, I can see that he was a tippy top candidate for many reasons, but that is not this son. Even with my oldest, before he applied to ten schools, he only had visited three of them, but he did spend significant time at a program in the fall of senior year at the school where he is now, so I do know it can be really important to spend time at colleges. However, very few students get the opportunity he did. Most will have to make decisions without that info.</p>
<p>Why do you keep talking about Saturdays? We used spring break, and long weekend breaks our school had for many visits, so a lot of our visits were not on weeekends. A few in the summer, which obviously aren’t as good since there aren’t many students on campus (but profs have plenty of time to chat then). I don’t think I ever posted on Facebook about a visit (and have never tweeted in my life) – it had nothing to do with telling anyone else about it, it had everything to do with finding a good fit for my kids. Maybe YOU visited colleges that way and that is why you think about it like that… can’t imagine why you would ascribe that to the rest of us, though.</p>
<p>And as someone who took two kids through this process and got a lot out of the pre-application visit process, I am telling you that you are WRONG. It may have been a waste of time for YOU. And it may be a waste of time for someone who doesn’t dig in enough to get more out of the college than the superficial view the college wants you to see on the tour. You act like you can speak for everyone, and you can’t. Both of my kids ended up at colleges that were fantastic fits for them. Without visiting ahead of time, I doubt either would have even ended up applying to the college they attended.</p>
<p>With the cost of applications and the time and effort involved in the application, why bother applying to a college that is not a good fit? My daughter would have landed up applying to Swarthmore, which looked good prior to her visit. After visiting she knew this was not a good place for her. She is a 4.0 student, with high test scores. We are not talking about a student who has no chance of getting into a competitive school. Visiting colleges prior to applying might not be for everyone, but it is good option for many others. A side benefit is that it is a fun trip. We frequently will go sightseeing along the way. How was that a waste of time?</p>
<p>dm2017, I don’t believe my kids thought visits were a waste of time. If anything it helped eliminate an entire region of the country for two of my three kids and it cemented my third son’s desire to attend a big uni for engineering. The reality was that it didn’t matter much to any of the three or me whether the school was a reach, match or safety. The visit cemented for them the conviction that they might attend if accepted and helped eliminate colleges narrowing the final list for application to a manageable amount of colleges. There’s no reason to apply to 10 or more colleges if there are only 6 or 7 a kid would be willing to attend. From a parent perspective I will always remember these college road trip visits because in each case I knew it would be a long, long time before I’d spend time alone with each of the boys since my H doesn’t care for college visits. It was fun for them to go traveling, it was fun for me. We also didn’t cram them into senior year…but spread them out during junior year.</p>
<p>intparent, you do realize you are dealing with a ■■■■■, don’t you? This is the reincarnation of another poster who was banned a while back. He’s bitter and bored and stuck in the basement on this nice day.</p>
<p>Back to the adult discussion at hand, I have heard of kids who didn’t feel the need to visit before applying (or even accepting) but I have not heard of anyone who thought they were an utter waste of time. </p>