Tulane is having local admissions events in Chicago and in Evanston in April. We just got an email yesterday. I’m signing D up for that. Hopefully, they will happen. If not, at least Tulane can see she signed up.
I’m canceling our Spring Break trip. My D16 is coming home - her college is moving all online after Spring Break, which starts this upcoming week. She has to be out of her dorm by Sunday, March 15th. All the seniors are shell-shocked about this, and this accelerated move off of campus (and the realization that senior week and graduation may very well be cancelled), has really struck them.
We canceled our trip, mostly because just about all the schools cancelled their tours. We were really looking forward to seeing Duke and Vanderbilt up close.
We’re not canceling yet…none of our schools have announced cancellations so we’re planning on going. We don’t go until the 3rd week of April, all hotels are refundable up until the last minute, and we’re driving so we’ll hang tight for now.
We’ve not cancelled our trip yet – it’s not til week b4 Easter and we’ve not heard cancellations yet. But my S21 is convinced all the tours will be cancelled by then. I got Basic Economy flights – hope they’ll still let us bank the tix for credit, but we’ll see…
Davidson, where D18 is, sent out another notice today. Not closing yet, but said faculty are prepping for online instruction and those faculty who want to (older, etc.) can start with online instruction now if they choose. Parent FB page is giving this 50/50 reaction. Some think they need to send kids home now, while others are happy they haven’t shut down. They’ve already had Spring Break and still have 7.5 more weeks of class left – that’s a lot!
They have a 4 day weekend for Easter – I bet they won’t go back after that. Or, could be sooner. Who knows.
We’re going to be in wait and see mode until we actually go. Our trip will consist of a half-day drive to two or three schools, and I haven’t booked hotels yet and probably won’t without free cancellation up to 24-hours of the trip. We only get off 2.5 days around Easter, and I was going to take off an extra day. But now, my D has wisdom teeth surgery scheduled the Monday of that week and has to be out of school for three days (the surgeon said. So really, she is now off that entire week. If she’s too sore (or schools close) we may not go at all. If there are no complications and no closings we may fit in another school. So much in the air. but I do know that having to take off the three days of school will make my D even more hesitant to take off more days later in the spring if college tours re-open.
I wonder if our class of ‘21 across the country will show a pattern of students going to college in more familiar places closer to home because all of the suppressed visits that didn’t get to happen for them. Might be an interesting socio-epidemiology study for someone. But a little sad for our kids, maybe.
My H has spring break next week. He will have to teach remotely for the remainder of spring semester, probably from his office. He has no idea how that will work. I mean, he’s a chemist. How do students learn chemistry without hands-on labs???
@inthegarden it will be interesting!! As it stands S17 has a 2 week break at Rowan. I’m hoping they’re able to go back after that (March 30). He doesn’t do well with online classes!!!
I’ll bet a lot of my husband’s students won’t do well with online classes. He said he spends half of class time lecturing and the other half circulating while students do work, helping them one-on-one or in small groups as they struggle with the material. He has to do a lot of remedial work ( a lot of tutoring of math) during office hours and giving extra study sessions for students who are lost and too embarrassed to speak up in class. For some classes he has non-STEM students taking chem as a requirement and they need more personal help and encouragement. So it doesn’t look too great. Maybe there will be an interactive format and Skyping, but that still kind of inhibits the kind of interaction you get in person.
Yeah, some classes are hard to do online! Esp. with very little time to prep. My D18 is taking genetics which has a lab. Fort., the prof told them this week they were done with the physical labs and the rest of the semester is dna sequencing and other things they do online. I’m sure a lot of profs are working very hard right now trying to figure this out.
Our spring break is week before Easter and our college tour is going to be a road trip so logistically very easy to cancel (haven’t even book anything yet anyway). Our school district is closed on Monday so that a remote/virtual teaching plan can be devised should an extended shutdown be required. This coming weekend’s indoor percussion trip and competition for my 9th grader has been cancelled. S21 works as a waiter at a retirement home so we’re taking all precautions to avoid the possibility of him spreading it unknowingly to the residents.
As a side note, it’s disheartening to see people brushing this off as no big deal (not in this thread, but elsewhere). It’s no big deal now, but could easily bloom into a major crisis. Please be mindful of the vulnerable among us!
This is all so heartbreaking. To think, a week ago, I was confident everything would be fine. I really feel for everyone involved. No matter how much I read or how much I try, I still can’t rationalize all of these cancellations - I feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland after she fell down the rabbit hole because so many people think the closures are the least we should be doing. Oh well. Sorry @sccaflagger74 - you are not alone. Though I don’t think I am either.
Meanwhile, as of right now, our trip is still on. UofSC just announced an extra week of Spring Break to allow faculty to figure out how to transition their courses online and then online learning until April 3rd. They’d prefer if you didn’t return until April, but are leaving it up to each student. I couldn’t find anything on the “visit us” website about canceling tours, so I called. Tours still on.
Clemson’s latest alert talks about the possibility of online learning, but emphasized: “Additionally, there are no plans to close campus, even if instruction is moved online.”
Literally two minutes ago, Tulane reiterated that all admission events were operating as normal.
That’s three of our 6 schools. And the other three have had less chatter about online learning than UofSC (confirmed online) and Clemson, so I’m feeling cautiously optimistic. Of course everything can turn on a dime with these things, as I’ve learned, so we’ll see how things develop over the next couple of weeks.
These visits might be a bit more like summer campus visits than we wanted, but still worthwhile. My daughter had no interest in sitting in on a class, so at least we’ve got that going for us. I’m thinking that a lot of upperclassmen who have apartments off campus (and will be paying rent regardless of online learning) will be around. I know I (a) would have had to work and (b) would have rather been with my friends and all the social life of college than stuck at Mom and Dad’s house in these circumstances, so things may be more vibrant than I was originally imagined.
Bowdoin told kids not to come back after this spring break (which started last Friday). Online class until the end of the semester although the president said if things change rapidly for the better by the end of the semester, he will consider calling kids back to campus. All tours cancelled.
I haven’t cancelled D21’s trip yet but it’s coming. I know it. Duke shut down and Davidson is in the same state. Colleges starting to close in Virginia too. For now, I’ve moved keeping this SAT sitting as a priority in my brain. I do not want it cancelled.
@homerdog I’m with you…focused on the SAT for this Saturday.
We cancelled our trip (for next week) last night and then heard from one of the 3 schools (Wheaton in MA) this morning that it was good we did because they had just decided to cancel all visitors for the rest of the semester. Later I saw their official announcement, and they also are extending Spring Break a week, having students move out of dorms by March 22nd, I believe, and doing all online classes for the rest of the semester.
We have some trips scheduled in May to 2 schools on trimesters (so they are still in session until late May/early June), and as of now, those 2 schools haven’t cancelled anything, so I’m hoping those will still happen. But for now, I just want this SAT to happen on Saturday.
I definitely feel for all the college kids - especially seniors - right now. (and many other affected people, of course). H works for CDC and was talking last night about the data from SARS and H1N1 and some much earlier outbreak (I can’t remember what one) and how closings/cancellations BEFORE a case shows up in that location is something the data bear out as being one of the most effective things…so as much as I hate it, I understand it.
@homerdog I’ve been following the list on the college board site but, shockingly, doesn’t seem very up to date. My husband works in the district where D is testing, so I’m guessing we’ll know first if it’s getting canceled. Looks like most of the schools are offering alternative sites to test, so hoping if our district cancels we can at least get in somewhere else.
S19 found out today that he will not be returning to Penn State this weekend at the end of spring break. As of now, remote classes will go on until the end of the month. Up until today the school was very clear that it was “business as usual.” So a lot of kids, my son included, left for spring break last Friday without their books, computers, etc.
We are only two hours from campus. But I feel for the kids who are unable to go home for various reasons. Or anyone who will suffer hardship.
S21 is taking the SAT this weekend. And thanks to us forcing him to attend all of the college visits for S19, we only had one visit planned for this spring. We opened housed at his top two choices back in the fall. It helps that he and his brother both have the same stats, same interests, and same parameters when it comes to schools.
The only difference is that for the state-related category, S21 likes Pitt and wants nothing to do with Penn State. But he actually wants to attend Mr. InfiniteWaves’ and my alma mater, Loyola U Maryland. Because “we are” #1 on his list! Sorry S19… 
D17 at Tulane was recently notified that they will be going online until the end of the semester. Demonstrated interest may look very different this year for everyone. Maybe we will all be doing virtual tours of colleges!
We toured University of Delaware today, apparently the last tour for a while since they announced today a professor was diagnosed with the virus.
S21 really liked it and so did I. Felt really friendly and I could definitely see him fitting in there. They seem to have a lot of resources and hands-on experiences, really focused on undergrad education, lots of study abroad opportunities. And, I appreciated that there’s an Amtrak station on campus – we’re on the Metro in DC so he could just get straight from campus to home via Amtrak/Metro. Much nicer than the 4-5 hr drive to current 1st choice Virginia Tech. He was also pretty impressed with their new eSports center. I don’t think it knocks VT out of 1st place but he’ll definitely apply.
@NJWrestlingmom I think we will get an email if the SAT location is cancelled. I hope you are right that they could take it somewhere else but it would be a lot of kids to move to another location and who knows where there are open seats.
Spring break cancelled. Wake and Richmond have no tours so we are out. Guess visits are just up in the air until we know more. With kids going home for the rest of the year, I think it means early fall visits for us. D will have to maybe miss some school. Pretty bummed that D’s chance to apply to Wake as early as this summer is now off of the table. They have rolling ED starting in June but she can’t do that without visiting.
And school was just cancelled tomorrow. A student at our high school was exposed to the virus but his results haven’t come back yet and they are still cancelling. Ugh! Anyone have their high school closing? What was the circumstance? Did they close just for a day of cleaning or for longer?