<p>Unless you are ED, you do not get your final net price and admissions decision until around something like late MArch or early April. It looks very difficult to do a good survey, fact finding, and discovery of colleges in only about a month before the official decision day on 5/1. </p>
<p>When more colleges are folded in in this brave new world of using the common app, then how do conscientious HS seniors do the discovery necessary to make a good decision by 5/1 - discovery such as taking time off and visiting campuses, eg?</p>
<p>One way might be to do a lot of the discovery before 4/1. But then it does not make sense to spend too much time on places that are reachy , or , on places where the net price is reachy. </p>
<p>My son said that he won't spend any time on this til he gets the final decisions. WHen I asked him - ahead of this 4/1 date - what is the most important piece of data that he'd be basing his college decision on (so that we can attempt to get more info, eg), he said, accepted ? and affordable? DOH!</p>
<p>Thing is, he takes his HS studied very seriously and is taking 5 AP classes and 1 honors class. He has only taken one day off of school in hs, which was for a funeral. Putting two and two together, I cannot see how he can do an adequate fact finding at (many ) colleges in a compressed period of time and still acquit his hs curriculum. As a parent, am I supposed to say to not take your HS curriculum as seriously as he does . When I see such motivation , I see that it is gold , and dont want to 'mess with success'.</p>
<p>See, here’s the thing. I guy named Vin Cerf at UCLA in 1969 helped invent the Internet … well to be precise the tip of the TCP/IP protocol.</p>
<p>The Internet allows your son to do all sorts of cool things not even envisioned in 1969, to wit:</p>
<ul>
<li>use Google Earth to zoom in on every building of a campus</li>
<li>enter the website of the college to check out faculty, read the student newspaper, etc.</li>
<li>go to students review dot com to read student unedited reviews about life on campus</li>
<li>go to college p r o w l e r dot com to do the same</li>
<li>go to collegedata.com to check out the degrees conferred by said college last year</li>
<li>go to USNWR to check out the ranking of the school</li>
<li>read this website, in particular, each school’s own section under “Alphabetical List of Colleges”</li>
<li>go to ■■■■■■■■■■ and search for pictures of the college</li>
<li>go to Youtube.com to search for videos of the college</li>
<li>go to weather.com, 10 day forecast, then historic averages, to see what the weather is like at a college over the 12 months</li>
<li>picking up a cellphone to speak (free) with the chairman of whatever Dept. he intends to major in</li>
</ul>
<p>I’m not sure actually visiting a campus does much more than doing the research on line will do, other than FEELING the weather and seeing the campus in 3D.</p>
<p>I agree, it’s not ideal to make a decision in one month. Hopefully he was able to visit many of his schools before applying. Just from talking to other families, it seems that the list gets narrowed down enough to make a decision based on just 2-4 schools by April. You will have a few weekends to get those visits in if he hasn’t yet seen the school. That’s our plan actually. We’ve seen all but one school at this point and will head there if need be in April to make the final decision. If you get any acceptances in March and it’s a high contender, go visit. </p>
<p>And as creative as the other responder was in his “helpful reply”, googleearth, etours, etc. will never replace the value of visiting a campus --everyone has a different reaction/experience to a campus feel. I would never advise a kid to make their final choice from online sources, though I am sure it’s often done (yikes! and that God for being able to transfer!).</p>
<p>thanks for the input. other than closer schools that were easier to get to , he said he did not want to visit a college unless he was accepted.</p>
<p>also, I looked at cerf’s wiki entry, and I was impressed that he is hard of hearing . I have two HH brothers. I hope anyone who ever might find a HH child in utero that the co founder of the internet was HH.</p>
<p>Some colleges have Facebook groups for prospective students, with current students answering questions. UChicago and Tufts do this with good success.</p>
<p>Have your S find out if there are other students from his HS who have gone to these schools. Try to get the real scoop from them. It is worth his time (and your investment) to make a couple of visits, esp. once you figure out which schools have FA packages/merit awards that work for your family, if that is a consideration. Schools that look great on paper may have a totally different vibe when you sit in a classroom. Both my kids dropped schools after sitting in on a couple of classes in their intended majors.</p>
<p>My kids did not want to attend the big admitted student weekends in April. They preferred to go on other days, sit in on classes, talk to folks without the filter of the Admissions Office PR machine.</p>
<p>OTOH, I know there are lots of parents who like the structure of those programs, there are usually structured opportunities to talk to FA folks, lots of activities to get students excited about attending and to meet potential classmates/roommates, etc.</p>
<p>My kids did these trips solo, usually over at least part of a weekend and into a Monday. Lots of schools don’t have classes on Friday, so we learned the hard way that it was not necessarily a productive day to see profs or classes. Have your S check course schedules before making travel plans.</p>
<p>At this point, I think he’s right. Chances are that when he does have all the acceptances and financial aid offers that he will be able to come up with a short list of places to visit/re-visit. That is what my niece did. She only visited the place that offered the best scholarship, decided that it would do, and has been very happy there.</p>
<p>If he didn’t have a good idea of his preferences before 12/31… </p>
<p>Btw, rather than checking media sources, have him look at the online course catalogs for his choices (now or after accepted.) See how he reacts to what’s offered in his interest areas, what the profs’ backgrounds and research interests are, etc. That’s real.</p>
It would be difficult to do the entire college search and selection process in one month. That’s why many students do much of the work up front. They find out whether they want to attend a LAC or a large U, they consider the region(s) they want to live, they explore local colleges to see if they prefer seminar or lecture classes, etc. They then apply to colleges they think they’d be happy to attend, and when the decisions come out they simply have to do some fine tuning; visits to places they haven’t been yet to confirm their assumptions about what the college would be like, etc.</p>
<p>I can’t imagine just applying to colleges without having a strong sense of the school before sending the application! We insisted on using family vacations for the past couple summers to visit schools. Some were ruled out instantly. Some were great surprises and went from “never heard of it” to “top 3 choices”. My D likes every college she ended up applying to (8) so that when the fin. aid packages have to be compared, she knows she will be happy at whichever college ends up the most affordable, even if it isn’t the “dream school”. Those college visits were so valuable, because we weren’t stressed or under pressure, and could really look objectively at the schools, the classes. the people, and the overall environment.</p>
<p>But are you comfortable with having only one month to gather information necessary to advise your son?</p>
<p>My daughter applied to eight colleges, six of which she had visited. (She had also visited and rejected five colleges before applications began). If she advances in the scholarship competition, she’ll be invited to campus to see one of the two she hasn’t seen yet–but we won’t get to see them as parents. As a result, my H, D and I plan to go on her winter break to visit that college, and to fly to see the reach college over Easter weekend if she is admitted.</p>
<p>My D is fairly tired of visiting colleges but she accepts the fact that her parents need to see the colleges as well.</p>
<p>Try to find out as soon as you can (some may have announced already to the ED students) when the accepted student days are for his top choices that are possible acceptances. Sometimes they conflict with each other. Also, you have to make travel arrangements quickly, so planning ahead will help a little. Read the various threads about going to admitted student days vs. not so you can decide on that issue. I think it’s very helpful for the accepted student to stay overnight, so if that’s offered for accepted student days and not otherwise, I would go with accepted student days.</p>
<p>I agree. I mentioned to my d that she only has a little over 2 months to make up her mind. She still hasn’t visited several of the schools she has been accepted to, and many are far away. I feel sure it will be april 30 before she makes up her mind.</p>
<p>Severe family illness during school year prevented us from starting the college visits during junior year…maybe she would be more prepared now if we could have done more visits last year, but hindsight is 20-20.</p>