Denison’s applications have been increasing of late. The kids she knows who were admitted years ago might not make the cut if they applied today.
Sounds like a successful visit! Your D sounds so similar to my S2 - he was also looking for a certain “feel” and although he liked BC, he didn’t get that elusive “feel” he wanted. And, I mentioned it here before, he hated the idea of a bus to class! That was a deal breaker for him.
I really do think she will love Richmond and Wake and I think her biggest decision will be where to ED. 
Fingers crossed!
Vassar has a lovely campus she might like? Travel isn’t direct, but Poughkeepsie to LaGuardia, then direct from LaGuardia to Chicago.
You mention she might be inclined to warmer weather. Bear in mind, the Appalachian Mountain spine rises as it extends south, which makes those college winters at altitude, much colder than nearer the coast. Definitely worth checking climate charts for a particular southern town in Jan, Feb, Mar if you are uncertain.
Vassar is about an hour to Westchester County airport… where she can fly directly to Chicago.
I will also add in my vote for Lafayette… depending on how the spring visits go.
If considering F&M, definitely fly into MDT (Harrisburg). Easy airport, non-stop to Chicago, and buy early enough will be inexpensive flights, especially when comparing to the additional ground transport costs from Philly. I avoid Philly and all NY area airports if at all possible.
@bloomfield88 well, just warmer than Chicago is “warmer”. I know Davidson got a little snow and that’s fine. She’s not looking for warm weather all of the time.
Getting some class visits set up. Davidson got back to D in 30 min with a lovely welcoming email and a list of classes to choose from. Wake department of dance got back to her right away too with a very long email inviting her to take as many dance classes as she wants and gave her the schedule. They also offered a meeting with the dept chair or the class teachers after class. (She gave them an overview of her dance experience in her email to them.) Richmond also responded today with classes options.
Washington and Lee says you have to call to request class. I called this afternoon. They told me no class visits unless you are a senior. I explained that we will be traveling from Chicago and this may be our only visit and they said sorry. I went on to explain that’s too bad since Richmond, Wake, and Davidson gladly offered for her to join a class and the W&L admissions person said she was sorry again and hurried me off the phone. Lol. She probably saw my name on the caller ID and made a note that I’m a pain.
I understand, especially when big brother is in Maine. I was living in Richmond and matriculated at Kellogg and there were a couple of days where I just said, “No way. Not worth it.”
That said, more than one kid from the north has day-dreamed of the warm climes of the south only to find out in January that 3,000 feet altitude in Boone, North Carolina gets cold, ice and snow too, whereas the College of Charleston would completely shut down with a half-inch of the white stuff.
That’s disappointing about W&L. We are traveling from Atlanta to schools in Wisconsin and Massachusetts in March, and all 3 schools have been very willing to make exceptions to their policies around class visits and interviews given that we explained we’d be coming a significant distance and unable to repeat a visit again during the admissions process. Wooster even let him sit in on two classes as early as last November. Looking forward to hearing what your D thinks of these schools after the visits.
@nichols51 yes. A disappointment. And visiting W&L is a little out of the way. We may call an audible on this trip and not go. Since we only have one day for Wake (Tues) and one day at Richmond (Thurs), I don’t know if we are best served to see W&L on Wed or spend more time at Wake and/or Richmond on that day. Right now, D is seeing a dance class at Wake on Tuesday and meeting with the prof afterwards. Between that and the tour/info session, she won’t get a chance to get into an academic class unless we stay part of Wednesday there. Same at Richmond, she’s going to a dance class on Thursday as well as the tour/info session and that takes the whole day. I’d like her to see a second class there too. I don’t really want to rush either of those visits.
It might seem a little odd that we are prioritizing her seeing dance classes when she’s not majoring in dance but that extracurricular part of the search is important to her. She wants to see how she fits in these dance departments and fess out how she can contribute without majoring.
^ Some schools are pretty rigid about this, others less so. It can be a matter of classroom size, whether visitors are hosted or attend alone, # of visitors, etc. This is the time when most juniors are seriously launching their searches AND when admissions offices are intensely involved with the class that will matriculate next fall.
It’s disappointing and may make it harder to get a feel for the school but I would advise against giving the school a demerit for that. (Not saying you are, btw…)
Wash & Lee’s policy is reasonable as the school’s primary responsibility is, and should be, to their current students. My thoughts might be different if the potential applicant was traveling from abroad.
In my opinion, Wash & Lee is a school that should be visited in order to assess fit due to location, small size of student body, and due to its strong personality, but best to do so closer to graduation from high school.
@homerdog I think it is completely reasonable to call an audible on W&L based on that phone call. During our oldest daughter’s search, we took note of how schools dealt with complications/‘problems’ just as much as well as how they did in showing their school off in general.
Things will get complicated at any school, how they react to challenges is important. The response you got from W&L would have made me decide to drop the school; there are so many good schools out there - why waste time at one that makes the process difficult during the sales pitch part of the search. For the most part, the search process of college applications shows us the best sides of a college, if the best can’t parts handle a request leaving you feeling heard and happy, what is it going to be like for your daughter to have to navigate that school? She has fewer resources and less experience than you do, how are they going to treat her requests?
My D20 recently called her chosen college (she applied ED) because she couldn’t get a link to work properly to fill out some additional forms. When she called, the person thanked her for letting them know about the bug in the system and immediately helped her complete the forms over the phone. She got off the phone with a huge smile on her face, felt competent and happy the matter was taken care of (not made to feel stupid or bothersome) and was more sure of her choice than ever.
These points of contact matter. For the money we are paying, we want a school that our daughter feels is responsive to her needs (and we will be paying less than half the COA, thanks to a very generous merit award).
@beebee3 I hear you on all of that. Wake, Richmond, and Davidson have been very responsive to her emails. All three responding in such a positive way within an hour of D sending an email with long, detailed emails and offers to meet with her.
@beebee3 , I hear you on extrapolation given the difficulty of filtering. But I can tell you I had a similar experience visiting a school recently where they couldn’t no-how, no-way do a tour or class visit for us even though we were 10 hours from home and might never be back. They were nice but wouldn’t budge. And no way are we taking it off the list. Too many reasons to love it.
Just seems a shame given how hard it is to find the right college (and 46 pages of comments here is testament to that) to eliminate one on the grounds that it has rules for stuff and is following them.
[Full disclosure: W&L grad.]
@OCDaddy W&L said she could go to class if she had a friend at W&L. She could shadow her friend. Makes me think they don’t want to bother having juniors see class who aren’t serious. Maybe their thinking is that, if a prospective student knows a W&L student, they are more serious about the school and it’s ok for those kids to see class. I guess I just don’t see why they can’t have juniors in class. When S19 went to class when he was a visiting junior (which he did at every single school we visited), no other juniors were in the class. It’s not like some onslaught of prospective students taking over space in a classroom and professors aren’t expected to do anything different with a prospective student in the room. S just introduced himself and sat in the back. Not sure why any school can’t let kids do that!
Yep, that’s a bummer and seemingly pointless. Bowdoin didn’t even ask my daughter what year she was. They just said nope, can’t help you. Seemed like they could’ve accommodated us (they didn’t look busy) but weren’t interested. When we went to Haverford last year there were no tours being given that day but the lady behind the counter jumped up and gave us a tour herself. Maybe she just needed to get her steps! (In fairness it was sunny and 70 and Bowdoin…wasn’t.)
My issue with a policy like that is some kids just cannot do fall trips because of their schedule. My daughter did her last visit in August leading into senior year. I can understand limiting it, but they should at least allow spring junior year IMO. I’ll also say an incredibly responsive AO who always responded promptly and helped out on a schedule conflict during the visit was the cherry on top of my daughter’s ED school. Those interactions make a huge difference.
It may be that seniors would have already applied & are, therefore, quite serious about attending the school.
A lot of change can occur regarding one’s target schools from one’s junior year to one’s fall term of senior year. As individuals grow & mature so do one’s preferences & goals.