My junior S and I will be touring 8 colleges in the next 2 months. Some of tours are just look arounds (the two large state schools) but some are personalized for him and include interviews (1 in state and 5 out of state small LACs.) S has a good SAT but a B average (on the upswing) and I feel that making the right impression will be a great benefit at the small schools. Tips on what to expect and how to get the most out of these trips? I am using precious vacation time and spending a tidy sum to make this happen so I want to maximize the value.
Try to see if there are open house dates when you plan on going. These often include more than just a tour. One of them I went to lasted all day and allowed us to sit in on a class.
We’ve done lots of these trips in recent years and have made lots of good memories. Here are a couple of tips:
–It helps if someone–preferably the student–keeps a journal to record thoughts about a school and the local community. What were positives, what were negatives. What questions arise from the visit? We found this helpful. It was helpful to include names of those doing the info session presentation and the tour guide, with a brief description, i.e. bio/psych major who sings opera. That can jog memories later. Also, my youngest was asked the name of the tour guide at their #1 choice when they went back a few months later for an interview. We liked to include fun/funny stories. They really jog the memory. And these journal entries might be fun to look back on in the future.
–Don’t try to do too much. Two schools in a day is a lot. Four in four days is a lot. Things start to run together. If at all possible, try to work in a day off in the middle, say two days of tours, a day off, two more days of tours. It’s a nice way to make it a trip and not work.
–Try to get a meal at whatever restaurant/shopping area where students go. It’s nice to see that, and the local community can be an important part of the college experience. It is the place where a student will live for four years.
–I always found it helpful to personalize questions to tour guides. So, not what do students like to do on the weekend and not where do students like to hangout. Instead,what do you like to do on weekends, where do you like to hang out. What do you think the school does great? What do you think it can do better? Is there any time or place you don’t feel safe here? Have you been able to get into all the classes you wanted? Who’s been your favorite prof? I find that they are more forthcoming when thinking of it in personal terms.
–Have fun! We really enjoyed getting to know regions and communities where we’d never been. For example, at the University of Wisconsin, we took a boat ride on one of the lakes adjacent to Madison and went over and visited Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin. We are not from the Midwest so that was fun to do.
We always asked (ahead) if our kid could sit in on a class. Also, we usually tried to eat lunch in a cafeteria on campus (better feeling for the school than restaurants). Often the admissions office will give your kid a ticket to eat free, but as parents we usually had to pay.
Take a little time after the tour to walk around campus on your own. For example, one of my kids was considering a visual arts minor. Tours don’t usually hit the art building, so we would go look for it ourselves, and go in to look at the exhibited art if possible.
Info sessions aren’t very useful. You’ve seen one, you’ve seen 'em all.
Try to determine ahead of time if the interview is just informational, or is evaluative (will they judge him a part of admissions criteria)? He should review some practice questions if any are evaluative.
Run net price calculator on each school website before visiting. If you can’t afford it, don’t visit. Be sure you visit mostly schools where he seems to be a match or safety. You can’t make a 3.0 into a 3.7 no matter how well he interviews. Be realistic – some people visit mostly reaches, which is a mistake. Time should be spent mostly finding matches and safeties, since a kid is much more likely to end up there.
Go on your own walk and stop to ask people questions. More candid responses will be had. A sense of pride in the school (or not) should be apparent. One school, we stumbled on an open house bbq, not intended for prospective students, they let us join in. Met lots of faculty and students who were helpful and friendly. Walked i to labs where people seems to be on a break from their work, and asked if they wouldn’t mind amswering questions. Spoke to profs we met in an elevator convo.
There is lots to be learned beyond canned marketing pitches, and if people are not so helpful, maybe that should eliminate a school?
We also spent a bit on college visits, including two round trip airplane flights, many car miles and many nights in hotels. I think that it was money well spent. Both daughters ended up at schools that were a good fit for them. There is a lot of good advice in the comments above. Talking with students and professors and sitting in on classes were quite useful.
We refused to visit one unaffordable school that was 2000 miles away. Mom and I were thrilled when it turned out to be the only school that a daughter didn’t get accepted to. We never admitted this to DD.
Both daughters visited their top choices at least twice, once before applying and again after being accepted. After the student is accepted the visit has an additional sense of reality. Assuming the offer is affordable, the student knows that they really can go here if they decide that they want to.
Keeping a journal or taking photos is a good idea. The tours do start to run together after a while.
Pick up a school paper if you see one on campus (or look for it online). A very informative look at the school not covered in marketing brochures!
I agree to find the school paper and read it. You can often find out controversies and/or issues that student are discussing. Be sure to read bulletin boards/posters…again will find the “real deal”. Try Googling the school name with the word “blog.” Sometimes you can find a student and/or alumni blog that is not official to the school. Can be very telling. Also, Google the school and read student reviews. All of the information sessions and tours will begin to feel similar. It’s the digging deeper where you find out the information the school isn’t advertising.
Consider your goals in the visit: (1) go deeply in understanding whether the school is a good fit for student, or (2) make a strong impression with Admissions (often, it is both!) For the former, you can schedule meetings and tours with departments/programs of interest, for instance, during our LAC visits, we usually contacted the music and art department administrative staff several weeks in advance to see if we could tour music and arts facilities during our visit, which often turned into a one-on-one with a faculty member. Many schools allow juniors to sit in on classes, some will simply provide you with a list of classes available that day, when you visit, others will advise you how to coordinate in advance with professor on your own. Admissions website will usually identify how to set those up. Check campus calendars to see if there are sports events, music performances, or art shows (or other events of interest) that you could attend – that can be a window onto campus culture.
In terms of showcasing a student’s strengths, interviews can show off a student’s contributions beyond the stats though do confirm that the schools you are visiting conduct interviews for juniors, as some schools do not do them until May.
Agree with the advice not to overdo it – our spring break trip of 4 schools in 4 days was the stuff of memories, but the last school really did not get a fair shake as we were just tired of being in the car. Granted, we had 4-6 hour drives between schools, so there was pressure to move on, and that did tire us out. Another spring break trip, with 3 schools in 2 days, when the schools were only about an hour apart from each other, was much less exhausting and we were much less cranky.
If I learned one thing from two kids and their college trips, it is that, if they say they are ready to leave – leave. Don’t encourage one last trip to the bookstore for memorabilia, or to a department or building you didn’t see yet. Just get in the car, and leave. We had some doozie of heated “conversations” in the parking lots of Admissions offices!
On the plus side, since these were always solo parent trips, there were great conversations on the road when it was just two of us.
A few thing to do would be:
Go prepared – Go through the college website to get a sense of things like academics offered, the types of dorms, the size of the school etc. If you guys can get your hands on a good college guide book (ex. Fiske, Princeton Review) which may be available at the guidance office or library read up on the school as well. Some colleges have the newspapers online as well.
Ask questions – that can’t be answered by looking through the website. Before visits think about what is important in the college experience.
Prepare for interviews – not a ton, but your S should have reasons why he thinks he is a good fit for the college and have a couple of questions specific to the college.
Keep a record - We bought a plastic bin and kept a folder for each college. Kept the materials we got from each school and we’d each write a few notes about things we liked/didn’t like about the school down on paper which we put in as well. If a school was taken out of the mix we’d toss that file.
Your S’s opinion is important - We would never give our opinion of a college until our child let us know his/her opinion. We didn’t want them to feel they had to change an opinion to please us.
Take time to enjoy – This may be the last big roadtrip you will take with your child. While I toured colleges, I learned so much about each of my two kids – what is important to them, how their thought process works etc. Take time to enjoy some meals together while you are away. Appreciate the young man your S is becoming.
What I do is seriously “people watch” when we visit schools. I think that’s super important. You want to get a feel for the students and whether your child could fit in with them. I look to see whether students are hanging in groups, if they look relaxed or stressed, if they smile, I look at how they dress: is everyone wearing workout clothes, do kids dress in a lowkey way, is it a fashion show, does everyone dress the same or do people show individuality…
Then, I really look closely at the student unions and the dining halls. Are there comfortable places to sit, is there a lot of life and energy, does the food look appetizing…
My husband and daughter look at other things and ask questions.
You can learn about the academics online, but it helps to see the school in action to understand the vibe.
Oh, I forgot two important things: Take detailed notes and pics of the campus. Colleges start to blend together when you’re seeing a lot. GL
This may or may not apply to your situation. S is a business student (finance). Ahead of attending generic info session and tour, we reached out to Dean of Business School, Career Services, etc. With few exceptions, they were very helpful and set up an informational meeting with who they felt was most appropriate. So the regular stuff was great, but the one -on-one meeting within the biz school was awesome. Really gave S insight into resources, focus, company recruiting, a breakdown of the four yrs (you’ll do this freshmen yr, then that sophomore yr, etc.). Also gave him a sense of “tone”. What are these people really like. Are you just a number or do they really care. Very telling.
Good practice for your kid to have an adult like conversation with a serious adult (about something important), write a thank you letter, etc.
Agreed that eating in a residential dining hall is a great move.
If you are feeling brave, crash a table of students. “Hey, we’re visitors, can we join you?” I’ve never been refused, and some of the best conversations of my career happened as a result.
This is especially effective at small LACs. I learned so much at the table from kids at Landmark, St. John’s, and Wabash College. At Western Michigan University, I ended up chatting with a sophomore who was working the stir-fry station.
At the University of Richmond, I sat down with a student who turned out to be a delightful – tour guide! So much for getting a perspective from a student not chosen by admissions. She was sweet and knowledgeable, though.
Re: school paper
There may be multiple competing papers at the school, often of different political viewpoints. Do not assume that the first paper you pick up is the “mainstream” one at the campus.
Even at the large state colleges you can set up appointments with the department you are interested in. My son loved the land-grant universities with vet schools and at every one we were able to meet with the pre-vet coordinator and also tour the vet school. We also set up meetings with the study abroad office and the department he was interested in. Those were all the best parts of the visits. He sat in a class after he was admitted on a one-on-one tour set up for his major. (He loved it and that is were he is now.)
Look at places that students study. They show you the big library but sometimes there is a nice satellite library that is open later.
Many good tips already in this thread. We did 18 college visits and by the end rarely went to the info sessions. My dd found it most useful to:
-sit in student union with her own homework, book for at least an hour to get feel and see who comes and goes
-meet with either or often both a faculty member and the advisor for her major.
If I am honest those were the two most important things we did for her and most schools were made or broken on those two activities each time.
Other things we regularly did and found helpful - my son needed more of these to know what he liked
-Eat in the dorm cafeteria
-Visit honors lounges/buildings
-If you take tour encourage your kid to go to the front and you as parent bring up the rear. I actually think it should be a rule on tours - kids up front, parents in back.
-Walk the floors of the library and the building/department she would spend the most time in
-Read school newspaper
-Pay a lot of attention to bulletin boards. My dd is an activist and was able to tell a lot about the level of activism
-Talk to random students - one girl told us most students were miserable here and wanted to leave and she only came because it was the only school she got into.
-Walk campus the way your child might - path from dorms to main class building, rec center, library, whatever important to them.
-If offered, take the campus bus system to see how that feels we also saw very interesting ads that were telling about the university on the buses
-Often I would let my kids do separate things from me - so they may go to the department visits and I would walk and check out something else that wanted to know about but didn’t feel they needed to see or we had time to see/do.
-Have a code word to LEAVE - sometimes it just becomes so clear and there is no need to stay. We always had a sentence they could say and we would just leave no questions asked until we were in the car.
After the visit to campus
-Eat dinner in a pub nearby - get a laid back feel for the student body
-Walk or drive the town and surrounding community
-Keep notes - we created a Google spreadsheet with the same criteria for each school and I always had the kids drive after the visit and ask the questions and write the answers. Because they were driving they had nothing better to do and were more willing to give longer answers because I was doing the recording. It also allowed us to put the school completely behind us and then just enjoy the rest of the trip each time.
*****A note about interviews and meetings with professors and advisors. About 90% of the time I encouraged or sometimes made my kid do these alone. We found admissions and professors very surprised I was not coming into the meetings. My response was always - it is their future - they need to know if it is what they want or not and they know what they are looking for, not me. I could tell this was not the norm but it worked very well for us and I think it made my daughter and son more memorable. Unless I was required to stay or it was about financial aid/scholarship/money issues I was not present. I got a lot of reading and knitting done 