"There are millions of posts on the Internet about how, when, why and where to take college visits with your college-bound student(s) to try to narrow down the possibilities — but this one was written by someone with unusual experience in the endeavor.
She is Lauren Kafka, a writer, English and ESOL private tutor, editorial consultant and certified barbecue judge in Bethesda, Md., who taught in the Montgomery County Public Schools for eight years. Kafka’s twins, Adrienne and Julian Kafka, graduated in 2017 from Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, and she took 23 — yes, 23 — college visits across the country to find the right school for each child.
This is Kafka’s best advice for anyone who will some day have to plan and then take college trips." …
23…wow…My parents allowed me to pick no more than 5 to visit, and then I schedule the trip, including what hotels we will stay at, and if I’m going to have an interview, I have to include that in the plan.
Wow, perhaps if they didn’t have so many visits, they’d have more money to pay toward colleges! 23 is a huge number of colleges, plus the “mini-vacations” she scheduled with the visits. That’s a ton of time and expense! I’m concerned about her comment that they’re planning to liquidate some of their retirement assets to pay for the kids college as well. Loving Us that are in the family budget without having to “pray” for help from grandparents and worrying about huge loans is part of being an adult. Our S said he’d love the U he went to and he did, even tho he had never stepped foot on that U’s campus until move-in day. (We did tour other Us when we were in the area for vacations but not specifically just to tour the U.)
Personally, I hated most of the comments! “Add this column to the list of reasons Trump won,” really? And I don’t think the “helicopter parent” accusations are appropriate. It’s not like she wrote their essays and actually did their applications. For kids who are applying to elite colleges, many parents at least look over essays and help manage deadlines. Mine didn’t, but almost everyone else I know at my LAC had a good deal of guidance on their application from parents and/or counselors.
@HImom I agree that the liquidation of retirement assets is concerning, but I don’t think that fewer visits would have appreciably increased their ability to pay for college. There’s a huge difference between maybe $1000-2000 to visit schools and $240,000+ for four years at Claremont McKenna. It’s true that many families wouldn’t be able to afford either expense, but they’re not comparable.
Also, keep in mind that the article is written about a mother of twins, so they visited about 12 schools for each kid. That’s not crazy, especially since they did most of them while also spending time with family and friends in the area.
All I can say is that when choosing Us that are affordable, it’s important to know the family can pay all 4 years rather than gee, the savings cover year 1 and use prayers and whatever to cover the rest. To me, that’s poor modeling and planning.
If they went to 5 colleges on each trip, that’s only about 4 trips with 3 local colleges thrown in. My kids have probably been to 23 colleges over several years. They visited a few when their older cousins were looking, some when on a summer vacation, we’ve been to football games and other events (band camp) on college campuses. The writer of the article admitted that the kids went to each other’s schools of choice.
I used to drive by 5-8 schools (depending on the route) when I drove to work in Baltimore.They could look at DC schools easily, or Philly schools. They didn’t go on 23 trips.
@twoinanddone The article states that the twins did not want to go to the same school and that the trips were “across the country” from Vermont to California.
Even if you cram visits to several colleges in the same city it becomes a blur. A couple of years ago a student here on CC posted after his whirlwind tour of Boston schools that the best thing about Boston University was that it had a defined campus and was right across the street from the Museum of Fine Arts. He was remembering the Northeastern University campus.
23 visits for 2 kids who wanted totally different things-- that’s 12 apiece. It’s way over the number I saw with my son, or will see with my daughter-- he saw 6 or 7 and she was going to see numbers 3 and 4 today (but got sick; that’s a different thread.)
But it’s way fewer than a lot of CC kids seem to be talking about.
Well, the comments for the article were certainly interesting. I will speak in defense of this mother. First, we didn’t have to liquidate any retirement, but that is their choice. I also hired a private consultant for a few sessions. She steered my D to the college she now attends. I will not need to do this for my son, because now, I know what I need to know.
We visited way too many colleges, I freely confess. My D saw 23. (She saw a few during summer programs, and one was paid for by the college when she was an accepted student.) Many of them were not real visits, but were seen just because we were literally at the doorstep and were curious. So we “visited” Bowdoin because we went to the Arctic Museum during a vacation. We “visited” Salve Regina when we did the cliff walk in Newport. We live in the Northeast, so it was really easy to drive by a college and have a quick walk around campus because it happened to be en route to elsewhere. It’s likely that this mom and her kids visited some colleges out of curiosity and because she had two kids with different interests and desires.
Was it overkill for this mom to visit 23? She turned the trips into vacations. I do regret taking my D to visit some high reaches at the beginning, and I will not make that mistake with my son. But I do not regret for one second the fun we had on our college visits. We spent many hours talking and laughing. We both saw cities and towns we would have never seen otherwise. We discovered that Baltimore is quite interesting, and that Pennsylvania has beautiful farmland. It was priceless. I am sure if this mom had kids not going to college in the same year, she would do things differently next time and visit fewer colleges. My son and I will likely see only six or so colleges. We will be spending a lot less time on the road than my D and I did, and that actually makes me a little sad. People shouldn’t be so quick to condemn this mother because she and her kids probably had a great time together.
People choose to spend their money on things that are of interest to them. I know people who eat dinner out several times a month and buy new cars every three years. We eat out once a month and have the same car we bought in 2004. I chose to spend money on a private consultant and a couple of road trips with my daughter. I don’t see a reason to criticize this mom for how she chose to spend her money or her time.
I think it’s just the number 23 that got this into the Washington Post and riled up some people. My D visited 13 schools over a two-year period (10 with tour and session, 3 walking around). In about a year, my S will probably start to visit 8 to 12 schools, and that might include only 1 (if that) of those we’ve already seen. Sounds like that could total 23 schools. But it will be over a much longer period than this family, as we don’t have twins and didn’t do everything over a few months.
I do think starting during spring break junior year is not a good idea if this is what you’re going to do. And I’m not sure if they really needed to bring both kids along to 23 schools if they had such different ideas. But if they all were happy doing it, why should anyone else complain.
If you spread the tours out over time it’s pretty easy (for many) to see potential schools before sending in an application. We started in the summer after freshman year in HS by touring local universities. Then we added tours onto the end of business trips, soccer tournaments, chess tournaments, and visits to grand parents. The only dedicated your trip was to schools in the NE, but there too we turned that into a family vacation. Total tours 14.
Yes, but the article also said that the boy twin visited the girl’s picks and she visited his. At least the California visit was the Clairmont consortium, so that’s 5 schools in one shot.
That’s another good way of doing it @TiggerDad . For my D, visiting first was really important, and of the colleges she was accepted to, she didn’t visit three of them before applying. She was called off the WL at one of those. There was literally no time to visit, as AP exams were starting in a few days. Had she visited that school first, her decision would have been easier.
She also got off the WL of the college she now attends. I am not sure she would have chosen to attend had she not visited first. By the time she was notified, kids were on summer break. Visiting first has advantages, but it isn’t always possible, of course.