I’m looking for some advice from parents who have already done this. I am planning to take my junior D to look at colleges over our April vacation. Due to my work schedule, this is probably the only chance we will get to visit many schools before she has to apply next fall. We may get a day here and there to visit something close to home but nothing we can plan on. We live in MA and she is primarily looking at schools in the mid-Atlantic and southern part of the country. Some are too far away to visit, but there are several clustered in the same general area (PA, DC, VA, and NC) that I’d like to have her see.
The dilemma is how much to try to pack into the trip. I want her to see as many schools as possible, but also want to schedule enough time at each for it to be meaningful. I want to visit as many schools as possible to give her an idea of her options and to use our limited time, but don’t want to overload the trip so that we are exhausted and the schools blur together. I don’t want her so burnt out by the end of the week that those schools get automatically discounted.
So what I have planned right now is a week long trip with one school/day for each weekday plus Saturday. For the most part, the schools are a couple hours apart. Generally I expect that we will do the tour/info sessions in the morning, eat lunch, explore more after lunch as needed or desired, then drive to where the next school is for dinner. This will allow us to cover 6 schools. Does this sound reasonable? Does it make any sense to try to do 2 in a day? Some are close enough to allow for this, but again, I worry about scheduling too much. I don’t think we can really wing this since schools generally want you to sign up for the tours ahead of time. Any advice?
We did a similar trip last spring with our junior. She is a pretty low key kid, strong student, excited about college. She would say it was too much and I would say it was necessary. We are in the midwest and we went through VA and PA. If you want to do 2 in a day, then I would say, it’s alright to do a drive by for one of the schools if you don’t think both are equally in the running. Perhaps, having lunch or a snack in the cafeteria or the student union or attending a class could be worthwhile. If you know any current students at any of the schools, they might be available and excited to give you D a personal tour. Also, if she is interested, see if there are specific tours for her academic major or if she would like to meet with a professor. On our trip, we did not visit as many schools as you are describing and we also planned in a few tourist sites to balance the time for leisure too. And we tend to look for fun places to eat on the road as well. For my D, experiencing the campus is very important and she’s really benefitted from it. Feel free to ask me more questions.
I’m from MA and did a 5 1/2 day, 10 school trip with my second child last year. She’s in boarding school and has Saturday classes so we knew we wouldn’t be able to do weekend visits. In our case the schedule only worked because the schools were clustered in NY, PA and CT and the drives turned out near perfectly to allow for one school visit in the morning and another in the afternoon. It was also early in the spring so some schools were not yet interviewing juniors. We did a tour and/or information session at each school with interviews at a few, and did a stroll and lunch in the college town after each morning visit and early dinner after the afternoon visits. The bulk of our long drives were in the evening. That way we could spend the night in the next town and get up an hour before the morning tour and still have time to shower, eat breakfast at the hotel and get to admissions.
Our trip worked out just fine and my kid didn’t get burned out until the end, wanting to skip the last school. Knowing that that was a possibility I had scheduled the last school to be the closest to home. That way we could take a day trip to visit it later if we needed to. My child also opted to skip one school along the way. After finding some schools she liked earlier in the trip she was able to make a quick decision after driving through campus that the kids at that school were “not her people.” As much as I wanted her to keep an open mind I agreed and felt it would have been a waste of our time and the school’s resources for her to stay, so we let the admissions office know she wouldn’t make her appointment and continued on our way.
I think doing packed trips works better these days than they did in our day because kids have access to social media in the car and they can get their thank-you emails out of the way while you drive as well.
There are multiple old threads on the topic of college visits. I’d recommend looking at them for advice on how to make the best of your stops and how to make your time on the road together as enjoyable as possible. Good luck!
That sounds reasonable. We did 2 schools in a day a couple of times when they were physically close to one another and it was a lot but is do-able (and we saw some of the same people visiting both schools along with us). You may want to consider adding in a second school a couple of days when it makes geographic sense.
My advice would be to take notes on what you and your D particularly liked and didn’t like at each school and any unique features right after each visit. It will help to jog the memory down the line. A byproduct of this is that your D may also be able to use some of this information when writing some supplements (Ex. when my D did supplements which asked “why college x” she could point to something like a building she could see herself studying in, a quad she could envision herself in, a particular program that was appealing etc. for different schools) Don’t wait until the end of the trip because it is easy for the schools to run into one another.
Also be prepared for some surprises and roll with it – one school I “just knew” would be my D’s favorite she hated so we left the tour early to see another school in the area we didn’t expect to visit (we made the appointment for the second school from her phone while we were at the fist school’s information session) and she ended up liking the second school a lot. For my S we went to an extra school kind of on a whim because we got a mailing and the college was close by and he loved, attended, and had a great experience at this school which was not on our original list. You just never know.
We also set up a a plastic file bin at home and made a file for each school we visited where we put in the information we got during the visit, notes, any future correspondence etc. I learned after my first kid that it is OK to toss stuff from colleges you eliminate from consideration after your visit (with my first, we kept every scrap of paper which was not necessary).
It is a long and sometimes trying trip, but I learned so much about both of my kids when we went on the college tours and it was a real bonding time. Appreciate this time with your D because she will soon be away at college. Throw in a nice dinner along the way and talk (with her being an equal) at every chance you can. Let her know you are proud of her accomplishments and it is your great pleasure to be looking at colleges with her.
I also suggest that you listen to your D’s opinion before you offer up yours on any given school. She should feel like she is driving the process. When all the statistics are done, is important to value fit and gut feeling in this process. See if there is a “type” of school that she gravitates towards because if you find you need additional choices (ex. safety school, financial safety) you can try to use her preferences as a guide.
Lastly, my kids guidance counselor offered up good advice which is to not visit any school you won’t allow your child to attend. So if there are cost, geographic, or any other constraints, plan your visits only to colleges that fall within your and your husband’s parameters.
That sounds reasonable to me. I would add if school is in session, she should try to sit in on a class. Admissions can help arrange that. And don’t be put off if they say only seniors can do that; you can usually sweet talk them if you are coming from far away and won’t be able to come back. I would consider that a higher value add than most info sessions. There is very little in the info session that you can’t already find on the college website. We would also try to eat in a school cafeteria for lunch (killer coconut cake at the LAC my D1 ended up attending!). But it is a good way to observe more students in their “natural habitat”. My kids would sort of listen in on conversations. My D2 liked the schools where the students were debating ideas from their coursework or talking about specific math problems, etc. But that is just her – someone else might not like that.
One other thing I did was copy the pages from the Fiske Guide to Colleges for each school we were visiting (or you can just take the book and mark the pages, since you are driving and not flying). On the way from the hotel to the school each morning, she would read the Fiske pages for that school to remind herself about the school. Then we would kind of debrief in the car on the way to the next hotel that night on what she liked and didn’t like about the school. I kept some notes, which came in VERY handy when she had to write “Why College X?” essays for admissions.
We did a week-long trip last spring to upstate NY, visiting 1 school per day and 2 (close together) on one of the days. It worked out great and D learned a lot. A year later, interestingly–D now having applied and received some acceptances–none of those first six schools are in D’s top final three. But you don’t know that at the time, and the trip was still very valuable in helping her to narrow down what she was looking for.
A few suggestions–try to eat a meal at each school, if possible. Have a backup plan for each day–you may pull up to a school and she may decide she doesn’t even want to get out of the car. This happens! Also, if possible, try to speak to at least one faculty member at each school, even if it is while waiting in line at the coffee shop.
D’s GC had suggested visiting a variety of school sizes (we saw campuses of 600 to 14,000). That was an excellent suggestion.
We did this last summer on a tour through the southeast. Twice we saw two schools in one day, but they were practically next to each other so it was easy to set that up. We say a total of 7 across 4 states. We brought D’s BFF and added some historical sightseeing into the itinerary, which D helped create, then we finished the 10 days up with a couple of days of fun and touristy things kids like-malls, for example. D kept a notebook in which she wrote her impressions of each school every night, and had thoroughly researched each before we got there. She’s referred back to the notebook since and has flipped her top two. It was well worth doing the trip.
@me29034 Some good advice from the posts above. Just a couple of additional points from our family’s experience.
Know your kid - How much you pack into one trip depends a lot on your S or D. We are now on the 3rd of 3 sons going through the process. My oldest didn’t want to do more than a 2-day trip to see one school a day at any one time. We covered 6 or 7 schools over several different trips. My middle son enjoyed the process more and we did two 4-day trips (one Jr. year Spring Break and one end of Summer before Sr. year). Each 4-day trip we covered 6 schools.
Bring a friend along - I can’t stress enough how much more enjoyable and productive the visits were when my sons brought a friend along. May not be possible for you but something to consider. By having a friend along, they had someone their own age to share the experience with and they had more fun with it. Also as a parent, instead of asking a bunch of questions in the car after each visit, you can sit back and listen to the kids talk and gain a lot of insight into where their head is at.
Include some fun - Plan something fun ahead of time for the evenings. Drive, tour, drive, tour, sleep, repeat, repeat, repeat can get old pretty fast. We agreed to a couple of fun things ahead of time for most of the places we were stopping (Dave and Buster’s, Medieval Times - wouldn’t have been my choice but my son and his friend thought it was goofy and fun, the “best” Pizza place on a particular campus, etc.).
Look at each visit as a gate not a comparative ranking- It worked out well not worrying about how one school ranked against another after each visit but focusing on “is this a school I could see myself attending”. I think the ranking thing can be counter productive early in the process. We were really trying to get to 4 or 5 schools that S would feel were good fits.
When we were looking at colleges in Florida for D a few years ago, I planned 7 colleges in a week, two we saw in one day (near each other, one morning session, the other afternoon session) since they were only about 1/2 hour apart. We spent each night in the new college’s town, waking up fresh for morning sessions each day at each college, then driving to the next college after lunch and a drive through town.
As an added benefit, we had my youngest D with us, so when we were looking at colleges with last year, we were able to eliminate a few since the trip was fun at the time for her and gave her an idea of what to look for in a college.
After looking at colleges in NJ, PA, NC and Florida, it was the LAST college in Florida that DD felt she connected with. It’s been 2 years since she graduated and has an excellent job through her internship.
Lots of good advice. I especially agree with trying to have some fun as well. One a day is plenty unless they are in the same town. My only disagreement with the above is that I’m a skeptic about sitting in on a class–too random.
If you haven’t done so already, I suggest visit schools of various types to start – large public U’s, private U, a LAC, colleges in cities, colleges in rural areas, a larger school where everyone lives in dorms or nearby, one with students spread thru a city, etc. Getting a first hand sense of what its like to be a student at those places is helpful in deciding where to apply. A lot of kids get a much better understanding of their options if they sit in a class of 200 kids, or sit in a seminar where they see everyone is expected to contribute every class.
Even if your D has already decided what type(s) are right for her, I’d mark that choice as tentative until she’s actually visited an example or two. My personal feeling is that if you haven’t done this already, the week in April would be better spent visiting colleges of various types in your area. You could see 2 per day, wouldn’t spend so much time driving, and she’d make a more informed choice.
As for what to look for and ask on college visits, many books on college admissions have a chapter covering this in detail. Print up some sheets with a set of questions she’d like to know about colleges she visits, and then spend 20 minutes getting a cup of coffee and filling out the sheet after every college. Things may seem vivid and unforgettable right after the visit, but blur together after seeing several schools.
Not in our family. My kids KNEW it was a costly endevour to visit colleges, and acting like a brat was not an option. Now, be sure you engage your kid in picking the colleges to see. If you just dump a list on her and say “we are going here”, that could result in problems. One of my kids loved to peruse Fiske (not surprising, this is also the kid who loves to shop…). The other one (who hates to shop) asked me to mark colleges I thought might be appropriate in Fiske for her. I flagged about 30, and we went through and discussed them, then narrowed it down to the ones we visited.
Not that we never ditched a visit… one college we visited, my D went to a class and we then went on the tour, and she knew by 2/3 of the way through the tour that this school was not for her. I agreed, and we left. And the day we were going to visit Yale, it rained insanely. We knew she had NO SHOT at Yale, we just wanted to see it… so we didn’t go.
That said, I had a hip pocket list of stuff to do in case something happened and we didn’t spend all day at a school, but I didn’t really share it with my kids. I didn’t want them ditching the school visits for a more fun activity… but I had it if the opportunity arose.
I also disagree about taking friends. Our experience was that kids can be too influenced by what their friends think. And other family’s don’t have the same financial situation or thoughts on colleges. This is one activity where we insisted that our kids focus on their needs and what works for our family. Bringing an outside party might make it more “fun”, but I think it distracts from your kid taking a serious look at the school without an outside influence like a friend.
And regarding sitting in on classes, both of my kids did a lot of it. They didn’t do it randomly, though. They looked for a class in their major or with a topic that was interesting to them, and then evaluated the profs on Rate My Professor before deciding. Both of them had a school where they thought the class was too easy (they happened to have done the reading the class was talking about). At one it was clear the other students mostly HADN’T done the reading – that was a huge turnoff. My kids came bouncing out of some classes so excited about the subject, class discussion, and quality of teaching. And others… not so much. They still went back for accepted student visits before final decisions, and usually sat in on classes then as well. But it did help them pick where to apply.
You pretty much just do what you have to do. If parents have limited vacation time then you have to try to cram as many vists as possible into your week, but be advised that the last one or two may get serious resistance from your child. I think from talkin to parents I know, these week-long visit marathons do seem to work better with seniors than juniors, because the seniors know it’s time to get serious about college. A friend of mine did a 10-day 8-collge tour with her son last summer, starting in Atlanta with Georgia Tech and Emory, driving up to Purdue and Notre Dame, up further to Michigan, and across PA to Pitt, Carnegie Mellon, and Penn State. She said by the time they got to CMU they were both cranky and worn out.
We tried to space out visits with both of our kids. We combined one visit with our summer family vacation and that worked well. That helps you learn about the scene around campuses and explore the surrounding town which you cannot do in a morning or afternoon. We also split some visits with Dad going alone with kid for some and me going alone with kid or others, so parents did not get burned out. The most visits we did in one trip was 3 with younger D - went to RIT’s Saturday fall open house and then to Toronto to see OCAD and Sheridan on Monday, with Sunday in between to see Niagara Falls and Toronto. D also did a one week summer workshop at one college and a two-week program at another. Those were great and worth the cost. We combined a parent vacation with her week long workshop so we all drove down and back. Going away for a time and living in the dorm gave her a good college-type experience that a one-day visit with Mom and Dad could not. She ended up not appying to the school where she did the one-week proram and falling in love with the hometown state U. where she did the two-week program.
Don’t forget about open houses, which tend to be on weekends., and summer workshops as options.
Thanks everyone. This has all been very helpful and does make me think we are on the right track. I’m not sure what to do with the “fun” aspect. We will probably start by driving down to DC on Saturday and spending Sunday sightseeing before starting with the first tour on Monday. I guess I do need to do some research on easy fun things to do in VA and NC near the schools we will visit so there is something more during the week.
We are going to a selection of different types of schools. Several of them she identified. I filled in a few (with her input) based on what I think would fit her and what I think she should consider. We are seeing a couple large publics plus mid size privates, both in and out of cities. so I think there is a good mix. But, for example, she didn’t want any schools under 4,000 people because she thought they would be too small. I have added one small LAC just so she can make a more educated judgement about this and she has agreed. This is the last school that we are visiting - Saturday in PA on our way back home so we can ditch that one if it really is too much.
We did discuss visiting local schools instead of traveling. The problem is that this is our only chance to go, and we know she isn’t interested in local schools. If we visited locally, we could get a feel for size, urban vs rural, etc, but would get no feel for the actual schools she is considering. Since we do have the week available now, the best use of it seems to be to hit some of her top choices plus a few extras that are in the vicinity. I do realize that her top choices may change but we can only work with what we have.
If you are visiting UNC and Duke in NC, both campuses have activities beyond looking at the schools. Also, Chapel Hill is very nice college town. Of course I’m a little biased. The Basketball museum at UNC is fun if she is interested in sports. You can visit both schools in one day. Lots of people do it.
I took my daughter on a whirlwind trip last March and we got 2 in / day. We are from the Arizona, so I felt our trip was about visiting schools and seeing a new part of the country. The school we saw were matches and reaches. I didn’t feel it was necessary to sit in on classes as we really wanted to see as much as we could. I’ll reserve some more “in depth” visits when she can go to “admitted student” days. Hopefully, we’ll be able to do this for 1 - 2 schools when she’s narrowed her list down. I guess it depends on whether you are ready to narrow down a list and get a really in depth view of each school. We were able to spend 3 hours or so at each school and the schools were no more than 1 hour from each other. We drop 3 - 4 hours in the evening to get to the next area. (We had a blast, just the two of us.) Of the 8 schools we visited, she applied to 3 of them.
Looks like you’ve got lots of good advice. A few extra thoughts.
1 - While friends can make it more fun I would also caution that it can be more harmful than helpful. Even if they have a healthy friendship; let’s face it most kids are influenced by their friends and what they think.
2 - Enjoy the time together! It was some of our most favorite times despite the stress it can induce.
3 - Don’t underestimate the importance of the admitted students’ weekends. My kids went far from home so we thought one visit was all we would do. But when you tour campus you are touring with all kinds of people. The admitted student weekends really give your child a great idea of what his/her classmates would be like at that school. Even though they are also big marketing events, we found them very useful. And a few schools funded the trips to visit that second time.
4 - Do try to do something on campus – a meal, an event, a class - it just gives you a sense of how the kids are relating to each other and their professors.
5 - Many campuses have housing for guests on campus(an alumni house, a spot for campus conventions etc…). That was an easy place to stay (usually not too expensive and it allowed us to wander campus at night, get a good feel for the neighborhood, stick our heads in at a intramural game etc…) and be ready for the morning without having the stress of finding the school, parking etc…
One thing I am not sure anyone has mentioned is to try to visit at least a couple of possible safeties. IMHO, that is one of the hardest parts of the college search, finding safety schools that your very likely will be accepted to, you can afford, and that they WANT to attend. I advise spending little time on reaches – your kid is so much more likely to end up at a match or a safety.
I also agree that going back for accepted student visits at the top few choices is a really good idea. 24 hours on campus gives a whole new perspective.
And don’t let your kid get too attached to any one school. A whole bunch of things can go wrong with that (not admitted, affordability issues, accepted students visit shows a side they don’t like, etc.) Your goal is to help her develop a list of schools, ALL of which she would be willing to attend, with safeties, matches, and reaches.
Check on the tour schedules. Not every school offers tours every day.
Also if at all possible, see schools that offer different things on consecutive days. Don’t go to similar schools one after another (unless all are similar!).
And treat it like a job - you or your child should take notes, and talk about “the major plusses and the major minuses”. If neither of you remember which one had the great air-conditioned dorms or which had the homestyle tasty food, it will make your lives miserable.
The only advice here I would not follow is to bring a friend along. For some kids it might be a good option, but I didn’t want my kids opinion swayed by their friend. Plus selfishly perhaps, I really enjoyed having the family time together. The bottom line is know your child and decide what would work best for her.