Hi everyone - thanks so much for your help so far! As we start to narrow down schools to the ones our student wants to visit, we need to make a plan to visit as many as possible during our brief stay in the US. We have one week where we have no plans at all so far during our visit and had been planning to just relax at our Airbnb in Woodstock, VT. However, plans change and now we are thinking to do some trips to visit schools that week.
Is it even possible to visit three schools in a day if they are all fairly close together? For example, could we visit Holderness, New Hampton, and Proctor (morning, late morning/early afternoon, and afternoon) since they are all within less than an hour of each other? Or, Middlesex, Concord Academy, and St. Mark’s. I could even see us trying a stretch day like Berkshire, Emma Willard, Millbrook in one day.
We want to visit as many as possible, but also don’t want to stretch ourselves too much each day. How long did you typically spend at a school (assume there won’t be an interview as most of the schools don’t start interviews until the fall - so far only Middlesex has said they will do one)? We would want to see if we could meet with/chat with the XC coach if at all possible as that is one of our daughter’s “must haves” and we want to be sure she likes the coach at least a little.
Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated!
If these are summer visits without an interview, it is technically possible to do 3 a day if the stars align but I would aim for 2. You may find, though, that when you schedule, they offer you an interview (or more than what you are seeing from the website).
Summer visits don’t allow you to see who the students are, which is really important. But you are more likely to find the folks you meet are less rushed and can make more time for you, so it’d be a bit of a pity to have to run because of scheduling.
We found when doing college tours that getting from place to place in an unfamiliar area, finding the right buildings, and keeping everyone fed took a bit more time than the times on google maps.
If you are doing drive bys and aren’t meeting with anyone – in other words, just looking at a campus, sure - doable but not so valuable.
Pretty sure @Calliemomofgirls did summer visits from the other side of the country and would have good input.
Definitely have a means to record reactions as you are leaving each school as they are likely to blur together!
Thanks! Yes, we have done the college tours with two kids now and always stress the need to record information immediately upon leaving the campus. It helps so much when trying to recall what you liked or didn’t about schools and can give a nice basis for the “why us” essays some colleges ask for.
Two schools a day will be hard with so many we want to visit, but maybe we’ll have to make some really difficult decisions in terms of which schools are top ones to visit.
It is a real bummer we won’t be around when students are there, but as a family living 8000 miles away, we are just happy we will be able to set foot on some campuses at all!
I think you at least need a tour, which is often a BS day student who can give you some insight. Admissions officer tours are different—they often know the strongest departments, so I’d listen carefully. If you ask about Y and they change subject to benefits of X, we’ll, Y is something they don’t want to talk about!
I would call ahead because times book fast. Driving by the campus is useless. Emma Willard wasn’t open at all last summer, but things may change this year.
My other source of intel is often the other families on the tour. Some are quite knowledgeable and are happy to help out.
With both of our kids, we found that we could only handle one full visit/tour/interview a day. We could squeeze a second visit/tour in, but when we tried to do two full visits (including an interview) we were all too tired to take it all in, and the kids had a hard time with two interviews in one day. Not surprisingly, the schools we gave a full day for, ended up being our favorites.
Thanks, everyone. Looks like we’ll have to do some massive trimming of the list if we are only going to be able to do five schools while we are in the US. I had really hoped we would be able to do more.
I think you can do two in a day but do NOT interview on campus at that time! It requires a lot of prep on your part and is exhausting. Prepping for a tour-a few smart questions-is much easier. Read the website as you drive over.
We were not planning on having interviews and will likely only opt for the “tour and casual chat” at Middlesex, but do the formal interview in the fall and online. The rest of the schools we just wanted to do a tour.
We found it pretty manageable to tour two boarding schools a day in Massachusetts and Connecticut. The trouble was usually scheduling with the individual schools in a helpful pattern.
Thanks for the page @gardenstategal! We did our visits in the fall, though, but we did visit and interview at 12 schools in one week with DD2 when she applied in 2019. :). @RoonilWazlib99 - given you are from so far away, I totally agree with you that since you will be in the US anyway, then yes get yourselves on campuses. It is ideal without students? no. but, it will still be more helpful than not setting foot on campus. Summer in person visit (no students) + virtual fall visits/events with students will give you a nice picture.
As to your question about 3 schools a day: I think it’s doable, assuming the school tour times and travel times lined up. Ideal? of course not, but it’s kind of now or never it sounds like so you do what you have to do! We did two schools a day for six days, with full tours and full interviews, and it was busy but totally doable. I echo your plan NOT to interview (why spend an extra few hours a day on something that can very easily happen via zoom this fall with zero negative consequences.).
My strong suggestion would be to visit a school, and then when you get in the car to drive to the next school, turn on your phone’s voice memo and record what you saw, waht you liked, what you didn’t, what you would want to ask more about, etc… And then, we gave the school an overall “gut score” of 1-10, just to have it recorded somewhere. And then, we turned out attention to the next school and we could focus our attention on that school since we knew our thoughts were recorded. We did NOT try to “keep track” of all 12 schools, because our head would have been spinning. We pretty much trusted our recordings to keep track so we could be in the moment. (I will say, I personally DID keep track of the gut scores, so I had a very good sense for which were the top chunk of schools, and which were evoked more tepid feelings for my daughter.)
The following April, when my daughter was evaluating offers, the recordings did come into play: we listened to our own voices talking about her top choice schools and there was definitely stuff we had forgotten. So it was VERY helpful to have our own voices talking about the details six months later.
We did ours in the summer……and some in the early fall.
PLEASE do your homework and make sure you have an appointment, as well as tour, during the summer. Often, the tour guides are faculty kids who are in school. They are the only ones around.
I would say that 2 is the max in CT and some parts of MA. But that is pushing it. You cannot expect to tour MSX and St Paul’s in one day. The drive is too long and the tours/interview/etc take longer than you realize. When we went to DA for a summer tour, the office made us wait in the nice waiting room (a former library) for almost an hour after the scheduled time. Kiddo later became a tour guide and made some changes to this problem (thanks, Kiddo!). At Choate - no tour guide showed up that day, so no tour that day…so that was really quick. At Groton we waited almost an hour past the scheduled interview time. It was cool though how they had the interviewees names written in calligraphy and posted on the door….got to check out where the competition was from
Hotchkiss was on time and most welcoming….we toured Hotchkiss and Taft in one day. Hotchkiss wins for best admissions office, waiting room, views (golf course) and M & M’s!!!
You had some bad luck on delays, I didn’t have any that long last year. The biggest delays where
when the school assigned a specific student tour guide who was running late. But in all cases the matches were good!
I am not sure what changes Kiddo helped make, but Deerfield seemed like a well oiled machine this past cycle. We were there on a fall weekend and the sheer number of prospective students (with parents in tow) was impressive (and a little intimidating!). But all of the tours happened on time. Mr. Boyden was looking over the waiting room from above approvingly.
When we visited for our first child pre-Covid we scheduled 2/day and then planned 2 day trips. This was during the school year, which is ideal as you can see students in their environment, perhaps attend a game or play, etc. Each visit would include a tour and interview at a minimum so I’d plan at least 3 hours/school. We did throw in a few drive throughs of schools we knew probably weren’t great fits but we wanted him to see just in case.
From what we can see on the websites, interviews aren’t offered at most schools until the fall. We are kind of hoping interviews won’t be done yet as our daughter would need some time to prepare and practice, having never had anything like an interview before. Have you experienced it differently, where every tour has an interview regardless of the time of year? I’d love to know if there are schools where an interview would be expected in June, so if anyone has experienced that, please let us know so we can be prepared!
Also, we cannot visit during the school year as we are an international family and the only time we will be in the US over the coming year is this June, so it is then or never to visit schools in person. Not ideal, but we are happy to be able to at least visit some in person before our daughter applies!
If you are not having official tours, Middlesex and Concord are very easy to visit in one day. I’d visit Middlesex first, then Concord and then spend some time in downtown Concord (walkable from the school). You could see St. Mark’s but it would just be a lot for one day. There isn’t too much to see on a drive-through of St. Mark’s and there isn’t much in the town. I don’t think you’d see much without a tour.
We usually had admissions person tour guides ask if we wanted to interview at the same time. We did interview at one school during our August tour. The rest of the interviews we did later, but in the earlier months of the application cycle. The zoom interview was always with a different person.
I felt like we did well on admissions, so the later zoom interview didn’t hurt us at all. So at least for us a later zoom interview had no affect on the process.
Thanks, everyone. Seems like we should anticipate seeing at most two schools each day and kind of do a mental reset between (lunch!). I really appreciate your help - now off to schedule and map!
