Not since about 6th grade. Don’t remember a thing. As expressed, the statements still don’t mean anything to me, though.
What is being said is - tour guides exclaiming over blue lights as though they are unique to the campus (when in point of fact most campuses have them) is so commonplace that if you were playing bingo, it would be the free square.
It would be akin to saying “and at OUR school, what makes us unique is that we call the second-years sophomores! Isn’t that neat?” It’s obvious.
I also have to agree with @Hanna . Blue light system is the center-square freebie for sure :-).
My thoughts on this are conflicted because I LOVED touring schools and still do, but I don’t know if the ROI is sufficient when you’re touring many schools before even being admitted anywhere.
One of the mistakes we made with D1’s jr year spring trip was overloading with ‘dream’, ‘reach’ and ‘high-match’ schools. The result was that we liked pretty much everywhere we saw. In the end she applied to a few of these schools but for the most part it was a bust. @dfbdfb 's advice is right on point here. The one positive was that she went in thinking she wanted a NE or East coast school, but after the application cycle was finished she’d only applied to a couple of these. She ended up going to a West coast school that she never even visited - and she loves it there.
With D2, we tried a different approach. She made no special jr year trip, though she did visit a few schools as was convenient (local schools, driving through town, etc). But, after acceptances and receiving the financial aid packages, she did visit the 2-3 schools that were in the final running. We actually found this to be a home run in the ROI department and in every other respect. After this trip she knew for sure what her future school home would be, and it was different than if she had not done this trip.
If finances were no issue, I’d be all for doing both kinds of visits, but finances are a big deal for most of us. We were very satisfied with this decision to only do visits after the acceptances, and are hopeful we’ll be able to do ‘after acceptance’ visits for D3 as well.
A few other comments on making the most of school visits (some of these have already been shared):
- do overnights if at all possible, spend as much time visiting with actual students as possible
- contact your intended major dept to try and set up special meetings, tours, classes, etc
- contact coaches, music profs, etc - for any EC’s your interested in. try to set up meets, etc.
- don’t buy shirts/merchandise from every school (don’t try to sway your kid in this way)
- less is more. do your homework up front - alongside your kid - to decide which schools are most important to see.
- harvard was a circus, it truly seemed more like a tourist attraction than a university.
- you do get a feel for how well schools are run and how much they nickle-and-dime you (or don’t) with these tours (and especially the way they manage your appointments, etc)
- be sure you run net price calculators on every school you plan to visit to be sure you can afford them. Don’t waste your time with schools that are unfriendly … they’re not going to change just for you, it’s who they are! But this is fodder for a different post.
Have fun!!
The problem with waiting until after acceptances to visit is that your kid may waste application time and money on schools that really aren’t a place she would want to attend. So her options could be quite limited in the spring. Plus, visiting in that one month window in April is expensive. Kids who take this route often have to drop schools sight unseen that might be their best choice because they can only do a few visits in that window.
It is a mistake to visit mostly reaches and high matches, for sure. And why would you buy merchandise from a school where your kid may not even apply, and may not be accepted? Also, our kids did not do overnights on initial visits – it makes it harder to move between schools for the next day. You are trying to get in a fair number of visits to build the application list at this point, not make a final decision. My kids saved overnights for the small number of accepted student visits they did in April.
Junior year visits are extremely useful for learning what does and does not ACTUALLY appeal to your kid. You certainly don’t have to visit all the schools they’re interested in, but if there’s any way to see schools in your area (not necessarily the top picks, just representative of a range of types – size, emphasis, etc.), or near where you’re visiting, it’s really worthwhile.
Both you and the kids learn a lot from that experience that you can then extrapolate to other options that may be less accessible. There were things my kid thought he didn’t care about that he did, things he or I thought he’d like that he didn’t, things he or I thought he wouldn’t like that he did, etc. etc. Once you’re on the ground, walking through campus, seeing how they present themselves, it all falls into place.
In the end, about half of the places my kid applied to were place he’d visited, the other half, further away, we’re saving until we find out if there’s any reason to visit. April will either be very simple or very complicated, depending on how things shake out.
If you have tuition exchange with Fordham, then go visit. They are also very generous with merit aid. Also, the kids that go to Fordham get great internships and all have jobs when they graduate. It is also a beautiful campus and Little Italy is right next door to campus.
@PG - The ubiquitous mention, got it. Just wasn’t carrying meaning. Thx.
You’ve gotten a lot of great advice. Just a few more thoughts. We haven’t yet visited a ton of schools. My son is a junior, but we did a few in California over the summer while we were there on vacation and have slipped in a few more as we could because his schedule makes visiting difficult.
We did find the info sessions often quite helpful. For example, the info sessions at Pomona and Claremont McKenna did a great job of crystallizing the different cultures and emphasis between the two schools. Tulane’s started with a wonderful video that captured the heart of the school and its special relationship with the city. They also provide good fodder for essays identifying “why ___”.
Son hasn’t done any overnight visits as yet, but my niece had an experience that totally nixed the school from her list and has made me cautious for the future. Host basically abandoned her to roommate and friends, they didn’t take her to many of the scheduled activities, female students she was with on campus lifted shirts to show friends their new nipple piercings, spent the evening smoking pot and drinking, etc.
We know that we won’t be able to visit all the schools on DS’s list before he applies as they are all over the country (he is looking for sun, among other things) and there is limited time. Now that we have a better sense of what he likes in a school: mid-sized (the real small schools felt like camp to him and not college); in city or solid college town; attractive campus with decent dorms and food, etc., we have enough info to craft the list. For remaining visits, we will focus on making sure that the school he wants to apply early to is definitely his first choice (so visiting any school that might on paper be able to beat out the current #1) and any school that requires demonstration of interest for good chance at admission. We already have had a successful tour of a school at which he should stand a strong chance of admission and that he really liked (that visit was very important and a huge relief to all). So that’s a way to winnow down which schools to visit that you might want to consider (any schools she might apply early to, any schools that really want you to visit, and a safety that she would really like).
Hello! I have a senior D and walked in your shoes last year! We live in the south and she wanted to attend U in an area where she was not raised to experience something different!! With that being said, we did several trips and depending on the region you can group your visits. Week days are when most tours are offered (in our experience.) For example: We flew to Chicago and were able to visit, Northwestern, U of Chicago and Notre Dame on one trip. We flew to Ann Arbor and visited U of M and Wayne State and MSU on one trip. One trip was Duke and UNC. The informational tours are good, we also did a few of the housing tours (this kiddo is a girl, so the housing piece is a big deal to her, lol)
Your start is great, figuring out the size of school, the city versus suburb setting, Other things to consider, access to airport to come home, ‘stuff’ in the area: whole food grocery store, shopping, pharmacy, work out facilities, medical facilities……So what does your kiddo like to do for fun? We took time in the evening to drive the area and see what it is like off the campus……they will be there 4 years….off campus housing? Keep notes for certain, every application will ask “Why this U…” so your child can cite actual reasons based on what she learned from the visit.
Good luck! It is a great time!!!
do a road trip across the state of Pennsylvania. the state has a lot of great schools of all sizes!
“Do you normally visit only one college per day?” you will burn out if you do to many and will miss the feel of schools later on your road trip because you are tired (IMO)
The advice to visit only 1 school a day doesn’t work for those who are flying in from elsewhere and have limited time. There are easily school pairs that can be done in a day. Smith and Mt Holyoke, Tufts and Brandeis, Haverford and Bryn Mawr, George Washington and American are 4 pairs we did.
Agreed. In a perfect world you would do only one per day. But two a day is fine if they’re not too far apart and the only alternative would be missing a key school. Two tips for doubling up.
- Look at their respective tour / info session schedules. Sometimes one set skews early and the other skews late, which can inform which one you visit first. (Or, if you're trying to do three in two days, it will inform how you pair them up.)
- Although ideally you should try to eat AT a school if you possibly can, if you can't, grab some finger food for the road and travel from one spot to the other while eating. (Not ideal, but sometimes practical.)
- If one school is clearly the stronger contender of the two, and the scheduling works out, you can schedule that one first, with option to expand the visit and ditch the other one ... but for that you have to be pretty clear. There can be surprises....
We found a lot of doubling-up options in college-rich states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.
[ignore this post - incorporated addition into an edit above, but can no longer delete this one]
If you’re still in process of making tours and want to have a bit of fun, create a notebook or spreadsheet rating the tour guides on multiple dimensions. Cheerfulness, knowledge of programs, helpfulness, response to questions, and ability to walk backwards in a straight line while maintaining eye contact.
Once you know “city or suburb”, use Google Earth to get an idea of the area around campus. We were able to knock several schools off the list by seeing how densely populated the areas around certain schools were and whether the schools had several green spaces or just one or two. Also, if you see something possibly problematic mentioned a few times on college review sites, especially by students, consider it and explore the possibility that it does exist. One of our student’s schools did have a few mentions about the school’s culture that we dismissed, and later it was found that there was in fact some truth to those observations. No school is perfect, but you want to go in “eyes open.”
In the spirit of @mackinaw 's suggestion…print these CC-crowd sourced bingo cards and think of us when you play 
http://myfreebingocards.com/A/vnoyj
Ha, that’s great…
If your trips involve flying, the strategy of waiting til after acceptances is a really expensive one. Flights on short notice are far more expensive than flights planned / bought well in advance.
I also personally don’t like the idea of taking a spot and then deciding you never liked the place in the first place. Yeah, I get if you release a spot it goes one else, but to me there’s a bit of bad faith about applying and then deciding whether or not the school is even acceptable to you.
We are just beginning the college tour process. When I look at the tour sign-up page for a couple of the universities we would like to visit, there is no mention of an information session. Is this something that is automatically included with a tour?
Also, is it too early to schedule a tour in the summer between your sophomore and junior year? In terms of demonstrating interest, will the admissions office have a record of a visit completed over a year before you apply? We will happen to be in that area of the country on vacation and would like to take advantage of not having to pay to fly back at a later date.
My D visited over two dozen schools. For each school she visited she had an index card listing things particular that school, including honors programs, average scores, favorite major/program, potential merit awards, etc. If the school made the cut (18 did) she noted the pros and cons of the tour and info session. It also helped to take a few pictures on her phone to jog her memory of the campus. We did several days of two schools, it was never a problem for us. We spent our evenings in the various hotels going over the visited schools. In the end, she was able to put the index cards in an order of most preferable school (didn’t consider $$ at that point).