Help needed prepping for first set of college visits

Parent Cafe
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Arthur Avenue: I go there to market-- fresh pasta, wonderful mozzarella, great butcher, etc.

Both restaurants on Arthur Avenue (mentioned up thread) are good. However, prefer the restaurant at the NY Botanical Garden, Hudson Garden Grill, more sophisticated, but not stuffy, chef & wonderful vegetables. It opened this past spring. (The menu is online at nybg.org)

The suggestion about campus newspapers is excellent. Some of them are online, so you can read back issues.

Even if Tisch at NYU is not what your daughter is interested in, the East and West Village is an area that college students gravitate to. The residential areas in the West Village are lovely to walk around. And, if you have the time, you can walk on the High Line or take in the New Whitney Museum. Great restaurants in the area, too!

Thinking of food reminds me that one of my fondest memories of college touring is finding interesting restaurants of all sorts to enjoy with our then rising senior.

Accommodations: Years ago (maybe still) one could get reasonably priced rooms at a Comfort Inn on the Upper West Side, it’s a block away from Central Park in the West 70s. The suggestion of staying near Sarah Lawrence is convenient for driving to Fordham (in the Bronx) or taking MetroNorth into the City. If you were to stay in Ft Lee, you could take a bus from the NJ side of the bridge (GWB), then catch the A-train on the Manhattan side of the GWB. You could also drive across the bridge and easily park your car near the Cloisters and catch the A-train. Another thought, if you’re in Manhattan on 4th of July, is to book a room on the EAST side with a view of the fire works.

Have fun!

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Just went on a trip like this but on a much bigger scale. Saw 11 schools (Yale, Harvard, Brown, Dartmouth, Williams, Amherst, The New School, NYU, Boston University, MIT and Princeton) in 10 days. A couple of things I would recommend:

Ask a ton of questions on each tour and be very friendly but not obnoxious to your tour guide. Most of the time they are super nice people who genuinely want you to go to their school. Be sure to ask why they chose the school, what there least favorite part of the school is and what tips they have for prospective students.

Take notes on EVERYTHING from GPA SAT ACT to how clean the bathrooms were and how many people you saw having fun outside. This part is critical!!! I instantly eliminated Princeton and MIT this way.

Walk around the campus and surrounding area a bit. It will help you get a feel for it.

Eat at one of the top rated Yelp restaurants in the area or ask your tour guide where to go. For example after the Yale tour we ate at Frank Pepe’s pizzeria.

If you know anyone relatively near the schools you will be visiting then ask if you can stay with them. It will save you money on food and hotels and you will have more interesting experiences. Don’t stay in the towns that the schools are in. The hotels are more expensive there especially in NYC. Also check out Airbnb if you’re adventurous. Take advantage of public transit and walking as much as possible to save on gas costs.

Do things besides college tours!!!

Listen to podcasts or audiobooks when you are driving to and from schools. It helps pass the time.

Chat with many different people including students, faculty, admissions reps, community members and total strangers.

Take plenty of photos. Use a good camera is you have one.

Give your daughter time to reflect on what she has just seen, preferably in writing. After the trip, have her compile a list or spreadsheet of her top colleges and the average GPA, SAT/ACT and any other relevant info.

Have fun!! You will see some wonderful places and some not so wonderful places take it all with a grain of salt and enjoy yourself.

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OhioDad - Is she considering Cincinnati as a safety? Two women I admire enormously went there. One was my son’s Theater Arts teacher and play for four years. She was a Psych major as an undergraduate there, but was involved with theater. She did not get her BFA, but was able to participate. She later got her MFA from Mason Gross at Rutgers. The other was the thoracic surgeon who saved my husband’s life.

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As someone who only took 3 official tours with my son, I am no expert on this. However, I wasn’t happy with the parents asking lots of questions that could easily be found on-line, e.g. GPA. I would rather hear questions from the applicants.

We also ate in the college dining areas (schools gave us passes) and stopped in the coffee shops. We were less concerned about restaurants in the area, though we did drive around surrounding areas. We also stopped by the library at 2 colleges. At 2 schools, son sat in several classes. While son was busy, I picked up college newspapers.

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@bookworm I have the opposite opinion regarding parental questions and online info. Online info regarding GPA and test scores can be out of date. D16 is interested in the computer science program at my alma mater. The online information says that the required percentage grade is x, but online scuttlebutt was saying that it was x+8. An email to the admissions office confirmed that the online info was out of date and the online scuttlebutt was accurate, and likely to increase for the next round of admissions.

We ruled out one highly ranked college because the person doing the information session kept refusing to answer questions, saying the information was on the website. IMO, if they’re not going to be helpful when they’re trying to get my child’s application, I don’t trust them to be helpful when my child is attending.

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Let us, and posterity, know how it goes.

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Since you are traveling east, I see why you want to cram a lot of schools in a short period of time. However, when I toured with my son, we found out quickly that trying to see a lot of schools in a few days was awful. I like the idea that someone mentioned that if you drive up to the school and it “turns your student’s opinion off” then don’t waste your time. You should spend more time at the schools that your student is really interested in.

Our best tours is when we combined touring with pleasure. We did a trip to Virginia and saw William and Mary and University of Virginia. We did side trips to Williamsburg and met my niece and sister in law for lunch in Charlottesville. It was a very successful trip and sent UVA to the top of his list of places to apply to. When we were in Boston touring BU, we opted to walk to BU up Beacon Street past the public gardens through Back Bay to BU. After a fantastic tour by a very animated and informative tour guide we walked the Esplanade to the North End and Fanueil Hall for lunch. This should be a fun time for you and your daughter so take in the sights as well as the colleges.

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BOUDERS, I would have appreciated a specific question, such as the one you posed. You had also done due diligence in trying to find out the answer.

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@Ohiodad51 - this just opened and is not far from Fordham: http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/nycbx-residence-inn-new-york-the-bronx-at-metro-center-atrium/ Half an hour on public transport and half that in a car.

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I’d be all for students asking questions, but in a mixed group of parent and kids they hardly ever do. Just don’t ask stupid embarrassing ones like about drinking, drugs, sex and co-ed bathrooms. I like the schools that have separate tours or info sections for just students, though usually this is just at accepted student sessions.

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Just completed a few tours in the last 10 days. I highly recommend completing any tours that you begin because I often have a completely different impression of the school by the end than I had in the first 10 minutes. Two schools we thought would be definitely applied to are no longer on the list and one is now firmly there. My and my DS’s initial impressions were so wrong.

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You can take the Fordham Shuttle from Lincoln Center out to the Rose Hill Campus.

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We just completed 12 schools in 12 days tour stretching between NYC, Boston and out to Cleveland. We live out west and this was our big NE trip so had to hit everything (had done a mini tour of NYC to Baltimore before). We had a bit of a different approach than some of the other posters.

  1. Made a list of schools that ranged from match to super reach given DD's stats. Sizes, settings and character of the schools varied as well, including all-women schools. On Sunday when there were no tours, we walked through couple of small LACs in small towns (which she has no particular interest in) just to get a flavor of the campus and confirm that she was not interested.
  2. Went to info session and tour at each school (plus interviews where offered). I had to cajole DD into some of them (esp towards the end) but she agreed after each one that it was a good thing to have done. Some of these 'don't really want to see' schools turned into 'will apply's.
  3. She was under strict orders to approach each school with "could I be happy here?" and not "how much do I like this?" Absolutely no falling in love allowed. I did not see any point in her falling in love with a school that has a single digit acceptance rate. Therefore, did not focus on all the wonderful things any given school had (and there were many), but rather on "does this school provide what I would want/need?" The floor rather than the ceiling. And we studiously avoided rank-ordering.
  4. Hence, we took no pictures and no notes. After each visit, only question we asked was "does it stay on the list and how will you answer the 'Why X' essay?
  5. If a school stayed on the list, she will apply, then once the school has chosen her, she will then decide which ones she likes best, visit in April, and make her choice.

Logistically, we made a point of staying near the school if at all possible. We’re not morning people and having less to do before the 9am info session helped. Also, every few days, we switched out to the afternoon session so we could lounge and take it easy in the morning. Only had one day with two schools (Wellesley in AM and MIT in PM: different enough that we didn’t confuse them) and would not recommend doing that.

Good trip. Glad it’s done!

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“…she will apply, then once the school has chosen her, she will then decide which ones she likes best, visit in April, and make her choice.”

Many people do it just this way.

Suggest just keep in mind though that, depending on how things go, it may not be so easy to visit very many schools if you wait tilll after you get accepted in RD.

There’s a lot of senior year yet to get through . Complete with exams, club and team activities, and senior activities. And a social life, perhaps. Schools are lenient with time off for seniors, but not infinitely so.

Obviously people do what they need to do, but it may be more convenient to do it at some times than at others. Some of those earlier trips may prove in retrospect to have been unnecessary, but if you had time to do it then with substantially less interference with your other activities, and it provided an excuse for a last parent-child bonding trip, those are some other rewards, at least.

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@ihs76, you mention match to super reaches, but what about safeties? Or do you already have that covered and selected?
I also emphasized not having a “dream school” with my kids.

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Re#168, that’s a good find @mathmom.
[upon reflection] I do understand the appeal of staying in the city (Manhattan) though, if people are planning to go out there later and stay till late at night. Driving, or walking from train stations, in unfamiliar suburban areas or outer boroughs late at night, probably does not sound very appealing to out-of-towners.

[Not pertinent to #168, but] if the train in question is the MTA rather than the subway, MTA train service changes to running only hourly at some point in the evening, which is another disincentive.

On the other hand, the other locations are probably better if OP wants to explore the area around Fordham, because for that one should best have a car. According to MTA trip planner it is a 7 minute walk from the station to the university. Plus, as I recall, teh university buildings are up a bit of a hill. And to get there and back by train you would be subject to the train schedule. The on-peak MTA fare per person is $8.75. And if you have to take a subway to Grand Central, that’s additional cost an time. So driving to Fordham does have its advantages. but driving there from Manhattan introduces some time unpredictability due to traffic. One would desire to avoid rush hour, for sure.

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“The on-peak MTA fare per person is $8.75”
That’s one way, BTW.
NYC subway single ride is $3.

You can use MTA trip planner to plan your public transport routes from point to point, it’s really good.

On the other hand, if you drive there are bridge tolls. But those are per vehicle, not per person. And fuel costs, of course. But then you have to park someplace, and that can cost $$ .

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Thanks for all of the advice on this thread (particularly the food advice). We lost the internet at home this weekend so I missed most of the discussion about hotels. At the moment, I have a hotel booked in mid town and one in Ft Lee. I am kind of leaning to staying in mid town and taking the train back and forth to Fordham, but the wife wants to drive to Fordham and check out the surrounding area a bit (as someone mentioned up the thread). Decades of marriage tell me we will likely therefore stay in Ft Lee, but I am going to keep both reservations until next weekend at least.

I did want to make one point in response to @as9934’s post concerning the amount of activity on a given campus. Maybe it is because during my son’s recruitment we were on several campuses multiple times, but I think it is tough to get a real read on how active a campus is from a single short visit. This is maybe particularly true on a bigger campus. For example, on one of his trips to Yale we were walking around by the library and the main quad (where the Nathan Hale Statute is, I forget the name) and the place was completely dead. A couple kids studying, but literally no one around. This was strange, because when we had been there earlier that spring, the quad in particular was packed with kids. I then went back to the hotel and he went to lunch with a couple current players. When I went to pick him back up, he told me they spent the afternoon on a different part of campus where there was a huge blood drive/fund raiser thing going on with a ton of kids out goofing around and hanging out. The point being, sometimes things are going on just over the horizon that you might not know about. I understand that multiple trips are not necessarily economically feasible for a lot of people or to a lot of schools, but taking a couple three trips to colleges really helped my son in the end.

And @monydad I will provide a full report when we get back.

I really appreciate all the thoughts and advice from everyone!

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If you’ll be driving to, hence parking in, Manhattan, :
I usually use this to find parking lots :http://nyc.bestparking.com/
Don’t cut it close to theater time though, traffic can be a bear around there, then.

And avoid rush hour if possible. Driving into Midtown on a weekday, between something like Lexington and Eighth ave, should best be avoided period.
(though I did ok with a lot around 7th ave/ Broadway last week. But I’m just giving “guidelines” for a more reliably good experience).

One benefit of going when you are is a lot of locals will probably be away taking vacation, so traffic may be lighter.

Agree about campus activity levels varying. A while ago on the sub-forum of my alma mater someone was complaining about how unfriendly everyone was when he visited; everyone seemed huddled inside, few people were up and about having fun, nobody was friendly, etc. He was actually making his decision based on this. Because “people there are unfriendly”. I pointed that unfriendliness isn’t actually a selection criteria the university actively screens for, and 14,000 students probably don’t all possess the same exact level of friendliness/ unfriendliness. Various other posters speculated on East Coast manners vs elsewhere. Finally an actual current student came on the forum, and figured out, and I closely paraphrase his post “Dude… you were up here during prelim (exam) week… everybody was studying…”

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Did you need food advice for Lewisburg, or as a Bucknell alum do you have that covered? Doesn’t look like you need any other advice!