<p>Anyone else go on college tours/info sessions where only the parents showed up? The son or daughter was "busy". Now THAT was odd. If you are going together, forgodsake go on a separate tour, if possible, or hang way back and encourage your student to walk up front with and ask quesxtions of the tour guide, including after the tour when no parents are hanging around. Definitely encourage him or her to meet solo with teachers in his/her area of interest, and don't jump all over the interviewer after your kid's personal interview, although shaking hands, introducing yourself, and thanking the interviewer for his or her time would be nice. If you make it clear that learning about a college and making a decision is your child's job (within various financial/distance parameters), he or she will ask for and value your input.</p>
<p>Burntsnowman</p>
<p>I couldn't agree more. Time for the kids to become self advocates and make some adult decisions with parent involment slowly fading to the background. (still there though as you indicate for financial guidlines)</p>
<p>My D and I also went to an info session where parents and students were "separated". Each group had different content, even though both included a tour. </p>
<p>Parents are looking for something different than the prospective student, and it seems perfectly "normal" to me (and D) that they should go their own way and converge afterwards (which we did), to discuss one anothers gathering (which we did), and even revisit some places that caught our attention (which we did).</p>
<p>Any school info session that would look cockeyed at a student on his/her own, would probably get points off in my book.</p>
<p>The bad scenes I witnessed where the parent(s) asked the questions and the kid was looking angry/uncomfortable/silent...probably Shanghaied or otherwise coerced into visiting the particular school.</p>
<p>Fwiw, I can see parents being allowed one "please consider this one school for me" chip but the rest of the list and, of course, the final decision, being the student's, at least as far as financial parameters allow.</p>
<p>TheDad...bad scene? How about when my D and I were on a tour and the guide was discussing a "safe house" for the gay, bi, transgendered population. She was enthusiastic about how wonderful a place it was. A mom on tour shot her D a look, I mean daggers. Betcha $100 that D didn't even get an option of applying there! Sad thing was the D (up until then) was seriously considering the school.</p>
<p>Sigh</p>
<p>JaM, variants play out in many directions. I remember at Georgetown a mother, of a Jewish family, I believe, gasped "There's a crucifix in the classroom." The daughter said, "Shut up, mother" in a tone that I wouldn't have cared for either. (Actually, it's hard to find a good tone for that in any event.) I would not have wanted to be riding in their car afterwards. The D apparently really liked the school, gauging from the cues offered as we walked around. Funny thing is, G'town is one of the more aggressively ecumenical schools, has a significantly large and active Hillel, etc.</p>
<p>Of all the tours, meetings with admissions counselors, coach interviews, professor interviews, and added up that's a lot, I was probably in less than ten. I was trapped or specifically requested to be there over my protest. </p>
<p>I believe my D received the admissions good fortune she did partly because of the way she handled herself without me. I had several dozen conversations with school folks who would pull me aside and ask why I didn't go. When I told them that I did my own thing and she did hers and we compared notes and that I felt her impressions were as valid as mine, that we valued different things, that I felt comfortable she could present herself and her concerns adequately without me - I got a hug twice (really) and several thank you's. ;) I had more than one tell me that her ability to be independent in thought and action played a big part in her admission and selection to prestige programs at the college.</p>
<p>My D would report back that she was most always the ONLY kid asking questions in a group, and that parents would stare/glare at her when she asked questions clearly showing her previously gained knowledge of the campus and its practices. She only asked questions about what it was like to be a student, not things we could learn from page 3 of the Viewbook. She would read about 100 -200 pages of current school specific material (at least) prior to arriving on campus and I would have read far more than that (financial , safety, etc). We would dicuss each school as we approached. She knew the Prof's reasearch in areas she liked so when the opportunity "happened" she could converse about his/her current research. She knew this was a test. Her biggest ever. We did the same thing even at Traveling Shows. </p>
<p>She followed the same rules with the coaches. She knew schedule , record, roster, who was returning, how many girls did study abroad, the assistants names and background . </p>
<p>This is her life for four years and she was interviewing THEM, too and she wanted them to know it. LOL. </p>
<p>I do go to general dog and pony shows and did meet with admissions after interviews. </p>
<p>For a parent to come in on a serious (not funsies)visit and whip little Johnny around the campus and Little Johnny clearly does not know diddly....not a good thing.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the input.</p>
<p>It sounds like different things work for different folks.</p>
<p>All things considered, I think we'll stick to our plan of "divide and conquer."</p>
<p>My daughter has been taking part-time college classes during her college years and feels quite comfortable on college campuses without me. </p>
<p>Going around a college campus with mom in tow just doesn't feel natural to her. </p>
<p>She feels more independent and feels she is more efficient at information gathering without me around. </p>
<p>She's the one who will have to do the work to succeed in college, so I feel I should respect her wishes.</p>
<p>She says that she does value the information I can pick up through my own independent campus wanderings (like looking at professors' office doors--many of them post some very interesting items on their doors!, checking out the library and browsing through the campus bookstore--interesting for me to see the leisure reading they sell and skim through some of the textbooks used in the courses and especially interesting for me to browse through books written by faculty authors.) </p>
<p>Since I've spent quite a bit of my life on a wide variety of college campuses, I think I have some pretty good ideas of how to gather information independently. I have taught in a wide variety of different styles of classrooms and enjoy wandering up and down hallways peeking in classrooms and labs to see how they are set up. Classrooms that have chairs bolted into place facing forward create a very different set of possibilities than classrooms with tables and chairs that can be freely moved. Classroom buildings with whiteboards or blackboards in the hallway mean that professors can easily continue conversations after class without delaying the next class. Little nooks and crannies with comfortable seating and whiteboards can be ideal places for informal study groups to gather before or after class. I can concentrate better on observing all these little details if I'm free to wander on my own rather than following a tour and listening to a guide.</p>
<p>Also, I have found that college librarians are often very eager to chat about the colleges' resources in general--not just the library resources but all campus academic support resources--and students' use of the facilities. Librarians know a lot about student academic work patterns (is the place mainly busy at midterm & finals time or throughout the semester), how much use do students make of the group study rooms for collaborative work (and are there other convenient spaces on campus for collaborative work that I can look at?), do students mostly use electronic reserves or prefer hard-copy reserves, how much library use is devoted to independent research by students and faculty vs. direct course support, etc.</p>
<p>It can also be revealing to sit in a campus coffee shop and pick up on bits and snatches of faculty and staff conversations at nearby tables.</p>
<p>Given that we have limited time on college visits, I think we can maximize the information gathered by investigating separately and then comparing notes afterwards.</p>
<p>(Another advantage to separating--the summer heat wave and the fact that I wilt in the heat and sun more easily than she does. I wear a broad-brimmed hat for comfort which she absolutely hates--she thinks I look silly in it--which could be true, but it's better than passing out from the sun and heat! But it would be a distraction if I wore it while accompanying her on tours. I've considered acquiring a Victorian-style parasol instead, but I think she'd really be mortified! Also, if I don't have to go on the official guided tour, I'm free to spend as much time as I like in air-conditioned buildings rather than marching around in the heat, hat or no hat.)</p>
<p>Thought this was relevant, so I just wanted to tell a little story. It was about how I went to an accepted students tour. On the tour I started talking to this one mother, and to my surprise she lived in the town neighboring ours, what luck really. So I started to talk to her about this and that, and then I ask her where's her son/daughter, and she's like, oh he's at Duke right now on a tour. Talk about weird, and I remember she was the one asking all the questions and taking notes, so just a very awkward experience no doubt. So yeah...</p>
<p>
Yeah, I had this crazy idea about Barnard, probably picked up in part from your report of your daughter's ballet class there way back when... my d wasn't too keen on a woman's college. </p>
<p>But I had the good sense to send my daughter there on her own. It probably is the kiss of death for a college if the kid is forced to spend a day there being embarrassed by the parents' raving about how wonderful the place is.</p>
<p>Tony88 -- since it was an accepted students event, it sounds like maybe the son had conflicting dates -- I know it can be very frustrating in April when there are a lot of decisions to make and not much time to do it in. So maybe in that case the mom was delegated to attend the event for good reason.</p>
<p>I am a tour guide, I've done about 100 tours this summer alone. The vast majority of my tours I get to know parents very well (and get to really like them sometimes) but then get back to admissions and don't have any opinion on the kid at all because they were quiet the entire time. I've told some of our admissions counselors "I really wish we could just let some of these amazing parents in and send the kids back home". That all changes if there are no parents on the tour (which has happened when we've had sports camps or things like that in town) in which case I really get to have conversations with the students themselves. On rare cases I will get tours where I talk to both students and parents but that rarely happens and when it does it's almost always with a tour group of only one family or so. As soon as the group grows the kids keep their mouths shut and the parents do all the talking.</p>
<p>My son skips the tour in favor of attending classes. First stop is the registar's office to get a class schedule and the next several hours are spent going to classes, eating in the dining halls, taking notes and talking to students. On the occasions where we have been present during a campus visit, we took the tour and heard the admissions presentation while he scouted the campus.</p>
<p>My sons go on the tours and info sessions alone. If possible, they eat lunch with a current student alone (we treat) and they attend classes--alone. H and I wander around, have a look in the art gallery, have a coffee on the quad or in the student union. WE talk about their reactions vs our research at dinner or lunch or on the car ride back to the hotel.</p>
<p>This apporach comes out of living next to a top 25 university off and on for a couple of decades and seeing groups of past-it 40 somethings trundling along campus, pretending to be enraptured by some cute college cheerleader--while their embarrassed, extremely self-concious and bored progeny linger as far behind as possible. It's a comic scene.</p>
<p>My sons thanked us for letting them go alone.</p>
<p>We had only one "real" school tour...my S didn't want to visit until after he'd been accepted (he chose the schools to which he applied based on extensive book and web research, with input from his extraordinary GC); he planned to visit where he was accepted. The one tour we did was because his GC strongly recommended (almost ordered) him to visit, to show interest -- </p>
<p>I was pretty excited--I really wanted to do the school tours and was really disappointed about S's decision. But I felt almost "in the way" at Stanford (the one school we visited)...the Stanford folks were so much more interested in the students that while us parents weren't exactly ignored or treated badly, we were clearly "second class" visitors whose opinions were of no real importance compared to their reaction to the kids. I remember thinking that when we went to the accepted school visits, I'd do better--both for S and for myself--if I went off on my own to explore the campus and let S have the "official interaction" on his own.</p>
<p>Of course, we had no more visits--S broke (shattered) his ankle 2 days before we were to leave for the four-accepted-schools "tour"...but if there's a lesson in this at all, it's that at least at one school--Stanford--parent presence is tolerated at best...they really only want to talk to the students...</p>
<p>Dima raises a good point: the students should be the ones asking the questions on the tour. I tried to ask questions only if no one else did and if the moment/area was about to pass.</p>
<p>From the alternative perspective. I went with my D on everything. Frankly, I had flown across the damn country and did not want to sit in some coffee shop in Providence or Middletown or Princeton while she went on tours. But, that said, if that's what she had wanted I would have done it. I went because D and I are both extroverted information processors. Meaning, we both think best out loud. So when D was processing what she had seen, my having seen it too was a good sounding board and vice versa. </p>
<p>It is possible to be closely associated with your kid and still allow them final freedom. </p>
<p>BTW, I didn't even think about did she ask the questions or did I. I don't actually think either of us said much of anything. We are both visual learners, primarily, and both of us spent most of our time watching when we were there and talking after to understand.</p>
<p>Plus, it was time to be together. Which I think we both still value. Hey. I will ask her tonight:).</p>
<p>When I did college tours, my D checked in, got the info, walked around with her sister, or friends, or with new friends, and I kind of hung back...This is the time the student shoud check in, etc</p>
<p>I found that the most annoying people on the tour were some moms and dads that asked the MOST mundane questions, things that if you looked at the home page of the website, or glanced at while waiting for the tour, you would have learned...</p>
<p>Or the name dropping parents, or the I went to school here eons ago and the college student giving the tour is like neat!!!! As if the people actually giving the tours, usually student volunteers have any power or influence...the tour hog is the worst...</p>
<p>I liked one college where they treated the kids to lunch</p>
<p>I found tours where no one, parents or students, asked questions extremely boring. I think of college tours the one for-sure time that you can talk to a real student and ask them about why they chose that college, what other colleges they looked at, what kind of activities they do, etc. </p>
<p>On large campuses it seemed that there is a lot of down time while touring and I don't see a point in staying silent and waiting for someone (ANYONE) to ask the questions that I want answers to. When we had small group tours, such as one other family or just us and a tour guide my son would be very talkative and I wouldn't say anything. I went on most college visits with my kids (my son did two by himself) and enjoyed going on the tours and then comparing notes afterwards. As another poster said, even though we were in the same place, we noticed different things. My kids had the final say as to where they were going to college but I think our input was important and helpful.</p>
<p>When my daughter was looking at colleges two years ago, I was shocked by the extent to which they wanted to include parents in the tours, meetings with coaches, even professors. This is a far cry from the time I was in high school - I don't think my parents even knew which colleges I visited or applied to.</p>
<p>Kenyon was the only school we visited that separated parents from students for the tour - a great idea. Unfortunately, the parents' tour that day was hijacked by a former student who had to describe in great detail the history of the school, the strong departments and professors when he was there, even freshman orientation minutiae. I felt so sorry for the tour guide.</p>
<p>As my daughter wanted to look only at schools far away from home (her criteria being: no schools in our state or any state that bordered our state), I was the designated driver for the long hauls. We had some great road-trippin' times, but when it came to tours and such, she took care of the college details and I was in charge of food and lodging.</p>