<p>Maximize the value of your campus visit dollar! Article quotes CC's Sally Rubenstone.</p>
<p>Nine</a> Ways to Cut the Cost of College Visits | Fox Business</p>
<p>Have you used any of these cost-cutting strategies? Do you have any to add?</p>
<p>Perhaps also important is what to do on the visit.</p>
<p>A lot of students seem to have questions about whether students at a particular school and major are well recruited by employers, or placed into graduate school. A stop at the career center to ask these questions would be a good thing to do when visiting, especially if the school is not one of the few that puts career survey information on its web site (for examples of useful career survey information, see Berkeley, Cal Poly SLO, and Virginia Tech). While there, ask what companies come recruiting for the majors that the student is interested in.</p>
<p>We used the vacation/college visit strategy about five years ago with the oldest son, stopping at two campuses as we journeyed south on vacation. One of the two schools he liked enough to send it an application. We will do the same thing this year but with the younger son, who is in his sophomore year. He wants to see two schools on the way down to see his grandparents and a couple on the return trip home. As a HS teacher, I have seen a lot of kids wait until their very busy senior years to visit, which can cause some additional stress in the student’s, as well as the parent’s, life.</p>
<p>It’s a big help to start local to determine “type” of college that you like. Visit a big, small, commuter, residential, Rah Rah, quiet, rural, city, etc, etc, in your area to rule out what you don’t like and determine what you do like. </p>
<p>Also…determine your finances ahead of time to eliminate schools. Why waste money on college visits to schools that you could never afford and won’t give you the aid you need? why risk having your child fall in love with an unaffordable school???</p>
<p>Overnight megabuses were very helpful for us. If you book early enough, you can get a ticket for $1 each way, and doing it overnight completely eliminates the need for a hotel room (if you’re just going for a one day visit).</p>
<p>But, if you need a hotel room, you can often book through [Priceline.com</a> | Best deal on Hotels, Flights, Cars, Vacations & more!](<a href=“http://www.priceline.com%5DPriceline.com”>http://www.priceline.com). We’re visiting 3 cities next month on college tours and used priceline in two of the cities (winning bids between $50-60/night). You can find winning bids at [Priceline</a> and Hotwire Forum](<a href=“http://www.betterbidding.com%5DPriceline”>http://www.betterbidding.com) and [BiddingForTravel.com</a> - The informed Priceline Travel Bidding Forum](<a href=“http://www.biddingfortravel.com%5DBiddingForTravel.com”>http://www.biddingfortravel.com).</p>
<p>For students applying to a wide range of colleges, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend visiting them all before applying. Throughout high school, make an effort to stop by colleges on your way or near to vacation spots. Then combine that information (both about specific colleges and a general dis/like of small/big/public/private/etc) with that available online and make a college list. Once the acceptance roll in, the student can narrow their list to a reasonable number to visit for prospective student weekends and go from there.</p>
<p>With both my D’s – our first stop was to a major college area (Boston in our case) to look at various types of colleges. For example – Brandeis, Tufts (small-medium, suburban); BU – Large Urban; Northeastern (Urban - Campus) – Brown (on the way back home – Urban Campus).</p>
<p>Once my D kind of figured out what she was looking for, we could tailor our search more, but we didn’t spend a lot of travel time on schools that were likely to be of no interest whatsoever.</p>
<p>We didn’t invest in visiting colleges before applying. It made more sense to spend a relatively small amount of money on applications and then visiting the schools that were being seriously considered after acceptance. This strategy also avoided the heartbreak associated with visiting a college, falling in love with it and being rejected. Several schools offered airport pick-up and overnight housing at the college with students. With other visits, we traveled with our child and stayed in a motel while they did the overnight. The overnight visits and classroom observations were the real deal breakers with both kids.</p>
<p>My H took our S and 2 friends on a 9-day (Sat-Sun) trip from the midwest to the east coast and back. Four guys stayed in one hotel room with 2 queen beds. Because of their aggressive schedule, brought a cooler and food items to save both time and $ by not having to eat out all meals.</p>
<p>The other boys’ families helped with the cost of gas and lodging. The three boys planned the itinerary ahead of time, including making appointments for interviews at those schools which required them.</p>
<p>Not sure how it was humanly possible, but they saw 17 schools in 9 days. Not all included official tours. They also threw in a few touristy things, like Niagara Falls.</p>
<p>It was a memorable experience, and sharing the expenses made it possible.</p>
<p>We always stayed at hotels with breakfast buffets. It saved time in the morning and if we had a very rushed day with 2 colleges we would take a little extra for lunch, bagel, peanut butter, a yogurt. We had a small cooler. My son got to be very good at fixing me lunch while I was driving. It helped make it seem like more of an adventure!</p>
<p>I totally agree with the start close to home suggestion. I have always gone to a local school. The school’s where I live are no ivy league, but they are adequate. I can still get a good education at a fraction of the cost. I do have some student debt coming out of school, but it is a lot less because I went to a school close to where I live and because of that I get in state tuition, for the first year and a half of school I was able to live and eat at home, and I didn’t have to worry about rent or other extra costs. Of course, now I live away from home, but those benefits are great for students who don’t mind going to a school close to home.</p>
<p>As the article states, it’s not necessary to visit every school before applying. However, if a school considers interest in evaluating applicants, it might pay off to visit if the school is within a reasonable distance. I suggest consulting each school’s Common Data Set to see if student interest is an admissions factor. There’s a stickied thread of links to school data sets somewhere on CC. If interest isn’t a factor, the student can wait until decisions are in to visit, by which time the student may have better offers, or may have lost interest in that particular school.</p>
<p>Agree frazzled1 : D visited early and comprehensively at the school that really cared about interest.</p>
<p>Through my college career (currently still in college), I visited 2 campuses…one in state and one out of state. My advice would be to look at colleges that are in your best interest. Which college caters to what you want to study and which college looks clean and safe. I was never really picky about the college I went to…as long as it was affordable and I could commute easily from college to home, I was ok with it.</p>
<p>What we did was try to at least drive by a few Us when we went on vacations with the kids, when they were in middle & high schools. This helped them get a better sense of what different regions of the country were like & what rural could mean–NOTHING but vegetation for many miles around the campus. This helped S solidify in his mind where he would narrow his search instead of just “anywhere.” He realized that he was NOT interested in areas where it was so cold they needed high snow poles and snow fences, so reduced his applications accordingly. It was less pressure, since it was done in connection with family vacations we were taking anyway & we did a LOT of fun stuff rather than college visits and more college visits.</p>
<p>We use Choice Privileges with a AAA discount for hotel/motel options by staying in that family of chain hotels/motels. Accumulate the points & use toward free nights. </p>
<p>We have been able to get a couple of free nights here & there with the kids’ college choices. Free breakfast is always a plus too.</p>
<p>My advice:</p>
<p>If it’s not in driving distance, like day-trip distance, forget it and visit the website. I don’t know when kids and parents started getting duped into this idea that you have to go visit to <em>experience the atmosphere</em> of the U or whatever, but it’s completely unnecessary. Here’s your big secret of the day:</p>
<p>Almost every college looks exactly like a college. </p>
<p>You can tell how rich the alumni are by how nice the landscaping is, unless the school’s urban, in which case it’ll be busy looking tough and world-weary. If you want to know who’s going to the school, take a look at alumni event photos. Unless the school collects a lot of first-generation-at-college kids, those are the kids’ parents, it’ll be reasonably representative. Or watch a recent graduation-ceremony video.</p>
<p>The campus visit will tell you almost nothing worth knowing except where the bathrooms are. </p>
<p>As for what the dorms are like, etc…you know, you’re about to spend $100-200K on four years. For that kind of money, the dorms should be made of gold. They aren’t. Forget the dorms. For $100-200K, your focus should not be on living amenities, gyms, etc. A decent gym costs around $1K/yr, so the campus gym is not the point.</p>
<p>Your question should be what you’re getting for all that money. Who are the faculty, how are they regarded in their fields, are they planning on leaving soon, will the ones you’re interested in be away doing research or whatever most of the time you’ll be there? Are they findable during the week? Who are the other students, what are their prospects in life, can they help you later on? Where do the grad-school pipelines go? What are your opportunities for significant research, high-grade internships, etc? For that kind of money, you had better be looking for some high-octane training and mentorship, not a great gym and a lovely auditorium. It’s true, btw, that many very good programs are housed in schools that have those things. But it’s much easier to buy a nice gym than it is to build a powerhouse department, and there’s a laaarrrge number of well-appointed schools with kids whose only real advantage is that their daddies are rich. </p>
<p>Unless you’re made of money and time, skip the visits, look at the websites and the zillions of photos people post, and focus on what’s important.</p>
<p>keabie: what are these megabuses? Are they all over, or just something you found in a particular region?</p>
<p>Replying to #2, who suggests you go to the career office to find out how the students fare:</p>
<p>This works well if you’re willing to take the PR lady’s word for it (and make no mistake, everyone you’re talking to at the university is doing PR on pain of getting fired if they don’t). Dig a little deeper for the information.</p>