<p>Let the kid take the tour while you take last year’s tax returns and transcript to the financial aid office for your scheduled visit… Look at the campus cafeteria and eat a meal there, but eat the meal on a typical day and not on tour day.
Ask the enrolled students how the weekend goes for stuff like dining halls being open and what are the hours of operation.Limited hours are a dead giveaway for a school that the kids vamoose from on the weekends–</p>
<p>This thread is hilarious. DH doesn’t usually care much about CC posts but he was mighty amused with some of the questions.</p>
<p>Hey…why NOT give discounts to Red Sox games…lots of other discounts in Boston for students!!</p>
<p>^ NYU Students get discounted tickets for Broadway musicals. Chapman U (in Orange, CA)students get a deal on Disneyworld tickets in Anaheim, CA. </p>
<p>Surely the city in which so many of our nation’s founding fathers flourished should also hand out discounted Red Sox tickets to…every college student in Boston? Uh oh.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You DO realize that at most schools, there is a finite amount of land available on which to build, and offering single rooms to every student would be absolutely impossible, don’t you?</p>
<p>Oh, the baseball ticket question is one I could see ds (or me :o ) asking.</p>
<p>@coureur, quite seriously, I found the Info Session was the first place that I, as a parent of public school students without access to any good counseling, heard the concepts that gave us courage to have our offspring apply to top schools (Ivies and LAC’s). When someone else asked about weighted and unweighted GPA’s, that was the first place I heard that concept. After an AdCom said, with great emphasis, that they recognize students who pursue the “most rigorous curriculum” in whatever school they attend, I knew our family had a shot at competing with families who could send their kids to private schools.</p>
<p>Since I didn’t know about CC with our first child, if it hadn’t been for those Info Sessions, I don’t know where we would have gotten the courage to keep pursuing top colleges from a horrible school district. </p>
<p>One AdCom settled the entire room (asking about which EC was better than which other EC) by saying, “we’re looking for an application where all the pieces hold together and describe an individual we’d like to meet.” You can’t hear that on a website or tour. Despite all the joking in this thread, I did gain a lot of courage from Info Sessions and do not perceive them a waste of time.</p>
<p>^^I don’t consider them a waste of time either. If nothing else I like to see how the school chooses to sell itself and who does the selling. But some on this thread are angry over any questions asked that they could have answered themselves by reading the website. I say relax; it’s an INFORMATION session for crying out loud. They are supposed to present inforamation that is important to potential applicants and their parents and answer their questions. That’s what we are there for. That some or even all of that information may also be available somewhere else is beside the point. </p>
<p>The schools themselves must consider spending time and money answering foolish, lazy parents’ questions worthwhile, otherwise they wouldn’t do it. They could just post a sign at the info session door that said “No Admissions Information Session Given Today. Listening to Your Questions Would Just Annoy Others Who Already Know the Answers. Go Home and Read Our Website. All the Information You Need is There. Thank You For Your Interest in Our School.”</p>
<p>Anyone care to rank their info sessions best to worst? That could be interesting…</p>
<p>Remember… info sessions are not geared to the CC families that are already doing intensive research. Yes, some things will bore you. Still I always welcomed the opportunity to hear info live, see the mix of students in the group (at Case I kidded, "you still have girls here, right?), ask questions, see slides, yada yada.</p>
<p>FWIW, we were at Case in early April and our info session room had a pretty equal mix of boys and girls.</p>
<p>I found the info sessions valuable because my son would not listen to me, but would listen to the adcom explaining what kind of student they were looking for. We started visiting schools summer after sophomore year, and I think the info sessions helped my son stay focused in HS.</p>
<p>I and DS went to some: I really wanted to know if I knew anyone :)</p>
<p>“I don’t consider them a waste of time either.”</p>
<p>I think the thread has drifted off-point a bit. Yes it’s an information session. The issue is, information for which students? “Why every student of course. Our school is the perfect choice for all students.” Well that sounds ridiculous doesn’t it? So what message does it send when someone in the room asks “Does your school offer degrees in Biology?”</p>
<p>It doesn’t send a message about the school, NewHope. It sends a message about the parent. I can see being (quietly) annoyed about that, but see no reason to take that out on the school, who can’t help the level of expertise (or lack thereof) of the people sitting in the info session.</p>
<p>I’m a researcher. Every school we visited – I understood at least the core basics of what they were all about, and had used CC to get some more qualitative feel. My H, on the other hand, showed up at the schools * tabula rasa * … He is more of an experiential person and learns by listening and being there vs researching ahead of time. I’m sure schools know that different people like to learn different ways, which is why they have websites, hand-outs, and info sessions.</p>
<p>^ PG - Let me try again. You’re a researcher. Let’s say you’ve there’s some institution that’s doing some advanced work you might interested in. You arrange to visit with the hopes of gathering enough information to maybe do a joint project in which you will be investing a quarter million of your own dollars. You arrange an appointment, you travel there, the quarter million’s in your checking account … and your meeting is dominated with questions that anyone with Web Access and ten minutes could answer. Would you consider that an effective meeting?</p>
<p>I know, I know, it’s expecting too much to actually GET the answers you need in a college information session … wait, what am I saying!!! (jk) Actually I’m already on record as saying it’s fine to skip the information sessions, as they are a poor source for data that actually differentiates one university from one another. I just think it’s a shame to waste a golden opportunity to showcase the institution. Of course if meal plans and study abroad programs are the way most parents/students actually choose colleges … no, didn’t think so.</p>
<p>I find info sessions excellent at getting the feel for the school. It is a sales pitch by the school and you will hear what they want you to take away from the school. You also need to listen and see if you share the same values & interests. For example, the Syracuse video spent lots of time with sports. I had never heard of the Rensslear Medalist program until the info session - it is not well publicized on the website. When she returned to school, my D made it a point of letting her GC know she was quite interested in RPI and wanted to be considered for this award. Also, you also don’t find on the website a frank discussion of what is REALLY important in the admission process. </p>
<p>There will always be an idiot (generally parent!) in the room that will ask obvious questions or dominate the conversation on something very specific to their DD/DS. These are not reasons to not attend, frankly, my D & I are entertained by these people and it gives us something to laugh about in the car driving between schools.</p>
<p>Do I think there are idiot or self-obsessed parents belaboring a point to death or asking ridiculous questions at information sessions, yes! But, what I discovered during every info session was the true philosophy of the school that my family couldn’t determine from a website. </p>
<p>For example, it wasn’t until we went to Carnegie Melon that we discovered it was really a trade school, an exceptional trade school, but a trade school nonetheless. We discovered the “D-Plan” at Dartmouth and their emphasis on producing a citizen of the world with their emphasis on international studies and languages. Yale produced an educated citizen in the oldest sense of the words. This is what my family gained from the information sessions before the tours and it put each school in a different perspective. We did “feel” these things from the website.</p>
<p>(You don’t have to agree with our conclusions about each school, it’s just our opinions.)</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>So what is the school supposed to do in this situation? Make the person who asked that wear a dunce cap for the remainder of the session? Implement a Gong Show policy and whack a big gong and drag the person out of the room? Begin the session with a stern announcement that no dumb questions will be tolerated?</p>
<p>Maybe schools should just require that all people attending the info sessions must be CC members in good standing with demonstrated admissions expertise. They could check you off by your screen name at the door and verify your post count. That would keep the admissions riff-raff out.</p>
<p>Post #117 - Last sentence second paragraph - “We DIDN’T ‘feel’ these things from the website.” Sorry!</p>
<p>Amtc: Absolutely. And to the extent the school decides to tell students / parents about “who we are” by focusing on history, philosophy, institutional goals … or opportunities, internships and job placement … or student life and activities … or size of the campus and SAT/GPA required for admittance … tells me a lot, indeed, about who they are.</p>
<p>Coureur: Thank you. I don’t get what NewHope wants the college to do. They have to be welcoming to all comers, whether it’s the poor kid with unknowledgeable parents who have never stepped foot on a college campus and are intimidated by the whole thing, or the CC-denizens with Ivy League degrees who have sent the kids to elite private high schools and have private college counselors lined up.</p>
<p>In fact, their graciousness in welcoming all comers says something about the school, too. An adcom member who is overly dismissive of the “naive” questions from a well-meaning parent sends a message, too, and it’s not a positive one.</p>