<p>I wonder how often this happens that a child will visit a school and fall in love with it. Then the parents insist they visit other schools and apply still to several, but it always comes back the initial school.</p>
<p>I don’t think the student would have fallen in love if the school was a really poor fit for him/her.</p>
<p>Kids don’t necessarily fall in love with the first school they visit. I remember that one of mine absolutely detested the first school and refused to apply to it. </p>
<p>On the other hand, if the first school is reasonably appropriate, the student might start picturing life there and getting comfortable with the idea. There’s nothing wrong with that – except, of course, if the student doesn’t get in.</p>
<p>Kids don’t necessarily make decisions on the basis of impressions gained during visits, either. My son liked one of the two schools that accepted him much better than the other when he visited, but he chose to attend the other school because it had a better program in his major. My daughter fell in love with one campus but did not apply to that school because she decided that she did not like its distinctive curriculum. Sometimes kids are more sensible than we give them credit for.</p>
<p>How far into the school visiting process are you?</p>
<p>My older daughter fell in love with every school we visited – for two weeks each. Then the glow would wear off.</p>
<p>The younger dau is a freshman right now at a school she was quite skeptical of on her first visit. She loves some things, not so happy about others (drinking culture). But I think she is pretty glad she is there. </p>
<p>This girl must have visited around 25 schools, if you count the ones she went along to when her older sib was on the trail. One thing this did do was give her a very good idea of what to “sniff out,” for what she did or did not like about a place.</p>
<p>It’s OK to fall in love with the first school you visit. Just have backup plans in case you don’t get in. </p>
<p>My daughter wanted to go to a specific school. She had spent time on campus with her friend and thought it was the perfect place for her. She had better grades and better SAT scores than her friend who was admitted two years prior. She didn’t want to visit other schools, but I insisted that she did. Well, she didn’t get into her first choice. Seems that they had record number of applicants and the criteria for admittance got tougher and she just missed the cutoff. She ended up at her second choice and after being there for a year said that it was actually a much better school than her first choice now that she really knew the school.</p>
<p>Moral of the story, you really don’t “know” a school until you’re actually attending it.</p>
<p>Hasn’t happened to us. We visited two schools first that my daughter expected to love, and while she was impressed, it was the next school and then the last school we visited that she totally loves and can picture herself attending. And they are two completely different environments that she likes for very different reasons.</p>
<p>Happened to me, actually. I was 15 when I went with some friends to visit the campus. Within minutes I said, “this is it.” It was the only school I applied to, the only school I wanted to attend. Still love the area.</p>
<p>My S visited a school in April of his sophomore year. He knew it had the program he wanted, and he applied ED there. He did not visit any other schools, although he did spend 6 weeks in a summer program on a different campus. I also insisted he apply to a rolling admissions school as well, so he would be in somewhere.</p>
<p>My older S pretty much did this. It wasn’t the very first school he saw, but it was among the first. We took him to see many schools after this visit, and he liked most of them, but Colgate remained his favorite. He applied ED and had a great 4 years there. So yes, it can happen. I think it is a good idea to visit the full list of schools, to make sure you are making the right choice.</p>
<p>my d fell in love with the fourth school we visited. I made her visit about a dozen more, even though in my heart I knew she would end up with the one she fell for!</p>
<p>My D also fell in love with the idea of going to a school during our college visits. It was great because she would do everything to keep her grade up. I recently mentioned that it’s hard to get into such college after looking at our naviance, perhaps she should not apply. She replied she wants to collect a rejection letter from such college. Nothing deters her.
I didn’t want to push too hard because she still has to keep junior year grade up.</p>
<p>Yes, that was the way it was with my daughter. She visited Bard and knew it was the right school for her. I forced her to visit several others, but she didn’t like any of them nearly as well. She applied Immediate Decision Plan (apply, interview, and you are informed the next business day if you’ve been accepted), was accepted and applied no where else. One application, one acceptance, and we were done. All by Thanksgiving. (And yes, she still loves it.)</p>
<p>My D fell in love with the second school she visited. She was a junior in HS. When we pulled up to campus, she said “This is it!” I suggested that we at least get out of the car and attend the Open House. At the end of the day, she wanted to apply, even though she was a junior. </p>
<p>She visited about 15 other schools, and went back the following year with her father for another Open House at her number one choice. She even did an overnight, which helped solidify her decisision.</p>
<p>She is currently a freshman and loves every minute of her college.</p>
<p>Kind of happened to son. He went to a summer program at one school for several years and even though we took it off the table and went to visit a dozen other schools, he kept comparing them all to the first one. Not sorry we did all the visits, though.</p>
<p>My daughter was a serial monogomist when it came to colleges. She loved a lot of them, one at a time.</p>
<p>I sometimes think if acceptances had come out in february instead of April, she would be at an entirely different school, though she’s quite happy. </p>
<p>Good luck. I think this part of the college application game is a lot of fun.</p>
<p>It seems my D always likes the schools she’s seen most recently the best. The schools she looked at a year ago and liked have now fallen off her radar, for no logical reason. We’ve visited about 15 places. They really do all start to look the same after a while. Sometimes I wonder whether the whole visiting thing was really that helpful in clarifying what she’s looking for.</p>
<p>DS fell in love with a school at a college fair in his sophomore year - he picked up their brochure, read it and from then on out it was where he wanted to go. He did apply to other schools. But when he received the acceptance from his #1 school in December of his senior year of high school he knew that was where he would go. Thank goodness their FA was great. Other schools did their best to try to convince him to come their way, even flying him east for their campus preview weekend (he wasn’t even going to to go but it was a free trip).</p>
<p>My son too always likes the most-recently seen school the best. He likes every college he visits. I don’t think he has a clue what he’s looking for.</p>