<p>We thought we would be smart and not tour all the schools until the acceptences and FA was in. What a mistake–it is three weeks until decision day and we are trying to fit trips in around colleges Spring Breaks and sons studying for APs.</p>
<p>I would NEVER do this again. </p>
<p>My son is particular about campuses—he loved Penn State the minute he saw it --clean and well maintained and that great stadium. However we have seen some very good schools that have a campus he did not like or feel comfortable with.</p>
<p>I suggest visiting all you can and do it early.</p>
<p>“The funny thing is that before the whole process started, she thought that she wanted a small, liberal arts college and as the search progressed, she decided on a larger city school.”</p>
<p>It can be useful to look at local schools as archetypes, even if the student knows she wants to go far away to school. If there’s a small, selective LAC near you, go visit it; you might realize that this type of school doesn’t work for you, and you don’t need to fly out to Swarthmore to learn that.</p>
<p>“We live in a college town, he takes several dual enrollment classes, he knows college campuses look like.”</p>
<p>wildwood888, we also live in a college town (well, university town). Ds, currently a junior, operated under the assumption that ALL college/university towns look like ours-------with a great Main Street business district, arts events all.the.time, beautiful greens, landscaping, aboretum-worthy trees, brick & columned buildings, bike paths everywhere in town, etc. He was shocked when he looked at websites of other campuses last summer! I then made it a point to discuss with him the differences between schools: small, medium, big, LAC, research uni, rural, small town, suburban, urban, etc.</p>
<p>One of the things we suggest to our students is to visit a few nearby schools early in the process just to get a feel of what the options are. It is hard to say to a 16-year-old - do you prefer an urban or suburban campus? How do you feel about rural? Do you prefer a small LAC or a large university? You might as well ask them if they prefer Mars or Pluto! So, we suggest picking out a few colleges within an hour or two of your home and just doing a variety of visits to get a feel for different campuses. I will be doing this with my rising junior son this summer. My goal is that by the end of our few trips, he will have a feel for urban vs. rural vs 15,000 students vs 2000 students and begin to develop a sense of what does and does not appeal to him. He might end up applying to some of these schools - he might not. But it is a good way to start the process and help your student quantify what they are looking for.</p>
<p>My mother - a former college counselor - always said that visiting specific schools you were interested in was best, but if that wasn’t possible then you needed to visit…
<p>We have been many universities, though not for his college visit, he has the sense how large, medium, and small universities look like. But may be when you go with a tour guide and participate in the activities, you will learn different things.</p>
<p>Wildwood, I’m a big believer in college visits, but there are times when it doesn’t matter so much - some kids are just not that swayed by the ambiance or the feel of the school. I don’t think the timing of the visit is too important, pre- or post-admission, unless the student has no experience of college campuses at all (after is late to visit if you applied to 3 large schools and one small school then realize the small school is for you), and obviously some majors and interests will trump all the soft touchy-feely stuff.</p>
<p>I will caution you with this, the Ivies are very, very different, and if there is something that you or he think may be very important about fit, you should at least research them online. My DD went to Dartmouth and it is very different than Harvard for instance or Penn. When DD began her search, she wanted to go to Yale, but after a summer program there, she realized she wanted a small town type atmosphere, she actually didn’t feel safe or comfortable at Yale, so that nixed Yale Harvard Penn and Brown right there.
The other caution I would make is that often as they look at schools, and they get older and it becomes more of a reality and less of a theoretical change in their lives, what htey want todo and where they want to go changes considerably.</p>
<p>For some kids, a visit may not be important. But it would be really hard to know for sure if yours is one of them. I think it is good to do survey tours early for prioritizing attributes. </p>
<p>But for sure you would want to visit colleges before accepting… college is a huge investment of time and money.</p>
<p>Visiting is important to do when deciding on where to go. </p>
<p>Visiting is not that important to do when applying to the school, as in most scenarios it doesn’t improve your chances, and only makes it necessary to visit more schools.</p>
<p>For me, visiting was a waste of time. Never once after visiting did my opinions of a college change one way or the other. I think 99% of the time you’d be better off spending the time you could have spent visiting doing real research about the college at home - reading the Fiske guide, the Princeton Review guide, reading Collegep-r-owler.com, reading the online newspaper, etc. Visiting a college doesn’t really tell you anything about except what it looks like. I absolutely refuse to believe you can get some gist of what students are like at any school by walking around for an hour. Colleges have thousands of students. Just because you saw a bunch of jocky kids in the cafeteria does NOT make the college jocky, just because your tour guide was preppy doesn’t mean all the kids at the school are preppy. I visited five schools before I decided that I didn’t need to visit any more. </p>
<p>This is just my opinion, I respect the fact that some people find college visits really helpful.</p>
<p>Wise words. As my son says, you’ll find kids you like and kids you don’t like at EVERY college. </p>
<p>But I’m still a believer in college visits. You don’t HAVE to visit before you apply, but we found it really helpful. In a couple of cases, we added schools to our list that our kids didn’t think they wanted. In one case it was a large school located in a rural area, when D thought she wanted urban. After a visit she found out that when there are 20,000 students on a fairly compact campus it doesn’t matter if it’s surrounded by cornfields - it FEELS urban. Eventually she figured out that what she really wanted wasn’t necessarily urban - it was a campus that felt energetic, with active/involved students. But it took a few visits to figure that out.</p>
<p>I’m a believer in visits simply because I didn’t think I could “stomach” a kid that wanted to transfer. Was concerned about the financial impact of a transfer etc. However, some kids are pragmatic and will get through no matter where they land, and some would/could quiety decide they went to the wrong school and handle the entire transfer process without turning their parent(s) hair white. Not mine, and I know this with certainty, so we visited. Depends on the kid.</p>
not sure I agree with that … at really big schools a student can find lots of students like them however I still think different schools have different personalities … and for smaller schools there can be a personality that some students find dominating the college and that may or not be a good fit for a college. I’m sure a student can find soem students they like at Smith or Davidson but I would be surprised if the vast majority of students who visited both did not have very different impressions and responses to the two schools … neither is better but they are very different (with a one phrase description of an excellent LAC). While I agree judging a school from a tour guide is over doing it … if a student spends a few hours on campus I do believe they can get a feel for the campus and if they can see themselves living there for 4 years.</p>
<p>My daughter had her mind set on one school for the first 3 years of high school. It had a great Broadcast Journalism program, around 20,000 students and a great football/basketball school. It was located out of state (she refuses to go anywhere in our state of Texas), but driveable.<br>
This past summer we went to sunny California and visited a small LA school with only 5,000 students and no real major sports teams. She could care less for the sports by the way but would still attend them. After visiting the school in California, there was no turning back. That was the right school/program for her.
We’ve been told by numerous college financial planners to apply to private schools since they have more merit aid then public. She had a great ACT Score (31), bad SAT Score (1710) and has a 3.5 GPA and is 11% of her class (66/616).
She also applied to a small private school in NY (since we have family there - bonus). That school awarded her $15,000 per year. We had not visited the school but thought with that amount of money, we should. The school looked great on paper and on the website, brochures, etc.
We walked onto campus and within 10 minutes of the tour knew she would NOT be going to this school. We were so disappointed with how run down the campus buildings were on the inside and how the dorms were all old and run down.
Unfortunately, the California school did not give her ANY merit aid despite her stats, but she is attending there anyway, and we will have to take out loans to pay the difference from what we can afford.
So basically, the point is - YES you need to look at the school and talk to people, eat the food, visit the type of room you want to stay in (had to fight for that in the NY school) and talk to the students.</p>
<p>I had the same question regarding the necessity of campus visit. After going through the postings I’ll probably do the following:</p>
<ol>
<li> Visit local schools as archetypes (with varying sizes and settings).</li>
<li> Seriously visit the safety schools.</li>
<li> Visit a few reach schools just for the feel.</li>
<li> Do post-acceptance visits to 2-3 top picks.</li>
<li> Ask my kid to check with friends who are attending the schools of interests.</li>
</ol>
<p>Visit any school your student is seriously considering. If your student is applying to 20 schools, this will take some thought on which ones are more important. Visiting after acceptance on a weekend specially designated for admitted Sr’s is not a good example. Everything has been cleaned, painted, in working order, the welcome mat is out. Better to visit on a Thursday afternoon in February (simply an example) when you will get a better example of what the campus is really like… not a glossy picture that a PR co. was paid to produce.
I disagree with the thought that if you’ve seen one small/urban/large/Tech/LAC school you can make comparisons. Someone from the west coast described Wake-Forest and James Madison as being very similar. If you are from VA, the two are vastly different. GATech is in midtown Atlanta, however it has a surprisingly secluded, parklike atmosphere with historical buildings. If you are from a very rural area though you may think it is way too urban. Once school had been suggested as a safety. Two blocks out in every direction were homes in disrepair in neighborhoods that did not feel safe. All we heard that night were police sirens. The pictures and virtual tour on their website looked awesome though.
If you are applying to many schools across the country, it is not reasonable, however anything worth considering seriously is worth visiting. Simply my opinion.</p>
<p>While schools certainly make some efforts to look good for accepted students, I haven’t felt that any of the schools looked that different than they do doing the rest of the year. Having too many schools to visit after acceptances is a pain. My son wants to revisit the ones he saw before (it’s been over a year now). We’ve just been able to manage it. My son also found that it was hard to write a heartfelt “Why ___ College” sight unseen, though he did a good job with Chicago and a mediocre one with Brown.</p>
<p>My D disliked some colleges she expected to like from the web/paper info, and fell in love with a school that was barely on her list. That said, it helps to do more than just go to the tour and info session. At almost all campuses she attended a class, ate in the cafeteria, and usually visited with either a coach or a professor in her anticipated major. And that took planning, communication, and preparation on her part. Then she went back for accepted students weekend at her first choice to be certain. Her college is a perfect fit for her, compared to some of her high school classmates who didn’t take as much time or energy in their search and have transferred.</p>
<p>Agreed on the “Why ____?” essays. We took good notes on her visits, and she was able to refer back them to talk about conversations with professors or classes attended, things on campus (the library all lit up at night is beautiful at her current school!), and the great coconut cake in the cafeteria I am sure it helped her admission prospects to have specific people, places, and experiences from her visits to reference.</p>
<p>You can spend the price of a house on college for one kid these days… why would you not spend a few thousand dollars to make sure you are applying to colleges that your kid really wants to attend and that are really a good fit? Colleges ARE very different. Some kids literally can’t afford to visit, so they have to take their chances, but if you don’t have to…</p>
<p>I felt it was very important to visit colleges with my D… first of all, because she had no idea what kind/size/location of a college she would want to go to. We tied campus visits in with other kinds of out of town trips and did a few two-day trips when we could work it around her activities. There were plenty of schools she did not like for various reasons, but it was apparent when we were at a college that seemed to be a good fit. We ended up visiting several more schools than she applied to but, now that the process is over, I am totally confident that she will be attending the college that is a perfect for for her – academically, personality-wise, location, etc. Or at least it seems so now! We did the best “research” we could - online and in person - and, so far, we are very happy with the result.</p>
<p>I will be doing this again soon with my son and I definitely think it is worth it. Because education is such a high priority for us – as well as such a great expense – I want to make sure I do all my homework and give my kids the best guidance that I can. The bonding time with them is also a bonus!</p>
I am sure it helped her admission prospects to have specific people, places, and experiences from her visits to reference.</p>