<p>My son & I are taking a two week road trip in a few weeks to visit a number of colleges and universities. I would appreciate any advice on places to visit that aren't currently on our itinerary.</p>
<p>Here's the current plan. We'll leave NW Louisiana (Shreveport) on Saturday, June 25th. By Sunday night we'll be in place (somewhere) for a Monday morning visit. Schools we plan to see that first week are Davidson, Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, and Wake Forest. If we do those one-a-day, we have room for another visit. If we were to schedule morning & afternoon visits (if that's feasible), we would have three days to see additional schools that week. I've considered doing Vanderbilt, Carnegie Mellon, or Case Western Reserve on Monday morning followed by a 7-8 hour drive to North Carolina. That would probably mean not doing a Tuesday morning visit.</p>
<p>Week 2 of the trip will (unfortunately) be a 4-day week. The three day weekend (July 2-4th) should give us plenty of time to see some sights (somewhere or other) and make it to Atlanta. The game plan is Emory on Tuesday, U. of FL on Wednesday, LSU on Thursday, & Rice on Friday. We conceivably could hit Florida State also or skip LSU & add UT or Texas A&M. Because of the distances and shorter time frame, we don't have as much flexibility in this week.</p>
<p>Our son just finished his junior year. He is interested in Physics (Math being a close 2nd). We are less interested in "preppy" and heavily Greek schools (even though Vanderbilt is on the list). His career plans presently are to get a PhD and teach. Liberal Arts colleges with good physics programs would be acceptable. I don't know his class rank. His weighted GPA is over 4.0; unweighted is 3.7 IIRC. ACT composite 36. SAT 750CR, 800M, 740W (11 on the essay). PSAT is either 231 or 233 (can't recall). Off the top of my head, ECs would include Regional Literary Rally twice (English), Quiz Bowl, Math Club, class play (The Crucible), Church Youth Choir, AMC & AIME math competitions.</p>
<p>If you've got any suggestions of colleges to visit, please let me know. I'm planning on contacting the schools late this week to set up the visits.</p>
<p>Aren't you guys looking into MIT, Princeton, CalTech, Stanford and Harvard? I realize those are spread out, but your son certainly has the credentials to apply to a couple of those schools. Other universities he can look into are Cal-Berkeley, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Illinois-Urbana Champaign and Michigan-Ann Arbor.</p>
<p>Some LACs have amazing Physics programs too. Amherst, Carleton, Davidson, Grinnell, Harvey Mudd, Haverford, Middlebury, Pomona, Swarthmore, Wesleyan University and Williams are just a few.</p>
<p>Case Western offers great scholarships for outstanding, involved students...lots to see in Cleveland too (and the university is in a museum area). It tends to be a very non-preppy school. Not sure about the physics department--my daughter is in engineering there. Some comments about Case can be negative, but we decided to visit and see for ourselves. My daughter was very impressed and loves it there.</p>
<p>We did visit Carnegie Mellon and Washington University in St. Louis, but she got the impression that they were too preppy and greek...she would not even apply to them...Not sure if it is an accurate analysis, but just her gut feelings....</p>
<p>Is this your first time doing college visits? I have to ask because
it seems like you are doing too much planning, and not allowing time for the evaluation process. By the way, my son visited several of the schools you've mentioned, and he will be majoring in math and physics at Cornell. He found that the courses, opportunities and size of the departments he sought were most available at medium-to-large schools.</p>
<p>I know it's a long drive for you, and you would probably like to fit in as many schools as possible, but a prolonged trip may produce the opposite of what you're after. Instead of a thoughtful evaluation, it could turn into boredom, crankiness, snap judgements..... </p>
<p>How about starting out with short visits to the close-in prospects like LSU and Rice? You may be able to eliminate certain types of schools early in the process. Keep the Emory-Duke-UNC-Davidson loop, but think about doing Case-Carnegie-Cornell on another trip, and the rest of the Texas schools separately. After a while, the schools seem to blend together. A notebook of your impressions and snapshots may help, and scheduling appointments with professors in his intended major is a great idea. Don't overlook the social element; be sure he has time to wander around without parents! Can you find some way to have a current student talk to your son, even if it's not during the visit? These things were important in my son's decision, so I'll pass them along and hope they help. Good luck!</p>
<p>I would strongly advise against trying to fit more than one school in on a day. We tried it once for two colleges relatively close by and for which the times seemed to work with respect to the scheduled information session and tour times - we were still rushed getting from one to the other and were completely wiped out at the end of the day.
The biggest surprise about the college visits was just how physically tiring the process can be. Even the tours of relatively small campuses lasted at least an hour - an the tour guides rarely take the shortest route around campus.
Also, if your son knows he wants phsyics, maybe you can also call the phsyics depts and ask if its possible to speak with someone. We did this with the subject my daughter was interested in and found in enourmously helpful - its easy to say 'oh I'll do that on a second visit' - but it can be tough getting back to all the schools you think you liked for a such a second visit.</p>
<p>I completely agree with unbelievablem. College visits are VERY physically tiring and take time. I suggest you visit one school per day and try to get a real feel for the school. Take your time and ask lots of questions.</p>
<p>Hi AlphaMicro - I'm in Mobile, and did the NC loop last year. You cannot make it from Atlanta to Gainesville to LSU, and do any meaningful kind of visit. I would recommend - Vandy on Mon, Wake Forest Tues afternoon (you might make it Tues morning, depending on what the over the mountain weather is, I-40 can be a bear) Davidson on Wed, then Duke and Chapel Hill. You can do two a days if you have to, particularly if you cannot talk son into speaking to someone in the Physics department (which I would highly recommend, physics is one of those small majors where developing a relationship with faculty will both let your son know if a particular school is for him, and perhaps give him an "in"). the other advantage to the 2 schools a day plan, is that you can get down to Atlanta and see Emory on Fri. That will allow you to use the long weekend to work your way back toward Texas (you might actually make it) or go down to Fla for UF and Fla State.</p>
<p>Remeber that it is a holiday weekend - are tours being given on Fri?</p>
<p>Also traffic on I-10 (Gainesville to Baton Rouge will be hellacious on 4th of July weekend)</p>
<p>Could you do this - drive down to New Orleans, leave your car fly to Atlanta or Charlotte, rent a car, do the loop, fly back to NO, pick up your car and then loop TX in the car? Or vice versa - LSU and TX first week so you can cover the larger driving distances - then double up on North Carolina?</p>
<p>Your son sound like perfect fit for Chicago. Excellent Math and Physics program, not heavy on the greek or preppy side. My S is finsihing his first year with a major in math and loves it. I believe Chicago gets quite a few kids from your area.
Good luck.</p>
<p>Your son sound like perfect fit for Chicago. Excellent Math and Physics program, not heavy on the greek or preppy side. My S is finsihing his first year with a major in math and loves it. I believe Chicago gets quite a few kids from your area. I would suggest skipping Case and Carnegie for Chicago but that is only a suggestion.
Good luck.</p>
<p>Thank you everyone for the excellent advice. Although this will be our 3rd (and last) college student, he is the first one to not already have a good idea of which college to attend, so weve never done the Great Search before. We definitely won't do more than one visit a day. I've got a lot of cameras (and will ponder which ones to take), so there will be pictures taken at every stop. Well preprint some evaluation sheets to complete after each visit plus will have paper for extra notes and impressions.</p>
<p>Our son made it back to town Wednesday night. He and I will decide on the schools to visit this weekend. I've paid attention to all of the recommendations plus done additional research on the web (physics sites mainly) & with reference books (Fiske, etc). At the moment there are a LOT more schools we would like to visit than we have time for. We'll have to figure out a way to see more schools later. Right now I think we'll start at Emory and then do four in the NC/SC/VA area (still not positive which four). We'll work our way back west thereafter. We've definitely added Washington U in St. Louis. Vanderbilt is a maybe. Rhodes and Tulsa are also down as possibilities as is Chicago. I don't have to return to work until Tuesday, July 12th, so I think Rice will be on the 11th. The other idea is to start further northeast (Princeton, Harvard, & more) and work our way back toward NC. That would probably mean blowing off Emory (at least for now). I think we could do some Friday visits later to schools that are (relatively) short flights away (or within reasonable driving distances).</p>
<p>Alphamicro, your son sounds like a potential Bellingrath nominee at Rhodes. If he likes Rhodes, you should look into it, as someone has to nominate him. I know nothing about physics there, but chem and bio are good, and there are some interesting opportunities with St. Jude's - sounds like he needs to make the large vs small decision, my money is with Rice or Chicago.</p>
<p>ADDED: We went from AL to NH and back, seeing colleges along the way, in 1 week plus weekend at each end, you probably have a little less than 1 extra day of travel (you're further north, but considerably further west). You can do two per day if you must, but I would throw in an amusement park or other diversion to add some rest. The problem with going, say from Duke to Princeton is that you are so far east, you have to do the drive through Richmond - DC - Philly to get there, but you could take the western route (?I-84, ?I-81) on the way back south.</p>