S created a solid list of criteria (fit - locale, size, strength of major and overall academics, athletics, etc) and did a lot of research online (you really can learn a lot these days). We then visited several on the list and a few others that were close by list schools. This was helpful to determine where to apply as a few came off the list based on the visit.
For many (as many as possible), we did a deeper dive than the simple tour / info session. I helped him set up a meeting with his major department. Very easy to do and the schools are pretty accommodating (most of them). You can find staff email addresses on the site, so we would send an email to the Dean of his major and explain we were coming for a visit and would like to learn more about the actual department, curriculum, etc. With few exceptions, we were connected with the appropriate person and they spent an hour or so with S, walking him through the four yrs, requirements, OCR, internship opps, career placement, etc. You could get a sense about the differences of resources available and the level of support provided by these meetings. Also was useful for the personal statement section of the application as he could refer back to his meeting…
All in all, we visited 10 schools. 3 or 4 came off the list and he applied to the remaining plus a few others that we just couldn’t get to.
Was actually pretty fun and we tried to build it around family trips. Actually tried to build a family trip around it but that was easy to do as they were in pretty cool places.
With my oldest who is going to be a senior, we started the summer after sophomore year and have slowly done some visiting. We have some further flung schools he’s interested in too. We may get to visit 1-2 more late summer/early fall. But he’s auditioning for music programs so some might wait to see if he gets through a pre-screen process.
However, I have a daughter that is going to be a freshman. Last week we went and visited a small LAC that is a day trip from us and I kind of made her come. It isn’t actually a school my son would consider, but it’s a particular type we haven’t visited and if he liked that it might give him some direction. She grumbled the whole drive there. LOL. Well it didn’t hurt that this particular LAC rolled out the red carpet and had treats before and after the tour and a cute and quirky tour guide but she had a great time and it totally got the wheels turning for her. So if I have other opportunities to take her to casually see schools (the basic tour/info session), I definitely will. She is an old looking 14 so that helps. She was treated like one of the juniors/seniors.
Did the big/small local in fall of junior year and the tours of potential colleges in spring of junior year. We visited and then the kids used the visits to cull their lists to a manageable number for fall senior year applications. I can’t imagine talking to a high school freshman in any serious or meaningful manner about college choices.
Oh I agree that you really can’t start culling with a freshman nor would I pay to travel to visit schools just for this purpose. But touring a couple if it’s convenient (locally or during a vacation) for general type to demystify the process with a younger high school I don’t think is a bad idea. Especially if the teen is receptive.
My 14 year old had to pushed a little to go on this one tour she did recently. But I’m quite sure she’d insist now to go on any other visits we have scheduled that are doable for her. If she didn’t, I would totally back off for a while.
We’ve visited local colleges informally during freshman year. During President’s Day freshman year, we did an open house at Juniata, to show DC was a small, out of the way LAC was like. It was great and she liked the small feel and personal attention. We are visiting another out of state LAC this week.
I don’t see anything wrong with starting early with a couple of nearby schools, if the opportunity presents itself.
We started college tours in the fall of the kid’s junior year. I think freshman/sophomore year is too early to think about specific colleges. It is important to recognize HS as an experience in and of itself – not just a 4 year college application prep experience.
It is good to encourage your child to take school seriously and know that college will be on her horizon, but it is also important to recognize that she will grown and change (overall maturity, areas of academic interest etc.) over the next few years – what might be appealing to your D now may not be what is right for her a few years from now.
For now I recommend that you focus her attention on:
–Working hard, learning, and doing as well as she can in the most challenging curriculum she can manage.
–When the time comes study for standardized tests.
–Getting involved in activities she cares about and work towards making meaningful contributions to those activities.
–Enjoying spending time with family and friends.
When the junior year comes you and your D should honestly assess her academic stats (including GPA, standardized tests, course rigor) as well as your financial needs and then visit a range of reach, match, and safety schools that appear affordable (you will have to run a net price calculator for each school you consider) and that she would be excited to attend.
Time goes quickly enough. Enjoy her HS years – no reason to rush into the college search.
We visited a handful the summer before junior year. Her high school includes sophomores on a spring outing to a major college fair, so she had already gathered lots of info on some schools and spoken with some admissions reps.
April junior year for my older son. That kid didn’t like visiting so the rest of the visits were April senior year. Amusingly he didn’t get into any of the colleges he’d visited officially. (One he’d seen via parents’ reunions.)
February junior year for my younger son. I didn’t like to do massive trips, so for younger son the February trip was a day trip to two colleges, April we did a few days in Boston and saw two colleges, early September we went to DC and saw three colleges, and then the final trip to see something the first time was to Chicago April Senior year. He’d applied to without visiting.
The problem with doing much visiting frosh or soph year is that you don’t really know what your kid’s GPA, test scores, or EC accomplishments will be. So a little visiting to get the wheels turning can be good, but I wouldn’t enter into it wholeheartedly til junior year.
“it didn’t hurt that this particular LAC rolled out the red carpet and had treats before and after the tour and a cute and quirky tour guide but she had a great time and it totally got the wheels turning for her.”
Kids mature differently but that is the exact reason I’m holding off on taking my incoming freshman on any tours. At this point, he’d choose a college or even romanticize it forever for dumb reasons. I don’t want him picking a college based on who handed out treats or who had the cutest tour guide. None of that bears any relation to what his actual experience would be as a student there, but he’s not likely to be mature enough to separate that in his mind.
After reading that thread about dumb reasons your kid disliked a college, it made me realize how inexperienced most kids are and how easily swayed they can be by irrelevant things. The post about the daughter dropping a school off the list because she disliked the tour guide’s shoes made me laugh and want to cry simultaneously.
Oh well - the school we were touring that my 14 year old happened to be was one my kids probably can’t apply to at all. It’s a small rural elite LAC that is known for no merit and stingy financial aid. We all went into it with that known. Our school does a private college week where it is very easy to be nosy without being super interested in a particular school. Great set up for general touring actually. There are similar schools that might be more generous and I wanted to see if my son like that feel and vibe.
I have to say my junior has liked and disliked schools for plenty dumb reasons too being almost 4 years older than my daughter. He’s very stuck on any school in a huge city even if it’s obviously a poor academic fit. He got extremely annoyed at one school by what ONE faculty member said in passing after having a great day on a smaller campus. He still knows at the end of the day it comes down to fit and finances if he wants to go to college living at our house. We don’t have the luxury of indulging whims. The adults in this house are very level headed.
I do think it was helpful and could be a motivator for my 14 year old to have a clearer sense of the journey and next step. My kids are academic, but not necessarily always super motivated and it’s helpful for them to have an end goal if hoop jumping is required. I wished we had taken my son a couple tours sooner in a very general sense. Senior year comes up fast. YMMV. I have to say, I know middle schoolers that chatter about MIT and UChicago like that’s their dream school and they’e never set foot on the campus. Tweens and teens romanticize when they want to. I would hope a parent wouldn’t be encouraging that whether they’ve wandered through the campus or not. LOL.
"After reading that thread about dumb reasons your kid disliked a college, it made me realize how inexperienced most kids are and how easily swayed they can be by irrelevant things. "
It’s too late to edit, so please accept my apologies for this terrible choice of wording. There was a thread about reasons “your” child didn’t like a college, but it was a general “you”. Reading my sentence it makes me sound like I’m referring to @MusakParent 's specifc child. I’m sorry for that wording. I was not referring to your child in any way, shape or form. I don’t know your daughter and wouldn’t begin to guess anything about her choices.
Again, sorry. Was not saying your child made dumb choices, was using language I remembered from that specific thread.
There are three reasons you might want to wait until later in your child’s high school career— e.g., junior or senior year.
Reality check. What will your child’s test scores and grades/ courseload be? You do not want to have your child fall in love with Harvard freshman year only to realize in junior year that her 1230 SAT, and easier courseload than some of her friends’, would make Harvard a long shot absent some super-compelling other factor. (And in terms of those other factors- you probably do not know yet if your child will be able to be a recruited athlete, etc.) If you wait until junior year, you will know where your child is performing relative to her classmates, etc. Then you can visit “realistic” colleges, so your child can be attracted to colleges where there is a decent chance the attraction will be mutual!
Emotional readiness plays a role, and may depend on your own child.
I remember visiting my husband’s college when my son was in a younger grade in high school, just because we were passing near it and thought it would be fun to visit. He loved seeing where Daddy went- but when I mentioned visiting the admissions office to pick up some brochures or maybe do a formal tour, he did not want to. The visit was about Dad’s past, not his future. He was not ready to think about going away from home to college yet.
Fast forward to August before junior year- when we went on the first college tour. He was ready for it, he loved it, it was great!
(A younger child might come along on a trip with an older sibling and you, and get a feel for the whole college thing in a nonthreatening manner because it is officially for the older sibling, not for him/her.)
Time, travel, and financial constraints- Some colleges require interviews. If they do, do you want to wait until the period during which they do interviews, or visit them twice?
Going back to a school a second time may involve more hours sitting in a car, bus, train or plane. There are costs associated with that travel- transportation, hotel, and dining costs. There also are time constraints (my son did not want to miss any days of school or of his summer camp job— and then there were my job and my spouse’s job to consider!)
We looked up when the colleges in which my son was interested did interviews, and planned our visits accordingly. Skidmore recommended interviews but did not offer them before the June before a student’s senior year. So Skidmore was not included when we visited the rest of the colleges we wanted to see in upstate New York in April of junior year. We saved it for a visit in August before senior year so he could interview.
LOL no worries @milee30 ! My kids do have some immature thought processes for sure. I just meant I had no regrets about taking my 14 year old. Unfortunately and fortunately for her she has really boring level headed parents.
I would never take the 14 on a tour with the mindset “do you think this school is right for you?” but more “This is a small LAC. It’s interesting you can do a little bit of everything at a school like his and the student body seems really friendly. Let’s go get lunch” and possibly revisit that school junior year if I think it might actually be a fit. Where as the tours now with the rising senior are much more nitty gritty class sequence questions, what dorms are best to request, can I get the music teacher I want, how much merit aid is possible here, etc.
Every time we travel we have brought the kids to see local colleges. This was on the advice of friends who said it’s better for kids to have an idea of all the various opportunities. It is also a motivator if they see a school they particularly like they can then find out more about it. No downside at all plus it’s cheaper. When it’s time to start serious college tours we can focus more. Our oldest already has ideas about what is not interesting. This might change.
High school is busy so the less you have to do the better.
And we wonder why we have stressed out anxious kids - Sorry, but freshman year is way too early to be talking about colleges. There’s a difference from being dragged to your parent(s) alma mater for homecoming weekend to get “exposure” when you are 14 than being taking around to “look” at colleges. Obviously that’s my opinion, but I didn’t have stressed out anxious kids either. At 14 summer after freshman year of high school they were looking forward to driver’s training in the fall and whether their voice was changing more than where they were going to college in 3 years.
Second semester junior year of HS, just locally, to give her a look at representative schools. Ex: this is a small LAC, this is a mid-size private in an urban area, this is a big state flagship…
We never did a college tour for the sake of college tours. We did stop by as a side stop during our vacations, though. Vacationing in Boston, Chicago, S.F., etc., the usual suspects in those cities, so during my kids’ middle school and early high school years. Even then, I think these college stops didn’t help much except to form an “impression” on my kids’ mind primarily based on how pleasing the campus was or not. Although impressions are superficial, they’re nevertheless quite powerful in the minds of teenagers. It led to the situation of “pleasant campus” vs. “fit.” Fortunately, the schools they ended up committing to turned out to be as “pleasant” as the one that they encountered during the side stops that it didn’t pose any difficulties. But it could easily have.
