<p>Another thing that DS did that probably helped him with his decision-making process was that he didn’t do all the tours. The first few schools we visited, and the ones we saw during the summer, he did, because he was not ready to go off on his own and explore just yet (soph year).</p>
<p>But since spring break junior year, he sends one of us to do the dog-and-pony show, and he goes off to check out the departments he likes, sit in on classes, and talk to profs, department advisors, etc. It’s been very interesting – people have been uniformly receptive to him and he gets a sense of how things operate without the makeup and bright lights.</p>
<p>It works because he is one of those highly focused, specialized kids who has known what he wants to do in one form or another since he was four years old. He also doesn’t give a hoot about dorms or food – he’s pretty low-maintenance that way. My younger son DS2 is much more of a generalist – he would want to go see many departments, plus the athletic coaches, plus the college MUN team, plus the kitchen facilities in the dorms. I think for him, the “bigger picture” of a college is a better marketing and decision-making tool for him, because he wants a variety of experiences and the quality of life is as important to him as the quality of program.</p>
<p>I expect that two years from now, I will be tossing everything I’ve learned with DS1 out the window as we embark on this adventure with DS2. But then again, that’s how it’s always been! :)</p>
<p>Actually, we did stay, and it turned out to be a pretty good day because we sat under a tree and talked about what she didn’t like (couldn’t express it) and what she liked about other schools we had visited. of course looking at the ocean was a perk for me (“well YOU should apply and be an art major and draw the water if you like it so much”). </p>
<p>Oh please understand we were getting out of that car, and i was getting lunch. lol - “we can go back now” oh sure we can. yeah right</p>
<p>Today is the official day the DS turns in his master’s project, but we really aren’t sure until he calls telling us that it’s done. Probably, it will need some polish on the paper. We are counted down to Zero, done, Finito! ((unless another degree is enticing him.))</p>
<p>Anyway, DS has been doing tours of colleges on his various trips; schools he didn’t attend, and also to schools/cities where his ugrad classmates are attending for their masters/phds or working.</p>
<p>This is an example of the tyranny of choice and affluence. I hate to sound like an old codger (I am 52) but doubt many of the parents on this board did college tour extravaganzas. I have been reluctant to do dedicated college tours. A couple side trips on family vacations. Fall football trips to the alma mater and so on. I guess I am fortunate to have raised boys who both admit they would make do and probably be happy wherever they end up.</p>
<p>No, I think the “I’m not getting out of the car” is a result of the tyranny of choice and affluence.</p>
<p>The tours themselves are a result of people realizing it’s a very important part of college decisions to actually visit the campus. I would never rule it out beforehand just because you didn’t do it - times were a bit different back then.</p>
<p>Also, it’s not a matter of just being happy, it’s a matter of being happiest.</p>
<p>maman…
It sounds like she didn’t like “the look” of the campus (first impression). For the rest of us who might find ourselves in a similar situation, maybe looking at an online virtual tour or campus webcam might avoided this.</p>
<p>I’m greatful to know that I’m not the only parent who had a kid who wouldn’t get out of the car. My S did that at UCSD. I knew he didn’t like “urban-esque” but water proximity was crucial in his selection and we were in the area looking north at a couple of schools using San Clemente has a home base since we have family there and I decided to take a spin down to San Diego. S says “I told you mom I’m not going to a college with roads going through the middle of it!” and would not get out of the car. There’s an info stand that was manned by a very nice man who heard the entire exchange. We quickly turned around and hightailed it back north. We were in Santa Fe a while back and I thought S number 2 might like College of Santa Fe. Nope, didn’t want to have anything to do with it, his reason is that he didn’t “care for” Santa Fe “all that much.” Jeesh, the things we do for these kids. I too am of the generation that barely remembers even visiting many colleges except for Homecoming weekends at my parents schools.</p>
<p>““I told you mom I’m not going to a college with roads going through the middle of it!””"</p>
<p>Gosh, of all the colleges we’ve visited, I think nearly all of them had at least one road going thru it. I know that many colleges are starting to close those streets or limiting them only to college trams.</p>
<p>But… I do know that if I had driven for hours and then my kid wouldn’t get out, I would have parked the car, told him that he can just sit there while I check out the school and/or relax (for an hour or two) in the campus Starbucks. It’s just plain disrespectful of the parent’s time to not at least get out and take a look (and make the best of it).</p>
<p>We just finished our last college tour. Since last spring we’ve visited 9 schools covering CA, OR, GA, and MA. LOL. My son certainly would NEVER have refused to get out of the car, because he knows those trips were a big sacrifice for our family. He tried very deliberately not to form snap opinions. There were two that he liked fine, but didn’t warm to especially – one he thought was too pre-professional feeling and the other… I’m not sure exactly why he wasn’t 100% about it. He pretty much loved everywhere else though. He did a lot of research before going, so he mostly hit only schools he knew he already had good reasons to be interested in.</p>
<p>What is interesting with him is that he likes to digest the visit for a day or two before really talking about it.</p>
<p>I really enjoyed the visits too. I wish my parents had been attentive enough to do even a little bit of that kind of thing with me. It’s been a delight and well worth the money to be able to do it for my son – my very appreciative son. Everytime he very sweetly thanks me for taking him.</p>
<p>I’m glad we’re done though. He has so many nice schools to apply to, I’m sure he’ll be really happy wherever he ends up going. I think he’s about set on one for an ED app, and another for an ED2 app should the first not work out. And then a little crop of RD possibilities to back that up if needed. Any one of them would be a wonderful college experience for him.</p>
<p>After a long plane trip, DD formed an opinion about McGill in less than fifteen minutes - something about people being rude in Montreal, and a parent who was also attending the tour telling everyone within earshot that he had gone to law school at the University of Michigan.
She also had an initial negative reaction to the school that she now attends when we visited - way too many tourists taking pictures, and the tour was very superficial. Ultimately, she went on an overnight visit and chose to attend the school.</p>
<p>I’m enjoying this thread. The college trip with son #1 was delightful, having him alone and all, and we were fortunate to have been tutored through expectations by many friends who already had been through the drill. For example, we didn’t want to be THOSE parents in the info sessions who used the Q&A session as an opportunity to talk about how brilliant their child was…etc. Our son was great, only seriously disappointed by the school he thought was his first choice, because the Fiske Guide said it had some of the best dorm rooms in the country. Ahhhhh, not so much. And thank goodness he adjusted his criteria! We could tell which (2) schools he liked, though, because they required a trip to the bookstore to buy a t-shirt. And, we’ll have another, very different, tour with son #2 in March.</p>
<p>When we did our whirlwind east coast tour, we tried to drive by/through/stop at as many colleges as possible, so I was thrilled when D said “too preppy, don’t bother to stop” at Amherst. We left halfway through the admissions presentation at Vassar (she wrote “I hate this guy, he’s a jerk” on her hand as the adcom was speaking). We spent hours at Bard, Swarthmore, and Haverford, though.</p>
<p>DS #1 pulled the “I’m not getting out of the car!” on our Massachussetts/Boston trip. The first school we looked at was Northeastern and we spent HOURS with the Dean of the Engineering School/School of Technology. I think DS was so overwhelmed and disappointed that when we went to Wooster Polytech he just said “NO WAY!” It was -17 degrees with the wind chill at Wooster that day and DS only had his sweat jacket with him! DH gave in and we just drove home in total silence!! I don’t think he was being disrespectful, I think he was just reacting to the overwhelming emotions he was feeling!! Well we made 3 more “regional” trips which went a lot smoother and when he set foot on the school he is now attending, he just looked at us and said, “This is it!” Went home and applied ED!!</p>
<p>It’s one thing to not get out of the car when the stop is just one of many on a whirlwind trip of many colleges, but it’s another if the long drive has been exclusively for that destination. On the way to Clemson, we stopped by U of Georgia - not much out of our way - son wasn’t too impressed - but we drove around campus and went into the “visitor’s center.” Since we were on our way to Clemson anyway, the 30 minute “mini visit” to U of G was not a problem.</p>
<p>For that reason it just seems that this situation might be avoidable by at least visiting the school’s website and looking at it’s “virtual tour” and/or “campus webcam” - which many schools have.</p>
<p>I do know that sometimes it makes a HUGE difference to know ahead of time which is the “prettiest” way to enter a campus. Many campuses only have one or two “good sides” and one or two "less impressive sides. Therefore, if you enter from a “less impressive side” an otherwise “good school” may not get a fair chance. It also helps to know (ahead of time) where the “off campus hang outs” are and drive by those, too. Often they are “bunched together” on cute streets.</p>
<p>“I do know that sometimes it makes a HUGE difference to know ahead of time which is the “prettiest” way to enter a campus.”</p>
<p>Very true. This is particularly true if the neighborhood surrounding the school isn’t the greatest. My daughter still teases me about the way we landed in one college town at night and I cheerfully suggested driving around to get a look-see, with no idea that certain streets were best not driven at night. That was almost the end of that school. They say that, other than Paris, most towns should not be viewed for the first time at night.</p>
<p>I’m curious – how many have kids who had an immediately negative first impression of a school (for whatever reason), yet eventually applied to, or even attended the school?</p>
<p>I don’t think most people overcome negative first impressions very easily, so if my kid wouldn’t get out of the car, I would give it up as a lost cause.</p>
<p>A negative reaction to a school, maybe especially the very first impression, is as valid as a positive one. It happened to us as well. D wouldn’t get out of the car as we pulled up to the admissions office. Actually, she did, to use the ladies’ room. But we didn’t go to the info session or the tour despite a reservation. I felt that her reaction was totally fine. Of course, it was during a longer tour of four other schools, so it was not logistically a nightmare, as others have described. But it was DEFINITELY better than figuring this out after much more of the process had gone on. </p>
<p>Interestingly, to answer fendrock, the school that she is currently attending was almost an afterthought. She applied last out of her list, did the whole app including three essays in 45 minutes, sent it off and didn’t think about it again, mostly because it is extremely competitive and practically impossible to get into. She did, though, and she’s there and just loves it.</p>
<p>D would not get out of the car at Vassar! one of the prettiest campuses around.<br>
We were on a whirlwind tour, one day to see Skidmore, Bard, Vassar and Sarah Lawrence driving down the Hudson to get home after dropping S off at music camp.</p>
<p>We got there at about 5 pm so it was too late for admissions visits which we had done at Skidmore and Bard (including impromptu interview – Skidmore, first one.) We never got past the first Gothic building to see the rest of campus. In fact, it looked like that was campus!</p>
<p>D said it was “scary”. Said the same thing at Mount Holyoke. It turns out Gothc buildings remind her of creepy things like Edgar Allen Poe stories.</p>
<p>We did eventually go back when a college book said it was an 1000 acre campus; I argued that we must have missed something. She did apply and to Mount Holyoke, too, but ended up at Barnard/Columbia, a poem to neo-Classical and Beaux Artes tradititons.</p>
<p>The Tudor feeling of main house at Sarah Lawrence also got nods.</p>
<p>It seems that the school whose in this category whose ambiance is most controversial is Wesleyan. Some people love its “look”; others not so much. I wonder why.</p>
<p>"We could tell which (2) schools he liked, though, because they required a trip to the bookstore to buy a t-shirt. "</p>
<p>In our family we called that “t-shirt worthy” as in each place we visited: “Well, is this college/university t-shirt worthy?” </p>
<p>Love the story of the tour guide’s shoes, too.</p>
<p>Also I don’t have any problem at all if one of the kids has a negative reaction or won’t get out of the car. Better to find that out before they apply than after arriving to start classes. We actually know 2 families that had to go haul their kids home after one week at their “chosen school” because the kids were horribly and genuinely unhappy. Truly I think some of these kids have an inner radar and gut check reaction mechanisms. Being a farily decisive person myself, I’d rather have a child who can make a decision rather than an indecisive kid, I guess. Indecision would make me crazier than a child who won’t get out of the car. Also son 1 wisely told me that “web pictures” make every school look desireable and every student in every college looks the same. And he’s got a legitimate point I think. Plus it’s a lotta money that is being shelled out, I certainly want my kids to pick a place they will be happy, thrive and grow otherwise we’re just taking our thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars and proverbially shoving it down our kids throats I think. Finally, love the stories about archite Gothic architecture. I love college trips, you just learn so much about your kids and their feelings.</p>