<p>So we live in GA and we are planning our October college tour. This round we will visit Caltech, Stanford, UChicago, UPenn, Princeton, Columbia, Yale, Brown, MIT, Harvard and Dartmout. Below is our plan, any suggestion will be greatly appreciated!</p>
<p>Day1: Fly to LA, visit Caltech, fly to San Fran.
Day2: Visit Stanford, fly to Chicago.
Day3: Visit Chicago and conduct an on-campus interview, fly to Philly.
Day4: Visit Upenn, drive to NJ and visit Princeton, drive to NYC.
Day5: Visit Columbia and drive to New heaven.
Day6: Visit Yale, conduct an on-campus interview, drive to providence.
Day7: Visit Brown, drive to Cambridge and Visit Harvard.
Day8: Visit MIT, drive to hanover and visit Dartmouth.</p>
<p>Where will you be flying out of for the return? Philly or Boston?</p>
<p>The East Coast portion is a logical straight line. If you fly out of Boston, this is the only way to do it.</p>
<p>If, however, you will circle back to Philly to fly out, I’d shuffle the order a bit, depending on your son or daughter. I’d put whatever you view as the best/favorite schools towards the end of the trip. This allows more thorough consideration of the others before your child gets locked on the prettiest campus/friendliest admissions department.</p>
<p>It goes without saying that there is not much on here in terms of safeties.</p>
<p>You are going to be exhausted and the info from the schools will all start to run together in your head with a trip like this. 11 schools in 8 days with 2 cross country flights and a flight from S Cal to No Cal to boot is really, IMO, too much. Break the trip up if you can. Will you be meeting with any professors? Sitting in on any classes? If so (which I recommend at many of these schools), you probably cant do 2 schools in one day. I see that the 2 schools where you have an on-campus interview you will only do one school in a day. That makes sense to me. Doing Penn and Princeton in one day, then driving to NYC is doable, probably, but you’ll be exhausted. And you can get caught in traffic between Providence and Cambridge and that drive can take a couple of hours. Probably unlikely you can tour Brown and Harvard in one day and get any real useful feel for the schools other than to walk around and possibly catch an info session.</p>
<p>To give you an idea, when we did a similar trip, we saw Amherst, Williams, Dartmouth, MIT and Harvard in one trip. Second trip was Cal Tech and Harvey Mudd. Third trip was Yale, Brown and Tufts (skipped Columbia- changed his mind). There were a few other local one day trips (we are also in Ga). After all that, DS fell in love with Rice and applied ED. </p>
<p>BTW-- love your typo-- New Heaven? LOL. Made me smile!</p>
<p>I agree with jym, too many colleges; try to break up CA Chicago and East Coast trips. And you have to include time for parking and traffic jams; some of the colleges seem close but not always. Maybe try to do one East Coast College a day and see some local attractions that would give some perspective on “do I want to be here for four years”.</p>
<p>We’re in NY and we did a CA to Chicago trip 3 days - 3 schools. You may be exhausted driving all over the Northeast for the other schools but I guess it’s doable. Just be certain to have a notebook to take notes immediately after each school is visited so they blur a little less. Pictures help too. </p>
<p>My real concern is that you might want to look more carefully into the different schools - all Ivies are not alike! Princeton and Dartmouth are very preppie and conservative, Brown just about polar opposite. Campus locations are very different also - big city, small city, very rural, suburban, etc. Size of colleges/graduate programs also very different. How much structure does you child want? Does he/she want to create their own major? What about international travel? Foreign languages?</p>
<p>I guess my suggestion is to perhaps lessen the number of tours completely. It seems like you just decided to tour all the top tier colleges with little concern as to their fit.</p>
<p>I’m in agreement with the others that you have planned to look at too many schools within your time frame. I would try to reconsider visiting more than 1 school per day. 2 years ago, we looked at 7 schools in 7 days, and even that was overwhelming. If you decide to continue with your plan, my best suggestion would be to write down thoughts on each school AS SOON AS you are done there. Do not even wait an hour (especially towards the end of your trip) as the details will meld together. Record the highlights and lowlights and especially your gut feelings.
Best of luck to you, and have fun!</p>
<p>I agree that this trip looks too ambitious. We visited 3 schools in 3 days in April and my daughter and I were still tired of information sessions and tours when we visited another school 2 weeks later. As others have suggested, I would recommend separating the East and West coast visits. You might also want to have your child do more online research to try to cut down on the visits. You can try visiting some local schools first to get a better idea on what size and setting appeal most. I know it’s hard to fit all the visits in. We spread them out over my daughter’s junior year, using days off from school,
saturdays and spring break. If you try to pack too many in to one trip, you run the risk of having your child reject a good fit because he/she is too burnt out to give it a chance.</p>
<p>even 2 schools can blur together so this sounds like alot! btw i hope you have some safety schools on your list to visit…these are are really selective. great stats wont guarantee admission</p>
<p>What I see as the biggest problem is the plan to visit two schools in one day, with travel in between. This will probably mean that you won’t do either justice–you may not be able to do the tour, and you certainly won’t have time to do an info session, tour, and generally look around. I would also note that the schools on your visit list are all super-selective–you might want to add some more “match” type schools (don’t know your kid’s stats, of course). You might, for example, be able to visit Tufts and Harvard on the same day, and you could look at NYU and Columbia at the same time. I’d probably drop Dartmouth for this trip, unless it’s a top favorite.</p>
<p>I heartily second the concern about drinking from the firehose here.</p>
<p>We find that by taking our time at each school – about 4 hrs on campus, my D has been able to do a fair head-to-head comparison. Each visit includes a student-led tour, class visit, interview and lunch (usually with a student; this is often when we get some of our best info and insights).</p>
<p>Immediately back in the car, we take notes. This can take a bit of time, too, but it’s so helpful later.</p>
<p>Granted, we’ve only visited 8, and usually just one-a-day, but they’ve never blurred together in our minds.</p>
<p>I worry the trip you’re planning could result in huge sensory overload and exhaustion, diminishing its value.</p>
<p>Very ambitious. This break-neck pace will exhaust you (pl) … and could lend itself to a domino-effect delay of missed appointments, should something throw you off schedule. </p>
<p>My DH and S1 drove through New England, NY and PA over the course of 6 days over S1’s April break and hit 11 schools - taking in guided campus visits and group info sessions. They also had appointments to meet with coaches at each stop. They came home completely wiped out.</p>
<p>I would caution against taking official interviews with admissions under these conditions, as kids tend not to be at their best when they are tired. If it is feasible, I would personally schedule the interviews for a seperate trip/later date, and only after you are confident that your child is interested in applying there.</p>
<p>I concur with everyone that your plan is way too ambitious. What we learned is that even at one school per day, you lose enthusiasm for the process, no matter how much you thought you wanted to visit the school. There is no doubt that you/your student will have burn out doing it this way. It takes a fair amount of energy to take the tours and be fully engaged in learning what you can at each school.</p>
<p>In summary, to accomplish the East Coast segment you should allow a week for that part alone. The west coast trip should be separate. Agree with suggestion from lastminutemom re Chicago. We live in the Atlanta area and this definitely would work.
Never visit more than one school per day. You will do a dis-service to the 2nd school, for sure.
Give yourself EXTRA time at each school to allow for spontaneous exploring of the area close to the school. This free-time exercise really can open your eyes in terms of “fit” for your student.</p>
<p>In spite of what you may think, you really will need time in between to thoroughly process how you feel. After doing the college search two years in a row, I can guarantee your proposed compressed schedule will be exhausting, not nearly as productive as you think, and most importantly, jeopardize impressions and undermine the overall assessment process. While I can appreciate what you are trying to accomplish re the efficiency of your plan, I highly advise you to rethink it!</p>
<p>I disagree with those who say get in first, and then visit. Visits can be very helpful in helping you to decide where to apply, and can even shape your thinking on what to say in the applications.</p>
<p>The tours are important, but so is the free time to talk to students, sit in the student center and people watch, visit the parts of campus that aren’t on the guided tour (often times the dorms or rec centers), drive around the local area and see the community the prospective student will live in for four years. The official tours are only a piece of what your student will be using to make her/his decision.</p>
<p>I agree with the others - way to many schools for the time you have.</p>