We can not afford tours or visits to colleges/universities any distance away. Does anyone know of ways to afford to tour schools? Or is it possible to just wait and visit if accepted to a school? (Which honestly would still be difficult if not impossible to afford.)
Thanks.
It’s OK not to tour. Really, it is. Although if you read only this forum you’d get the impression that everybody tours 15 colleges to find the absolute best fit, that’s not the reality for many students. Luckily, there’s a lot of information out there especially for people with internet access. You can research colleges using the college’s own websites, guides in the library - Fiske is a favorite of many - and also see hours of official and amateur videos describing life at colleges on YouTube.
While it’s a nice luxury to be able to visit, even visits are subject to random events that sometimes give a person a mistaken impression of the college. Maybe it was sleeting the day of the tour, maybe the tour guide was sick so was uncharacteristically rude, maybe you were sick so felt awful during the tour, etc. So even a visit isn’t necessarily the be all, end all way to get to know a college.
Do your best to research from where you are. When admissions results come in, if there are colleges that admit you, contact them about subsidized visits.
You can totally wait until you’re accepted to visit a school. Both of my kids did junior year trips to figure out what kinds of schools they liked and then visited their top choice schools once accepted - both of them ended up choosing schools they’d never seen before applying.
But one thing to think about - if you can’t afford to visit a school next year once accepted… how will you afford to get there and back for summer, winter break, spring break, Thanksgiving, etc? Not all schools keep dorms open during school breaks. People really underestimate the expense of getting to and from school and it should totally be part of the “affordability” calculation. If finances are an issue I would prioritize looking at schools that are driving distance away from home or in a location that has cheap flights from your home’s closest major airport. That will help both with affording visits and over the years of college.
Many schools have flyovers and will fly/bus you out to see a school. Talk to your counselor as soon as you can to find out more. But you can always start whatever is local to you just to check on size of school and feel. We are lucky in Chicago since many different types of schools are realitivly close. Many amtrack trains stop right on campuses and there are inexpensive bus companies to look into.
But do your best online. This is why there are so many online tours per se. You tube and the like helps also. Also the ideas above.
We’ve been fortunate that many schools we’ve looked at are easy day trips. However, one school is 7.5 hours away and we are visiting it this week. We waited to find out if my D got accepted and she did and it will most likely come down to this school or the instate option if she get’s in. She’s pretty much ruled out the others we’ve visited.
Prior to any visits we did most of our looking online. We did the virtual tours if there was one and if not then we also looked for YouTube video’s. There are all sorts of kids out there vlogging about their campus, dorm, etc. Honestly, I think you get a better look from the vloggers and what they post.
For several of our visits with my older D we would incorporate a stop if we happened to be in the area. We did UGA because we happened to be visiting family in Atlanta. We did Penn State because we had a family event and were driving through the area. All other visits were planned and my younger D was with us so for her current search we’ve limited the visits since several schools she had already seen and they aren’t high on her list.