<p>I tend to be fairly self-reliant, I don't mind exploring on my own, or talking to random people. I stayed overnight at the majority of my colleges, and I'm not sure how one could make a decision without doing so.</p>
<p>Overnights allow you to meet students outside of tour guides, and see what campus life is like after the last tour group has left. For example, at Reed I was left at 7 O'Clock in the evening by my host so he could go do homework until 2 AM. So I looked around, discovered the comic book room, played pool and met a bunch of really interesting people.</p>
<p>At Macalester everyone, including my fellow prospective students got drunk. I wandered up and down the hallways but everyone was either getting drunk, watching tv, at a salsa dance or gone. I don't drink, so I ended up reading the book I'd brought with me for the plane ride.</p>
<p>At Haverford I was dragged all over campus by really nice hosts, who tried to teach me how to swing dance, introduced me to their friends, took me to a lecture they had in the evening (with good food). </p>
<p>Overnights allow you to meet people outside a scripted environment. It's a great way for getting a feel for a school. If it's possible, I would highly, highly reccomend them.</p>
<p>My school (Wesleyan University) has overnights that are also all volunteer-based... we get nothing in return except for that warm happy feeling that we maybe made someone else love our school as much as we do. I think overnights are the single most powerful thing a prospective student can do to find out if the school is right for them; if your host is lame, then you can usually pretty much tell that it's just someone you wouldn't be friends with, but nevertheless, you get to be on the campus, behind-the-scenes without admissions officers whispering sweet nothings into your ear, seeing what it's really like. If this is going to be a school you're living at for possibly four (or more!) years, it seems to me that deciding to go to a school without ever staying overnight to see what it's really like is a poor choice. That said, I didn't do an overnight, applied ED, and was thrilled with my choice. In retrospect, however, I wish I'd done more overnights, instead of somewhat blindly crossing other schools off my list (i.e. Yale, which I visited over an alumni weekend and disgusted me, which surely wasn't the most ideal light in which to view the school.)</p>
<p>My son is not interested in any overnights & has decided that he will love the school he ends up at & would prefer to save the money. I know the overnights can be important to many students & agree that the experience can be colored by the host & the folks the student happens to meet. My son is pretty set on the school he wants to attend anyway, so we'll just go along with his preference. It does take him a while to "settle" into a new place & he feels that an overnight will necessarily be pretty superficial. One of my nieces toured the schools she had been accepted at during her Spring Break before choosing her school & was glad she did. Her top choice became her bottom choice & her "safety" became the school she fell in love with & has since graduated from. Her sisters visited the schools before they applied & that was enough for them.</p>
<p>Reed, Macalester, Haverford...sounds like you were working your way east, Timedistorted. Have you made up your mind yet? Which schools have won your heart so far?</p>
<p>My bet is that timesdisorted won't choose Macalester because of her bad overnight. </p>
<p>Which may prove my point: </p>
<p>Take 3 great schools (where, no doubt, each has kids who drink and kids who don't) and throw in one bad hostess and it can really sour a kid on a school which might fit them just fine. The stakes are even higher is there is a big scholarship at risk.</p>
<p>Overnights are critically important. And it's truly stunning that some schools pay so little attention to the students chosen to host and the outcomes of these visits. </p>
<p>My daughter was very interested in a school for well over a year and a half. It didn't even take an overnight to turn her off, but a "Shadow Day" where she followed a student for a day to classes, etc. Host student took her to two classes and spend the rest of the visit in her dorm room w/ other friends planning on where and how to buy alcohol (she was underage) for their party that night. I met up with my daughter at the end of the day (the parents had a different agenda and I'd had a delightful time)...and she said "What a waste of my day." She never again mentioned said college. Thinking this was an isolated incident (with a bad host), I advised my daughter's boyfriend to go check out this school (which has an outstanding regional reputation), and worse yet...his host student drank with friends in his dorm room and offered alcohol to this high school senior (who doesn't drink). So his day was miserable as well. I apologized for telling him to check it out! </p>
<p>At the school my daughter ended up attending, her tour guide was well prepared, dressed business casual, articulate, and asked questions of prospective students to engage them. Her overnight was outstanding.</p>
<p>It just amazes me with all the money spend on marketing, brochures, websites, etc that this aspect is (as described above) a crapshoot. I completely agree with Weenie. And parents, you DO need to complain to schools with bad overnights. Schools need to hear this feedback and should promptly ban said student from hosting again. But there should be a better selection process in the first place.</p>
<p>Wow, I have to say I am pretty shocked at the prevalence of alcohol on overnight visits. I am not naive about alcohol on campus, as I went to college and I also live in a Big 10 town, but you would think the schools would be very careful about who they pair recruits with and make it clear that recruits are NOT to be introduced to situations involving alcohol. I know a lot of high schoolers do drink, but many of them do not and exposure to the partying life seems to be a big turnoff for them.</p>
<p>when i went to WashU i went to an on campus party in one of the dorms and the people who were hosting it @ one point stoped the music to announce that there would be no tolerance of alcohol being present out of respect for the prospective students that were there</p>
<p>I think overnight visits can be both highly valuable and a crapshoot. In particular, a bad experience may sour a student on a school that would actually be a good fit, simply because the students host did not carry out his or her responsibilities well. Although my child did not ultimately go there, my child went on an overnight visit to Yale that helped demystify the place and convince my child that Yalies were not creatures from another planet who are orders of magnitude more intelligent than human beings. On the other hand, the son of a friend of mine did an overnight at Yale that went so badly that he called his parents at their hotel and asked them to pick him up in the middle of the night and take him home. The student refused to ever explain what happened, but we suspect that drug use may have played a role. My friends son never applied to Yale. He graduates from Amherst this year, which he loved. My child is at Princeton which s/he decided to attend after having a good stay there.</p>
<p>Anyway, you'd be right that I've decided against Macalester, but it's for a variety of reasons. I don't really like the area as compared to Portland and Philadelphia. Secondly, although the admissions staff was wonderful, the other faculty I met didn't seem to be quite so well loved/admired by their students. Thirdly, as a Californian, the 8* winters with people still being outside in t-shirts didn't bode well...</p>
<p>Substances don't bother me that much unless I feel like it's everyone who's doing them and there's nothing else to do. I do know Reed has a fabled history of everyone being high, but that hasn't stopped me from applying/liking it.</p>
<p>I've been in love with UVA since I was two. I toured and fell even more in love with the school, our tourguide was great and into singing (so am I). But before applying ED I wanted to make sure I would mesh with the student body (UVA is somewhat diverse extracurric wise but I did not want to feel like a dork in a circle of people who dress up for football games if you know what I mean). So I did an overnight.</p>
<p>The way they matched me up was they asked my prospective major but also matched me with an OOS person as well, which was really helpful. Since I was already committed to applying ED my host kept telling me all these things I sort of already knew. Haha. I arrived late but that night was totally amazing. In her dorm, I would walk into a room and either I would see a book I totally loved and would strike up a conversation with the person, or would ask about what classes so and so was taking and that would work out really well... We stayed up until about 2 and I would say the one preppy girl who went to sleep early was the outcast! I fit in sooo completely.</p>
<p>I would advise bringing homework (UVA specifically told you to do this and my host had a test she had to study for so it worked out well) if you hadn't already planned on doing so. My host did have a test so she let me sleep in late and then matched me up with a friend of hers since she was only in Calc I and I am in Calc III hehe. Great lecture on bioethics. We went out to lunch, and it was an awesome experience that made me apply ED. Got deferred and then accepted so it all worked out.</p>
<p>Oh also my host let me read her book she got when she was accepted, and I learned so much. They gave information on dorms, meal plans, etc that just isn't available online. I asked a lot of questions and she always had an answer. I also wanna do this 5 year elem ed program and it turned out her RA was in it and subbing at the local synagogue (I want to get hired there) so that worked out amazingly as well. We stopped by the office for the 5 yr prog too and got information I already had but that's okay.</p>
<p>All in all - amazing and definitely necessary (calmed my fears about not fitting in). I have been urging all of my friends to do overnights who are having trouble deciding where to go next year.</p>
<p>My son is trying to decide between Notre Dame and Cornell. I'm interested in which school you decided on- Notre Dame or Dartmouth. Also what were the main factors in your decision ?</p>
<p>Your situation is very similar to what we're facing with our son. He is facing a decision between Notre Dame and Cornell. We will be visiting both school soon. I would be interested in knowing what you decided - Notre Dame or Dartmouth. What influenced your decision and what were the main factors in your choice. Could you share that with me? My son has always liked Notre Dame since he was in grade school; however he's trying to make an educated decision now.</p>
<p>I would advise speaking to whatever group organizes the overnight hosts and requesting someone with a major of interest to your child. Not only will they probably mesh better, but your child will be able to get information specifically about the program.</p>
<p>Another thing you can do is have your son or daughter contact a particular department, asking for students who would be willing to meet during the overnight. Oftentimes professors have a better grasp of who would be a good/responsible host than the admissions people. Plus, then there's another opportunity for finding out about the program, and perhaps an alternative to meet up with if the host bombs completely.</p>
<p>i'm not sure colleges would mind if they knew the kids drank, as long as it was willingly, not peer pressure and safely. if the kids already drink there's a good chance they'll have a great time if they get drunk and hang out with college kids, and that would make them want to go to ABC College.</p>
<p>lol i find it interesting (understandable, but still interesting) that a lot of people were utterly turned off by the presence of drinking at the schools they visited, whereas when i visited my brother at his university one of the reasons that contributed to making it my first choice was the fact that i had so much fun at the predrinks and bars that we went to. it's really unfortunate that people feel that they are being pressured to drink at these visits, but that being said alcohol has a huge presence on most campuses so encounters with it are unavoidable once you actually attend.</p>
<p>Actually, I think it's an extremely good thing that schools don't screen prospective overnight hosts. If the admissions office starts controlling the aspects of overnights and making it shiny as they do with everything else, then surely the student won't get a realistic idea of what the school is really like. And surely that's the point of an overnight visit. To get away from the controlled vision you see from the admissions office perspective, and see what your actual college experience might likely be like. Yes, hosts will differ enormously, but if you're not an idiot, you can get a good general idea of what it's like with different social groups.</p>
<p>what if you want to do an overinight at school that doesn't have these events officially? i don't want to be the only one spending the night. lol.</p>
<p>when i visited campuses, i didn't go to any sort of official overnight visits-i just stayed with friends, which i think gave it a more accurate sheen. being the only one spending the night will allow you to have a more accurate view of campus life. hopefully you'll have a chance to stay at the universities that you're interested even without an officially sanctioned visit.</p>