<p>Which one is better? I'm trying to hit most of the schools that I'm thinking of applying to so I can only attend one of the two. Which is more helpful to me?</p>
<p>I prefer tours. There isn’t anything in the info session that you can’t learn online, but touring in person is rather different than looking at pictures or videos.</p>
<p>I’d agree that the tour is more important, but you can usually do both in 2 hours or so. But whatever you do, be sure you sign in at the admissions department so they know you were there (especially for schools that count demonstrated interest).</p>
<p>If you can only do one, I’d choose the tour…unless you are going while the college is in session. Then you could do the info session and self tour, talking to some students on your own.</p>
<p>Tour. Read the info online.</p>
<p>Agreed Tours are great but info sessions are usually just stats about the college. </p>
<p>IMO the tours are much more important. Info sessions are really repetitive after a while, and you really get a feel of the college through the tours</p>
<p>If you have to choose, take the tour, but honestly, if you’re trying to cram more than two tours a day in, they’re going to start to blur together - sort of like palate fatigue while tasting fine wines. If you need to ditch an info session to make the drive between schools, then do so, but I’ve never met anyone who thought three or fours tours a day was productive. You’re better off eliminating schools to tour rather than rushing your experience at a school.</p>
<p>Also, it’s bad enough with just the student and parent(s) taking the tours and doing too many, but under no circumstances drag siblings along and try to do that. They have a way of making everyone’s life miserable if you insist on doing a crash tour with them.</p>
<p>I see it differently. Stage 1, leading up to applications, is the process of pulling together a list of schools that will meet your academic needs, realistically accept you, and be financially attainable. You’re visiting a school because it’s made the initial cut on the basis of the website, and you’re trying to find out if this school really belongs on the list. You get a lot of nuggets of information when you (and others) quiz responsible admissions office personnel about the things they don’t tell you on a website. You can also get tips about how to present your application in the best light. You can’t expect to get much of this from the tour guide.</p>
<p>Stage 2 is when you’ve been admitted, and you’re going back to see how you like the place. That’s when the physical features of the campus are ripe for evaluation. You’re assessing your own emotional reaction to each of them, as you make your final pick.</p>
<p>I think info session (or better yet, open house where you meet professors) and then wandering campus and talking to current students in an informal, unscripted way, tells you the most at Stage 1.</p>
<p>Ideally, you devote a whole day to each school you visit, and you take the tour as well.</p>
<p>The answer may vary from school to school, particularly based on what the info session is about versus what you can find on the school’s web pages.</p>
<p>If the info session is just the admissions office giving stats and talking about financial aid (and you have already read the stats and run the net price calculator), then it may not be much added value. But if it involves meeting faculty in your potential areas of academic interest, that may be more worthwhile if you have questions about the departments and academic programs not answered by the web pages.</p>
<p>Tour</p>
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<p>99% of the questions asked in info sessions can be gleaned from the college website or the Common Data Set (Google “<school name=”“> Common Data Set”). The questions are predictable and a TON of time is spent answering basic things that could easily be learned from a copy of Fiske or the website, and the rest are nit-picky “will my kid’s allergy to wheat be manageable?” type questions. I have visited 40 colleges, and have been to exactly TWO info sessions that I thought were memorable. The rest were a waste of time, but did most as due diligence while we were on campus. Although by the last half dozen college visits or so we skipped em… And we have found that specific questions about academic departments can rarely be answered by admissions anyway, best asked of the department in question.</school></p>
<p>Typical info session: blah, blah, “grades and score rigor are MOST important”, blah, blah, “we look at the application HOLISTICALLY”, blah, blah, “our distribution requirements allow you to sample MANY of our academic offerings”, blah, blah, “40% of our students STUDY ABROAD during their time on campus”, blah, blah, “our career office is available to help support your applications for INTERNSHIPS”, blah, blah. Gack.</p>
<p>Although I agree that tours are better than info sessions, if you learn to listen to info sessions closely, they are highly useful. They set a tone and you can eliminate or like schools based on details you hear or see. I’ll give two examples we had:</p>
<p>Went to one school where D was very enthused until she went to the info session. On paper, the school had everything she was looking for. Halfway through the info session, she whispered to her mother, “We can skip the tour, I am NEVER going to go here!” Despite it’s reputation of academic rigor, the info session made it all sound like a facade - you could dodge core requirements with weak courses, triple major with little depth in anything, etc. It was eye opening, and even when we gave it a second chance with a presentation at a road show that came to our town, same reaction. Maybe some students want to hear that, but D didn’t.</p>
<p>The other school she was less enthused about, because it was a top woman’s college, but on paper everything looked great. Really impressive tour, info session equally so, but when we got out, she said “Really impressive school, but looking around at who was on the tour with us and listening to the type of questions they asked, I can not see myself going to school with these people.” And I had to agree, they were an odd group, way different than we saw on just about any other college tour, I just couldn’t put my finger on it until D mentioned it.</p>
<p>And one more from friends who just went to see a potential safety or match. On paper, it’s great, and a lot of people on CC recommend it. D applied there as well, but we never visited. They asked specific questions about pre-med and their pre-health advising and came away very disillusioned - something just didn’t add up and their gut instinct was to walk away and not apply. They said even our state flagship has a better pre-med program than that, and we don’t live in a state with a premier state flagship.</p>
<p>So you can learn a lot at the info sessions, you just have to learn to listen at more than what they say, it’s how they say it and what they don’t say as well. And take a good look who’s on tour with you, that’s a representative sample of who want to go to that school with you.</p>
<p>You can’t tell a thing from who is on the tour with you, IMHO. They aren’t accepted yet. Talking to current students (a tour gives you at least one student to talk to, and attending a class or eating in the cafeteria exposes you to more) tells you a lot. But your fellow tour participants don’t mean a thing, IMHO.</p>
<p>Tour. After two info sessions, they all sound the same- it’s a bit of rah-rah. I took D1 to one for the school I work for, know the guy who spoke- and didn’t think it was informative. In fact, I thought some things were a wee bit misleading.</p>
<p>That said, early on, we visited many campuses we knew our kids wouldn’t apply to- so they could get the feel for different variables. On those, sometimes we stopped for a walk, but no tour. Very casual.</p>