<p>I have a list of colleges I'm interested in, but there are 17 total (I'm not planning on actually applying to that many though), so I don't have time to visit all of them. Any suggestions for how to narrow the list down? Thanks. </p>
<p>The only think I've done so far is eliminate the safeties because I only have two and I'm going to end up (most likely) applying to both of them anyways.</p>
<p>How thoroughly have you researched them so far? When I was narrowing down my list, I made a list of general questions based on what I was looking for in a school (quality and variety of academics? unique programs? specific departments? absence of Greek life? music scene? activism on campus? Jewish life? surrounding area? housing options? etc.) and wrote up a short profile for each school. Perhaps a tad too obsessive, but that really helped me narrow it down (from 14 to 6 schools to visit). And since I was very familiar with the "concrete" aspects of the schools, I was able to focus on things like environment and social climate during the visits.</p>
<p>Places that are within 2hrs you should visit. Unless one of your top choices is super far away, you can save those schools, and your safeties, until the spring if you end up having to go seriously consider them.</p>
<p>Otherwise, just make sure the schools you visit are a good cross section of your list as far as size, location, type, and campus feel. It will help you narrow down your list.</p>
<p>If I hadn't visited Swarthmore last year, I would have applied to all LACs without realizing that I could never have gone to a school that small.</p>
<p>Best wishes!</p>
<p>Yeah. I don't know what schools are on your list, but visiting Haverford and Penn in the same day helped me cross LACs off my list because they were too small, whereas Penn had a better overall feel with the campus/city, but didn't seem to be nerdy enough for me.</p>
<p>Another great combo is UChicago/Northwestern. It's easy to like both schools, but you'll come away liking one much more than the other and that preference can help you cancel out other schools you haven't seen. This one only works when school is in session, though.</p>
<p>Thanks for the help everybody.</p>
<p>One more question. Should I bother visiting the schools I put down on the national merit form (they aren't really my top two colleges; they're just the top two that I was interested in at the time that gave out national merit scholarships), or should I just assume that I'm going to apply to them anyways because of the chance of a scholarship?</p>
<p>1) Visit your top few choices.
2) Visit schools you are interested in but do not know a lot about.
3) VISIT SCHOOLS THAT CARE ABOUT YOU VISITING!</p>
<p>This third point is very important. While it is stupid, unfair, and insane, there are a number of schools that keep track of which applicants have visited their campus. They make the assumption that if an applicant visited, he is more interested in actually attending the school and will increase their yield rate of accepted applicants who attend. Schools that have been rumored to do this are Emory, WashU, Tufts, and Rice, although I am sure there are others. Of course, the top ivies don't really care. Just to give you an example, a student from my school was accepted to one of the top ivies regular decision and rejected by one of the schools above regular decision, probably because he didn't bother visiting the latter.</p>
<p>I'm interested in applying to Tufts, so thanks for the info.</p>
<p>Does anybody know if there are any lists of colleges that especially care about you visiting?</p>
<p>I've heard that schools want you to visit if you live within a 2-3 hour driving distance. If it's easy for you to visit the school and you don't, then you just look lazy. </p>
<p>Most schools take your name and address when you visit, but I don't know if they just want to send you more stuff or they actually streamline your visit with your application. If I were you, though, I would visit and PAY ATTENTION on the visit so I could cite it later in my "Why ____" essay. When I applied to colleges (back in the stone age, when I only considered at most 10 schools and narrowed my list down to 7), I visited EVERY school I applied to, and more, so for every app I was able to write a pointed, detailed explanation of why I wanted to go and why I thought the school would be right for me.</p>
<p>If you want to get more bang for your buck, see if you can interview on campus at the same time you're doing tours. Then they will know that you're there.</p>
<p>And also, because you have 17 schools, I would try to focus myself down to 5-6 that I was super interested in and then the others that I was just applying to in order to apply to. I would make sure to do as much as I could to express interest in the 5-6 schools.</p>
<p>Another thing you should try to do is pair up schools that are in a similar area, for example someone mentioned Northwestern and UChicago earlier. If you can find a couple of schools that you like that are in a close proximity to each other, it is much easier to take down a bunch in one college visiting trip.</p>
<p>Upsilamba - People usually talk about reaches, targets and safeties. I find it useful to split the first two groups into high reaches and reaches, high targets and targets. That, with safeties, makes five groupings. You might try classifying your 17 into those five groups (or is it 19 with the two safeties?) and seeing how they sort out. If you don't have many in the target range you could give those that you have a higher priority to ensure that your list covers a broad spectrum.</p>
<p>Upsilamba, If time and money for visiting time is limited then I'd agree that you could concentrate on personality types -- small/large/medium, urban/suburban/rural, sporty/arty/nerdy, greek/no greek etc. After you've been exposed to the different general categories you'll be able to narrow in on what appeals to you.</p>
<p>It's the smaller colleges that put more weight on demonstrated interest in the form of visits and since the smaller colleges tend to have distinct personalities it really is a good idea to visit to get the feel of the place. (You can do this after acceptance as well.) The bigger ones with thousands of applicants don't much care if you visit or not. </p>
<p>My advice would be to concentrate on the less selectives/safeties on your list as these are the hardest to identify. It usually takes more of a process of elimination to find one or two that you truly would be happy to attend.</p>