My D21 has visited seven colleges and has six more visits scheduled before the end of the school year. Is this a typical amount of pre-acceptance visits?
It’s a lot but you do you. My D really wanted to visit places that she thought she was seriously interested in so we did a lot of tours too. She was very undecided and it was helpful for her to see a variety of campuses/locations. And her opinion was very much changed in some cases. For instance, she thought she’d love U Chicago and hated it so she didn’t need to waste her time applying. Some schools we went to just because they were near another school we visited and we had time. Like we visited UNC when we toured Duke and she loved the UNC campus. I think she only applied to one school she hadn’t visited because it was a last minute addition and we simply ran out of time. We told her if she got accepted we’d visit. Funny enough, that’s where she ended up. She had some friends who did no visits at all.
You have to do what you have to do. If you have the time and can afford it, and if that’s what your kiddo wants, go for it. Especially if you think it will help with the decision.
We visited 15 and D applied to 8. I think it totally depends on the kid, your location, and resources.
We visited 30 schools in 12 months for DD19 and brought DS22 along for most. Hope to be visiting well under 1/2 that with DS.
I think we visited 10. My DS applied to 8. However, only 2 of the schools we visited were ones that we visited. Visits help him narrow down big/medium/small and urban/suburban/rural more than an actual school. Visits can be overly impacted by irrelevant things (your guide, weather, etc).
By the end of this year (11th grade) we will have visited 7-8 schools and that will have covered big/medium/small/urban/suburban. My son is planning on staying in state so we haven’t ventured out of our region. He already has assured admission at 3 state public schools (safeties in both cost of attendance and stats) is a match at another (his first choice!) and has one reachy reach which wont be upsetting if he doesn’t get in. A couple of private schools round out the mix which all me dependent on merit aid. Easy peasy!
I don’ t think there is a definitive answer to your question. Basically, if your daughter wants to see more colleges and is not sick and tired of visiting them, if you do not begin to feel a strain from time off from work and travel costs, etc.- then all is good. A negative answer to any of the above would be a reason to limit visits.
Here are the reasons visits are helpful:
- Adjusting to the whole idea of her leaving home for college. Walking around a college campus allows her to imagine herself there.
- Allowing her to envision herself at her matches and safeties as well her reaches.
- If she is a high stats kid, interviewing and demonstrating interest at those matches, so that they don’t assume she is using them as a safety and thus not admit her.
- Getting a feel for which qualities attract her to a college... and which qualities she views as more negative than positive... allowing her to personalize her list to her preferences and to prepare a better ‘why us’ application to each college.
- Having all that time together as a family. It allows you to spend long periods of time talking and hanging out together. This is time to enjoy, as you all begin to adjust to that idea that you will be apart more when your kid is away at college.
As the visits progress, some of the ones planned for the future may fall off the list. We did not visit two top LACs my teen probably would have loved, because by the time we got to visit that state, he already had visited enough reaches-for-everyone schools and wanted to focus instead on colleges that would be easier to get into. We also did not visit the three colleges we considered for each of three planned multi-college trips that were the most distant— when there were similar ones that were closer, my kid thought it just did not seem worth the longer car journey to add the ones that were farthest afield.
Your daughter may make decisions of a similar sort as the process unfolds. Go with the flow and treasure the time together!
How ever many you can visit which is: A, within your financial budget, B, within your time budget, and C, within your energy/memory budget. So, whatever you can afford financially, have time for, and won’t exhaust you to the point of hating the visits, and which you will be able to remember enough from each visit for the visits to be useful
For some families to many will be 8, and others it will be 45. It will always be easier to visit more colleges which are closer to your home, and more which are closer to each other. We visited 6 by the time D19 was accepted ED, but likely would have visited at least 4 or 5 more. I don’t think that any more than that would have worked for us, time, energy, and memorywise. However, D19 has spent time on multiple campuses, because of summer programs and because her parents are academics.
My d visited about 40(!) but in our defense, we live in New England and there are a LOT of schools. A visit to Boston could knock off 10. We saw a lot in PA as well. My son has visited half that. In all honesty, we really enjoyed the trips, great one on one time, had a lot of fun. There’s no right number.
How far away and over how much time? For my older D, we visited a couple in the local area just to get a feel for what a visit, info session, tour, etc. were like to be prepared for the “real” ones. The seven schools she applied to we visited 10 times, and then two admitted student days. We also visited three that she didn’t apply to. So 15 visits to 12 schools during the application process.
My younger D is in 10th and we’ve visited five so far during trips for academic competitions.
Older D had a 6 hour drive limitation, stretched to include Purdue at 6.5 hrs. Younger has MIT and Stanford at the top of her list, so just those two visits would be more involved than a majority of her sister’s. So it depends.
We started visiting colleges very early, both to give us all plenty of time and to not burn us out. I have a “one school per day” rule for colleges within a few hours drive, which has helped. So far the college visits have been enjoyable, not at all a burdensome chore. If DD starts complaining, we’ll cut back to only those schools that consider demonstrated interest.
Do what feels right for you and your family.
You only mentioned the number of colleges, but not whether they were reach, match or likely. By the time that she’s finished with all of her visits, be sure that she has seen at least 2 likelies that she would be happy to attend (and be sure you’ve signed in so the schools know she’s visited).