Help with Planning College Visits

Parents Forum
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We started with weaving college “drive-throughs” into everything we did when our daughter was 15 or 16. It was a gradual learning process, rather than a frenzy. Going to visit family 400 miles away? Got tickets for an event in a neighboring state? Let’s make sure we include time to check out a few schools on the drive. At home, there was a small wall where our daughter put Post-It Notes with the name of each school she was interested in. Schools moved up, down and into the trash can. For example:

  • One of the first schools she saw interested her, but her dad and I weren't impressed at all. She soon learned what a "suitcase school" was and that it wasn't what she wanted.
  • A multi-day stay at an in-state LAC due to a high school leadership program led her to the realization that a beautiful school in the middle of nowhere would be too dull.
  • She fell in love with a mid-size public university in a neighboring state when she spent several days there in summer because of marching band camp. At admitted students day, she discovered that many of the people who would go there were just too preppy / frat-bro for her, and that the marching band was so huge that not every member gets to perform on the field, a fact that they did not advertise.
  • A large neighboring state flagship gave us a great tour but said they couldn't show us a dorm room because of security concerns. After the tour, we met up with a friend from her high school. He showed us his dorm room and told us that the real reason they couldn't show a room on the tour was that the dorms were so overcrowded that there wasn't an unoccupied room available.

In the end, our daughter figured out that she wanted to stay fairly close to home, that she wanted a school large enough so that she would have options in case she changed her area of interest (which she did) and what kind of a vibe she wanted the school to have. She applied to only four schools and was accepted to all of them. She is ridiculously happy in her sophomore year and knows she made the right choice.

42

Haven’t read through the thread, but we tried as much as possible to take care of college visits when we were traveling for other reasons. Many of them were quite far away from us. We were able to drive to most of the schools and/or catch them on other trips, and if it required a flight, I told my kid she could fly out to look if she got in and if it was still a serious contender. In the end, no flights were taken, although one of those schools offered travel money after she was admitted (something else to consider, and this was an unsolicited offer).

If it’s within your budget, it’s always more convenient to stay close to campus. Even better is if your kid can stay with a current student, though we weren’t able to arrange that so far. If you are lucky enough to have a high school that sends students to the colleges which interest you, I suggest you have your child contact the alums from their school and see if anyone is willing to host. You can also ask at admissions, though I think hosting arranged by them is likely to be limited to admitted students or perhaps to seniors.

I would not worry too much about where to eat–in my opinion, you should try as much as possible to eat on campus or at the close by off campus eateries and see what the eateries and food and general student atmosphere are like. The way I look at it, you are there to check out the school, and you’ve traveled a ways to get there, and those few hours may be your only time on campus before you have to start making decisions. Getting a nice meal at a place your kid is unlikely to be patronizing while a student seems unimportant in this context.

My first kid wasn’t super fussy about campuses but even she eliminated a few from consideration based upon the visit. The accepted student visits were quite helpful in making up my kid’s mind, but it’s not realistic to do more than a few of these, so you need to have some kind of prioritization. Seeing the campus again, and more importantly to her, getting to spend significant time with other accepted students (these were overnight/weekend affairs) was helpful for her to feel confident about her decision.

One school we visited in freezing cold weather close to xmas. The campus was dead, the admissions office was closed. My kids couldn’t get out of there fast enough and first one didn’t consider it seriously. But my second kid recently asked to see the school again and this time we were able to do the info session and tour and it was a nice day and she came away saying that she will probably apply. Impressions do matter.

We only once toured 2 schools in the same day. I would stick to one school per day if possible. In general, the campus tours are more informative than the information sessions, so if you are pressed for time I would skip the info session. Most of what they say is on the school website anyhow. On the campus tour, it was helpful to walk near the guide and chat with them while they were walking.

We also liked to sit in on a class or two if possible. For the smaller classes, my kids went alone while I did some extra campus touring. They would email the prof in advance to ask for permission and so far it’s always been granted. For the large lectures, I also went, and some of these we just quietly went in and sat in the back row. In one of them, the prof noticed us and came over to chat after the lecture, was very friendly. My writer kid, currently a junior, has been able to sit in on some small creative writing classes which has been helpful. For those we had to check schedules carefully, and unfortunately it didn’t always work out.

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I think sitting in on classes is useful, but very time consuming and/or unpredictable. It seems to work best if a student does this post-acceptance, when they will likely spend most of a day, or overnight, on campus. There were a couple of occasions when D tried to sit in in classes and the profs would make last minute changes (pop test, and showing a movie, rather than lecture), which mean that a prospective student couldn’t sit in on the class that day. Assume it might not happen.

44

Two kids in college already here.

Most important is to schedule time after the tour, to do a walk around and just speak to faculty, staff and random students to get a feel for the college. People who are not paid to recruit (admissions) will give you a better idea of the school.

Above works better of course if you visit while school is in session, but then it’s tough to visit many schools. I would say visit some schools during summer to figure out big vs small, public vs private, city vs rural etc. If admitted and costs are appropriate you would go back during April for admitted students visit (does not have to be on a date of their choosing, can go anytime and see how the school really functions, if you can’t make the date they organize). Maybe do some less likely schools (safety etc) in summer, some target/match schools in fall when schools are in session, and re-visit top 2 in April to make a decision.

The school my kid ended up attending, we visited in summer and again in fall, since it was a favorite
of the schools we visited in summer. Was feasible since it was a 3 hour drive from home.
Other schools were only visited once, in clusters (2-3 colleges in a region for each trip).

Kind of does blur things a little, if you do the 6 colleges in 7 day trip, but did try that with my older kid
and it worked for him. Younger kid we broke it up to the 1-3 colleges per trip. Most important is to
walk around and speak to people off tour. You’ll get a feel for which ones are your favorites, and those
experiences will be memorable despite visiting a few colleges in a short time.

45

There are also kids who either (1) don’t care about some of these issues or (2) already know what they prefer before the visiting starts. This can cut down considerably on the number of schools you need to see. If you kid knows (as my son did) that he wants to be within two or three hours of home, or if your kid knows (as my daughter did) that she only wants to look at large schools, you don’t have to visit every possible type of college in every possible location.

46

Yes, we are also trying to meet with someone involved in the writing programs at the schools we visit. Those are small programs and it’s unlikely we will hear anything about them at a general info session or get a tour guide who has any experience with them. When possible, I recommend picking a tour guide whose academic or extracurricular interests are the closest match to your kid’s.

47

For smaller schools, absolutely agree with @blevine about the value of attending a class and/or scheduling meetings/visits to departments/facilities which are most relevant to your interests. We visited more than 15 LACs, on east coast and midwest with my kid who has strong music, art and athletic interests. For every campus visit, he had contacted the art and music departments for tours, and had recruiting meetings going on as well. Those “behind the scenes” tours and conversations really helped him sort out which schools were a good fit and which were not. We were so impressed by the care, and attention showed by faculty and staff – looking at you, Knox College, Denison, and Kalamazoo – for a high school senior just trying to figure things out. Sitting in on a class was also very helpful for our student to walk through the halls in between classes, to see how students interacted inside and outside of class. Those would be his peers and classmates, and it was interesting for him to observe some real differences across campuses.

48

We actually found some of the greatest places we stayed on the school websites. Outdoor lab at Clemson on a busy football weekend, university owned lodging on campus at both Purdue and IU, actual quad dorm room at Marquette, etc. All were quite cost effective and made each visit unique. Do not overlook those options.

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Another thing i did was start both my kids off with a tour of the state school which seemed like the most likely in state option for them. I thought it would be good for them to have a basis for comparison.

50

I wish I could get my son to be more comfortable with NOT visiting colleges – I think his HS puts too much emphasis on visits, which has now become engrained in him. He already has a pretty well narrowed list of schools that meet his Goldilocks criteria (not too big, not too small, not too near home, not too far from home, etc). He feels pretty strongly that he wants to go visit all of the reach schools he might apply to, which to me is a bit silly, since he already knows he’s going to apply to those schools. He’s already visited one ‘possible’ school and will be seeing another ‘possible’ school soon. But I can’t get him interested in going to see any ‘likely’ schools, though to me those are the ones that would actually be most important to visit, given that there’s tons of schools that could qualify as ‘likelies’ so visiting might help make better choices about which to actually apply to. I know that subconsciously he thinks he’ll never need to worry about those likelies, as he’ll get into some of the schools higher up his list. And based on where the schools fall on his list, he’s probably right about that, but still, if we’re going to take the time to visit some more schools, I wish he’d visit some of the likelies.

51

Took DS to visit our local commuter Penn State campus, and one state school where he could see a dorm and cafeteria.

Other then that, he visited his current school when he went to register for classes.

We didn’t have the money for visiting schools to see how they felt. In our case it was just a matter of finding something we could afford, all that other stuff was irrelevant

So I guess visiting all the schools that many do is fine if they can afford it, but from our experience, it really isn’t necessary.

52

Some really great advice here.

I also recommend that once you decide on the bones of a trip – visiting New England, for example – start a new thread here. Do it before making the airline reservations. Parents here will give you tons of advice – best roads to take and the ones to avoid, when it’s best to take a train vs. renting a car, which city to fly into and out of, etc., and will offer names of nearby colleges that might be worth visiting.

I’ll second or third the suggestion to focus on safeties and matches. We abandoned info sessions after the first couple – the info is almost always the same – but we always registered for tours.

We also visited the campus bookstore, and looked at courses and reading lists. We did not buy T-shirts anywhere.