MIT gives a powerful impression when you are touring the campus–moreso than every other school I have visited (and I have been all across the country). One of two things will happen:
Tour with an open mind, but know that you will be in one of these two camps following your visit. There is no middle ground at MIT.
Baloney. There is definitely middle ground.
I don’t put much faith into college tours. They can be very hit or miss depending on who is your tour guide; who gives the admission’s briefing; whether classes are in session or not; etc. You also don’t usually get to see the inside of a classroom when classes are in session and when you do, the student is kind of wide eyed and blown away by it all.
I graduated from MIT and am on the MIT campus occasionally to visit old professors and old classmates who are now on staff there. My kids would go with me, so they knew a lot about the school. So, when my daughter was applying to colleges a few years back, we decided that she would do an MIT tour since we were on campus that day anyways. It was the worst tour I ever went on. I’m sure that the tour we went on was the exception and not the usual MIT tour. MIT is a great school, but you just couldn’t tell from that tour.
My son ended up attending a school that seemed pretty dead the day we visited but turned out to be a very lively and fun place as well as a good learning environment. My daughter ended up at a school whose tour pretty well matched the real feel of the college. Hit or miss.
MIT feels very strongly about ensuring that everyone who gets in is able to attend, regardless of individual financial circumstances. Whether you visit the campus is in large part related to financial ability to travel. Yes, if you can go, it can be very helpful. You are picking a home for four years. You should select a place that feels like somewhere you can be happy. However, a visit is not “imperative”. It is nice to have. There is a big difference.
If financial circumstances prevent a student from touring the MIT campus before enrolling, then that’s an especially risky situation that could easily spell disaster for the student. If you are a prospective student reading this, find a way to visit the school before you must commit. Leave the parents at home, take a bus, impose on distant relatives.
Yes, MIT could also do a lot better job presenting itself. It has a ton to offer the prospective student–so much so that most other schools have a hard time matching it. However, you will have to do your research beforehand to make the most of your time there and not rely entirely on the guide or the staff to spoon-feed you. One of the things that you will learn about MIT (if you were to visit) is that they are not going to spoon-feed anyone.
Also, tours are never “hit or miss.” In my experience, tours are only hit or miss if you are not paying attention and have not done any homework. They are one of the most valuable investments of time you can make as a prospective student (or as a parent of a prospective student).
“Also, tours are never “hit or miss.” In my experience, tours are only hit or miss if you are not paying attention and have not done any homework.”
Please. There are variables that can’t be controlled that will have an impact on the visit for the student no matter if the student is paying attention and has done his/her “homework” (whatever that is): weather, the presenter for that day, the tour guide the student gets, and on and on and on.
We had a very nice tour of MIT but neither of my kids felt that strongly positive or negative. They both applied but it was a middle choice not a top choice. Some of the concerns they had previous to the tour were eliminated by the tour but some of the concerns stayed with them. It definitely was a good tour and left a more positive impression than most of our tours though.
In my case, I did feel that visiting college campuses helped me decide on which school to attend.
Growing up, I had never been to the “big city” before. The tallest building in the rural towns I grew up in were maybe 6 to 8 stories tall. In my senior year of high school, after having received several college acceptance letters, I went with my mother to visit some of those campuses.
Princeton was a beautiful campus, with lots of greenery and a surprisingly large number of expensive luxury cars parked all around. Yale felt very… colonial to me, in regards to some of the building architecture. Both Princeton and Yale lived up the being called “Ivy League” schools, given how much ivy I saw growing on the sides of various buildings.
But for me, while I liked those other campuses a lot, I fell in love with MIT immediately. Looking across the Charles River, I saw the “big city” before me for the very first time. It was so different from anyplace I had ever lived, that I was instantly fascinated. It was the “big city”, but not TOO “big city” like the way I felt when I visited New York City. Plus, compared to the other schools I visited, MIT felt more like a facility full of research laboratories than a country club… and for me, that was appealing too.
Granted, this was just my impression of the campuses from a very naive, rural high school senior’s perspective. But I do think that visiting campuses can help you choose. One can blindly decide on a campus, looking at just statistics, photos, and promotional material. But for me, the campus visits clinched it for me. And looking back, I am so happy that I chose MIT.
My D was in the #2 camp. We didn’t even finish the tour! MIT felt geared towards corporations and graduate students. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ (Which is why we have hundreds of colleges in this country: one person’s dream school is another’s nightmare.)