You can tell from my user name that we did not get started on this until late in the game… like end of junior year. S has applied to 12 schools with one more to go and only visited one (Macalester). As his EA results are coming in… 5/5 so far with good merit aid at all (22-30k). I am starting to get panicked about scheduling all these visits last minute. I had expected that the process would be more self-selecting, but his results are better than expected. There is no way with academic, work, financial, and theater commitments that we can somehow travel the country before the May 1 deadline. To make it worse, S is adamantly undecided with interests ALL over the place - History, Politics, Theater, Film, Creative Writing, Study Abroad. He wants a intellectual, left-leaning, quirky school with good opportunities for jobs/internships. I am thinking we should either pick one or two schools per area (Pac-NW, midwest, NE) or just focus on one area.
Organized by area here are the schools (still waiting on many but have to plan for decent airfare soon):
Pacific Northwest: Whitman, Puget Sound, Willamette, Lewis and Clark
Northeast: Fordham, Emerson, Bard, Sarah Lawrence, Columbia, University of Portland
Midwest: Oberlin, Macalester
California: Pitzer
Thoughts? How important is it to visit? At this point, it won’t help admission to visit I imagine, just help him pick the best fit. Help!
So far: Emerson, Willamette, Fordham, University of Portland, and Beloit (forgot on first list), but rest of schools except Pitzer and Columbia are pretty solid matches/safeties for his stats.
Realistically, you are going to have to figure out his priorities from afar to narrow down the list. Your problem is compounded more by the fact that he probably won’t know if he gets into other schools until the end of March. If he hadn’t yet, he should review his list with a copy of the Fiske Guide to Colleges in hand. Also, have you run the net price calculator on each school’s website? If you are applying for FA, not all of his schools meet need – so any that are unaffordable could be dropped.
Can he go to the PNW over spring break, since he has 2 acceptances there and five schools total in that area?
A mistake can be expensive financially – transfer students often don’t get as much aid, and also socially can have a harder time.
Does he have any long weekends when you could hit the NE with an extra day or two off school? Unless he has GREAT credentials, Columbia isn’t likely, so you could skip that.
Are any within a day’s drive? If you got to Mac, is Beloit in range?
He could leave Pitzer & Oberlin for April if he gets in.
@intparent
Sound advice… we should know a few more EAs in the next few days. I think a Pacific NW trip is probably the best bang for our buck right now followed up with a trip back East in April. If I ever do a post in the “what I would do differently” thread, visiting before applying would top the list. It was just too easy to put it off because of work, finances, classes, and other commitments. Yes, Columbia is not realistic (2240 SAT, 4.14 GPA but good not great EC’s) nor do I think it really meets what he is looking for in a school. That app isn’t done yet and I am not pushing it!
Just a quick note: If your child is so fortunate as to be admitted to Columbia, you simply must visit before you attend. Unless you are already familiar with NYC, I would never send my 18 year-old there without a visit.
I think the first thing you need to do is calm down! It’s wonderful that your son has been accepted to five of his choice so far but that is in now way indicative of how many and which others he will be accepted to when all is done. To purchase tickets now to save some money could be a waste of the money should he not be accepted to those schools. College is expensive, is $200 difference in airfare for visits worth the gamble?
If he applied EA to all of these then he should know by January 1st at the latest. What he should be doing in the meantime is looking seriously at all the information he can concerning all these schools. If he doesn’t have a firm decision as to what major (or two or three) he might be interested in then he needs a school that covers all his areas of interest and more so he has options. While it doesn’t seem that weather is an concern of his, what about size? Smaller LAC will mean closer relationships with everyone (teachers, students, administrators) but possibly a more limited selection of class offerings. Larger schools (Columbia, U. of Portland) means he can hide in the numbers of large lecture classes (especially Freshman year). What about city, suburb, rural? Columbia is obviously in NYC but a bit north of the busiest part of the city, Pitzer is a cute little college town but fairly close to LA, Macalester is kind of rural as I am guessing the Pacific Northwest schools are (don’t know so don’t attack). What about the different schools extra curricular programs? I wouldn’t worry too much about studying abroad as this is pretty available at most schools. These are all things he can investigate without visiting and it should help him narrow down which schools, once admitted, he would be interested in visiting. Oh another thing - if he’s interested in theatre he should look into whether there are openings for kids who are not majoring in theatre to participate in whatever area in theatre he is interested in (in front or behind the stage). Both Emerson and Fordham have BFA programs in theatre I believe, although it might be BA programs, so unless he’s interested in majoring in theatre he may not have much of an opportunity to participate. Again, I’m not certain, but this is something he can look at in advance and figure out if either of these two schools work with his indecision.
Again, relax, breathe, be happy he has at least five choices. It’s up to him to narrow down his 12 schools once he is admitted to them. Visiting should be the final determination.
FYI - Macalester is not rural at all - right in the middle of St. Paul, MN. One of the few LACs that is not rural or in a small town. But amtc’s main points stand.
Oberlin and Macalester are very much separate trips, I’m afraid. They’re nowhere near one another. You could (not that you need more schools) easily go see St. Olaf and Carleton while you looked at Mac, however. Carleton is everything you’re looking for culturally, and it has a very strong film department, in addition to being all-around excellent in other respects.
Regarding PNW schools, you could feasibly do UPS, Lewis & Clark and Willamette in one swing if you rented a car and simply drove the 2 1/2 hours between Tacoma and Portland. Whitman is harder, because it’s 4 1/2 hours away from Tacoma by car and the flights from Seattle to Walla Walla don’t run frequently at all (plus, it will run you an additional $180 per person round trip – I know, my S and I just did it this fall).
Finally, in the east, any reason Wesleyan isn’t on your list? They’re super strong in theater and film, as well as pretty much every other area you listed, while being plenty liberal and quirky. Sorry, I realize MORE schools isn’t necessarily what you were looking for with this posting – can’t seem to help myself.
Again with the help of a rental car (and enough time), you could definitely fit Fordham, Sarah Lawrence, Columbia, Bard and Wesleyan into a single plane ride trip. It would take a few days to do them any justice, however.
@amtc
Excellent point about Emerson and Fordham’s theater opportunities. He will not major in theater but does want to participate. We did visit Macalester last year, but it was during finals week so a little dead feeling… too bad because I think it is a great fit for him. St.Paul/Mpls is a great size city with lots going on and most people I know who went there loved the experience. The Pacific Northwest schools are all located (except Whitman) in areas that we have visited a lot and love (although have only passed through Salem so that it an unknown).
Didn’t apply EA to all. Oberlin, Macalester, Pitzer (not sent), Whitman, Sarah Lawrence (not sent), Middlebury (forgot to mention - seems a moderate reach), and Columbia (not sent) are all RD so plenty of time to research and wait.
@rayrick
Thank goodness we already went to Macalester. He didn’t apply to Carleton… seemed similar to Macalester on paper but perhaps harder to get into? St. Olaf is a little small town for him. I don’t know why Wesleyan is not on his list… great suggestion! It was my #1 choice when I was applying many moons ago. I would have gone but opted for UCB because of the $600 per semester price tag back in 1988. Finally, We have been looking at just that Pac NW trip as well and Whitman is definitely the odd city out for flying. I think we will go up in February and visit the schools on the coastal corridor for sure. Whitman I will need to think on and will depend on aid offered. Although he loved Whitman from a school presentation and all he has read about it… I keep seeing on CC that it has a strong Greek presence so I am wondering if it really fits his quirky/liberal vibe.
Thanks everyone… not sure I really solved my problem but I am definitely feeling less panicked. He is a pretty easy going kid and I think there will be lots of schools that work for him. Just need to winnow it down once we get more results. I did run NPC for all and they seem, tentatively, within the range of possible financially.
U of Portland isn’t “larger” - if anything, students often complain that it’s a bit small, and everyone is in everyone’s business. Having said that, it’s one of many excellent choices. A PacNW trip, especially soon while the weather is utterly miserable, can be a good way to see the area and determine whether the weather is survivable. I’m from the region, went to L&C, and we were always told to be especially kind to our classmates from California, Hawaii, Texas, etc. in January and February because it really is THAT dark, THAT gloomy.
My S is applying to fewer schools, but some on the same list. He wrote off Oberlin, Whitman, Sarah Lawrence, and a couple of others (including L&C) because of their isolation. (L&C is in a residential neighborhood with nothing really around.) If that sort of thing matters to your S, it’s also possible to check out the environs via Google Maps. It’s how mine came up with some definite “NO” schools, and then we worked from there.
I don’t think it’s essential to visit ALL the schools, but I wouldn’t write that first check to the chosen school w/o a visit.
Although we visited a lot of schools, the final list was about 50% un-visited schools (we extrapolated from the other visits), so I’m also a little worried about plotting out visits. My big plan is to see how the EA results play out, and then plot a February trip to visit the top contenders in that group (along with any other pending options that might be nearby at the time) so the kid goes into the RD round with a clear idea of the preferred bird in hand, and then we can do a mop-up trip or two from the RD results (which may not be a long list, given that most of those schools are more selective than the EA schools on our list).
Similarly, with 5 acceptances in the bag, it may be possible for you to pare down that list on paper, select a few front-runners from the list of 5, and plan some early-in-the-year visits accordingly. Alternatively, just choose a part of the country where you can get the most college bang for your travel buck (for us that was an Ohio trip) and visit as many as you can on that leg. What you learn on one leg may inform decisions about schools you can’t get to.