Deciding which schools to revisit before May 1

Parents Forum
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<p>Now that many of our kids are starting to receive acceptances, I'm wondering how our family will go about narrowing our D's list of schools. Some decisions will be made for her, of course, but she's already into 4 schools (at similar costs after scholarships) which are scattered around the country. Even visiting only those four by May 1 would be a challenge, and she still has 8 more schools to hear from. Of course, she wants to visit them all...granted, several she has never seen are they are across the country.</p>

<p>Just curious how other students and families are handling this. Are you only visiting schools you haven't seen already? Are you limiting the number of accepted students days your child will attend? Setting a budget for travel?</p>

<p>Thanks for any feedback for this first-timer!</p>

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<p>OP - You did say “revisit” … right? It’s clear your D is doing great with her college acceptances. Revisiting all twelve schools would be counter-productive, even if it was possible. Ask your D to identify her top three choices. As acceptances to those schools arrive, schedule (re)visits.</p>

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<p>We are getting in some visits now (Feb - mid March) before regular decision results come in. That way, our child should have 1 to 2 clear preferences in place before regular decision results come in. Then, if there are regular decision additional acceptances that she has remained interested and are as affordable as the early action acceptances she has visited and likes, she will see them over spring break. </p>

<p>These visits now are not all on accepted students days. But we have found that departments, honors programs, etc. are more than willing to meet with a student who has been accepted and is coming for a visit. In terms of limits, we are visiting based on her true continued interest and COA, and only visiting ones now that she has been accepted to, that we know we can afford and that she is truly interested in. If she has to go for a scholarship interview, we are sure to plan additional tours, meetings, etc. on that same date.</p>

<p>We put aside money for these visits, as we did for SAT fees, applications, etc. She also is doing some visits alone (revisits) so no need to pay for all of us to go. Still, we expect spring break and at least one additional time in April to be very, very busy. As I posted on another site, I believe we may have cast too wide of a net. But regular decision rejections and poor financial aid packages will surely naturally limit the final visits.</p>

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<p>So already if she has 4 in with similar costs which location does she like best? Which school provides her the most value for that cost? Schools of vastly different objective strength not to mention subjective value and appeal can have the same net price. Do they all have her whole list of “wishes” for majors, location and student life features or do some fall short. Will they all continue to come in under budget if income changes or her academic status changes? How easy will it be to keep the scholarships? Does she KNOW that she will like a location or does she just imagine it if she hasn’t visited. Some places are more fun to visit than actual live for 4 years. Find some way to stack rank what she has now and go from there.</p>

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<p>And rejoice in having planned her application process so that she has come this far with choices! :slight_smile: </p>

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<p>For my daughter we attended one admitted student day for an EA acceptance and then 2 during that spring crunch time for RD acceptances (over the same weekend one on Friday and one on Monday each 4 hours away in opposite directions!). You should narrow down her EA admits to 2 and see those before the RD decisions come in and then narrow down the RD admits to another 2? I am a strong believer in admitted student days - they are a very good indicator of the school and its students (remember looking over the admitted students is a good indicator of who will be your classmates next year)</p>

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<p>I agree to pick the top 2 contenders and try to squeeze the visit in during spring break. If they are on opposite ends of the country you might only have time for 2. If there is a #3 choice close perhaps you can squeeze that one in, also. It’s tough senior year spring to try to do visits. </p>

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<p>Last year, my D, like yours, applied to a lot of schools. Some she had visited during her junior year, some the summer before senior year, and some in the fall of senior year (a couple of sleepovers). She got in one last visit in January before acceptances had come because we were in the area. She was not able to attend any accepted students days due to her spring schedule, so had to decide based on previous visits and what she knew of the schools. (She is very happy with her choice even though she could not do any spring visits.)</p>

<p>For your D, she can’t possibly visit them all, so have her pick a few of her top choices. My older D had 2 schools in Boston and 2 in Washington DC that had accepted student days we could do at the same time - one trip to Boston, one to DC, and she chose from those visits.</p>

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<p>We were only revisiting with our kids – did a lot of visiting in the couple years leading up to applications while on family vacations, etc, and they did not apply anyplace they hadn’t already seen. For D2, she went to her top 3 accepted student days, which took us all over the country (both coasts and Chicago). A few others were a short distance from our house and she could have gone for another visit to those, but decided not to. Your D is realistically going to have to narrow down to a few choices based on what is on paper/computer. You are seeing the disadvantage now to the “we will visit if you get in” approach – we have this debate often on CC. Of course for some families it is impossible to afford visits, but it is quite difficult and expensive to save the visiting for the last several weeks before May 1. My D did get plane ticket vouchers from a couple of her colleges (one she didn’t use, one she did).</p>

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<p>My son also did revisiting. He picked his top three choices and went to their accepted students days. Unfortunately they were all in the span of 10 days. He stayed overnight at each college and found it very helpful. He liked being at the accepted students days because you met other prospective students considering as well as definitely attending the schools. However, by the third school he was exhausted and mentally drained. I don’t think he could have effectively visited any more schools. </p>

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<p>Congrats on your D’s acceptances to date and good luck with the remaining schools. It sounds like your D will be able to choose between several to many good options.</p>

<p>I would only advise that having too many options can be a very challenging situation, especially for a teenager. There is an interesting TED talk you can easily find on the Internet called “The Paradox of Choice”. Simply put, having too many choices, and considering them all equally, can lead to stress, second guessing, a lack of focus on what is most important, and unrealistic expectations. </p>

<p>Let’s assume your D gets into half the schools she is waiting to hear from. That is 8 acceptances to consider. If she wants to equally consider all 8 schools, and potentially visit them all, she will have a very difficult time squeezing in that amount of travel and reflection by the end of April. </p>

<p>Based on experience with my S last year, I would suggest:</p>

<p>1) Help your D establish some objective criteria to stack rank her list and cut it down now. 3 to 4 finalists in March is the top end of manageable. By the end of March last year, S had 6 acceptances. However, based on his criteria, he was able to cut the list down to 3 quickly. That left 3 to consider in April for a final choice. </p>

<p>2) Take advantage of Accepted Student events for the final couple schools, especially if they offer some overnight opportunities. S planned to go to three, but the first scheduled events were for the top school on his list. When we picked him up after an overnight event, he had made his decision. The opportunity he had to interact with other accepted students, see what they were like, etc. was what he needed to finalize his decision. Didn’t go back to the other two.</p>

<p>3) When they say they have made a decision, ask a few questions. Not to try to question the decision, but to make sure the reasons are clear in their own mind.</p>

<p>4) Help them have peace with the decision and help them enjoy the final couple months of HS.</p>

<p>Hope that helps. Good luck.</p>

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<p>@NewHope33,she’s only seen 4/12 schools. Several are on the other coast but close to each other, so that will take up spring break, assuming acceptances come. She then added two more, also far away, later on that we never saw. Also, she had planned to apply EA to moe schools but had mono all this fall. So we’re behind a bit from what we expected!</p>

<p>@matmaven…thanks for letting me know about the TED talk. D loves TED so we’ll check it out.</p>

<p>Thanks to all, many good thoughts here! I appreciate your thoughtful input.</p>

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<p>Agree matmaven. Another reason why I support the concept of pairing down colleges before the applications go in, at the end of the day you can only chose one college and it’s a much simpler process to rank order 1,2,3 or maybe 1,2,3,4 than it is to rank order 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 or more because there was a huge amount of applications. Hopefully the OP can pick a couple that can be visited…the visits are fun and it is helpful to the kids to actually see where they might be spending 4 years. We didn’t do any trips after September of senior year - so I can’t comment on “how families” do trips in the spring although high schools do have a “spring break” so that seems the logical week to fit them in. </p>

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<p>DS applied to 9 schools, choosing two safeties, three matches and 4 reaches. He got accepted into all except a denial at one reach and a waitlist at one reach. He eliminated the safeties, and the waitlist along with one other reach and one of the matches. That left him 3 schools. Then we visited the three remaining (and one of those he’d visited before and didn’t like–we revisited to make sure his initial response was accurate–it was!). So that left two and I told him to ignore name, location, etc and go to admitted student weekends (both had overnights) and choose based on fit. He made a great decision and is now a Junior!</p>