<p>My two cents: For most families, there are many more factors other than just what the kid wants. Obviously that is an important piece, but things like maturity levels and finances may overrule some choices. We could not have afforded 40-50K per year, so the final choices depended on the bottom line after FA offers were considered. We are not believers in going into debt for a college education, and student loans are incredible burdens on graduating students. That does not rule out reaches and expensive matches. There may be enough merit money and financial aid to bring the cost within reason.</p>
<p>As for visits: I think you MUST visit your first choice, at least. If it’s not a great fit, move down the list from there until you find a new first. We did a lot of travel when my son was in HS, and as we traveled, we casually visited campuses that were on the way or not too far out of the way. These were not necessarily “choices” but it did give us an idea of what kind of campus/school/environment/size might be good.</p>
<p>We may have jumpstarted the process a little early with our son, but not without his blessing. Since virtually all the good students from his high school go to UT Austin or Texas A&M, we thought it would be worthwhile for him to see that there were other options before he set his mind on UT (he would never consider A&M), particularly since almost all of his friends were already set on UT from the beginning of 9th grade. And he has been enthusiastic about visiting all these different schools.</p>
<p>laxkid, maybe I am missing something – I am the OP and my child is not a sophomore! She’s in spring term junior year and is quite interested in seeing colleges. We did look at a couple of places informally last year if we were passing by, but until we had at minimum PSAT scores we weren’t even sure what we were reasonably looking at. </p>
<p>One excellent but unintended consequence of those early visits was that d saw a school she really loved, but wasn’t quite strong enough to get in. This gave her something to shoot for and her grades have been going up ever since. </p>
<p>So–one kid’s pressure is another kid’s motivation. As others have said, it’s all about the kid’s personality.</p>
<p>I like what austinareadad said; visiting different schools in different locations gives kids some idea of the range of options. And it can be fun! We did all our trips (save one to the Pacific Northwest) by car. I remember how excited my daughter became on an early trip when she saw kids lounging in the library with their shoes off. (“You can do that at college?!”) All our trips helped her home in on what she wanted in a college environment.</p>
<p>We’re down to three: Kalamazoo College, Rhodes College and Willamette University. The common thread among these offerings is that they are all small school in a reasonably sized town. One more visit (extended visit to Rhodes) and we should have our final answer!</p>
<p>We have visited 19 schools with my D. I have found that she tends to like the ones she’s seen recently the best. But one value of the trips is to realize that so many campuses are very nice and that there is no magic fairy dust floating around the physical environs of top-ranked places. </p>
<p>We also live in NJ like the OP and it’s very easy to visit a lot of colleges. Families in our area can see a lot in one long weekend (i.e. a D.C. trip, an NYC trip, a Boston trip, an eastern PA trip). Use the NJEA convention weekends. We took a southern road trip over junior year spring break. It has all been a lot of fun. </p>
<p>For colleges in the NE and Mid-Atlantic, expressed interest counts a lot for NJ kids because there are so many of them applying regionally OOS. I have known really excellent students who were waitlisted/rejected at places like Lehigh and Lafayette because they did not bother to visit. Showing the love can help.</p>
<p>Boy am I lucky. My daughter knew she wanted to go to school in NYC. Looked at NYU and Fordham. Loved Fordham. Only applied to Fordham, Early Action, got in. Done.</p>
<p>laxkid137’s comments really resonated with me, and that led me to realize something important about my family. My father and father-in-law were both university professors (now retired). laxkid has a parent who works in admissions at a top university. Families like laxkid’s and mine are very comfortable and familiar with campus environments. I tend to be a bit incredulous that people claim to get so much out of visiting a campus. They all have lecture halls, labs, libraries, dorms and dining halls, don’t they? Like laxkid, I figure that if you need to see what these places look like exactly, you can look at them online. Does anyone really prefer a college because it has Gothic versus Greek Revival versus 20th-century modern architecture? As for assessing the suitability of a college by whether or not the tour guide seems likeable … wow. I’m far more interested in information about courses of study, faculty, etc. - information that’s easier to glean from a website than a campus visit.</p>
<p>But … I spent my entire childhood with various campuses being my dad’s workplace. Evidently, families that don’t have a background like this, really feel they get something out of “kicking the tires.”</p>
<p>I agree that there’s no value in forcing a kid to schlep all over the country if she doesn’t want to. At the same time, there’s also no harm in taking a few trips if everyone is willing. I like to travel with my kid and she, mostly, likes to travel with me. The cows, the wind farms, the iPod wars, watching Law and Order reruns in the hotel room after the day’s activities: all fun for us.</p>
<p>Weatherga notes in post #49 above that all schools have “lecture halls, labs, libraries, dorms and dining halls.” Well, yeah, they do. Some are nicer than others. But, sure, after a few trips, they all start looking more or less the same. The physical layout of the campus is important to some people, though. Each to his own taste, yes? </p>
<p>But, just as important, for some kids (mine, for instance), a school’s location is a major factor. We had scheduled visits at a few schools that we cancelled upon arrival based on the “look and feel” of the surrounding town (or lack thereof). Arbitrary? Some might think so. I don’t. The qualification for getting on my D’s school list was good academics. So if she prefers good academics at a school where she wouldn’t have to take a shuttle bus to get a tube of ChapStick, so be it.</p>
<p>My kids are first gen college, although both of them were born at the teaching hospital of our local flagship university & when they were young, both H & I assumed they would just go there. Neither of them even applied.</p>
<p>I took my oldest to look at three regional schools, she looked at a few more with her high school class. She applied to three of the schools we toured together and we looked at them again after she was accepted.</p>
<p>Youngest had come along on several tours with her sister & we revisited a couple when she was a senior as well as adding two more. Im afraid we didn’t get a great fit for her as money was a prime consideration, but she eventually has made her school work for her.</p>
<p>While I hadn’t attended college, virtually all of my friends have, & several only set eyes on their campus when they were moving in, so I didn’t feel much pressure to have them visit a lot of schools even if we had the money & time.</p>
<p>As I see it, there are two stages to the process of visiting colleges. </p>
<p>The first stage – that weatherga described – is familiarization with the idea of college and the different types of college campus. But you don’t need to have a parent who works at a college to do this! We’ve always taken our kids to activities (lectures, concerts, plays, basketball games, Girl Scout events, STEM outreach programs, etc.) that take place on college campuses. As they got older, they attended various competitions (some HS-sponsored, and some related to their ECs) that took place at local campuses. My older D has attended several workshops (related to her EC) where she lived on-campus at different colleges for a week at a time during the summer. By the time they’ve gotten to the stage of thinking about what kind of college they’d like for themselves, they’re pretty familiar with the different “flavors” available.</p>
<p>The second stage is touring specific campuses to decide what kind of college experience fits the kid’s needs and wants. This stage is best left until the kid is ready. And also best done during the school year, when you can experience the “vibe” of the particular institution. As for how many – there is no right number that everyone needs to visit. Some kids just go to one place and it feels “right” and then they’re done. Others may need to see and compare lots of alternatives.</p>
<p>Visiting colleges is like speed dating. You can tell immediately whether you like a place. The feel of a campus cannot be determined by looking at its website and taking virtual tours. I have been surprised at some of the places my D did not like, even though they seemed like a great match based on black and white information.</p>
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<p>I am a professor myself and grew up in an academic family, and we all toured campuses and found it of value. YMMV. I found it professionally interesting to look at how other colleges represented and marketed themselves.</p>
<p>We “forced” our S to go on one tour because we knew the school would be a good fit, despite his negative feelings going into the tour, it is now his favorite “non-reach” school and will be his top choice if he doesn’t get into his reach schools (or they don’t give him enough money).</p>
<p>Living in South Texas, we were not bale to visit many schools for either of my boys. Most of the schools they were/are interested in are simply too far away and it would be burdensome to visit. We were able to visit our state schools like UT and A&M and am glad that we did. I think that if live in an area where you aer able to visit, then it can be a great way to help your child realize what they may or may not like in a college. </p>
<p>We told our sons to apply to 5-6 reaches, 4-5 matches and 2-3 safeties. When all of the decisions came in, oldest visited his top three choices (did not like top choice at all) and made his decision. Younger son is currently a senior in high school and in the process of having to decide on schools. Hopefully he will have some great schools to choose from. Good luck.</p>
<p>We visited many schools with S1 and S2. We did not always take the tour. We made appointments to talk to coaches and professors in the subject areas of interest. We attended music rehearsals and we able to meet some of the musicians. To arrange this is much more work that taking a tour but it really made the process efficient. So if you know what you are interested in, focus on that. You will get the sense of the school even without taking the tour. We also visited some schools where they did not want to get out of the car. The best thing for us was when we are visiting one school for a second time and S says ‘gee do we have time to see other nearby school today also?’ That was fun for us to hear because we knew he was really starting to think about his options.
H and I loved visiting colleges - we had a great time and enjoyed the time spent with our sons.</p>
<p>laxkid and midwestmom, thank you both for your comments, which I found very helpful. I will take it to heart and not push S2 who is currently a sophomore and only tolerates limited college discussion. “Mom! I’m just a sophomore!!!” I think all the college mailers/invitations after his PSAT put me into some type of hyperdrive. ((deep breath. exhale.)) I probably need to give it a rest until next spring break.</p>
<p>We too are an academic family, so college campuses were not new to us. Yet, the college tour process was a huge growth process for my DD. We ended up visiting 19 schools, in part because she switched focus from academic to conservatory to academic with performance. And the irony is that she ended up attending the one school that we couldn’t visit because she came down with the flu.</p>
<p>Not sure if this has been mentioned (I haven’t read the entire thread). But, be sure to do interviews (local or Skype) for the schools far away, that need to be shown love. It is also a great way to get a feel for the place.</p>
<p>We visited 12. For four schools, too far to visit, DS interviewed without being on campus.</p>
<p>We found the visits to be invaluable. What a wonderful process, watching DS decide what was important to him, what he was willing to compromise and what he was NOT willing to compromise. He knew immediately which schools were a good fit - those schools (or interviews) put a skip in his step.</p>
<p>It is quite likely that DS won’t even go to his fave schools if he doesn’t get enough merit, so visits to those safeties are even more important!</p>