were you able to schedule a tour at Tufts? We haven’t been able to get one, shut down for Covid. I didn’t want to self tour since it’s a long trip. Ds very interested in it.
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This is one of the things people tend to forget about when they are considering St Andrews (or indeed many study abroad options in Northern Europe).
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@SoCalDriver - my situation is exactly opposite. We live in New York and my DD only wants to go to college where she doesn’t have to wear a winter jacket. Next college visits are to Georgia and Florida. She refuses to look at schools in New England or mid west only for weather reasons.
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My D has 4 UVs lined up, but all of her schools are in lockdown for outsiders. YMMV, but we are looking end of Feb/Early March for the schools to be out of lockdown. She will hang out with a current player, classes, lunch, meet other players, etc, but overnight in dorm is probably out.
Offer by July and done by January. Ha! Wishful thinking.
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UMinn-TC, U of St. Thomas, Gustavus are on the if we have time for a self walking tour list.
The Minn trip is for my daughters dance competition and I don’t know her schedule yet so it’s hard to plan.
We are on the IL/WI border so used to snow here. Son would prefer to get out of midwest but trying to encourage him to apply to a few schools. He may apply to 1 Illinois school (DePaul?) and 2 WI schools (Lawrence and maybe a high reach for him U Wi Madison). I don’t see him applying to any schools from Iowa or Michigan so we shall see about Minnesota.
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We have a two week spring break, so we’ve made plans to do a East Coast trip starting in NC and finishing in Boston. Most schools are still dealing with Omicron lockdowns but we are crossing our fingers that things will be a little more open by then. The good thing is that at most of the schools we know someone so if need be we can ask them to show us around.
We had to cancel our S21 campus trip (ended up doing virtual tours). Our S23 is pretty excited about the trip.
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No, can’t schedule a winter tour at tufts but I am hoping they will open up in spring.
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I toured St Thomas back some years ago with my D17 and D19, Incredibly pretty campus infrastructure (though the road running through campus was a bit off-putting), but I do have to say, if you don’t like purple, stay far away! Of any college I’ve ever toured with my kids (and I’m not at but closing in on 100), it was the one that leaned in the hardest into its school colors in its interior spaces.
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Yeah, s23 will be a bit of a wild card with things he notices. I don’t think a single school will tick all his boxes. We shall see. Likely not doing formal tours yet.
I’ve toured only 1 school with s19. He was tech school bound and chose the school before the tour.
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I am with you on the appeal of college towns.
I would move back to Gainesville in a heartbeat if it were closer to a beach.
Unfortunately all the college towns on beaches are crazy expensive.
I’m demanding a beach once the kids are gone - my goal is to snowbird at least three months out of the year, because I can’t convince hubby to move permanently, and it isn’t cost-effective for us anyway.
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Trying to focus on the big picture. S23 will end up with around a 3.4 GPA. With a black mark on his behavior record, we will need to think outside the box a bit with college selection.
Senior year course selection is now underway. He’s taken 2 years of foreign language and refuses to do more through this hs. Math through pre-calc and a tech college level math. Hes taken required history which includes econ. Science hes had bio, chem, and physics. Hes taken english every year plus an extra credit of english elective this year. Hes considering music ed as a major. He technically needs .5 credits total to graduate. He would be open to doing one of the internships possible but again not sure if his suspension kicks him out of contention.
So far he will only agree to English 12, band, choir, and Autos I (where they learn about how to take care of cars, he wants to learn for personal knowledge). Pushing him to do another “academic” course. Sadly, the one or two courses he would be more interested in dont work due to his music classes (we ran into that this year and were told the heads up it would be the same issue senior year).
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We’re tentatively planning a Boston area college tour during the first half of spring break. S23 has a robotics tournament during the latter half. Tufts, Harvard, and Brown are on the itinerary.
I was able to schedule a Brown tour, but no luck with the other two. I know Tufts considers demonstrated interest so we’ll definitely keep trying to book a tour (virtual or otherwise) with them.
However, If he gets accepted into a six week summer camp hosted by MIT, then we’ll push all those tours to the summer and visit Michigan and Northwestern instead.
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This is perhaps very out of the box, but would a DE course (if available, naturally) at the local community college in a subject he enjoys work?
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Looking into it at the only college really close to us. Others would make it hard for him to leave school midday, take a class, and still get back in time for after school extracurriculars. I’m thinking of anything. 
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how about an online accredited high school class? kids from all over the world actually take classes here.
University of Nebraska High School | Online High School | United States
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Hey my kid does robotics too and we are visiting same schools. Hopefully Tufts will open up to tours soon.
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Anyone use daytripperuniversity.com? We are trying to mix in some fun with the visits so we’ll at least take a look at the suggested places from that site. We plan to visit the local area as well as the college. I enjoy it and this is our last kid so I must say I’ll miss the visits. We’ve got UPenn, Princeton, Rutgers, and perhaps Cornell at the end. Thinking of having our student at least contact the departments in fields of interest to see what options are available to learn more.
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D23 and I visited Massachusetts for a quick 3 1/2 day trip before Thanksgiving, partly to see some schools and partly to see family. Did tours at Wesleyan, Brown, and Northeastern, an info session and self tour at BU, and a self tour at Tufts (empty campus, because it was the day before Thanksgiving).
Re: Tufts – they were apparently doing some in person tours early in the fall semester, so I would not be surprised if they reopened tours in the spring, after the winter COVID surge. They had a QR code on the door to the admissions office for students to scan and download a virtual tour and get credit for the visit.
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We also try to throw in a bit of sightseeing. Certainly a lot of that in Philly. But we spent a whole afternoon at an apparently very famous comic book store… if kid ends up there this will be why! Unlike many we haven’t had luck reaching out to connect with departments of interest. Perhaps should have gone directly through the department rather than approaching through admissions. Or perhaps the selective just don’t bother with this kind of thing until you are actually admitted.
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I can help you with any information/questions/what-to-do for UPenn and Princeton. I live 10 blocks from UPenn and spent a lot of time the last 4 years in Princeton. When my D was a Frosh at Princeton some neighbors that were 2019 went and sat in on a class with her. I’m not sure if they went through Admissions or not but my D did make sure it was okay with the Professor. I suppose with Covid it’ll be impossible but maybe by April it’ll be better.