<p>D is a rising jr in HS and we are going to see a few colleges that happen to be on our route to and from vacation this.summer.
D is interested in a few schools that would require a special trip, but those would likely be reaches. Visiting now does seem a bit early ( flying out just for that purpose...stats may change, test scores are an unknown...)... And I'm not sure that going and falling in love with a reach is really a good idea.<br>
What are the pitfalls of applying and then visiting only if you get accepted? If tht is too late, when would you recommend making a special ( and xpensive) trip to see reach ( or maybe high match) schools?
The schools are in the north, so winter weather could be a factor in travel.</p>
<p>We have just been through the process with my son, who will be a college freshman in the fall. Now we are, like you, beginning the process with our daughter, a rising junior. The first time around we visited like crazy before he applied. Went to special visit days, used Spring Break time, etc. Now, in hindsight, I can see that he likely would have applied to most of the schools we visited anyway. While we enjoyed the visits very much, it might be a more prudent choice to research schools thoroughly and use virtual tours and then visit senior year after we know acceptances and financial offers. Granted, it may make for a March or April final decision. But, that’s what we had anyway even with all the early visiting. Maybe others can comment on the benefits of “showing interest” early with visits. I question whether that really matters.</p>
<p>If you go to collegedata + school name : ie collegedata Delaware you can see if a school tracks interest- look at the chart with x’s on it. Some schools view demonstrated interest as important, but sending an email can be viewed as interest. Some schools do not care.</p>
<p>I am a rising senior who is finishing up college visits this summer…</p>
<p>What my family did is begin by visiting the different types of schools, research universities (public and private), LACs, a variety of urban, suburban and rural schools. This worked well because we could see many without driving more then four hours. From there I made a list, the only times we visited schools was when there was a cluster of them fairly close by (as was the case with the Philly schools on my list) or if we already visiting that city/area. Doing this is really enough to gauge basic interest in a school (visits to a couple urban schools nocked a lot more of them off of my list). I do have schools I have never visited on my list, though they are all high matches or reaches, I will visit in the event that I get accepted. The only time when you really should visit a far away school is if your daughter is considering ED to the school.</p>
<p>Hope this helps!</p>
<p>Thank you. I also wondered if there would really be time to visit schools after acceptances. In looking at a couple schools, it seemed like you might get your acceptance and only have a month to get your decision in, which doesn’t leave a lot of time for visiting…not knowing what else might be going on that month…and if a student is lucky enough to get multiple acceptances, I just don’t know if there would be time to visit them.</p>
<p>For schools with rolling admissions, there’s plenty of time to visit if you apply early and get a decision back early as well. Even for schools without, there’s usually a ~2 month time frame to get all that done in</p>
<p>When my older daughter applied to schools she heard back from 7 out of 8 by December of her senior year. She heard from the last school by February. This gave us plenty of time to re-visit schools.</p>
<p>twogirls, thank you so much for the info about the collegedata site! I just started trying to gather all that info and creating info sheets. Now I can just print them out!! So nice to have it all in one spot.</p>