<p>I think this question could be helpful to parents of juniors.</p>
<p>how many un-officials and officials did you go on?</p>
<p>my D went on zero unofficials and 3 officials. her coach advised 3 maybe four visits, he said be more selective and focused from the get go, it'll result in a BETTER recruiting experience. </p>
<p>I know there are some kids who just don't know where they want to go (or what's out there) so they probably need to check out a lot of schools. But don't most of our athletes have a short list of 3 or 4 teams/schools and most ended up at one of those 3 or 4.</p>
<p>My daughter is going on at least 8 unofficials. She has a short list of 3 schools, but that could change. She will most likely take only 1 or 2 officials, if any, due to time constraints in the fall. She is captain of a fall sport and cannot afford to be away after Oct. 1st.</p>
<p>There are several reasons my daughter is going on so many unofficial visits. Number one is she wants to go to schools that are 1500 miles away from home. I know several students who went away to schools they had never visited and ended up back home after the first semester or year. I want my daughter to get a feel for the different types of colleges, different environments and really have a good idea of what feels right to her before we narrow our focus. The academic fit and location are most important to her and she will be sitting in on classes at most of her visits. </p>
<p>Secondly, she wants to have the opportunity to observe prospective coaches and teams interactions. She wants to have face to face meetings to gauge her gut reaction to each coach and program. She will be spending 4 years with these people, it is important to her to find a place where she will feel at home.</p>
<p>And third, as parents, we want her to have the experience of visiting many of the fine colleges and universities our country has to offer. I realize not everyone will think this is important, but I think it will be a wonderful experience for her and will be an asset to her in the future. Many of here friends are applying to colleges sight unseen and only visiting when they are accepted. So different strokes for different folks!</p>
<p>For us there were three categories: pre-unofficials, unofficials and officials.</p>
<p>Pre-unofficals: prior to junior year, when we happened to be on a campus for a camp (academic and sports) or competition, passing through on vacation, or visiting a friend/current student. She probably visited 10 campuses in that way. They were all in the western states, the “home” side of the country.</p>
<p>Unofficials: during junior year. one in the fall, close to home, and then a crazy, whirlwind trip to the northeast (thousands of miles from home) during spring break to decide if it was possible for her to make a match there, and if she even liked the feel of those campuses. She wanted to find out if the kids were “her people”, if the travel was something she could live with, and so on. I’m sort of embarrassed to admit that in seven days we visited Brown, Tufts, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Amherst and Dartmouth, in that order. By the end of the week, there was no turning back. She had decided to try and match in New England.</p>
<p>Officials: 2 from the list above. She was offered more, but she’s in a fall sport, and the logistics of travel made it impossible. In retrospect, the unoffical trip was key to making the official visit list short. Tempting as it was to take more trips, her high school team was in position to take a state championship and she was captain. She felt such gratitude to her HS coach, and loyalty to her team that she absolutely refused to jeopardize the team’s chances for state by being gone. I’m not saying this to brag, but to say if your kid is also like this, it may be harder for them to leave for very many weekends during the final year of high school. </p>
<p>(fishymom, your D sounds like mine…and your plan sounds good to me.)</p>
<p>river, that’s a better question: what’s the “key” to making the official visit list short?</p>
<p>for my d, the right feel or fit with the college coaches she had met or watched her sophomore year…that set up the 3 official visit comfort level for her. and by chance those three coaches where at three very different institutions from a community, weather and region of country standpoint. Had they all 3 been in the same area maybe the list would have been larger.</p>
<p>so the “key” for her was the three coaches she liked, but not all equal, the one she liked the most was her dream school.</p>
<p>to throw it out there again, I think the coach is the key!</p>
<p>I feel bad because, financially, we are not in a position to do any sort of “whirlwind tour of schools” with my junior son. We’ve done many “pre-unofficials”, probably at least 20 over the past couple of years, visiting schools wherever gymnastics of soccer took us. We’ve done two formal unofficials so far and will hopefully be able to do two or three more before the summer. My son is in Florida right now visiting his older brother and I am encouraging him to try to get to a couple of schools while he is there (but he does not consider this a “vacation” type of activity).</p>
<p>Before deciding to apply ED II to his top choice, a NESCAC school, S did overnights with the teams at 3 DIII schools during the fall of senior year. He plays a fall sport and his HS is very demanding, so fitting visits in was not easy. Also, his club team did a last round of college showcases 4 weekends in a row mid-Nov. to mid-Dec. (only one day snowed out!), so S put off a few others he’d been invited for to see if he got into his ED II school. He did, so he never did more than the three.</p>
<p>Definitely a good experience, as were the tours/visits to around 20 schools before he narrowed his choices.</p>
<p>Now for us, my S visited 5 schools unofficial as a sophomore-his brother was a junior and I was trying to be efficient-and this was very unofficial-no coaches involved. He ruled out 3 of those schools.(MIT, Harvard, Dartmouth)
He contacted 3 coaches after he took his ACT junior year, and all 3 asked him to come visit unofficially(D3).(Amherst, Williams, CMU) We went over break and those coaches all invited him for official visits in the Fall. He contacted 4 other coaches in late August just before his Senior year, and those coaches all invited him for official visits.(Midd, Carleton, Macalaster, St Olaf)
He went on 6 official visits and canceled the 7th.(CMU) He was tired, and decided he had his top 6 schools, and that would be enough.
He applied ED to one of his top 2 choices-the one where the coach was the most positive about his admission chances-(Midd)-and he got in. He contacted the other coaches by email and thanked them for their interest. 3 of them contacted him back, and asked him to let them know “If things don’t work out”(Carleton, MacAlaster, St. Olaf)</p>
<p>He is in public school in upstate NY and the only coaches who come looking for us are SUNY.</p>
<p>He doesn’t have the patience, and I don’t have the time to physically visit so many places as some other parents. You can do so much on line nowadays, I think you know your kid and your own family, and you don’t have to have so many choices to do well, if that is your personality.He did better not being driven, and it all worked out.On the other hand, we weren’t looking for non-need scholarships, because he wasn’t interested in D1. He also was only interested in the NE, and the twin cities area, so he had narrowed down the possibilities that way early on.</p>
<p>S did 5 officials on the opposite coast in six weeks in September/early October of his Sr. year, one unofficial in our home state in mid-October. Done.</p>
<p>keylyme, I hope you don’t feel you’re letting your son down by not running him all over the US. The fact that he’s visited so many schools over the years will serve him well. At least he has a good basis of comparison- school X is the same size as Y, but more selective than Z, and more rural than W. Kids who have never visited can’t begin to have this conversation. </p>
<p>Officials will be footed by the hosting school, of course, and once admitted, many schools have admitted student events. Often, if the student qualifies, these events are also possible to attend with the help of travel vouchers from the school. I can’t tell you how much I respect families who go through the admissions process with their eyes wide open about the financial aspects. This saves heart-break in the long run.</p>
<p>Obviously CC is a great place to come for specific info about schools- ask away, if any of the schools we visited are of interest.</p>
<p>One other thought- some of my daughters’ friends have joined together for college visit tours- one parent and several kids making the road trip. Cost is much lower because they can share the ground and hotel expenses. I’ve done this with friends’ kids, and the advantage to me is I get to evesdrop on the deconstruction of some of America’s finest academic institutions by picky 16-year-olds. I highly recommend it.</p>
<p>Riverrunner, had to respond to this sentence you wrote: “the advantage to me is I get to eavesdrop on the deconstruction of some of America’s finest academic institutions by picky 16-year-olds. I highly recommend it.” Reminded me of hearing 2 of those picky 16 year old athletes critiquing Harvard - they thought the buildings looked “way too OLD” for them!</p>
<p>We did lots of unofficial, unofficial visits, then 3 officials. I agree that it was very difficult to fit in the officials during athletic season in fall of senior year. If I were to do it again with another child, I’d probably cast a wider net earlier - we somewhat underestimated how competitive S might be to DI schools (he was a late bloomer) and ended up having to say no to some offers of official visits without ever having seen the schools at all. I would have preferred it if S had seen the school before and was making a more informed decision to say no to the official. Happily though, I don’t think S has ever engaged in any of my second guessing!</p>
<p>Does the # of officials vary from sport to sport ? I thought the NCAA caps that process.
As for unofficials–don’t know how to classify college visits vs unofficals…</p>
<p>fogfog, as far as I know, athletes are limited to making 5 true official visits paid for by DI schools, regardless of sport. </p>
<p>On what I would label as unofficial visits, we met with coaches in addition to doing the typical college visit stuff. On some earlier college visits during trips, etc., we didn’t have any contact with coaches and really didn’t pursue the sports issue. So I’d consider unofficial visits those in which you’re checking out the sport as well as the academics at the school, but it’s not an official visit paid for by the institution. Often on an unofficial visit, the athlete may be there at the invitation of the coach and may even stay in the dorms with an athlete on the team, but the school can’t or isn’t paying for the visit. So all visits to D3 schools are truly unofficial since they can’t pay for visits. Others may have other ideas -</p>
<p>fogfog, the limit is 5 officials. The college coaches must report the visits to NCAA. Hopefully OldbatesieDoc will clarify. Maybe the visits were made during senior year, but were really unofficials because there was no expense involved? </p>
<p>It’s splitting hairs to differentiate between pre-unofficials and unofficials- I started it, I know… on the pre-unofficials, we did not meet with coaches, just visited the campuses.</p>
<p>runner is right, “paid” means it’s an official. not to mention the coach will use that language, “we’d like to have you out for an official”…then the plane ticket shows up in your inbox:) </p>
<p>My d did 3 officials, and two of them required airplane rides and big cities, it was a really positive experience for her to be “wined and dined” so to speak, by top schools…a huge boost to her self esteem, as if it wasn’t healthy enough already:)</p>
<p>In my opinion an unofficial visit is one where you’re invited by the coach, or the coach extended some sort of open invitation for you to come sometime. </p>
<p>If you just show up, and then ask to see the coach it seems more like a normal school visit. Or I guess a “pre-unofficial”</p>
<p>I’m certainly not advocating dropping in on coaches. My “source” says coaches can find themselves conveniently too busy to meet with drop ins or unofficials they have no interest in.</p>
<p>I took 5 officials and no unofficials. The fall is pretty open for my sport so I was able to do them all in about a month. Agree with pacheight that the officials are a little too kind to the ego.</p>
<p>Junior year DS did nine unofficials: HYPS, Penn, Duke, Brown, Columbia, and Haverford. This was enough for him to know where he wanted to go, so he made his decision over the summer. All that was necessary once that decision was made was to prepare his application and a backup strategy in case he didn’t received a likely letter. Once he got his LL, his backup plan was super simple - online no essay app to State flagship.</p>
<p>Senior year he took one official, to his 1st choice, to get to know the team, sample the social life, and confirm his decision.</p>
<p>I strongly advocate junior year unofficial visits. They give student-athletes a huge headstart on the process.</p>