I’ve heard many stories about kids/parents touring a school and noticed that if the weather was terrible that day, the impression of the school was in every case negative.
Has anyone toured a school on a bad weather day and loved the school?
This is a great question. I’ve noticed that rain seems to sour people on colleges, and timing can be key. I’m always somewhat bewildered by the people who complain that students at a college “seem too stressed” when they’re visiting during exam week.
My first visit to Harvard was in the middle of February while I was in town for a conference at BU. It was 80 degrees when I hopped on the plane in LA and 18 in Boston when I landed. I was freezing and totally unprepared for the snow and slush, but I absolutely loved Harvard and Cambridge.
Yes, if students and parents are not careful, they could allow random or irrelevant factors to influence their impression of a college from a visit.
It wa 20 degrees and windy the day we visited St. Andrews. Note where we are from.
She chose to attend.
The rest of the family was miserable!
My kid’s visit to Mount Holyoke was on a drizzly day, but she loved the school regardless.
This is a great topic. We just took a tour of UC Davis last week, and the tour guide said that when she came to visit the campus for the first time it was rainy and she didn’t like the school. When she came the second time it was sunny and she completely changed her mind.
Just like it’s tough to walk into a “fixer-upper” and see the potential, same goes for a college on a bad weather day. Also, I’ve learned that one should always try to visit a college while school is in session. An empty campus never seems to leave a good impression on HS visitors.
This is one of the dangerous things about putting too much emphasis on tours. It is hard to differentiate between things that are tour specific (weather/guide/other people on tour) and things that are not (climate, size, location). I just walked around the Stanford campus on a chilly/rainy day and the place seemed miserable. It didn’t help that it was during winter break.
It’s hard to separate out weather as a consideration. When DH and I had to find work outside Texas after oil prices collapsed, we visited Albuquerque in August and Maine in September. Guess which we picked, ha! Sometimes I wonder if we would have chosen differently if we’d visited the two places in February.
A kiddo I know broke a generations-long tradition of attending fancy pants East Coast university he toured on a rainy, windy day. The following week he flew to Stanford where students in bikinis were studying pool side. Off to Palo Alto he went the following August, much to his dad’s “disappointment.”
I have anecdotal experience that supports your thesis statement. D of username and I visited Denison and Kenyon on consecutive days. Denison had sunny gorgeous weather (she ultimately attended). Kenyon was miserable and rainy, to the point she turned to me on the way to lunch and stated “I will NEVER go here. Can we leave now?”
We’ve just completed admitted students tours, so a second look for both. Loyola Chicago was super freezing, snowing, and this was late March when we were starting to warm up a bit at home. Other one was to Elon where it pretty much rained the whole time and they even cancelled some things. No matter…both schools were well liked despite the weather and the Elon visit sealed the deal…he had decided before we even left but it was too rainy to get a picture in front of an Elon sign or fountain!
This reminds me of our visit to Richmond in March, it was comparatively warm (50s?) and drizzly but there was NO ONE around campus and the tour guide said it was due to the “terrible” weather. This also didn’t affect our opinion…once the lack of students was explained, we just laughed at her definition of “terrible.” Oh and we appreciated the complimentary spider rain ponchos they had ready and waiting!
We visited a school in April. It hailed. She loved it! I said, “OK, if you like it during an April hailstorm, you can go here.” She did, and had a great experience.
I’m afraid guilty as charged. First time D visited her current college it was late August and really hot. Tour guide was meh. It stayed on the list but not very high. Then she went back for accepted students’ day, and it zoomed to the top of her list and she’s very happy there now.
We toured Brown in drizzly rain and hated it. I’m 80% sure D wouldn’t have liked it in better weather either, but who knows!
The heat index was 110 degrees the day we toured University of South Carolina…in the summer. Our kid really liked that school…and so did we. Plus their tour was a long one because the tour guide at the time (2004) actually did the info session as part of the tour.
Frankly, I think a bad tour guide is worse than bad weather.
It’s weird… I’m sitting here trying to think of when we toured a school during bad weather but I think we got lucky. Not a single tour was rainy. One tour was in mid fall. The evening before had been fairly warm, but the morning was quite cool and there was a a gorgeous, spooky fog backlit by pale early morning light through the trees. DS fell. in. love. That school ended up being his second choice. His first choice (& the school he’ll be going to in the fall) the hot water in the dorm he was staying in went out. Even that wasn’t enough to sour how he felt about the beautiful campus & the school as a whole.
Even the few tours that were a little cold, he loved. He’s very ready to leave the swamp weather far behind!
My S had never been to the state of Maine before. The August day he toured Bowdoin it was cold and rainy. He loved it and applied ED.
IMO, there is no doubt weather affects the experience of the visits and interests in the colleges. That’s why schools like UCLA, Stanford and Pomona consistently receive far more applications than their peers every year.
D1 toured her safety on a day it was pouring, and still really liked it. She revisited again for accepted student days to be sure, and decided to go there. Was really happy.
D2 visited her school twice. 1st time it was over 100 degrees. Too hot to move. 2nd time for accepted student days it was chilly and raining - as bad as the weather ever gets there. She still picked it.
Now… we spent time before we visited working on a list of questions and things to evaluate. So my kids had other criteria in mind. They also did more than tour - sat in on a class, ate in the cafeteria, etc. That probably made the weather seem less important.
Visited our state flagship (UConn) on a cold, rainy day. My son loved it regardless, so I was thrilled.
“Has anyone toured a school on a bad weather day and loved the school?”
Yes! The day we did our NYU tour, it was absolutely pouring with rain. Most of the tour was outdoors, with some brief respite in the library and a couple of other buildings. Despite coming out of it soaked (even with umbrellas!) my daughter absolutely loved it and it was first choice right from then. She even worked the rainy tour into her “why NYU” essay, and she starts there in the fall 