How did you do college tours?

If your kids are/were open to schools in various parts of the country, how did you do tours–if you did them. When I was looking at colleges (back in the stone ages), I knew I wanted to go to an artsy school in the Northeast. I was at a summer program at Bennington after my junior year, so after the program, my mom and I took a driving tour to Bard, Hampshire, Emerson, Sarah Lawrence, NYU and finally GW on the way back to Virginia. That in itself was quite a trip, looking back. I’m kind of surprised we didn’t kill each other.

My son might be interested in some west coast schools in addition to east coast schools…definitely no to the south. He likes cold and wet. LOL. Possibly some mid-west schools? Or at least they aren’t definitely nos. So, how did you winnow down where you visited and how you visited? Thanks!

We started looking at local colleges. Within 30-45 minutes from home, we have a SLAC, a large state university, and schools in both urban and rural locations. Casual visits helped D see what kind of environment she likes (for her, small and quiet). Once we knew what we were looking for, it helped focus on the kind of schools she wanted to see. She also was focusing on a certain geographic distance from home so we planned a few road trips hitting the schools of interest in that area.

ETA - she wanted less than 5 hours from home, and no flights, because we live in the northeast and she had a bee in her bonnet about not being able to get home for holidays.

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Well…one of our parent college criteria was that our kids go to a college within a 3 hour drive of here…or within an hour if a close friend or relative.

SO. We combined college visits with visits to our friends and relatives.

We did a seven college tour in CA over ten days. Flew there, and rented a car. Plus flew from San Diego to San Jose.

We did a seven college tour of the southeast. That was a BIG roadtrip but we had a lot of folks to visit along the way.

We did a three college visit to Texas and visited relatives there. Flew there.

We did day trips to anything within 3 hours of our home.

Did you do tours? Or just look at the campuses? I had wanted to do some tours this summer, but all of the places I looked at were just doing virtual tours at the time.

I see. So you combined them with other trips. Definitely makes sense. When did you do them? For example, the 10 day CA trip? The southeast? Was that over summer? Did you do them both around the same time? How early did you start looking. My son just started his sophomore year, but everything was pretty closed last year!

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The ten day CA trip was over spring break. We left here late Friday and returned LATE Sunday the following week. That was spring break of 11th grade.

The SE road trip was during the summer to coincide with our other kid who was in a music festival in Greensboro. That was summer between 10th and 11th grade.

The Texas trip was for the first kid…and that happened during spring break of his 10th grade year.

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We did both, actually. She was a swimmer and had spent a fair amount of time in local college pools. In some cases she wanted to check out the rest of the campus (informal, walkabout) and at others, she wanted the formal experience.

Some trips were on days when she had a half day of school or some other day off. We would leave Thursday or Friday, drive a couple of hours and see schools Friday and Saturday (again, formal or informal depending on their tour schedule and her choices). Long road trip over February break as a junior - 7 schools over 5 days. Most were formal because she really had a handle on what she was looking for but 3 drive by/walkabout visits because she didn’t like the area once we got to one, one was on the day of a big snowstorm and they cancelled everything, and another because it was the last one and she was done with it all.

We mixed visits with vacations. Make it fun but don’t over do it. Only visit one or two schools. Also visited some schools due to EC’s.

We limited schools to 8 hour drive or direct flights from our airport. We broke that with son 2 but he’s only a few hours drive or direct flight from son 1. It was a really good offer too hard to pass up.

Once sons narrowed their short list to 3 we visited again if they wanted.

COVID canceled a few visits for S20. He visited every school except one, the school he attends. His first visit was an abbreviated move-in day. He’s happy.

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We began tours during spring break of junior year. However, they really didn’t have a lot of impact because A:Covid had shut much down and there weren’t a lot of students on campus, and B: D22 didn’t have a whole lot of vision of what she wanted in a college. Tours taken in August and September of this year were much more impactful. Before doing a lot of travel, I would recommend looking at as many virtual tours as possible because they really were very helpful and not too far off the mark from the import person tours for the buildings and campus itself.

We started with the info sessions and tours - and they start to blend together - especialy the info sessions. They’re all the same - i know others disagree but my kids were bored and it turned them away from wanting to do more.

I also combined visits with vacations - at the end, my daughter didn’t want to go see the finalists again but needed to - so it was half beaches (various) and then days of campuses. The last trip was Beach, Florida State and Florida, more beach, C of Charleston, U of SC, and she decided UGA was out so skipped that.

For us, having all the info sessions/tours cancelled turned out a blessing.

Last Summer, My daughter and I did 11 schools in 4 days - all, except Elon, self toured. Elon was a 15 min info session (thank goodness) and private tour. yes, campuses were empty but we always found someone to talk to and you could see the architecture, town and surrounding areas, etc. In fact, we bumped into a wonderful professor at W&L who spent 30 mins with us - was just lucky. He was in the area my daughter wanted to study.
Normally in 4 days you’d see 4 or maybe 6 schools - so this was lucky and our preferred way. After all, if you really want an info session, most have them online. And some even pre-recorded.

I think in general, trying to spread it out is best or they get bored. In our case, my son was overwhelmed and uninterested - just bored. And my daughter couldn’t see enough schools.

So depends on the kid.

We picked his top 6 schools and mapped out a plan of visiting (our school district only allows 3 missed days per year for college visits so it took a lot of planning - plus he worked at a camp 5 hours away all summer). We spread the visits out over Jr. and Sr. year. Two were within driving distance and we did those together one on a Friday and one on a Saturday so took a 4 day weekend. The other 4 we flew to. One of those we made into a family vacation.

This was not totally ideal. He wasn’t interested in the first few we went on. Just not ready to think about college yet. This was kid specific. He had a bad Junior year (not with grades just everything else). Those we did at the end of the summer before his Senior year and at the very beginning were much better.

For him the visits were very important. Most of his schools were safeties so figuring out which one he really fit into was of the most importance to us once we had our list narrowed (plus who gave him the best deal!) We were able to learn things on our first visit that made it possible to get some excellent program acceptances.

That is really helpful. Thank you. I’d kind of thought the virtual tours wouldn’t give a good sense of the places. Knowing that, I will investigate them more, especially this year. It’s very hard to narrow things down at this point, not knowing how his grades will be this year and what his 10th grade PSATs will be. He has done the 8/9 in 8th and 9th, but I don’t know if this year’s will be different.

We started late. We visited a well known local (1hr away) school right before the summer before senior year. We knew we couldnt afford visiting very far schools at such a time crunch, so we made a plan. We visited a very large state school, and a smaller private school that were within 3 hours of us during the summer. That way my kid would have some sense of what he would prefer. Any school that was super far, we used virtual tours. During the beginning of 12th grade, my child was invited to visit one college for the weekend and he traveled by plane.
This worked out well, however for my younger kids I would probably start sophomore year so that I could plan visits with vacations.

If your son is a sophomore he might not be interested in looking yet. If he isn’t I wouldn’t push it. It’s a marathon, not a sprint and the process can cause burnout.

We know kids who only applied to a few schools and called it done. One applied to one. He graduates from VT this fall. Nothing wrong with that.

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Probably stating the obvious, but make sure you are visiting schools that fit within your budget and ideally a broader range of acceptance rates. It is nice to love a likely/safety.

We found the website Daytripper University to be quite helpful, as it talks about the areas around each campus popular with the students and families. One more resource to get a pre-visit feel.

The Fiske Guide to colleges and the Princeton Review book also helped our kids add and eliminate schools and narrow down a huge list to about 10 or so that we visited for each child. We also did initial visits to local schools - ie: state flagship, small liberal arts for size and campus culture thoughts.

We started in grade 10 with what they thought they wanted (Calif dreaming) and they ended up East! We found it super helpful, as they had time to think about what they liked and wanted in a school without feeling the pressure.

Adding - my kids also were sensitive to where students from
their high school attended - good and bad, as they made broad sweeping generalizations - but it helped to narrow too.

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Same way I did them, meaning we didn’t. The kids narrowed down their lists based upon interests and geography, then applied, then chose from where they got in. It was pretty obvious for each of them where they were going to go, from an early acceptance for each, but visits weren’t made until acceptances rolled in.

The best virtual tours are the live virtual ones, and live information sessions, though they all sound the same after a while. D looked at everything virtually before deciding on campus visits (except the uber local schools, which could give a good approximation of city vs suburb vs rural -or- large student body small LAC). I do agree with others: He is very young and it may stress him out to start looking so soon. AND his ideas will change a lot in the next few years, regarding major and perhaps school environment. If we went with what D thought in 10th grade, she would be a classics major, going to a college 2 miles from our house, with a student body less than 2K. Now as a senior, she is interested in chemistry, and her first choice school is a 5.5 hr drive and has a much large student body. Wait at least until his PSAT scores come in so you know roughly where he stands academically.

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Your post got me thinking about another point. Visiting schools like the Ivy’s is nice but do you want to spend time and money visiting a school with a 5% chance of admittance? Wait until you’re admitted might be a better strategy. Go visit your safeties and matches because the odds are that’s where you’ll most likely attend.

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I have two kids 3 years apart in school, so my younger kid got dragged along to all of the older kids visits, too. Older kid was really not that into school or the idea of going to college so it wasn’t a lot of schools, but we did visit some of the ones that are local to us with a friend and that made it more fun. I highly recommend that. I don’t think we would have gotten to half the ones we went to if a friend wasn’t going too.

We did also visit schools on the way to somewhere else occasionally.

Turns out my oldest did not want to go to college right away. Took 2020 for a gap year and is now in community college.

I do think my younger one got something out of all the visits, though. But the really significant visits have been in the past month or two. D22 is focused now and really interested to see what the schools have to offer. She wanted to sign up for two open houses for prospective students that have more programming than just the general info sessions.

For us the virtual sessions were not well received. Too much online school, not interested in an online college visit.

The college visits where we just walked around an empty COVID lockdown campus were more useful than the virtual info sessions, but by far the best visits have been in the past month or two when students were on campus. She can see if she feels like she fits in, if she could see herself there.

With a 10th grader I would recommend going to some events at your local colleges that he might be interested in — football game, theater, comedy show and just let him have fun and walk around and see what it’s like.

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If they don’t track demonstrated interest, no need to go other than to see if it’s a school you want to apply to.