My DD is a junior and refuses to visit and tour anymore colleges. We have visited 6 schools of which 3 she may consider apply to. Her plan is to apply to 10 or so colleges and then visit once accepted. How important are college visits when level of interest is “Considered” per college data set? Is she hurting her chances of admission or merit money? She has very strong SAT scores, academics, extracurriculars etc. TIA
Considered is almost at the bottom of the scale (only not considered is lower). She certainly won’t hurt chances at merit aid (usually numbers based). Some schools may want her to show the love but with 10 apps she should have some good options without visiting.
As long as she shows a lot of interest in other ways, she may be ok. We have 1 college that is too far and out of the way of anything else that we won’t be visiting. Have her connect with the admissions counselor for her area and email often and ask thoughtful and insightful questions, showing her interest and her knowledge of the school. Meet with the counselor at a college fair. Interview. Etc.
You just don’t want them to assume that your D is only applying to them as a safety school since she has high scores.
She can express her interest by writing to, or contacting online, every college she plans to apply to. The college will then have a “sign of interest.” She doesn’t need to visit them before applying. My son “visited” NONE of the colleges he applied to until after he was admitted. He got into all but one college he applied to. He attended a college that he had never even seen before until “admitted students day.”
My daughter visited several colleges, some of which she chose NOT to apply to. The visits were informative – a learning experience for her. But she was admitted to all colleges she applied to, including three that she had not visited for practical reasons (they were all over the country!).
So in sum, it doesn’t hurt to show interest in some way (write for or go online to request applications and materials, and thus get on the mailing list). You do not have to visit in advance, but it could help you to make a decision about where to apply and where to attend.
It is tough to squeeze in a lot of visits in April if she is in the RD pool at colleges that don’t respond until March. Realistically, she could end up dropping schools with acceptances that might be a good fit due to visit logistics. We also see students who end up with no schools they really like in the spring because they applied to places they hadn’t visited, then when they visit they don’t like them. So those are both risks if she doesn’t visit ahead of applying.
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It is good to get an idea of what college is all about.
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It is good to get a feel for big/small, urban/rural, etc.
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Some colleges (esp. private/competitive) want you to show Demonstrated Interest. You can see what colleges do by looking at the Common Data Set in section C7 and look for “Level of applicant’s interest”. Is it Very Important, Important, Considered, Not Important?
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Colleges understand you may not be able to visit…but you can show interest in other ways
For example, For Case Western:
+Sign up for information.https://go.case.edu/register/requestinformation
+Attend a college fair and talk to the admissions counselor/alumni. They will have a method for you to share your information. https://go.case.edu/portal/local-visits
+Attend a High School visit if CWRU visits your HS
+Attend a regional information session. https://go.case.edu/portal/off-campus
+Take a tour/Go to open house if possible. https://go.case.edu/portal/campus-visit https://go.case.edu/portal/open-house-programs
+Sign up for an alumni interview if you can’t make it to campus. https://go.case.edu/register/alumniinterview
+Contact the admissions counselor in your area; http://case.edu/admission/contact
+Read emails Case sends you
+Asking questions not answered on website or in this forum: admission@case.edu
You seem like you have done 1 & 2 so do 3&4
My guess (admittedly a guess) is that both of my daughters would have been admitted to the same schools that they were admitted to with the same scholarships whether we had visited or not.
However, I think that they would have had a very tough time deciding where to attend if they hadn’t visited. Both ended up at schools that they had visited at least 3 times. In both cases the last visit was after being accepted – and there is a “this is real and I actually can come here” sense that only appears after seeing the acceptance letter.
My daughter applied to schools she did not visit because many of them were on the other side of the country. There is so much information online, so many forums, that it’s actually possible to make a pretty good guess whether a school will be a fit or not. We agreed that once she had her acceptances – that’s when we’d visit. As it turned out, she got into her dream school through early action, and we didn’t have to visit the midwest and west coast schools she applied to. It saved us a lot of time and money and stress – at a stressful time in her life.
I think it depends on the school and on the distance. I would not depend on the information in the common data set. When we visited Muhlenberg, the OA stated several times how much emphasis they placed on demonstrated interest and stressed the importance of the interview as well. The CDS states that interest is only “considered” but I would guess that it is significantly more important. I have read here on the boards that if you live within 100 miles of Lafayette and don’t visit, you have very little chance in regular decision no matter how good your grades are. On the other hand, I think there are colleges that don’t seem to care much about visiting at all. Its easy to get burned out on these visits. They are time consuming and start to all blend together after a while. However, if there are schools within driving distance that are important to your daughter, I would suggest trying to get there.
If she’s genuinely interested in a school and it’s not too hard to get to, she might hurt her chances a little if she doesn’t visit. Certainly if a school is within 200 miles, I think you should visit, but there is no hard and fast rule. I would explain to D the advantage to her application and possible merit. If she were to refuse in a situation such as that, she should triple up on other signs of interest.
As far as visiting for her own edification, she has visited enough schools to start to form a list of druthers. Contrary to what you might gather from cc, there are plenty of kids who never set foot on campus till Registration Day.
Echoing many the above comments. My S’s guidance counselor strongly recommended when schools consider level of interest that we be sure visit ones that are within a few hours driving distance. The guidance counselor felt there is more leeway given for not visiting colleges that are far away, especially ones that would entail a flight.
It may depend on the schools in your list of 10. In our search, we found some LAC’s that give merit as well as some smaller-medium size universities wanted to know the student was interested, including interviews. My son received a merit scholarship only given to a handful of students at a school that he visited twice and had a great interview. At another he was not as interested, visited once, and was “off” during the interview. He did not receive much merit. Note he only applied to five schools, as we had toured several and he was able to narrow down his list. If your daughter doesn’t want to visit and the distance is far, I would recommend reaching out to your admission counselor. Maybe in fall she will have a few favorites in her top 10 and she could visit/interview with those.
Alumni interviews are a great way to show interest in lieu of visiting, even if interviews are not required or are informational only.
Colleges track interest in multiple ways, not just visits. The “demonstrated interest” issue is probably more of a factorr when their very first contact with the student is via the common app, and there is no other significant communication along the way. And many students may have visited the campus in ways that weren’t tracked- and colleges must know that.
But if that student has been emailing or calling their admission rep with a variety of questions and concerns… that provides information about quality of interest. Similarly, the depth of information in the application answering a “why this college” question also provides clues about level of interest.
Visiting is valuable to really get a feel. Some care about that more than others. S was geographically specific, he wanted east coast, suburban, etc. So we researched good schools through that prism and planned trips to see several within a few days. To make it more manageable, we weaved it into our family vacation time. (UVA, Richmond, William & Mary included Williamsburg and a few days in DC. Duke, UNC , Wake Forest were two days ahead of a week in the NC mountains.) It was actually pretty fun. That said, we couldn’t go everywhere so he did apply to a few schools unvisited. They were the reaches and he would have visited if admitted.
If you don’t visit, how will your daughter know if she wants to apply ED or SCEA? Or, does she already have a favorite?
There are some colleges that one must visit. You’re attending a wealthy school district / pricy private school ( so they know you can afford to visit…unless your essay/Recs talk about how you’re a scholarship …the one poor student ) and the school looks at demonstrated interest…get yourself there.
The school is within an hour of your house. Go.
The school is a safety with stats like yours and you can afford to visit. Go.
If definitely applying but not visiting, can demonstrate interest by interviewing with the admissions rep over the phone.
We did this at 2 OOS schools and it worked, and we are full pay. I know this works at LAC’s, may not apply to all.
I recall at some information sessions at some very competitive schools, they had a sign up sheet which they said they used to track demonstrated interest. Right above my son’s name, someone had written Alfred E Neuman, in pink ink.
Then, during the information session itself, someone asked about interviews and demonstrated interest. They said interviews were for the student to ask question, they don’t penalize students who don’t have one. Then they said that as far as demonstrated interest goes, they figure if you apply, and send in an application fee, or bother to get a fee waiver, you must be interested.
This was just one school, and their common data set did indicate that they consider interest. So who knows if they don’t?
Honestly, colleges do not look at/consider interest/visits that much, if they do it is at the very bottom of the list. I would say that if you have the grades/essay/all around good student/extra curricular then it does not matter if you show interest, you will get in and they will not accept someone who showed more interest over you and not accept you. I think they might give a second look and reconsider those who may not be strong applicants on their own, but showed interest, but that’s it.
My advice is to figure out what type of campus she wants because if she doesn’t like the campus of two of the schools she is thinking about applying to, then she shouldn’t apply and that will save you ~$200 in application fees. If she knows she enjoys the city campus, most of her schools should have that city campus feel to it and then perhaps one or two that do not.
When I applied, I toured most of my schools before applying because I learned that I wanted a school in the city and that even if I got into the other schools such as UMass Amherst, I would not go (I applied as my safety school).
But if some of the schools are far away, I would wait until she’s accepted to tour because then you can go to accepted students day, if you guys want, or just do a regular tour and not waste your time traveling to a school she might not be accepted into.