It’s not necessarily imperative to visit every school on your list – particularly when there are dozens. https://www.collegeconfidential.com/articles/should-i-visit-all-22-colleges-on-my-list-before-applying/
It’s not imperative for a lot of kids. My D personally knows three kids at her college who never set foot on campus until move-in day. Of course, it’s good to visit if you can.
I think most students can visit a college after they are accepted. No need to visit all. Eliminate all but the top two
choices, if possible. Makes life easier.
I attended graduate school at Cal Poly SLO without ever visiting the campus. It’s a great town and school, so everything worked out great.
However, I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone. I’m touring schools now with my D whenever we pass by one on vacation, weekend trip, or some other reason to be in the area. I found that just walking around campus for 20 minutes on my own gives me much more info than hours of research. Some schools are pleasant surprises, while other schools are fuggedaboutits. Anyhow, my advice is to see the school before applying (unless its a “reach”), so you can determine if its a place that you want to live for the next 4 years. If it is a “reach” wait to see if you get in first. (No reason to waste your time)
There’s only one reason anyone would apply to 22 colleges, and that’s because most of them are reaches.
@circuitrider Agreed. It’s better to apply less schools that are “fitter”.
College visits are a complicated question. We live overseas so had to think really carefully about this given the time and expense involved. College visits can be useful in several different ways. They can help kids identify broadly what kinds of schools they may be interested in and they can help kids identify specific schools they may want to apply to. We did college tours in the spring of both our S’s junior and senior years. Even before that, we signed him up for summer sports camps at a couple of universities (Cornell, Berkeley and UCLA) so he could get a general idea regarding what a US college is. He loved his sports camps but didn’t like any of the large host universities, so that was one piece of useful information. Based on this, last year, on our first tour, we concentrated on LACs. We covered a lot of different types of schools - D3, D1 (Rice and Davidson), “normal” curriculum and block program (Colorado College), different geographic areas. From that trip, we (S) learned a lot. S realized he did not want to make a D1-level commitment to his sport, he realized the block program was not a good fit for him nor matter how beautiful Colorado College is, and he realized he would not be comfortable in a very politically-focused environment like Pitzer. So this year, when he came up with his final list (his school limits the kids to 10 applications, which provided some useful discipline), we focused on D3 schools with a fairly traditional curriculum and a balanced and inclusive political/cultural environment. He applied to five schools we’d visited and five schools we hadn’t. The trip we just completed last month focused on three of the six schools where he’s been accepted, including one we saw last year and two that we added this year. His top choice at this moment is a school we added this year based on what we learned from last year’s visits. So for us it’s been worth it, although it was a big investment by the family.
Another issue that comes up here all the time is what to do on college visits. In our case, we focused on the information sessions and tours and added in conversations with coaches and admissions officers. We also tried to stay nearby the schools so we could get a sense of the “neighborhood.” We attended only one admitted student event, as most of those occur in April, when our S is back in school. Our S did not want to do overnight stays or attend classes, and we did not push him to do this, as it seems like these things may go well or badly based on the luck of the draw and may have an outsized impact. Kids access information in different ways - our S is finding the Face Book pages for admitted students and specialty sports groups to be very helpful in getting a sense where he would be most comfortable.
Sorry this has become a treatise, but responding to the specific question asked, trying to visit 22 schools seems extreme and would probably be more exhausting and confusing than helpful. Maybe this kid could try to identify a more limited selection of schools from the list that both reflect her best guess as to “favorites” and include diverse characteristics that may help her pin down what types of schools might provide the best fit.
In this era of small margins, not visiting a college that is relatively close to your home could leave you without a check mark in the demonstrated interest box.
It was very difficult for our family to find time to visit colleges when the colleges were in session. If you are involved in ECs and taking a challenging course load, missing school to visit colleges is tough. Our district also has very strict attendance rules. My son found visiting schools during breaks not nearly as helpful as seeing a college with classes in session.
You definitely get a different feel depending when you visit. I’ve seen the same college look drab and unappealing on an overcast day during spring break look vibrant and exciting and ‘hell why would I look anywhere else’ on a sunny day during classes.
@tkoparent, I appreciated your detailed post. It did leave me wondering about something. I may be naïve, but I was surprised to read: “So this year, when he came up with his final list (his school limits the kids to 10 applications, which provided some useful discipline)…” How does his high school limit its students’ applications? Does the Common Application count as one application? How about, for example, the Universities of California… would that be one application? I’m really surprised that a school would limit a student’s real-life options for life after graduation. But, this may be common and I may just be out of the loop about it.
To be clear, I’m not saying that self-limiting one’s applications to 10 is a bad idea. I absolutely understand the institutional demand when a student applies to a dozen or more schools. But I sure don’t love the idea of a high school making such an important decision on a child’s/family’s behalf. Perhaps I’m the only one who feels this way. Does the school receive any negative feedback about this limitation? Are there exceptions?
@CardinalBobcat, the school limits the applications by declining to provide recommendations and transcripts for more than the permitted maximum. The Common App does not count as one application, but the UC schools do, as do the UCAS (UK) schools. My S attends an international school in Asia where probably more than half the students are planning to attend schools in the UK or elsewhere in Europe, so I think it’s a one-off policy arising from the school’s history. I was upset when I first heard about it during his junior year, but it worked out OK for us. I believe the idea is to try and keep the college application process from overwhelming the last two years of high school - it’s an all-IB school, so there is a great deal of work during the final two IB Diploma years. It is possible to request an exception, but I am not sure how easily the school grants those.
That’s very interesting, @tkoparent. Thank you for taking the time to provide this additional information.
@tkoparent I don’t mind your lengthy explanation at all. It’s very informative. I’ve never heard of a school limiting to 10 applications, but it makes sense. I think self-limiting to that sounds like a good idea. In our case, our DD is in 10th grade but will be overseas all next year, unable to travel back to the U.S. during that time. We will have to do what we can during the summer before her senior year. It won’t be ideal, because it’s quite possible that the school will not be in session, but perhaps we will only visit a few (they are all far from where we live) and then re-visit schools to which she was accepted. You’ve helped me think through our planning a bit more. Thanks.
Glad if it was helpful, saga9497 if your D is unable to visit schools before she applies, you just need to pay additional attention to showing demonstrated interest. At least in Asia, a lot of the US schools visit in the fall for college fairs and individual school visits. Our S participated in those and filled out the cards so the schools had a record. In some cases, the schools actually sent their admissions officers responsible for our geographic area, so he was able to stay in touch with them throughout the process. Interviews, including interviews with alumni in your area or self-interviews by video (although our S wasn’t going to do that, no way!), are another way of showing interest. We just kind of did whatever we could think of without becoming pesky.
@tkoparent It sounds like you are in Asia with your child attending a rigorous IB school - I’d probably make that choice, too, if I were living abroad on a permanent or semi-permanent basis.
I will elaborate a bit more on D’s situation. She’s been offered–and accepted–a scholarship from the US State Dept called YES Abroad. Program rules forbid non-program-related travel. She will be studying in India and living with a homestay family, attending an Indian public school (supposed to be the US equivalent of private schools)–alongside Indian students in whichever location she is assigned. Given that she won’t be at an international school, odds are next to zero that she’d get a visit from any college/university while there. She leaves last week of June and will return May 2020. It’s an amazing opportunity for her, a chance of a lifetime–and fits extremely well with her career goals. (I’m a nervous mom but I have to trust the structures in place to safe-guard her.)
Since her pre-departure orientation is in D.C., we’ll try and arrive a few days early in order to take that opportunity to visit some D.C. area schools that she might be interested in. (Geographically, we live quite far from the East Coast schools to which she wishes to apply. We’re in a West coast state, about a 2-hour drive from the nearest large metro area.)
Current plan is for her to spend the summer after she returns focusing on test prep and applications. Likely, we’ll have her take the SAT and SATIIs for the first time in August after doing some intensive prep work. We’ll have to schedule any additional college visits for that summer, too. I’m sort of pondering whether she should talk the SATIIs later, since she’ll have to take any/all AP classes that she wishes to take during her senior year. You’ve got me thinking about lots of things. Thank you!
We felt a lot of pressure to do the whole college tour thing prior to applying. What a bonding experience! You can talk compare notes with your parent friends! While we probably had the means, we are pragmatic people and didn’t think it was an automatic to spend time and $$ schlepping all over the state and beyond. Advice passed to us from a friend of a friend with 5 kids and a budget: tour schools your kid gets accepted to. There is SO much information on websites now (school sites and places like CC) that can provide data that can help in the school list process that just wasn’t available back in the day. We did drag D to a local small private and large state school in early fall of her senior year to kick-start the enthusiasm (college apps - oh, boy!) and to get a feel for campus size. She came up with a list of 10 (including the 2 she had toured), 2 OOS, with a mix of public and private and reasonable in terms of safety/match/reach (6 acceptances, 2 WL, 2 rejections). Once we heard back from all of the schools, we toured 2 other schools over spring break that were in the mix (mostly based on $$). She wound up going to the large state school she saw back in the fall because it was, in her words, the best school she got into. It was, and it has been a great experience for her so far.
If you want to do the pre-application touring because you have the time/budget/can roll it into other planned travel/etc., by all means, go for it. I’m just saying that it’s not a must in order for a good application list to be formulated. Some kids will step one foot onto a campus (literally) and declare they don’t want to go there (this is real). Some kids won’t even get out of the car because the campus/area smells like (insert objectionable smell here) (also real). Better to have that happen at one or two places vs. 5, or 10.
@circuitrider Sorry, wrong, but that isn’t the only reason to apply to 22 schools. Of the 19 my D applied to, 4 were reaches with only one being a “lottery” reach (admitted to one), 10 were matches (admitted to 5/waitlisted at 2), and 5 were safeties (admitted to all). There are many reasons to spread a wide net. But two top reasons are the need to chase merit money and the inability to estimate EFC because of various family income issues. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…had my D taken my advice and not applied to the school where she is currently attending, the overall difference in COA between that school and the next lowest priced is a total of nearly $40K. For some, $40K isn’t a big deal, for us, that would have meant deciding between large parent plus loans or community college. Instead she’ll graduate from a top 50 LAC.
If you pick a true safety, you don’t need to apply to 5.
@saga9497 That sounds like a fabulous opportunity! I checked and it looks as though there are a number of US college fairs in India, so maybe she can participate in one of those while she is there. The EducationUSA fairs are sponsored by the US government and it looks from this link as though they held fairs at a number of different locations in India last year, with 35 colleges participating: https://studyabroad.shiksha.com/educationusa-u-s-university-fair-2018-articlepage-1419. Maybe there will be one that is convenient for your D. You can also check https://educationusa.state.gov. (There are private fairs as well, but we didn’t participate in those.) The EducationUSA fair that was held in our city during the fall of S’s junior year was our starting point in the college search process, and it was very helpful to us. Even if your D is not especially interested in some of the schools that participate, the fairs are a great opportunity to gain experience in talking with admissions people, thinking about what issues might matter, etc. The fairs in India are no doubt geared towards Indian (i.e., international) students interested in studying in the US, but I am sure the folks manning the booths would be thrilled to meet your daughter.