My D has officially toured: Dickinson, Franklin and Marshall, Lafayette, Lehigh, Bucknell, Villanova, Gettysburg, Univ of Richmond, Elon, Wake Forest, Davidson, Denison, Purdue and George Washington. We drove to all of them. There are many other schools we informally saw by walking around and looking in some buildings. Of the ones we toured officially D will be applying to 6 of them. We’ll be seeing another one next weekend. Then we are done with tours. As of now she has about 5 other schools that we will only see if she is accepted. Many of these involve a flight.During this process her criteria has been changing, so we have schools on the list she would never have considered before. I was exhausted just typing this.
PS- the school we are visiting next weekend is a school we drove by awhile a go and D was totally turned off due it’s large size and crowded sidewalks. She didn’t want to get out of the car. Now she thinks it has what she is looking for so …
We did official tours/visits to 9 colleges – three colleges that required total of 2 plane tickets (b/c 2 in same city) and two we combined with New England driving vacation trip. Three we visited were in driving distance.
She also did non-official visits of three other colleges (one she was there for MUN, another for an academic conference, and another we did a drive by/walk through but no official visit).
She applied to 6 of the 9 colleges she officially visited. None of the drive bys. Also applied to 4 colleges she didn’t visit, showed a lot of demonstrated interest and was accepted at at all four, but ended up making a decision and cancelling our visits there. I sometimes wonder if she’d visited them b4 applying if result would have been different? But she’s very very happy (as are we) with where she is.
We visited (gulp) 41 for dd18, but several of them were only drivebys in conjunction with a vacation. I mean PA… you could easily hit half that number in that one state (she was mostly looking at LACs). Anyway, she was unsure of a major, just knew she wanted to stay in the northeast, so we had a lot to consider. She ended up applying to 13. Ds20 only has 19 schools on his list. We will likely visit all if they stay on; most are easy drives. I enjoy the time we spend together bonding in the car and hearing what they like/don’t like, seeing their excitement when they find schools that fit and they want to apply to.
We narrowed down financial realities prior to any visits using the college’s NPCs. Didn’t want S19 to fall in love with a place we couldn’t afford even if he got in. Official visits - 6. Unofficial - 2. He’s applying to 2 of these (accepted to one so far, and the other is a dream/reach/lotto school). The two finalist schools are 12 hours away by car (in different directions lol), so we’ll be flying him there/back for breaks, etc. For visits, we drove and incorporated into a family road trip, seeing other sights along the way.
D visited somewhere between 24-30 schools, a few of those “just because” they were in the general vicinity; think, Hampshire while looking at MHC/Smith/Amherst, Cornell while visiting Ithaca, …
She applied to 19 schools, 5 reaches/high matches (with one ED) and then 7 matches and 7 safeties. We flew to PA (one trip) to see UScranton, Dickinson, Bucknell, Gettysburgh, Susquenna and ??. We were chasing merit and it was worth the time and effort. In the end, she got into all her matches and safeties with good merit and was waitlisted at two reaches which she declined. Of the 19 schools, I believe she applied only to two that she hadn’t visited.
Our S toured 12 over 2 years. He got a good idea of the trade-offs big/small campus, city/suburban. He also dropped 2 schools off his list entirely after touring including what had been #1 on his list.
We visited 6 so far. 2 by air. 2 more visits are lined up in the coming weeks.
D19 applied to 5 or 6 schools that only required the comm app and she had a free code for the app cost. I think 2 of them required extra essays for merit. She will in the end apply to 11 or 12 schools. Probably too many, but some of the effort wasn’t much at all. I think she is serious about 5 or 6 total schools at this point.
S17 + S19 twins: GA Tech, Clemson, C of Charleston, Davidson, NC State, Wm&Mary, U of Richmond, VA Tech, Elon.
S19 twins: Vanderbilt
one S19 twin: U of South Carolina
The NC/VA schools were a summer vacation family trip where we drove to the town, found a good place to eat dinner and looked around, spent the night, toured in the morning, found a good place to eat lunch and drove on to the next town. I was apprehensive but it actually turned out to be a nice family time. And by the end included a lot of reciting of common tour information – “we have 40,000 clubs, but if we don’t have one you like, you can start it”. Twins were rising sophomores and DH said “pay attention on these tours; I’m not coming back to these schools again in two years.” And it did give them a good variety of schools to compare.
Both S19 twins are applying to schools visited at some point, although they were “additional family members” for most of the earlier tours so the schools have no record of them visiting. One is also applying to 3 schools that we haven’t visited and we’ll visit in the Spring if they become a realistic option.
After awhile, all the tours and info sessions start to look and feel the same…except when your kid is turned on and really connects. I witnessed it four times (out of twelve). Body language was different, was walking up front by the guide, having a conversation, etc. It was very cool. Equally good schools but you could tell he found a home.
Fast forward 3 semesters and the apple hasn’t lost its shine…
@citymama9 , My son’s list looks just like your daughters list…from Bucknell all the way to Wake Forest. Elon is the only one not on our list. Of all the schools she visited, which ones did she like more? (My son fell in love with Bucknell.)
With our daughter we formally toured about 10 schools and maybe informally (walked around on our own) about 4. This isn’t counting schools that we drove by (I’d say about 6ish, maybe?) or went to because we were in the area but our kid had no interest or it was too much of a reach, but hey it might be fun to walk around (Example: Stanford and Harvard on family vacations or other college tours). With our Son, it’s a bit a different since he was on a lot of college tours with his sister and we didn’t visit some schools because he still remembers them somewhat from when we visited for his sister. But, just for him, I’d say we’ve formally toured about 5 schools (not all of which he is applying to) and we may visit some others.
Plus, both our kids have been on our local university campuses for various reasons over the years. We used to go to the Nutcracker at UC Irvine every year at Christmastime and my daughter had a dance recital there one year as well. My son had a tae kwon do thing at CSU Fullerton, and his winter formal was at Chapman U. And we also went to a wedding at USC. And cousin’s graduations at Loyola Marymount and USC…It’s amazing how you can end up on college campuses for various reasons.
Our philosophy: we didn’t have the $ or time to fly all over touring schools D may or may not even bother applying to.
In this day and age, the internet is a great source for getting a flavor for a campus (I know, not the same as visiting, but it’s better than nothing). Before D applied, we toured a smaller private and a UC (both within driving distance) to get a feel for both ends of the spectrum. Applied to 10 schools (2 in-state, 2 out of state). After she received acceptances, she toured 2 other schools she got into that she was actually considering attending, plus retoured the UC (housing tour). Wound up at that school (UC Berkeley).
We visited idk 15 and in the end she has just about decided to just stay in Texas because she thinks she will miss us. Is what it is. (Friends, sister, etc too)
I had two very different kids and approach for each was different.
Older son had stayed at several LACs in middle school and said “All dorms are the same” why do I need to visit? I thought it was important so I dragged him off to some colleges in CA (Stanford, Berkley, Caltech) while visiting family and friends over spring break senior year. At the end of the trip, he said, he still didn’t think visits were necessary. He applied to Caltech and Stanford along with 4 colleges on the east coast and one not quite in the midwest, but close. He ended up not getting into the CA colleges, but we did visit the colleges where he was accepted. He’d seen one college from parent reunions as well. Suddenly he actually did care more about clubs, and atmosphere, but ultimately he still went for the best department for his major. I think he applied to 8 colleges, visited 4 before applying (one of which did not stay on the list). He visited 4 colleges after being accepted. One was a repeat visit.
Younger son really enjoyed visiting. We visited a couple of smaller colleges over his winter bread sophomore year that were about an hour’s drive from us. Then a couple of colleges in Boston over spring break. We have family in the area so that was easy. Finally we visted three colleges in DC over Labor Day weekend and again stayed with family. There was only one college he didn’t visit - U of Chicago because it was so far away. He got in there EA, but chose to put off the visit until April when they had their accepted students weekend. He saw at least one other college - U Penn - when a friend’s family invited him to come along. I think he applied to 7 colleges. He’d visited 6 of them, and visited another 4 he didn’t like. He went back and did repeat visits at 3 colleges and saw one for the first time April senior year.