My D is a junior. I took her to visit 2 schools over fall break which did not interest her and she doesn’t want to visit anymore. Its not that she isn’t interested in college, she just feels the visits aren’t necessary. She doesn’t have a list yet, but that seems to be normal for juniors.
My concerns are financial. I want her to visit schools that give NM and guaranteed scholarships as safety’s and no loan schools as reaches. I’d prefer not to pay for an instate school if she can go somewhere else for free or somewhere better for about the same price.
Should I trust that she will be able to figure it out using online resources or continue to drag her to college visits?
If visiting the schools is something that you feel strongly about, and you are willing to commandeer her time for a weekend or two, try taking her to some colleges and universities near your home, within a two-hour driving distance. Make sure you do the tour, though you may want to pick and choose which info session to sit in on (if any) so that you can keep your daughter’s interest.
She will see enough that is different on some test-runs to colleges that are not among those on any proposed list to raise her awareness about different aspects of college living to begin to formulate some ideas on the size of campus she may be looking for, the number of students, the architecture, the dorms (really try and see if you can get a tour of the dorms, not always available though), and the spirit of the campus.
There are other students much like your student, and they will go to visit colleges that accept them during the re-visit days, and then decide. It is not unique to her.
In his junior year, my son was not interested in visiting colleges or listening to reps speak when they came to our area. He would sit with his head in his hands during those meetings, looking like he was fighting intestinal pain. I think I had to make him take notes. It was not until senior year that he began to sense he would be turning a corner and would be living somewhere else, and all the other changes college means. Then he became interested and engaged in the visit process, and it made a big difference in the energy he put forth toward his applications, having seen many of the schools on his list.
We live overseas where most of the high school students where my daughter attended do not get to visit colleges at all because it is not practical. We only visited one college because my daughter attended a summer music camp there and it was convenient to schedule a visit the day after we picked her up. We were unable to visit other schools while we were in the states that summer because my husband had to have surgery and we couldn’t manage the extra logistics. My daughter is extremely happy at the school where she ended up and it’s not the one where she attended music camp. I do think it is possible to get a lot of good information about schools through today’s technology.
It’s much better if she visits. Especially the ones that will be safeties. A NM student who is applying someplace that gives merit money has to show interest. Otherwise they could very well reject her to protect their yield. I know very high stats students who were rejected from Tulane and University of Miami. They were in the top 25%, but did not visit and therefore could not give a good reason why they were so interested in the school.
I don’t know if your child is uninterested or you just haven’t visited one that resonates with her positively or negatively. College visits right now aren’t about specific schools but school types. Look at schools with a hour drive, LAC versus research university. Large versus small. Urban versus suburban versus rural. Private versus public.
She likely doesn’t know what is out there. Visiting different types of schools will show her and help her later when she does build a list.
No need to force the issue now. Many kids do their first visits over spring break - after which the conversation in school halls is dominated by college talk. It’s likely your D will get into the spirit of it by then. She should make a point of visiting her safeties, at least over the summer. But if fall of senior year rolls around and she still has no interest in thinking about college, it’s an opportunity to talk seriously about whether she wants to to take a gap year before applying. (The Gap Year Advantage is a great resource.) Assuming she is interested in college, know that many kids don’t visit schools until after they have been accepted - that’s April of senior year. Friend’s D, applying to highly selective schools for which demonstrated interest didn’t matter, said she didn’t want to be overly influenced by the tour guide, the weather that day, or superficial things like the appearance of the buildings - they were all excellent academically and that was good enough for her: She ended up at Wash U and is happy with both her choice and the process.
You can tell her she can skip visits, but that you will entertain no discussion of transferring if she is unhappy with her choice. You can also inform her of how many schools you are willing to visit after acceptances and before May 1. It is more expensive and hard to schedule, especially for schools without rolling admissions if she waits.
She has visited two colleges, which is probably enough to give her a general idea of what the college environment is like.
I wouldn’t push it. She’s not likely to gain much from a visit where she spends the whole time burning with resentment.
Later in the year, if she hears that her friends are visiting colleges during spring break, she may want to do it, too. Or if she misses the spring break visits, hearing about her friends’ visits may inspire her to want to visit some campuses in the summer – especially as she realizes that she will need to finalize her list soon.
Once her friends start talking about it later in the school year and over the summer her attitude will change. There is no rush with a junior. You should do some work behind the scenes making a spreadsheet of schools she might like. Sort them by where she falls in academically as average to start, then add the wings later.
The other tip is when she comes around, strike when the iron is hot and visit schools in groups. This is much more efficient anyway. Kids do seem to enjoy Open House events, rather than listening to mom and dad say “Wow, it wasn’t like this when I went” on a small tour.
My son HATES to shop. And for him, looking at colleges is shopping.
But I told him I was unwilling to invest $30,000+ per year into a school sight unseen. So he went.
We started in the fall of his Junior year, and saw a total of 7 schools. Three he didn’t apply to: one was too big, another too rural. The third turned out to just be too much of a reach once we got his SAT scores.
But the remaining 4 are on his list, and he’s been accepted to one of them. Right now it’s his top contender over the other 2 acceptances he has. We may or may not get to visit the other schools to which he’s been accepted.
All our visits-- hits or misses-- helped us learn something about what he wants. We learned at one school that it was bigger than what he wanted-- great, that cut a lot of schools from the list. Another taught us that he doesn’t like schools that are too wooded; he’s very much a suburban kid. On paper, both of those schools looked perfect… until we found out that they weren’t.
What did work well with my son was spacing out those visits. We saw no more than one school a month, aside from the overnight last summer when we hit 2 schools within 30 miles of each other.
See if you can do a visit in conjunction with a trip somewhere your D wants to go. My wife took the two Ds to the big mall in MN when they visited Carleton and Macalester.
Back when I applied to colleges, my parents never even offered to arrange visits. I’m not sure if it wasn’t a big deal back then, or if it was just my parents.
I applied to one school, was accepted, the first day I ever saw campus was during freshman orientation, and I absolutely loved (almost) everything about my experience.
When my son was applying to schools, I thought visits were important and we visited at least 10 different schools. I tried to arrange visits for some smaller schools, some larger, some in city settings, others in college towns. By the end, the visits all seemed very similar to him (and in fact we’d joke about how much the speeches they made used the exact same language at different schools) and all ran together in his mind. One weekend we visited 2 schools and I asked him about ‘the fit’ and he responded that he really didn’t know it seemed to him it was just more kids his age walking around between buildings carrying backpacks.
What worked for me was inviting a friend to visit a couple of colleges together. Having friends one year older also helped. These schools were not far - just within an hour or two. We discovered that large flagships were out, no matter where they were located. We found D liked small LACs in rural and suburban areas, as well as small towns but she nixed the urban environment. I also took her to a public LAC as well as a wealthy SS-LAC, so she would know the difference.
fwiw, D did not visit every school before applying. She found several ways to express interest without visiting the schools. After acceptances, she visited her top three choices (she never had seen two).
I’d talk to her and work together to schedule a trip over spring break. If you don’t visit schools then, you’ll regret it in the fall of her senior year.
One thing to consider if she remains resistant to visiting - some schools factor in an applicant’s level of interest. If you are within driving distance of such schools and they’re on her list, she should go there even if only to sign in at the admissions office, lol. Also hard to visit many schools over spring break - they all kind of blur together, so depending on how many she considers, that may mean visits in summer when school isn’t in session, or in the fall when it might make more sense to be home writing the applications.
I’m at a HS abroad, so visiting is a costly and time-consuming endeavor. Most students consider the expenditure of $2000-3000 worthwhile only when they’re deciding between 2,3 or at most 4 schools to pick the one they’ll be spending $250,000 to attend over the next four years.
If your daughter doesn’t want to do a lot of visiting, and knows what she’s looking for in a college, I’d suggest visiting only once she knows what her choices are come spring. If she isn’t quite sure, a few trips can’t hurt.
My D17 had visited tons of colleges with S16 but he picked all the schools and they were based on what he wanted which was mostly medium to large size schools. My D did not want to do any visits and just wanted to apply to 20 schools and visit the ones she got in. That would work really well with schools literally all over the country and basically only having April to visit and decide I talked her into doing 1 long weekend visit (without S16) where we did a very large school and a very small school. She realized she really did prefer small schools which I expected. She also once she started thinking about it realized she would prefer to be in or near a city. Just those 2 decisions cut her list of potential schools in half. I have told her that I want her to visit any school she plans to apply to EA or ED plus any school in her top 3 but other than that we can wait.
The majority seems to suggests giving her some time. So, I guess that’s what I’ll do and let her deal with the consequences. Thanks for all the advice.
I thought my daughter would love a small college campus, and she didn’t care for any of the small schools we visited. She ended up preferring a couple of bigger schools that, honestly, I took her to visit because they were on the way to the smaller schools.
So I’m glad I took her to those latter schools, as well - we never would have known her preferences if I had not insisted on visiting ANY of them. She was also reluctant to visit schools her junior year…
I talked her into doing 1 long weekend visit (without S16) where we did a very large school and a very small school. She realized she really did prefer small schools which I expected. She also once she started thinking about it realized she would prefer to be in or near a city. Just those 2 decisions cut her list of potential schools in half. I have told her that I want her to visit any school she plans to apply to EA or ED plus any school in her top 3 but other than that we can wait.