Heading into April vacation college touring last week I was wondering the same thing! U of Delaware we saw on a cold, windy day with all the kids on campus run, run running to their classes/dorms. Then a few days later we saw VA Tech, Clemson and Furman on beautiful warmer sunny days. Actually loved all the schools and S2 will apply to all 4. Only regret with the cloudy cold day in Delaware was that we did not see as much of the campus as we would have liked and we did not get as many photos. Weather was not a factor in our like/no like.
As most families go for college tours in spring or summer, they don’t get to encounter ice and windchill related issues and go home with a false perception of the life on those campuses.
Similarly, they see worst side of warm campuses during summer and go back with false perception. Most students don’t spend summer at campuses so it doesn’t matter if July is hot or not.
If possible tour each campus during their worst months to understand ground reality.
We toured Auburn on an unusually windy and chilly day in the spring a few years ago. Like previous posters observed, students were huddled and racing from place to place. It made it hard to get a feel for the vibe of the school. DD did not drop it off of the list but in the end she didn’t attend. DH and I feel that the weather that day played a big role in her decision since both schools were very similar. We did plan a return visit when she was in final decision phase in the spring of senior year and the weather was wonderful. In the end she thought the students at her school just seemed friendlier - I am sure it stems from that initial visit.
One person’s bad weather is another person’s ideal. I grew up in the midwest and couldn’t wait to leave winter behind. My kids grew up in California and at least 2 of them (not sure about the 3rd yet) prefer cooler weather and snow is a definite bonus. I’ve given the talk about how one week of snow might seem lovely but after 3 or 4 months of it and especially when it’s all grey and muddy they are not going to like it as much but I think they really want to try it for themselves.
At one of the accepted student weekends my daughter attended the weather was horrible. It rained, iced, snowed was windy and the temps dropped rapidly…ending up in the low teens by mid after noon (in mid April). She and her hosts did not attend any of the scheduled events as it was sheeting ice by evening. She committed after the weekend.
My family just got back from St. Andrews. The miserable weather definitely affected all of our views on the place.
Awful, rainy, windy miserable visit to the school that my daughter happily declared was perfect.
My older son visited Harvard on a gorgeous weekend, while it rained the entire weekend at Carnegie Mellon. They had umbrellas at the tour office, because yes, it rains a lot in Pittsburgh. He still picked CMU. All the CS events were indoors and they were fabulous.
We went to Boston in mid-August to tour NEU and BC. We hoped to escape the heat and humidity back home in the mid-Atlantic. It was a cool, dreary rain in the morning (about 55 degrees and we had shorts on) but we loved NEU despite the ugly weather. We ate a quick lunch off campus then uber’d to BC. By then, the sun had come out and it was nasty humid, quickly rising to about 80 degrees. Lovely campus but could not stand the director of Admissions, who ran the admissions presentation. D17 did not have BC on her list but we decided to check it out since we were up there. We couldn’t wait to get out of there - we preferred NEU in the dreary rain to BC in the hot sun. We spent the next day sightseeing in Boston where temps rose to 95 degrees and miserable humidity. It felt like we were back home in the DC area. She didn’t end up in Boston in the end.
We visited Boston University in all kinds of weather because of other reasons to be there. So we saw all seasons, and temps. Accepted student day was a picture perfect gorgeous spring day. Couldn’t have been more beautiful.
But…graduation four years later in May…the weather was absolutely horrible. We didn’t go to the main outdoor graduation…thank goodness. Shuttle buses were jam packed because of the torrential rain. We all looked like drowned rats by the time we got to the departmental graduation.
I say this because…a one day visit does not tell the whole weather story anywhere. Keep an open mind.
Of all the tours we took, the very finest was on a day with pouring rain. Credit goes to a fabulous guide and loaner umbrellas. But the school, for other reasons, was a no-go.
We visited UVa on a day so hot the guide took us into extra buildings just to take advantage of the a/c, while he talked. She still loved the campus.
not sure if New Englanders remember the rain on Marathon day 2019 but it was hours long with lots of terrential downpours. I had a friend running the marathon and brought her 10 year old son with me (no school). We went to an accepted business student day. There was a pretty small turn out and we were drenched most of the time. However there was lots of personal attention and my daughter loved it. The dean still remembers her from that day.
The 10 year old year old not so much. When we ended up at a restaurant to meet up with his mother (I didn’t think she wanted to deal with dinner that night) the first thing he said to her was you could’t believe how much I had to walk in the rain today.
Once we had a tour booked at a college in an area we were visiting. It was raining quite a bit. We skipped the tour and never rescheduled the visit.
@AriBenSion the weather has been gorgeous in St A the last few days. I’ve been getting pics of my D in a sundress and on the beach.
My daughter toured her college for the first time in the rain on a freezing day. She fell in love anyway. It wasn’t until her third visit to campus that she got the beautiful weather.
We actually had the opposite experience. We have twice visited schools in the pouring rain, and both times, my S loved the schools. This happened most recently just last month, when we visited Denison during a cold, heavy rain directly after attending an admitted students event for another school on a perfect spring day. I thought Denison would surely drop away, but he surprised us and the school rose to become one of his final two (still not decided). It gives me a level of confidence that he formed that kind of positive impression in spite of the weather. The admissions offices in both schools we toured in the rain had pretty cool loaner umbrellas, so maybe that helped some.
Yes. Last year, we went to accepted students day at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY. It was mid April, 32 degrees with freezing rain. The vibe and friendliness were over the top that day (yes, of course, it was accepted students day), and Hamilton pulled out all the stops from parking, meeting with professors to dining. My son was torn between Hamilton and another school, and we had gone two days prior to the other school’s accepted students day and the weather was sunny and 65 degrees. There was no doubt in his mind about choosing Hamilton, even after walking around in freezing rain in mid April!
1 rainy day, we visited Lehigh and Lafayette on the same day.
At Lehigh the tour guide pretended it was not raining and did the usual tour. I was at the end of the line of like 20 people when climbing the hills and all I heard was the rain on my umbrella.
At Lafayette, they split us up into groups of 1-2 families. They did as much as possible inside.
I had a much more favorable impression of Lafayette.
Also we went to Cornell on a gorgeous blue day…but still did not think of the campus as very active/warm.
We have jokingly said in our family that if we were planning a college visit some place the weather would be out of the norm.
We visited Reed, Willamette, and University of Puget Sound in the summer when it happened to be unusually warm/hot. My daughter didn’t mind but we had been telling her the northwest would be cooler. We went back in the spring and told her beforehand it would probably be rainy and gray - typical northwest weather. It rained the 5 days before we arrived and 5 more after we left. On the days we were there the weather was warmer than usual and the sun shone the whole time in a beautiful blue sky.
We did the Ohio college tour late in April last year. It just so happened that the area was experiencing some record lows. At Wooster they had hot chocolate stations set-up. There was rain and sleet when we went to Denison and cold in Oberlin. Temps were in the 30’s when normally they were in the 60’s that time of year. The guides at all the schools were great, but when you’re freezing or wet you do miss some of the positives of the places.
In the end, our daughter is leaning towards going to Reed. While weather wasn’t a totally determining factor it did play a part in her decision. She’s ready to leave the cold wet midwest behind.
We did accepted students’ day at Ithaca in April last year. It was in the eighties when we left the DC area around 1 PM,and it was close to freezing when we got to Ithaca. It was dreary the whole time we were there, but that’s where he ended up.
I recently attended Wildcat Days at Northwestern and it was 70 degrees that day & sunny. It was the 2nd admitted student day, the first one was the week before where there was snow on the ground .
I bet some of the ones who went when it was cold & snowy in the middle of April were turned off by the weather.