<p>I am so frustrated! My schedule during the school year has left me no time to visit colleges, unless they were a day trip by car. I took straight AP classes, and was in varsity orchestra as well as city orchestra. Between studying, tests, volunteer work, orchestra, music lessons, I have not had any time at all to visit any place. Now, I am finishing junior year. All colleges are out of session. My high school goes through two weeks after memorial day. And we are not allowed to miss the last week (finals) without a doctors note. </p>
<p>Then, just as all that is ending, I have a summer class, and volunteer work, and more music stuff. How does anyone do all they need to do, to get in to college, and still have any sort of life, or actually visit any of the colleges they might be interested in??? I am stressed to tears over this! Is college going to be this impossible?</p>
<p>First of all, calm down. It will all work out. You don’t need to visit every college, if you apply to a wide range you will definitely get at least one that you will be happy with. It’s more important that you are prioritizing your tests and music.</p>
<p>This is why it is advised that juniors visit colleges early in junior year or even before(FYI: I haven’t, I’m going this summer).</p>
<p>This couple months is the worst time for juniors, but it won’t last forever!</p>
<p>We visited 5 schools over spring break. Sorry, that doesn’t help you at this point.</p>
<p>OK, you can’t visit colleges right now but there are things you CAN do. Read about the ones you are interested in on this site. Go on each college’s site and do a virtual tour. Go on YouTube and watch videos people have posted of campus events, football games, concerts, and so on.</p>
<p>Plenty of students wait to visit colleges until after they have been admitted. If you do Early Decision or Early Action that will buy you more time, because you will know by the end of the year or shortly after if you got in and can make travel plans for next winter.</p>
<p>Visiting colleges early is fine, but it’s not until late junior year/senior year that kids really, really know what they want (and even then) in my experience. My kid is having the same problem–no time to visit! Unlike you, she has some time in the summer so she’ll do some then, but I keep hearing how summer visits aren’t that helpful. You have no time at all in the summer?</p>
<p>We visited schools over junior spring break, during a week in June, during a couple days in fall when seniors had open days for visiting colleges, and over some random weekends throughout this time. </p>
<p>Summer visits are less useful since most students are gone and you can’t sit in on classes, but are still worthwhile because you can still see the campus, attend an admissions presentation (at some places), take a tour, see a dormitory, etc.</p>
<p>Many colleges post virtual tours of their campus. I’d also recommend that you go to a few well regarded schools in your area and tour them. These don’t have to be the ones you want to apply to, but it should give you an idea of whether you’d prefer an urban, suburban, or rural school, how large you’d like it to be, etc. Maybe you’d want to go to your state flagship, a liberal arts college, and a medium sized private. If you’re in a heavily populated state with a wide range of college choices this is much easier than if you, say live in Wyoming.</p>
<p>I didn’t have time to visit colleges my junior year. However, I spent home coming weekend and spring break touring my top choices and deciding from there.</p>
<p>Redpoint, it is the same issue as you are having. I have time during the summer, but the schools are not in session. My understanding is that these visits need to happen while school is in session. I think I will actually maybe even get to take 3 trips this summer. </p>
<p>However, I also think I need to widen my net. I do not think I have a good list of schools to look at.</p>
<p>I visited schools over winter and spring break, and I don’t think any classes were in session then. The only in-session experiences I had were admitted students days, which are certainly another option. Relax-- I don’t think it’s as big a deal as you think it is. Think about what you want in a school, and I’d visit two or three (large state flagship, medium research private, SLAC, engineering school, rural/urban/suburban) and get a feel of what you want in a campus. If your family can afford it/waivers, make more of the admitted student trips your senior year (I only went to my top two). Schools are typically more permissive spring of your senior year. If you’re applying for any large merit scholarships and you’re a finalist, you may be flown in for the scholarship weekend, and that’ll be when school is in session. If you qualify, quite a few schools do female/diversity fly-ins in the fall as well (from what I can recall, mostly small NE LACs). Good luck!</p>
<p>When I was looking at schools, I looked a lot at how schools described their academic experience and their approach to learning-- that was super important to me, so that was what I focused on in websites.</p>
<p>I really don’t know how helpful college visits are anyways. The campus tours are probably pretty biased, and how much can you judge a school just from one visit to their campus?</p>
<p>It’s not like you need to visit every school. You also should not be doing it to “show interest” so the colleges are more willing to accept you. There was no record of me visiting any of my colleges and I got into almost all of them. I would say that if you have time, it’d be a nice trip for your family. However, you can always wait until Spring Break to visit the ones you’ve been accepted to and are seriously considering.</p>
<p>I disagree kevycnuck. So far I’ve visited 2 schools with my kid, and we got a good sense of the school and the vibe, the layout and accessibility of stores, restaurants, and transportation. Plus, if you go to the school, and especially if you talk to a rep and they can put a name to a face, it’s a bonus. I would think visiting during the summer may have benefits. You could be the only one, or almost, on a tour, and have the rep all to yourself. Has anyone experienced this? I was at one school in the off-season in January and there was only one other prospect.</p>
<p>* I have a summer class*</p>
<p>How many weeks is this summer class? How many weeks is your summer vacation? You proably have at least a couple of weeks that won’t be filled with summer school.</p>
<p>Most colleges start school in the middle of August and most high schools start later. There is usually a 2 week window in August to visit while the kids are in school. Just an idea. But I do think that trying to see 3 or 4 schools in an easy commute (urban, suburban, small, large etc) is a great idea even if they aren’t the schools you are thinkging about - it really helped my dd to decide what size and environement she wanted!</p>
<p>Supplement your online research with a good college guidebook or two, such as the Fiske Guide to Colleges. It does a very good job of really **describing **each school it covers so you get a good idea of what makes it different, what the student body is like etc… The descriptions of the colleges I know the best seem quite accurate. Some of the guidebooks only give you statistics so they are less helpful to someone in your situation.</p>
<p>We did most of our tours during the summer and it worked out fine. Yes, touring during the school year is better, but summer touring is still very valuable. Info sessions, tours, visiting the neighborhood around the campus, and even talking to professors. We had some great conversations with grad students too.
See how much you can do this summer. Is your summer course all summer? If so, do you really need to take this course?
You can also be proactive about contacting schools you are interested in. Tell them you would like to visit but can’t and ask if they have ideas for you. They may offer to put you in contact with a professor in your potential major or point you to an info session they may be conducting in your area, and they may help answer questions you have. Check the admissions website, some of them provide you with ways to talk to current students even if it is by Facebook.</p>
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No they don’t. The degree of activity will certainly be different but some schools may be obvious hits or misses from your visit.
This is a bigger issue. What schools are on your list? What are you looking for? What geographies can you visit?</p>