College Visits?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Does anyone have any tips or suggestions for how to make an east coast college tour efficient & informative? I want to go to as many of the Ivies as possible, and I have a week in which I may do visits.</p>

<p>Which Ivies should I visit? (Like, should I just skip the ones that are kind of off by themselves, like Cornell?)</p>

<p>How long should it take to see each college?</p>

<p>How many can I plausibly expect to see in a week?</p>

<p>Are there any notable schools I should visit that are near the Ivies that could be my safeties?</p>

<p>Ok, one more question. If you're familiar with the student bodies of the Ivies, which would you say has the most "hipsters"? I don't want to debate over the term hipster, so if you don't know, just ignore this question.</p>

<p>Thank you.</p>

2

<p>Go to Amazon. Search for "Professor Pathfinders US College and University Map". Buy it. Make your plans.</p>

<p>As for a hipster Ivy, that would be Brown.</p>

3

<p>oh, tysm! that seems like a very handy resource.</p>

4

<p>Why just ivies? You should visit a variety of schools. Visit a reach, one or two matches, and one or two safeties. Make a second round of visits when acceptances come in.</p>

5

<p>nysmile, I did say that i was looking for safeties to visit as well, when I said "Are there any notable schools I should visit that are near the Ivies that could be my safeties?"</p>

<p>do you know of any safeties, but reputable schools nonetheless, that are geographically near the ivies?</p>

6

<p>The ideal itinerary for the (hipster, ivy-caliber, college-seeking) high school student:</p>

<p>Travel from north to south, or reverse if it makes more sense:</p>

<p>Sunday Night: Arrive in Amherst.
Monday: Amherst College (very hip (am I using that term correctly? I'm not very hip, myself...), ivy-caliber school, from what I've heard), then drive to Boston to stay overnight. Spend the evening exploring Boston...most people love it, I hate it.</p>

<p>Tuesday: Harvard morning, dart on down to Providence for Brown (hipster ivy central), then drive down to the Harford area to stay overnight.</p>

<p>Wednesday: Get up early for a doubleheader of Wesleyan and Yale. Don't plan to stay in New Haven though...not a whole lot of lodging options. Stay outside NYC overnight, like in Westchester County or in Jersey.</p>

<p>Thursday: Columbia/NYU doubleheader. If you're a girl, you might want to consider Barnard. NYU sounds like it would be a good safety for you (if you are considering ivies) and stay overnight in the NYC area again.</p>

<p>Friday: Option A: Enjoy the City that Never Sleeps! Unless you're a local and/or you visit NYC regularly...then Option B: visit Princeton. Relative to Brown and Columbia, Princeton isn't "hip" and may come across as a tad stodgy, though. So if P'ton is not appealing, Option C: visit Penn and stay overnight in the Philly area.</p>

<p>Saturday: If you chose option A or B, visit Penn. If you chose option C, I'd recommend either heading home and visiting a school conveniently located along the way (unless, of course, you're flying...then just go home)...or you may want to check out Swarthmore. Or you may want to continue on down to DC for Georgetown or GW.</p>

<p>Thus, in one exciting week, you will have visited:
Amherst
Harvard
Brown
Wesleyan
Yale
Columbia
NYU
Princeton
Penn
and maybe Swarthmore</p>

<p>For a total of 10 schools (6 ivies).</p>

<p>Now, as far as the two isolated ivies, Cornell is a fantastic school in a really neat college town (Ithaca) but it is really isolated...the nearest schools of interest are a good three hours away in Rochester or Albany. And unless you are into sciences or engineering, I'd say it's expendable. Dartmouth...I never visited and was never really interested in the place (scared off by the frats and reports of heavy drinking). I MIGHT BE WRONG, but based on hearsay, its student body is on the opposite side of the ivy spectrum from, say, Brown. However, if you ever decide to pay the rest of the northeast a visit, a Bowdoin/Bates/Dartmouth/Middlebury/Skidmore/Rochester/Cornell trip might be in order...</p>

<p>Lastly, the above are all mere suggestions. What you should do really comes down to what schools you WANT to visit as well as logistics (can you really squeeze Harvard and Brown into a day? It depends on tour schedules...).</p>

<p>However, I CAN say that, as a veteran of several marathon college-trip/mad-dashes, the most important part is to make use of your evenings by driving to the next college the night before. Don't stay in Boston the night before visiting Yale...you're going to have to get up really early and will tire out by the end of the week.</p>

7

<p>You are fabulous, 2-iron! Thank you so much, as that itinerary is exactly the sort of thing I was looking for.</p>

8

<p>Good luck on your college adventure. Be sure to focus on "fit" more than on prestige.</p>

9

<p>Sorry, but I think 2-iron's itinerary packs in way too much in too little time. It would be exhausting and wouldn't give you enough time at any school to get a sense of the campus or the surrounding community. You'll have time for only the info session and standard tour and then you'll be off to the next place. (If all you care about is an info session and canned tour, you can do that with one of the video tours available for sale online.) You can't possibly tell whether you'll like Boston or not by spending one evening there. Wesleyan and Yale in the same day? Too hectic, and you wont get any feel for New Haven. With this plan, by the time you get home, you won't be able to remember what you saw where. </p>

<p>Cut down your list based on some good research. The trip will be far more worthwhile.</p>

10

<p>Well, my itinerary is on the ambitious side. You asked for the ABSOLUTE MOST you could do in a week...and this is it. It wouldn't hurt to narrow down the list of schools I gave you, though.</p>

<p>However, I do somewhat disagree with MommaJ's assertion that you need to spend a lot of time at a school to get a feel for it. While I have never done a trip quite as ambitious as the one I made up for you, I have done this before:</p>

<p>Day 1: Get up at 3:00 AM to fly to O'Hare (Chicago) and then drive to Ann Arbor for Umich.
Day 2: Get up at 3 again to drive ALL THE WAY AROUND Lake Michigan via the Upper Peninsula for Lawrence in the afternoon, then down to Madison for the night.
Day 3: University of Wisconsin morning, drive to Chicago for a Cubs game. Spend the night in Skokie.
Day 4: Northwestern/Chicago doubleheader</p>

<p>That's 5 schools in 4 days, with a WHOLE LOT more driving than the trip I made up for you (the drive from Ann Arbor to Appleton via upper peninsula was over ten hours).</p>

<p>And I did not spend more than a couple hours on each of the campuses. Even Northwestern, which at the time was and still is my second choice (and likely destination unless I make Princeton): as soon as the tour was over we had to leave for UChicago. I still got plenty of a feel for the school. You just have to be efficient and observant...even start evaluating the area around the school by looking out the car window on the way there.</p>

<p>Oh, and if remembering what you saw was a problem...take notes and bring a camera.</p>

11

<p>I would not consider all of these schools safety schools... However here are schools in New England which I think are worth checking out. I am by no way suggesting you should visit all of these schools. I would suggest researching these schools a great deal and finding some which you find the most appealing and maybe visiting them if you are in the area. </p>

<p>I also suggest using the Princeton Review to read about the 'Student Body'. By no means would I say the Princeton Review is a reliable resource for college research, however, if you read in a college's 'Student Body' section claiming that there are "so many hipsters", then perhaps it's safe to say that there are a decent amount of "hipsters" at their school.</p>

<p>Wheaton (MA)
Tufts
Boston University
Brandeis University
Vassar
Wesleyan
Wellesely
Connecticut College
Amherst
Williams
NYU
Skidmore
Bates
Bowdoin
Middlebury</p>