We’ve casually visited colleges when we were on road trips (just for the fun of it). Having a ninth grader, we just drive around the campus or park and walk a bit. In some cases we stop in the student union and/or library for a quick peak. No formal tours at all. It’s fun to see the different campuses and hear D’s thoughts. Two campuses she loved were Lafayette and Skidmore. Hated our drive thru Vassar and Williams. Didn’t particularly like Middlebury or Haverford. Liked Lehigh until she saw Lafayette, then immediately ruled out Lehigh. We are well aware that when she gets closer to application time we have to decide if the schools she ruled out are worth seeing again in a more serious way. Vassar is supposed to be a great school, for example, but she didn’t like the architecture or Poughkeepsie. Middlebury is beautiful, but she was not in the mood at that moment. If you have many places you want to explore around the country, it’s probably not a bad idea to start early, and to try to see places when you’re on your way to a vacation or visiting relatives in another state. I think we plan on checking out the south and the midwest and maybe further west, so I can’t imagine saving all that until she’s a junior. Finally, I agree with whoever said that what they want when they are younger is not what they will care about when they are seniors. Right now, my daughter wants a school with beautiful sorority houses next to a picture perfect town and a variety of students. She insists the school has to have all kinds of people (not just preppy or just hipsters or artsy types)She’s not ready to think about future careers, which is to be expected.
When we visited Brown we went to the info session first. At the end there were a number of questions. All seemed insincere. Instead, it seemed like parents standing on a soapbox indirectly selling their student/applicant. We blew off the scheduled tour and class visit.
I personally think the overnights are overrated. I’ve heard from several parents who regret them because the kids had a bad experience with a particular student hosting the overnight (ignoring them, etc…) I think the overnight is SO overly affected by who you get that you can rule out a perfectly good school that you student may have found her ‘tribe’ in because the overnight was with a non-compatible person.
Wow, you have some pretty interesting and varied Road trips is you just happened to be near Middlebury and Williams! We did a few of these drive-bys but it was hard to get a good feel for most schools from them. I recall, for example, we did a drive through of William & Mary 5 years ago when passing through on vacation. But then we did a formal walking tour this year and it was SO much more impressive in the areas you couldn’t see by car.
I know what you mean by mood too. I really liked Middlebury, BTW, though I know some people don’t like the consistent grey brick architecture. Helps that I was there during a beautiful day. My S and I didn’t like the appearance of Vassar when we toured either, but my wife and D did.
@suzyQ7, I take your point and we had the exact same reaction after he had a negative experience on one of his overnights – that he was placing too much significance on the small number of people he interacted with. That said, for him the vibe was really important and he ended up much more comfortable with the vibe somewhere else. And before the overnights and detailed visits with students he simply could not get off the fence. Only time will tell if his instincts paid off.
I wonder if overnight stays at LACs give a more accurate vibe than an overnight stay at a large university where there may be more diversity. Maybe an overnight at a place like Oberlin or Grinnell would be an accurate portrayal of what the kids are like…where at a state school, you may or may not get a definitive answer on whether you fit in or not.
Visiting varied campuses when in an area for other reasons is a great idea. Before the formal college visits your kids get to become familiar with them and get a feeling for what is the same and different. Getting out of the car to see the students unions and eating facilities gives other campus culture info.
While I love the discussion about overnights, it’s very valuable, maybe this is best discussed in its own thread?
It would be great to hear which colleges moved up and down and were crossed off of people’s lists as they toured.
I second the comment that schools will also arrange for tours etc for admitted students if you can’t make the official day. D16 got a scholarship the last week in April out of the blue from a school that was lower on her list due to cost. DD decided she needed to see it again as the first visit had been in April junior year so we decided to take the 5 hour road trip spur of the moment and the school put together a great day for us with a lot of one-on-one time with students, admin and professors, which helped win her over. This was a small LAC but also had something similar on a smaller scale at a mid sized university (15,000 undergrads). It can really help a student decide, particularly when they may have concerns about their majors that can’t always be addressed in a big crowd.
Small LAC did such a good job that when she suddenly got a call giving her a spot of the WL at one of her absolute favorite schools the following week she only needed literally 5 minutes to decide to stay with the first school.
So if the official admitted student days don’t work, ask admissions to put something together for you, or call programs individually and schedule appointments for another day. It can be very helpful.
@myjanda could you please identify the colleges? It may help others.
@dustyfeathers - Lafayette was the small LAC that within 24 hours pulled together a fabulous day for DD. Syracuse was the larger school - my daughter and I contacted individuals ourselves to pull together a last minute visit - so not as personal but still very good (and perhaps admitted students depart would have done it if I had thought to ask…). Heads of departments: neuroscience, honors program, premed advising - graciously took time out of their schedules to meet individually with my daughter and answer all her questions.
I’ll guess though that these two schools are not outliers and that many other schools, big and small, would also be accommodating for admitted students if you ask.
The trade off is you don’t get all the rah rah and parties set up for admitted student day but in my daughter’s case this was much more helpful…
@citivas " consistent grey brick architecture" also known as marble or limestone
Yeah, I wondering even as I typed it if I wasn’t recalling the material correctly. The emphasis being on grey. And to be clear, as I said, I really like it personally. But I have heard and seen others who didn’t respond to it. So much subjectivity in what makes a beautiful campus…
@svetoy - Same thing happened with my youngest and SDSU - it kept moving up his list each time he visited!
And even that may depend on the day:
DD loved the look of UPenn because of all the different colored buildings on the quad.
Then she loved the the monochromatic gray limestone look of UChicago because it gave the quad a unified appearance :D.
@citivas We live in NY, so it was easy to go to Skidmore, then Williams then Middlebury on a trip to VT. My husband and daughter didn’t like that gray stone at Middlebury, but I thought it was lovely. The only thing I didn’t like was the fact that the bathroom in the student union was unisex. I guess I’m old school, and like separate bathrooms for males and females. When we drove through Vassar it was a rainy day and everything appeared gloomy even though it’s known to be a beautiful campus. I think my daughter liked Skidmore a lot (even though it has no Greek) is because it kind of looked like a summer camp and the Student Union was vibrant. As for Lafayette, we loved that it seemed so neat and tidy and cozy. It felt very safe after seeing Lehigh with all those steep hills and woods. The thing with looking at schools early is that you have to be prepared to see schools again even if they didn’t appeal when you were 15yo if everything else fits the bill.
That’s really true but oddly enough, it was a less than optimal overnight host experience that convinced my son that he had found his place. He did an overnight at a college after he’d been accepted. He and his host got along ok but then his host had to go study or do something, leaving my son on his own. As he was telling me this he said “but I just found a group of students and asked if I could hang out with them.”
He must have seen my jaw drop (S is usually extremely shy in those situations). He smiled and said “yeah, I couldn’t believe I did that either.”
It was realizing that he felt perfectly comfortable even when things didn’t go according to plan that told him the college was right for him.
^^^ Very different from my S’s overnight experience at one of his top accepted choices. To be clear, everyone was nice – there was no issue of the hosts being rude, etc. But the room was a suite with all “Bros” (the local slang for athlete/preppies) who had a room dedicated to beer pong. A handful of kids were all being hosted in the same suite and they all sat around and talked about parting and what they used/drank, etc. Totally not his thing. He also interacted with some other kids in the classes he sat in on and same thing – they all talked about what parties they were going to do. We told him there are probably kids not into drinking and he just didn’t meet them but from his POV meeting a couple dozen kids and having 100% of them into drinking made it a pretty representative sample. When he’d surf some of the sites like this one and he read people complaining that there’s no party scene at a school, it made him want to look at that school more…
I’m still only at page 16, but I love this thread so I thought I’d contribute. We did our first intentional tours when our twin sons were freshman. They will be seniors next year. The first tours (morning and afternoon) were at Washington and Lee and UVA. It was a spectacular way to start because they were opposite ends of the spectrum.
Washington & Lee - Sons loved the focus on teaching, small classes, and small, manageable campus. The town was a bit too small, and the tour reinforced the dominant nature of Greek life on campus. It was ideal in some ways, but scratched off the list.
UVA - Tour convinced my kids that they didn’t want to go to a huge school. It felt sprawling and impersonal. The most telling moment that struck us all was when the tour guide said that the professors were one of the secrets to UVA being a great school, then he went on and illustrated that with a story about a professor telling an amusing anecdote in class (while sitting with the tour group in a 75 seat lecture hall). It was a totally different feel from Washington & Lee where your adviser was required to take you out for a meal.
Others moving up:
Univ. of Richmond - Well loved by all. It is currently top three for both sons. They were the most hospitable – coffee at the info session, cookies on the tour, and discount passes to the (excellent) cafeteria. Campus is gorgeous and their transportation system in and around Richmond was impressive.
Gettysburg College - Nothing extravagant, but the campus was nice, the town is interesting, the students were friendly. Our tour guide was one of the best we had.
Lehigh - Campus is beautiful and will keep you in shape walking up and down a thousand foot vertical climb! Clear campus spirit. Right next to town. Nice size – not too small or too large. LOVE their 5th year free scholarship possibility. (Currently frustrated by results of their net price calculator.)
Bucknell - Math oriented son LOVED it. Campus was nice, but mostly he loved it fit the smaller school / small class size model and he got to talk to a number of the math professors and liked them a lot. Also talked to the homeschool admissions rep who was very helpful and was anxious to recruit more homeschoolers.
U of Chicago - Best info session. Loved the former student who led it. My proudly “unusual” sons were glad to hear him say, “We don’t want a place full of type A personalities. If we were all type A personalities we’d be a pretty dysfunctional school!” Parts of the campus are beautiful while some buildings are actually hideous. We loved the house system and loved the Liberal Arts focus of the undergrad program. The neighborhood feels a lot like home to them since we live in an urban neighborhood in DC.
The King’s College in NYC - (Evangelical Christian) Fascinating mixed bag of a school. The academics are as ideal as I could imagine. It’s a great fit for one son academically. Unfortunately he dislikes everything else about the school. “Campus” in the Manhattan financial district isn’t his thing, and the thought of college life without a cafeteria is depressing. We went for one of their “check-out-our-school” weekend and wow was it a different feel from all of the selective schools we’d visited. They rolled out the red carpet. They had sessions with professors, students, and alums. They took our whole family to a Broadway show. It was nice to be courted.
Schools that stayed the same:
Georgetown - One of the worst info sessions of the bunch. Admissions person was boring and talked a lot about details we could easily have found on the website. The tour was given by a girl who lives just a few blocks down the street from us, so that was fun to discover. She did a great job. The school itself feels pretty cramped and the buildings are hit or miss. Still, I have one son who is set on attending, and nothing about the tour changed that. He wants to attend so he can stay near home, and I don’t have any problem with that!
Wheaton College - (IL school - Evangelical Christian) My Alma Mater is a small Christian school downstate, and we were surprised that Wheaton (“the Christian Harvard”) had a campus that felt pretty dingy in comparison. The two new buildings were impressive, but the rest of the school could have used some TLC. Nevertheless we find it amazing the caliber of kids who are there when they really aren’t terribly selective. A mid-50th ACT composite of 27-32 when you accept 71% of applicants is pretty amazing. That is similar to most schools who accept 30% of applicants.
Schools that dropped:
Johns Hopkins - I’m not sure where the dug Kiki up from, but she participated in the info session and was one of the dingiest students you can imagine. We mostly learned about the food she liked and where you could find it. They also focused so much on their practical experiences that it made it seem like they didn’t care much for the actual teaching process. The campus was nice, but it just didn’t seem like a good fit.
Lafayette - I’m pretty sure that we had the same admissions guy doing our info session as an earlier poster did. I think the phrase he used had the word “pompous” in it. He said a lot of things along the lines of, “We may not be a good fit for you.” By the end, we agreed with him. They also did little to distinguish themselves from other small, selective, liberal-arts schools. The campus was beautiful, but . . .
Franklin and Marshall - I’m sure it didn’t help that the temperature never got above 0 degrees on the day we were there, but F & M seemed dingy and spouted back the same phrases my kids had heard at 20 other schools. There was nothing that made it seem unique, particularly when it didn’t “show” very well to begin with. The cafeteria was distinctly mediocre. If you are Jewish and looking for Jewish community, you might see things rather differently. There was a very clear Jewish presence on campus, including signs for several clubs and a Rabbi standing in the cafeteria area presiding over the kosher area (perhaps because it was Shabbat.
George Washington - I have a son who wants to stay in DC, and GW is my wife’s Alma Mater, but GW was just too pragmatic and work-focused. My classicly educated homeschoolers couldn’t buy into the image GW was portraying of themselves. The size was a bit bigger than Georgetown and it felt less personal.
I think that covers the bases for now. We may do a few more visits in the future. I really wish more schools would include their cafeterias in the tours – including discounts for eating on campus. We’ve really only had two schools do that.
I didn’t like the grey of Middlebury either, my daughter thought I was a dink for even bringing it up, because weather you like the grey buildings or not, the scenery is absolutely beautiful. Also it was winter with a little snow, I’m guessing you don’t notice the grey as much as in the Spring? I didn’t like co ed bathrooms when I went to school 20 years ago, O.K., 30 years ago, and still don’t like the idea today, glad to be old school.