<p>We going to visit a local college today (within a couple of hours of where we live) but it's pouring here and the forecast is for thunderstorms later.</p>
<p>Should we change the visit? (Will we not get a good view of what a typical day is like?)</p>
<p>Thanks for any advice!</p>
<p>Although it will not be as much fun to walk around on a tour today, I don’t think a rainy day is any less typical than a gorgeous day when everyone is out playing Frisbee. The information session and inside spaces will be the same and there is something to be said for seeing what a place looks like on a rainy day. For the tour, bring shoes you don’t mind getting wet. Bring your own umbrellas too if you think it will be more convenient–though many colleges have nice large ones in the admission office that they lend on rainy days.</p>
<p>If you want your kid to consider that college, it probably would be better to go on a nice day. Sometimes students make snap judgments about colleges based on the weather.</p>
<p>If you had to make a reservation for the tour/information session, go. If not, I see no harm in waiting for a nicer day.</p>
<p>Not all kids are overly influenced by the weather. My daughter’s worst college visit was in midsummer, on a day when the temperature on campus was 98 degrees and taking the tour was akin to torture. She ended up applying to that college early decision.</p>
<p>You can always cancel your tour.</p>
<p>If it’s hailing I’d probably skip it. It rained for much of accepted students weekend at Carnegie Mellon while it couldn’t have been more beautiful for the Harvard weekend. My kid still turned down Harvard! If you can easily reschedule, I might do so, but if not it’s not the end of the world. We probably got more building insides than we would have if the weather had been nicer.</p>
<p>I’m probably too late to contribute but I would delay it. DD1 and I went to visit Kenyon on a dreary, cold, wet day. Midway through the morning she told me “I will never go here. Can we leave now?”. DD2 visited on a more typical day and applied. I still believe the weather had a hand in the (snap) decision.</p>
<p>I’m probably too late to post too… but given that the college is local and easy to get to, I would just change the visit. Your kiddo should be familiar enough with the local weather to understand what a rainy day looks like – but if the weather is a distraction, the kiddo might not take in as much information about the college.</p>
<p>My son wrote one of his application essays on how it rained every time he came to campus. It was an excellent essay and he is now at that school.
That said, it really does color your experience of the place if the weather is bad.</p>
<p>MOWC – What’s the weather like at his school now? At frosh orientation, did they welcome him with sandbags? :D</p>
<p>^^ It rains a lot. It’s grey a lot. He has done fine but is ready for a different part of the country.</p>
<p>Thank you all. We did end up going, mainly because we really couldn’t think of another time that was going to work.</p>
<p>It was pouring for most of the tour! But he still liked it. He didn’t like it so much as we were driving in, past cows and farms, but once we got there his opinion changed.</p>
<p>I thought it seemed small! And with 15,000 students, of course it isn’t small…but I guess since I went to a school with 30,000 I was expecting a bigger student union and bigger common areas. But we probably didn’t look around as much as we normally would have, since we had our heads down against the rain so much!</p>