My daughter is in 10th grade, and we have no idea what kind of school environment would be best for her. (LAC? Large research university? Rural? Urban? Etc.) Right now she’s leaning toward going into mechanical or bioengineering, but that’s highly subject to change. My guess is that she’ll be a good candidate for schools with ~20% acceptance rates.
We’re thinking of doing a road trip during her Spring break in April, and I’d like to expose her to as many different kinds of colleges as possible, just so she can get a sense of what’s out there. Is there a geographical area that has a large variety of different schools that we can hit in one go? I’m imagining the Boston area could be good, since we could hit an all-women’s LAC (Wellesley), large universities (Boston U?, Northeatern?), medium-sized (Tufts), engineering-specific colleges (Olin) etc. Any other recommendations?
My other daughter is at Haverford, so another idea I had was to go to Philly, so she could see some of the schools there: Haverford, Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore, Villanova. That seems to be about it, though. Again, I’d rather not tour Penn, since she puts enough pressure on herself already. I’m hoping she doesn’t fall in love with any ivies until/unless she gets into one.
We’re from the Seattle area, so if there are similar places on the West Coast with a wide variety of schools, that could also be helpful.
Both Philly or Boston would give you a nice range of schools to visit.
But you know what? So would Seattle/WA state in general, and you don’t need to wait until April. Since your daughter doesn’t know what kind of school is right for her, you can already start visiting places, even if she’s not interested in them specifically, in order to get a sense of what a large university feels like (UW), what an LAC feels like (U of Puget Sound), what a slightly larger private uni feels like (Seattle U), and so on.
Southern CA might also be a quicker trip if you’re looking to try out schools before April, as there’s a slightly larger offering than WA in terms of large unis (UCLA, USC, UCSD), LACs (Occidental, the Claremont schools), and plenty of tweeners (Loyola Marymount, Chapman).
I agree with the previous post. We started out looking at a variety of schools within an easy distance from home (large state school, LAC, medium sized private school, an urban, a suburban, a rural). DD was able to tell after the first few schools what size/locale she preferred. When she had a more narrow focus, we could target specific schools on longer trips and see schools that fit her wish list. We were limited in the number of long trips we could take in terms of time and money so if those things aren’t a concern for you, it is probably fine. It would be a shame, for instance, if your D found she liked LACs and your trip east was spent at BU, Olin, and Tufts when she would have been better served by looking at Amherst, Bowdoin, and Skidmore and you don’t have the ability to check them out on another trip.
I agree that @Hapworth’s advice is spot on - try and get a sense of the big school vs. LAC issue by visiting schools locally and then take a more targeted approach on your longer trip. With our son, we sent him to a couple of big-school sports camps his first few years in high school, and he decided very quickly that wasn’t what he wanted and we were able to focus on the LACs. If you need to take a different approach and see different types of schools on the big trip, I agree that Boston is a good choice based on the variety of schools in the area. You might also be able to fit in a couple of the Maine schools - Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, which are relatively close by.