<p>This is new to me! I have been to accepted undergraduate student events with both my kids and also graduate school ones and none involved any fees, nor should they. </p>
<p>I don’t mind parking fees if they are in a garage or lot that normally charges, however. We have paid to park, particularly at urban schools.</p>
<p>PS, one of my kids was at an event last week of this nature and was catered for three meals too.</p>
<p>Charging a nominal fee could also make sure that a student who RSVPed will show up.</p>
<p>Wow I didn’t know some schools were now charging. I understand parking in some areas, or maybe to encourage students show up…but still, its in their interest to get tons of students to visit and apply.</p>
<p>So different from our recent experience of a far-away school we recently visited Their policy is that if you eventually enroll, they’ll reimburse half the cost of the student’s airfare incurred for the visit.</p>
<p>S, H and I attended Admitted Student Day at a public school in the West last weekend. $15 per person, so $45 for all us. It was a great presentation, and we didn’t mind paying for the experience (which included lunch, parking and the tours, but not a T-shirt like the University of Kansas event offered) at a public institution that is watching how every cent is spent. </p>
<p>If the private school (with a COA of nearly $50,000) charged for the admitted student experience/information, I might feel a little differently.</p>
<p>Ellemenope is correct. The school is Rice, and we have not given them a deposit yet.</p>
<p>The parking fee is annoying, but I know enough schools do that now that it wasn’t so much of an issue.</p>
<p>But $15 per parent seems high. Yes, they gave us a lunch with that, and yes my son received a t-shirt, book bag, some meals and an overnight. He loved the campus and the students. They were very welcoming to him and tried hard to keep the prospies entertained.</p>
<p>But other schools offer this and don’t charge.</p>
<p>I’m just miffed that we paid $75.00 to spend a day on campus (the parents) and an overnight (the son). It seems high and I’ve never heard of other schools charging.</p>
<p>Wow. My college (NYU-Poly) as part of the new student orientation experience, pays for you to go to upstate new York for a few days to camp out. I didn’t know some universities were so damn cheap. -_-</p>
<p>If admitted students have to pay to park at these garages or lots (which we do), why would someone visiting who might not even end up coming not have to pay to park? That’s not fair and completely ridiculous. Students, faculty, visitors, etc to the university, admitted or not, pay to park all the same (we have a Unesco world heritage site at UVA so we get a lot of visitors). In this competitive climate (where if you turn down the offer someone else with equally great stats will accept), undergrads are not how a school makes money. Research faculty, who care about their graduate students (who do get paid plane tickets still), are how a school makes money. That is just my 2cents.</p>
<p>OP, I was also surprised when I saw the fee on our Owl Days materials. However, it sounds like you and your son had a good time, and I know the entire Rice community works very hard to put together a fun and meaningful program for all. When you think of 600+ students attending together with however many hundred parents, that’s a lot of people for the school to host, feed, educate, entertain, etc. I finally reasoned that inasmuch as Rice prides itself in offering a “value” college education compared to most its peer schools, perhaps I should respect their fiscal conservatism in charging a moderate fee (which is waived for students who ordinarily qualify for fee waivers or request a waiver).</p>
<p>I never heard of such a thing. But what a great idea as a moneymaker! Imagine, Verizon charging everyone in their coverage area (even if they’re not customers yet). Or water companies charging for rain. Or, or, or …</p>
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Interesting. The camping trip sounds really cool.</p>
<p>Ahhh Rice. Their admission people seem to try to make you decide not to let them go. But once they are there they love it. DD would not trade her last 4 years exprience at Rice for anything. BTW there are ways to park without paying parking. They should have told you about them. We did not attend Owl Days with her but had DD go by herself so it did not seem to be that mucn for food, etc.</p>
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<p>I can’t disagree here, at least with the fee waiver. And I appreciate fiscal conservatism. But let’s assume 600 kids attend and that 40% of those have a fee waiver. Let’s say half of the 600 have one parent attend. Let’s ignore the parking. That’s $12,600 for the kids and another $4,500 for the parents. I mean, I guess it could cost $17,000 to host this. I’ve done some event planning, but that seems high to me.</p>
<p>@ singersmom: DS said he thinks he found “his people” at Rice so I get you. Our other trip is next week, so we’ll see.</p>
<p>I can already see the future of college visits as profit centers become all the rage: $500 in fees to see their school, but that includes a raffle ticket where one lucky winner will be guaranteed admission!</p>
<p>We are looking forward to the free luncheon next week, promised as part of the official tour at the New England college we plan to visit. I’d guess we’d still go if there was a fee, LOL, since at this point the school is Lake Jr.'s first choice.</p>
<p>This is interesting…I expect this might be a wave to come. There are actually sophomores going on college tours these days. We have paid for parking and we have paid orientation fees but so far not paid for visits. That said, if the trend of applying to more than a handful of colleges continues it would not surprise me in the least if some college start trying to recoup their costs of the additional labor to tour, give info sessions, review applications etc, hand out print materials, give out t-shirts…certainly people can’t expect that they will continue to staff up when they aren’t expanding their freshman classes proportionately Not gonna happen. There are hard costs to paying tour guides, preparing printed materials, passing out tchotchkees etc. So many colleges send out “free apps” or waive the app fee and charging $50 for a visit kind of makes sense from a business perspective if you are one of those colleges that gets a bazillion apps but the accepted students don’t materialize. Soft costs are one thing, but hard costs are hard to ignore.</p>
<p>I am not going to comment on other schools’ policies/fees, but I can tell you as someone who has worked in admissions at a highly selective university (and still works in the admissions field) that we routinely spent more than $20,000-$30,000 on our admitted student day(s)/weekend. The way many universities work these days requires departments to reimburse other departments for their spaces, maintenance, etc. etc. For example, if we wanted to have an activities fair as part of our program, we had to pay a fairly hefty set of fees to cover the set-up and rental of the tables, chairs, etc. Not to mention catering; the cost of printed materials (please don’t think these are incidentals!); even things like bottled water add up, especially when sometimes being forced to use on-campus catering departments that have considerable mark-ups. (Many colleges and universities have ‘exclusive vendor’ agreements that mean divisions can’t really price-shop for these types of items). It adds up - and quickly!</p>
<p>I think there is a misconception that admissions offices are rolling in the dough. Most admissions offices I know use the entire application fee income (plus some budgeting from the main university/college, depending on the school) to actually fund that department. The cost of salaries, printed materials, technology, recruitment travel, etc. etc. etc. really consumes any potential app fee income. Let’s say hypothetical university X has 25,000 applicants and, considering fee waivers (etc), the a/o office brings in $1.3 million dollars in fees. That’s not going to cover the costs of salaries, technology, events, recruitment travel, for the number of people an office that can handle 25,000 apps is going to have.</p>
<p>I’m not excusing things one way or another, but I wanted to throw in here a little “reality check” about the actual $$s. It’s a common myth that colleges/universities make money off application fees. I have worked in admissions for some time; I’ve never heard of it (I guess it’s theoretically possible though!). Not to mention that places like the Common App and/or credit card companies each skim some off that fee as well (little known fact: Common App not only charges colleges/universities a flat fee to participate but also skims off money off each app fee too!).</p>
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<p>We started college visits after my D’s freshman year due to convenience. First visit was UPenn, where she recently received an acceptance. Just because a kiddo visits early in their HS career does not mean that s/he is not serious about applying!</p>
<p>That was not the implication, the implication was that kids are going on look sees to more colleges and going at an age where they aren’t even part of the application cycle which I’m assuming means that more kids overall are going on look/sees. Admitted student weekends which used to be a rarity are now becoming a “way” for kids to look/see. Kids are applying to more colleges even though kids can only attend one. There are hard costs associated by the colleges for all these activities. Colleges are not expanding their classes yet kids are visiting and applying to more colleges. There is a point where it is a business decision to say “we’re not going to expand our staff.” There is a point where a business starts looking for revenue streams. If a family wants to go on college look sees with a sophomore then they may incur a cost for that activity if they want an info session, a tour, personalization, the same applies to a junior or a senior. It is to easy for kids to check boxes these days in lieu of an individualized application to a couple colleges and frankly it’s not suprising that colleges are throwing up costs – it certainly isn’t good business to hire more admissions people, tour guides and all the extras when you are going to accept the exact same number of kids you did 3 years ago simply because more of them want to go on a look/see. </p>
<p>No one is saying that every college is doing this and the OP is an anecdotal report. I’m simply saying that it doesn’t surprise me. My 3rd will most likely apply to 4 or 5 colleges and while I’m not happy it might/could/maybe will cost us $200 or more on top of the travel costs it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of college. You can go look at a college without the personalized attention for free if the cost is an obstacle. Anyone can go look at a college, talk to the students, eat in the cafeteria etc. without the bells and whistles and a service charge if that’s an issue. But on the other hand I’m sure the college are thinking if you can’t afford a $50 fee for a look/see how on earth are you going to afford the college costs so it’s a Catch 22 no doubt.</p>
<p>My son goes to a public flagship, and we did not have to pay for parking, nor to visit the college. Orientation did have a charge associated with it - it was 3 years ago so I can’t remember how much it was. I remember paying for parking too, then.</p>
<p>Just went to an admitted students event for my D today. She was given free meals, overnight in the dorm, and there was no charge for the event - nor for parking. I had to pay for my lunch today, that’s all. They also gave us 20% off everything at the bookstore. Good deal!</p>
<p>My daughter is a sophomore and we are going on a campus tour next Friday, 4/15 to a college within the state (2 hours away). Our main purpose was to go up Thursday, 4/14 for a lecture that interests my daughter and then we decided to stay the night and go on a campus visit the next day. </p>
<p>This was an unusual situation for us but we decided to make the best of it because we were already on campus and it was set a good baseline when we go college hunting the next year. Also, the 9am-2:30pm tour won’t cost us anything (other than my stay at a hotel the night before).</p>