Yes, it’s not that I dislike the CA publics, but I just wouldn’t prioritize them for a visit. We love SLO (go regularly for wine tasting) and hope S23 gets in. But it’s only 3 hours drive for us and great value instate. He didn’t like SDSU that much (preferred UCSD’s campus and had a better tour experience). He’d probably pick Arizona, ASU or Utah over SDSU.
UCLA was amazing for S18, many of his friends were from OOS and thought it was decent value if they would otherwise have been full pay at an east coast private. I don’t think any of them would have qualified for need-based aid elsewhere: the difference between wealthy out of staters and the significant number of poor/first gen CA students was quite noticeable.
In my opinion, I would do a tour of the California schools during Spring break. You can fly to San Diego, visit SDSU then drive up the state to UCLA, Cal Poly SLO and SCU then fly back from San Jose or do the reverse.
SDSU does admit a small percentage of students early in Mid-December so she may be one of the early admits. Last year, decisions trickled out starting March 8 with a large admit wave on March 11. If SDSU is a top option, definitely visit.
UCLA’s decision date has always been the 3rd Friday in March which would be March 17, 2023.
Cal Poly SLO admits in rolling waves with admitted students hearing first. If they follow the same pattern they have for the last 10 years, admits first followed by a week later with waitlist and then finally denials. If she does not hear with the large admit wave, you can expect that she is waitlisted or denied.
Hopefully she will have all decisions prior to Spring break so she and you can make an informed decision.
I would just wait until she has all of her decisions and just visit the favorite of the acceptances to make sure that it doesn’t have some critical flaw. Remember, she is only going to one school there isn’t a reason to need to have 5 vs 6 in the “correct” order.
If you are visiting schools to decide whether to attend, it’s unlikely that you are going to evaluate “hard” factors, such as availability of major, clubs, etc. because these are the things you can get good info about from the website, connections facilitated by admissions, etc. What is really hard to assess without visiting are the “soft” factors- how the campus feels, the kind of students, the vibe in and out of the classroom, etc. And for this, you need to attend when school is in session. Which is all to say - don’t go over Christmas! (And also pay attention to spring breaks.)
I know your D doesn’t want to miss any of her spring sport, which I can relate to. But this is an important decision, so she might want to reconsider that. Most late-announcing schools host revisit days for admitted students in April, and most admitted students are given access to all the resources they would nerd to make a good decision. Some schools may also start running them as early as February, again for students who have been admitted. At this point, your D can probably rank her choices, or at least group them by preference. If there are good options in the top tier (with good also meaning affordable), don’t waste your time on the less liked schools. You can also agree to look at the [5] least expensive options that meet the top criteria. It depends on what makes a school most preferable to you. But I’d say at this point, since you know your time is limited, don’t visit unless you KNOW it’s a real option for you. Which means acceptance and FA offer in hand.
Can I also add that mpst schools provide a decision date, but that is often the latest date, so in many cases, you may have a decision by mid March even if the school says 3/31. You can look at threads for previous years to see when decisions are typically released. That might make some of the uncertainty above 2 schools in one area easier to address.
I don’t think it’s necessary to visit ALL accepted schools. Trying to visit three after acceptance is probably manageable for most people, more after that is hard.
Kid 2 was very straightforward. He didn’t apply to too many schools. He had three top choices. He knew he loved one of the schools before he was accepted and didn’t feel a need to visit again. He visited two after acceptance. One of those was a plane ride away, and yes, it was hard to work in a visit. But he got the acceptance in Dec., and was able to visit in Feb. He and his dad worked a big basketball game into the visit and made a fun trip out of it.
Kid 1 was trickier. She visited one in Feb, after an early action acceptance, then had two other solid choices she wanted to see. She decided not to visit other schools where she was accepted because she didn’t like them better than the ones she was most interested in. It would have been very tough to visit all the schools after she was accepted and she didn’t want to sacrifice class time and prepping for AP tests. Kids still need to keep the grades up.
One visit was by plane, and it was really hard to squeeze in because she didn’t get that acceptance until mid March. She visited in April and deposited at that school, so it seemed worth it, at the time.
The kicker was she got an acceptance later from the waitlist at another school that was a top choice. Her previous visit had been in summer, when no students were on campus. There was no time to revisit that school, so she had to trust her gut. She did end up at the waitlist school and had a great experience.
I guess the moral is: do a lot of research before you get to campus, and be a bit ruthless. Don’t assume every college your daughter is accepted to must be visited.
Because she has a long list, she may feel overwhelmed with ranking all of them against each other.
If I were in your shoes, I would wait until February 2 (when all but the final batch of decisions are in) and ask her to pick her top two. Then I’d ask which of the outstanding decisions might beat those two.
Thus should help pare down the list of which schools to visit. No need to spend $2000 visiting her 5th choice. Hopefully she can narrow it down to her top 2-3 schools at that point, and you can visit as you are able over Spring Break.
Has your daughter been to California before? I probably would have taken a trip to those schools before applying, definitely before attending. We lived in CA for several years, and have returned for visits, and it wasn’t until we took a college trip there that my daughter decided that it was pretty much too far away for her (we live in MidAtlantic now). We looked at 5 CA schools and she only was willing to apply to one (and that one is very close to an airport).
Will grab a weekend in Boston to address a likely admit (BU) and seen NEU at same time even though a reach.
Will plan a February CA trip to see SDSU and then SCU (family nearby). These seem like likely admits. Will make a decision as to UCLA and CPSLO around then to see if they of a high enough priority vs. the likelihood of admittance.
As for the happy surprises (CMU, Gtech), if they were to come to pass, D will have to prioritize a visit (I don’t think you attend either without visiting). Her call though.
Arizona goes onto the no visit list. Doesn’t mean it’s out, just that a visit probably can’t happen.
We did some visits during “off times” and while not perfect, I wouldn’t rule that out either. My D was also in a sport that was difficult to miss. It was not school related and practices where over most weekends. While you don’t really get a sense of what campus is like when students are there you still get to see things and see the area.
Once decisions were in we took some time to visit admitted student days at her top two choices. My then her sport season was over and those days were normally very well run and gave an in depth look at the schools and their programs. And at that point she had narrowed down her list a bit. We had to miss a day or two of school for each though.
If you are visiting Santa Clara…fly to San Jose, and take the FREE bus that drops you off right in front of the main entrance. The airport is all of 10 minutes from Santa Clara University. It’s a shuttle flight from San Diego to San Jose.
If SCU is where you want to visit…I would suggest NOT flying into San Francisco. That’s not a convenient airport at all to SCU.
When we did our CA college trip, we stayed in San Diego. Drove to the greater LA area to see colleges…and spent two nights there with relatives. Returned to SD, and DH and the kid flew to San Jose and did the SCU visit. Easy peasy.
Piling on to @Lindagaf 's comment. You know that many of these schools have ceased to be a sure thing even for excellent students. Just be careful in how you talk about the ones where you are expecting acceptances when you talk about them with and in front of your D.
Not being admitted to a school where you (or your parents) thought your odds were excellent can be very rattling – even though you all know there will be good options when it comes time to make decisions.
Traveling to them at this point in the cycle already shares a bit of a message. Given your reasons for doing the visits after the application has become submitted but before you have decisions puts you in a position where you have to be a bit more mindful of this.
We did a California college tour last year with D23. Flew into San Francisco, drove to LA area before continuing on to San Diego and flew out from San Diego. We had 10 days to do this.
It was a really good trip, and with 10 days we did manage to do some fun non-college tour activities as well (food tour in San Francisco, shopping/eating in Sawtelle area in LA as well as exploring coast around Malibu, and seal watching in La Jolla).
It is a busy itinerary to go that distance. But worth it, especially if your daughter doesn’t have clear idea of what living in California might be like. As much as D23 loved San Diego…she was really clear she didn’t want to go to school there. And between San Francisco proper and the surrounding area…the surrounding area won hands down for her. LA was the big winner location wise for her.
D23 went into application/decision time with a much better idea of what travel will look like if she ultimately decides west coast. It’s one thing to imagine those travel days, its another to make the flight, and understand what 2-4 trips a year feel like (and cost).
Edited to Add: Fully agree on not flying into SFO unless the cost makes it the most attractive option. We did fly into SFO and took the train to our hotel…picked up a rental car at Oakland Airport actually because the cost differential between SFO and Oakland on a week long car reservation was almost $900. But we were staying in Oakland during that portion of our trip. If you are only visiting Santa Clara, definitely fly into San Jose.
Agree with beebee. My East coast kid was enamored of the West Coast (and has spent a lot of time there since college for work) but in HS it was difficult to understand the geography and the distances.
I think that you really have to consider the impact on your daughter if you go to visit a school this close to decision time and she doesn’t get accepted. High school can be a cruel place. It is bad enough when you just are rejected. You really don’t need someone saying “Susie was so confident that she would get in that she went to go visit three weeks ago and then got rejected”. Also, the program for accepted students is much better than the normal tour. When we went to my DS’s school, he got the tour with only one other accepted student. The “normal” tour was a mob walking around campus. Also they sent us to Thea dining hall to eat and the two students went and sat in a class together.
Both are great points. I think visiting and falling in love with a couple of highly rejective schools made it that much harder on my daughter when she wasn’t accepted there. If I had to re-do I would hold off on a visit until after acceptance. There’s plenty that can be learned about a school online and through virtual information sessions without having to step foot on campus. If your daughter wants to get a feel for a particular type of campus (big vs small, urban vs rural, etc.) see if you can visit a similar type of campus nearby - not necessarily the school(s) she’s applying to.
How much importance does she place on aspects of a college that can only be found by visiting, versus those which can be found by other means? Also, are there some colleges where she has questions that would only be answered by a visit, but other colleges where a visit would not be needed for her to determine how desirable the college is for her?