For our tours last summer, the trailing sibling (two years younger) had a video camera and videoed (videod? video’d? none of them look right) stuff that caught her interest, plus reactions to the schools from her older sister and at least one parent soon after each tour. Incredibly useful to be able to look back at, say, tour #2 after the passage of several tours (and months!) and say “Oh, yeah! That was the one where…”
Pictures are super useful. At first my kid was annoyed that I was snapping pictures, but since he’s not a note-taker, it was super useful later.
@oak2maple We visited some colleges during D’s spring break of sophomore year. It was not spring break at those colleges. I believe they kept the record. When you sign up they will ask expected HS graduation date. D was the only one not an upperclassman.
She only applied to 1 of the 3 and she did mention her observations from her visit in her “Why XYZ College” short essay.
Every college we toured had info sessions plainly listed online. I would call the particular college and ask about ut.
@oak2maple, we made a few visits the summer after D’s sophomore year because we were in the area visiting family. (One of those wound up being a top choice, and D returned for an interview and overnight there in the fall of her senior year.) Since D was interested in schools that were out of state, there was no way we could have afforded the time or money to see them all during the school year. The biggest thing she realized from those first tours was that she did not want a big school. Helped us better focus our tours junior year spring break. And while school year visits are ideal, schools with summer sessions usually have enough folks around that they don’t feel “dead”.
@dfbdfb, great way to keep the trailing sib occupied and helpful, to boot!
Hi–I hope that my reply is not too late. Tour the honors colleges and meet with students and faculty/advisors in these programs. Even at the larger universities, the community becomes much smaller and intimate—a college within a college, and the “feel” might be quite different than the greater college community.
I am not sure why “ScaredDad” wrote to consider other schools? Seems like a bit of judgment to me. There are plenty of 32 ACT kids at the schools that you have mentioned. Again, they are most likely in the honors programs, but not necessarily.
BTW my daughter had a 32 ACT and attends one of the state colleges that you mentioned. She received a nice merit package and is challenged and happy.
Also—if the merit that you receive is not sufficient, contact the college and ask for more. It can’t hurt! Good luck 
as you are probably in the heat of it right now.
Thanks @harper8! We are in the thick of it right now We ended up visiting 10-15 (it’s all a blur now!) and she pretty much liked them all. They included most of the schools that I listed in my first post and others similar to those, as well as a few ivies for fun. We aren’t too concerned about the ranking of the school, we just want her to be comfortable and happy. I think you make a really good point about honors colleges making a larger university seem smaller - that’s just what she needs. I take it your daughter is in an honors program? Does she also live in the honors dorm? And she’s enjoying both?
I wasn’t sure where ScaredDad was going with that comment either. She ended up getting a 35 when she took the ACT in her junior year (32 was from soph year) and that still didn’t change our list. We are crossing our fingers for a good merit package though, or a tuition exchange scholarship.
Our only college visit trip took our DD and a classmate of hers on a 10 day trip visiting 11 colleges. This was long distance travel by car, and included me and my wife. My daughter was interested in art, her friend in theater. Starting in Michigan, we saw Oberlin, CMU, NYU/Pratt/CooperUnion, RISD/Brown, Syracuse, BostonU, Colby (day or two on Maine coast), Bennington, Ithaca.
Sometimes one of the girls interviewed while the rest of us toured campus. A lot of driving (by me) but we mixed in a bit of sightseeing. Our daughter ended up attending RISD; her friend, Indiana University.
I agree with @JHS – We chose based on other factors first, then visited. I do think with a 32 your D could get some really good merit money. I didn’t know tuition exchange was a one time thing.
@Hanna I too was shocked at this. My D just committed to a university to play a D2 sport. She went on an official visit last weekend which she loved! Stayed in a dorm, watched a practice, went to a football game, ate in the café… went shopping lol- she spent the whole weekend there.
Anyway, she told me that there was a party Saturday night and her ‘host’ was not allowed to take her (or any recruit) to the party because apparently last year a recruit on an official visit went to a party with the girls and drank herself into an ambulance ride. This was on an OFFICIAL NCAA VISIT! I was flabbergasted.
Apparently the girl never went to the school again- and I guess as a parent even if the school let her I wouldn’t if she couldn’t exercise enough good judgment not to get drunk to oblivion on an OFFICIAL VISIT!!
@lz57c4 I agree with this… and we did this for all our older ones so far (4 of them)
“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.”
She should also look at WPI. They give great merit aid, and her scores and her gender will give her a real shot at getting it.
@toomanyteens What’s ROI stand for?
@Massmomm WPI is actually one of her very top choices - she loved it there!
ROI is return on investment, as in will the degree be worth the cost?
Great thread and glad it’s still alive as we are contemplating starting tours for our S19…
One other tip - pick up whatever publications you can find on campus. We looked for and found student newspapers, community newspapers from shops around the campus and the mother lode was a special editions of the school newspapers that we found from the beginning of the year when freshmen arrive or homecoming, when alumni come back. We read them in the hotel at night and kept them in a box at home and referred back to them when D16 was writing her essays.
One school that was on my D’s list had a strangely high number of ads for psychotherapist in the student paper, and more than one article that referred to how much angst and unhappiness there was among the students. Those were too much to ignore, so it came off of her list.
recommend all look into VCUARTS in Richmond VA. It is one of the top ranked fine arts programs in the nation as per USNWR . It has a beautiful theater as well and the studio art is unbelievable. D attends , also has unique cross discipline program with the “DaVinci Center” (art, engineering and business). Richmond is a totally arts town.