@yucca10 Do they have tours? Info sessions are not the same. Tours are generally better.
No, I said “they don’t even have info sessions” because often there are info sessions but no tours outside the school year.
If you believe it is important, then it will be important. If you have the resources to visit schools, go for it.
Two issues:
- Admissions importance (varies per school) Some don't even keep record of attendance (the bigger ones). Some say it matters. For those, it could be a factor in admissions but not that big of a deal (I think).
- Fit - more important to me. Was to my kid. Actually seeing the college, getting a sense of the place, speaking to people, meeting with department heads, etc. All those things help determine if you want to attend. For my son, it knocked a few good schools out of contention because he just didn't like the place. Would not have gone if admitted.. For others, it actually got him excited so ultimately he knew he'd be perfectly happy at several of them. This was important because admissions is quite fickle. You need at least a few that you that you feel really good about because you may not get admitted to your "Dream" school. It helped narrow the list to apply.
Of course this assumes you have the time and money to visit. We focused on it for a summer. It’s what we did. Planned small family trips around it. Made it fun. If you, you can’t. Fortunately there is a lot of info available online. You can always save the trips for schools you’re admitted to.
@Bananas95, two universities that are known to emphasize interest, where high stats and no visit is likely to be a problem are Tulane and Washington University in St. Louis. S was admitted early honors to Tulane and waitlisted at Wash U. He interviewed at Wash U and not at Tulane. There were many who posted with high stats who got deferred or rejected at these two and some we know personally who did not visit and were rejected at both. Anecdotal evidence at best but that was our experience.
As far as other suggestions for visits. Summer visits are not the same as when school is in session. Would recommend visits to top three schools (if there is a top three) during spring of jr year or fall of senior year (preferably spring jr year). Senior year gets extremely busy.
We ultimately visited around 20 (many on family visits or short road trips and not all were formal campus tours). Visited the top three or four on the list twice (most were able to drive in 8 hours or less). The second visits were very helpful in S making a decision, although S is still waitlisted at a top three T20 university.
Good luck!
Some schools absolutely do want you to visit. When the rep from U of Rochester came to our high school he said you really, really, really, really, really need to visit. Yes he said really five times. It’s over a five our drive from us, so not a trivial visit.
When my son was applying to GW his GC counseled him to make sure they knew he had visited. The year before a young woman had been waitisted from our high school. It was her first choice and a good match. When the GC called their admissions office to see what their concerns were, they told her they didn’t think she was interested since she hadn’t visited. In fact she had visited, but informally as she had friends there. Luckily for her after GW was assured she wanted to come she came off the waiting list.
At Carnegie Mellon, 90% of the kids in the audience at Convocation for CS admitted that they had applied to MIT but been rejection. They then got the pep top about being number two being a catalyst for trying even harder. The Dean of the school had graduated number 2 in his high school class and he talked about how he had to get over it. Some schools know they are always going to be number two to the majority of their candidates. Well maybe not always, but at least for the foreseeable future.
Lehigh is another school where the visit is important. They have correlated that for them, students who visit are more likely to enroll so it seems they are doing it from a yield management perspective. They also had regional opportunities - info sessions and admissions interviews.
^^^Humorous true story - When we visited Lehigh the admissions folks made a point of telling us to take as many pics of their beautiful campus as we like AND to tweet our favorite ones to their office. Well, it is beautiful and my son really liked it so he tweeted a pic of himself sitting in one of their lawn chairs. Low and behold, I was looking for something on their website and his pic came up. Received an invite for an interview (in FL) and I told him, jokingly, to let them know you made the website. Well… he did and the admissions rep was thrilled by that. She was the rep for FL so I know she thought he was interested. He was accepted (but also a high stat, accomplished applicant).