We re-visited my S’s top few schools and it was very helpful in him making his final choice and feeling very confident about it. He felt he looked at the schools through a different lens once he was accepted…more interested “is this school a good fit for me” as opposed to “can I get in to this school”
"They are not great for “due diligence’’ visits to help determine if you want to attend.”
have to disagree with this one.
If a student has NOT been able to visit a college AT ALL, due to the cost of travelling there, then admitted student events are great for BOTH due diligence AND/OR bonding.
I think visiting at least two if you can afford it is a good strategy- primarily because you want your kid to own the decision lock, stock and barrel.
Even a kid at their “dream school” (how I hate that expression) is going to wake up one day in October and the weather will be grim, and there will be two papers due that week and one quiz, and the roommate snores, and the lettuce at the salad bar was soggy last night at dinner, and there is someone’s hair in the shower stall and nobody on the floor every cleans up after themselves OMG why did I pick this college?
Even if you want to put your thumb on the scale- at this point in the process- your kid needs to own the decision. As long as you are weighing two or three affordable options, and the cost of the visit isn’t going to be a burden- let your kid kick the tires. He’ll get off the Greyhound bus or whatnot and he’ll have made a decision and it will be his alone.
Good luck!
We did not attend any of them. Had visited top choices ahead of time, twice for one kid, once for the other.
Sometimes the schools make the decision for you, when the $ and admits work out as you hoped.
But if not clear, of course go to your top 2 or 3 choices.
Unless he has a very clear 1st choice, it is beneficial to revisit if possible. It doesn’t have to be at the admitted student day, he can likely schedule a day visit or overnight that best fits his schedule.
Thank you all for the helpful responses. You have mostly confirmed my intuition…that he should really go to at least one maybe two more admitted students days (or visits). I have talked to him about doing an overnight and he doesn’t seem to want to do that. I think just too much going on with APs and prom one weekend (who schedules prom for a weekend in late April? so dumb) and his sports stuff… But I think I may be able to do quicker trips, maybe I’ll try again on the overnight…but I think most of his schools only do the one day thing. He did just get waitlisted for one that was farthest away and he has not seen – so luckily that one’s off the list! I suppose this week he will hear from the rest…also he is such a low key kid - I keep waiting for him to just absolutely fall in love with a school and I am just not sure he will ever get there. This is hard for me to personally understand as when I went on the tour of the school I went to I just “knew” it was the perfect fit and it was. I may be looking for a response from him that will never exist. (I know that’s kind of a different topic).
My son eliminated a lot of his choices where he had acceptances. Now he is down to his top three, and he visited all of them on accepted students’ days. Hasn’t made the final decision yet, but the added information HAS been helpful! I’d say if you can manage to do it, financially and time-wise, I would.
My kids did both types of visits – day visits prior to applying, and some accepted visits (all with overnights). 24 hours on campus when the school is supposed to be putting their best foot forward can be very revealing.
We insisted our kids go to admitted student days at our favorite choices. It turned out to be a waste of time. One kid called me to be picked up early, and had a compelling reason the school just didn’t work best for him.
I still think it was a reasonable requirement.
First, congrats to your child on multiple acceptances.
I would say the accepted students events vary a bit depending on the school(s). S and I found there to be a big difference in tone between regular info sessions/tours vs. the accepted students days, especially at the schools with single-digit acceptance rates.
The general info sessions hammered home the low expectations - they’d say things like - okay, I have about twenty prospies here, so that means on average maybe one of y’all might get in. And with their tone, we could tell they weren’t trying to be mean nor snotty, but just honest.
But the sessions for accepted students only were much more welcoming, congratulatory, and sometimes sales-y.
“One kid called me to be picked up early, and had a compelling reason the school just didn’t work best for him.”
Doesn’t that mean that the trip was actually useful? Assuming that you have good alternatives, knowing that you don’t want to go somewhere seems just as important as knowing that you do want to go somewhere.
@ClassicRockerDad most of the admitted students days my kids included extended overnights, classes on Monday, and more in depth tours of the departments. There were often student panels that were refreshingly honest, and often sessions about special programs and institutes on campus. I think it was the presentation by Tuft’s Institute for Global Leadership that really made him choose Tufts over Chicago, but he loved the sample classes at Chicago and found the decision difficult.
A full weekend at Harvard made my oldest realize there were plenty of game playing nerds there, and that he could find his crowd there if he decided to go there. A weekend a Carnegie Mellon, made him realize that an entire school devoted to his favorite subject was different from a small department. There was a different level of energy and a “we try harder” vibe there.
To me this is a vital part of making the final decision. It allows you to visit the schools that are now on the short list and are ones that are possible financially. It allows you to visit under a totally new light.
What I do not like is the conspiracy here in NE where all the colleges put them on the same day (said in jest and a chuckle. lol). Every single school my son is accepted to has it on the same Saturday. April 8th. How does he choose?
I would narrow it down to 2 or 3 options based on the fit on paper plus financial aid and then visit those.
Or you don’t have to any! We were living in Germany at the time and we did do a spring break college tour but after that she never visited again until orientation!
“Doesn’t that mean the trip was actually useful”?
DadTwoGirls: maybe it was useful to husband and me. We thought that was the best fit for son and it is our favorite small liberal arts college. However, son kept saying from the beginning he wanted a university where he had access to graduate school courses. And he preferred a larger, more diverse student population. Diverse in the sense of academic interests, as well as political leanings. It was his choice, but he had to at least seriously consider our favorite, before making a final decision.
He was very happy with his choice.
Parents, have YOU found it useful to go to these weekends, or do you just send your DCs? My DC wants to go solo which in theory is fine with me, unless there’s something important I’d be missing.
I found it very useful- in that I was able to let DS decide between 2 Ivys’ 3000 miles from home vrs a more familiar U close to home.
He had not been able to visit either Ivy, and neither had offered much FA, vrs the U in our state which was his “safety” and had offered him a full tuition scholarship. He had visited that safety 3 times and did not need to go there again.
He was not yet fully licensed to drive that April so my job was to drive him between the 2 colleges. The 3 days he spent at the accepted students weekend of both colleges events solidified, in his mind, that he wanted to stay in our state. I stayed out of the way and let him know the decision was his- I was only along to get him from one state to another.
Ours are on school days. We are trying to decide if they are important enough to miss a week or two of school for.
A week or two of school- no way. My daughter missed two days of HS for two admitted student days. The third one she attended was on a weekend.
Last year, my son went to 3 schools for their official accepted days. He visited two others as well (conflicts prevented attending the others, but he would have). I think any visit is useful after acceptance, and official days more so. Overall, I think my son missed about two weeks of school, maybe a day or so less.
First, visiting after being accepted creates a different feel, mood, and perspective. Instead of wondering and dreaming about a particular school, it’s a real choice now. You start to think of whether this is the place you want to be while knowing that the school wants you. You can be more critical and accepting at the same time. Applying was like asking a bunch of people if they would like to date you. Visiting after acceptance was getting to choose who you wanted to date. You process information differently.
Second, the official days are better than just a visit (but a visit is better than nothing, and nothing after being accepted is still something (this made better sense in my head than it does in writing). Why? For my son, he was able to personally interact with students already attending the school as well as with other accepted students. It gave him a sense of the actual student community he might be joining. That was a useful perspective come decision time.
Third, as a parent, I attended one official visit and a regular post-acceptance visit of another. I found the school-created lectures for parents useful and informative but not overwhelming so. I did like getting to hear what the school thought of itself, what it offered, etc.
I found something more useful, though, and it can be done at any place after acceptance. I stopped a few random students while there, told them my son was off gallivanting with other prospective students (I always let him roam alone and do his thing), but asked if they would be willing to share their opinion about the school, about being a fresh__/first-year, what they wished they had known, etc. The answers were wonderfully honest, sometimes funny, and quite insightful. And yea, current students can be quite willing to criticize their school to random strange parents. From those talks, I got a better idea of how my son might fit into a particular school. I shared what these students told me with him (I had a small notebook with me so wrote down notes and such while visiting).