I agree to a point…but… for the kids that really are well within academic range for the reaches, visiting provides excellent insight into the vibe and feel and why the kid would want to go there. Much moreso than occurs with virtual sessions, though those are very helpful. My D23 had 10interviews. Every single one asked Why X school and some had multiple followups. Most but not all also asked it in essays either directly or indirectly . Her visits were key to her essays and interviews. Amazing essays and /or interviews can push a kid into the admit pile and help them standout from all the other non-hooked, max rigor, 1550+ kids at these reaches.
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I agree. I read somewhere that if you meet the academic requirements, 10-30% of college outcomes are based on your essays. And you probably have a much better essay if you’re able to visit in person, immerse yourself into the campus, speak to students, the tour guide and the AO at the information session to better understand their culture and values - even it it’s just for a day.
'Also, it can help you eliminate schools. My D loved the Boston College virtual tour and was excited to visit. We live in New England and people rave about BC. We visited and she really disliked it. She viewed it as a rich, white, preppy boarding school.
We want our D to explore all her options because she’s super ambitious and determined, but explain to her the most likely probabilities. Smart kids understand probabilities but we’re all human so it’s hard not to at least imagine yourself going to a top school when you’re a tippy top student.
We showed her the safety schools’ employer outcomes and that she can work for a Big 4 accounting firm no matter where she goes because they all recruit locally. We prepare for the most likely scenarios without artificially forcing her to give up on her top school choices.
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The scenario presented was a child who didn’t want to visit any safeties and a family who had neither the time or resources to visit all the schools on their list.
If you have to pick and choose what schools you can visit because you can’t visit them all, I still believe that reaches should be the first schools to be eliminated over eliminating safety visits. Especially if you don’t really like any of your safeties and would think the whole process an utter failure if the only school you are admitted to is your safety.
If you have the time and resources to visit as many schools as you’d like? If your child already has a safety school on the list they’d be happy to attend? Then choose to visit all reaches all the time if that’s what makes you happy.
But again, I believe there is a failure of information and imagination if a family truly believes the only schools worth attending are highly rejective schools. I also think there are lots of ways for a student to research a school without visiting it that would allow them to write a strong, personalized essay for the schools they are applying to. Supposedly we are talking about some of the smartest, most capable students. If they are so, an in person visit before admission is not necessary for them to be successful in their application, it is an added bonus/luxury.
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He will be doing DE classes at one of our community colleges next year instead of AP (except AP Lit, which he really wants to take). Scheduled for French 3, Calc 2, Biology w/ lab, & Psychology this fall.
The classes are fine, at least as rigorous as our local public high school, but that is probably less rigorous than some schools. (Last year S23 took AP tests with the kids from the local public school, and on the test breaks they were talking about how they hadn’t covered half the material on the tests.) The DE classes are mostly in-person, but some of them have 1 meeting per week online and 1 in-person meeting.
I think he can remember/relearn the material with a few weeks review if he needs it in the future. It will definitely be a bigger deal if he decides he wants to do some kind of engineering (still on the list as a possibility, but dropping in likelihood since he didn’t love either calculus or physics).
The main thing I want him to take away from this year is that he has to be more proactive in making sure he is learning, and remembering, the material from his classes. Maybe the teacher doesn’t give them any assignments that will make them continually review material learned earlier in the class, but that is something he needs to develop a system for doing himself. Whether that is making flashcards from each topic and reviewing them a couple of times every week, or reworking a few homework problems from each assignment every week, he needs to find a way to regularly review material covered so he will be ready for end of semester cumulative finals. Oh, and also so he’ll actually move the knowledge into his long term memory.
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Sounds like he will be really well prepared for college!
My S24 had issues with recalling material from the beginning of the year last year and was concerned this year about APUSH and physics so he found online review sets of questions on Quizlet for the classes and has spent 5-10 minutes each day reviewing them. This has been very very helpful and he feels extremely well prepared for his AP tests. These things are pretty easy to find online and there are both free and paid versions of Quizlet so this may be an option for your S if he wants to review material but not create the cards.
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No one has the time or resources to visit every school on their list unless the list is really short or they’re all local. There’s not enough time during the school year to make all the visits, especially with sports, activities, and super high rigor classes.
Let’s assume you only visited safety schools and not any reaches. So the logic would be: You know the most about the schools that are highly likely and know the least about schools where every application is scrutinized, where understanding the culture and its values are paramount in the application.
And although virtual tours are fine, it’s difficult to really get a good feel for any school and its surroundings unless you go in person. Like I mentioned earlier, my D loved the BC virtual tour and disliked the school when visiting.
My D loved Rice after visiting because she got to speak to a couple of professors and really got a much better understanding of their newly created undergraduate business program. Her tour guide also gave some hints about class selection, dorms, etc.
My D loved Michigan because she was able to envision herself taking classes at Ross when we peeked into one of their empty class rooms. She also loved the unique vibe of Ann Arbor and how we spent time visiting the on campus museum.
These are the type of insights she can express and incorporate into her essays and prompts on why Rice/Michigan etc.
So if she did manage to get into Rice, U Mich, and BC, and we never visited, we would have to make a mad scramble and fly across the country in very limited time to determine what school is really best for her.
Visiting reaches could also help determine if you want to ED to a school, where we know increases your odds (even if slightly)
These are not experiences you can just get from a virtual tour. It’s the difference between going on vacation and experiencing it in person vs watching someone else go on vacation on YouTube.
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Like most of us parents on here? I remember we had ONE counselor for the whole school (who also happened to be my English teacher) and we would peruse catalogs during lunch and then just make a list and apply. Very little “guidance” from her and def zero input from the parents. At least that was my experience.
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Definitely. S24 has about 10-13 schools on a list right now. We have seen 5 of them and likely will not make it to anymore of them until next spring. We are assuming/hoping the ones he has not seen are a god fit based on what he likes/loves about the ones he has seen. But it is still quite possible that in the end he visits a few that he was accepted to and has never seen and feels like he would never go. Hoping that is not the case but I am sure he will not love every school on his list once he sees it in person. For us it is cheaper/easier to apply and see what happens than to visit all these schools.
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As a parent who is now hearing unsolicited input from MY mother about where my kid should/should not apply, I also think there is a LOT of information out there that people just do not know. The college counselors should 100% be up to speed year by year with what is happening in college admissions, how things are rapidly changing, etc., but I think parents sometimes truly do not know that their kid who may have perfect SAT scores, a 4.7 GPA, all AP classes, etc., etc. is unfortunately not unique and most of them are applying to all the same schools. I think it is on the parents to educate themselves and be involved in the process, and on the counselors to guide everyone. Sounds like you were let down in both categories and for that I am sorry.
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We made a priority to visit the 3-4 schools that we thought were ED contenders. Demonstrated need was not necessary but we wanted to be certain of the choice. (In the end she did not ED anywhere)
We also did one 4 day trip where visited 2 schools per day to figure out what things were important to her. Knowing that, combined with virtual tours/info sessions, allowed us to make a solid list of targets and likelies (some far away) that we were comfortable with but saved the visit for if/when we had to cross that bridge.
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I have truly loved touring with my kids! They have very different interests so I have been able to see a wide range of schools, and I’m grateful. We have mostly used tours to try to determine ED options. D24 and S24 go to different schools and each of there college counselors strongly encourage ED when possible. S24 has a fairly wide range of schools where he thinks he would be happy. I’m afraid D24 fell a little too much in love with her likely ED choice though and I am worried she will be crushed if it doesn’t work out.
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Our strategy was to spend 2 days on every tour if possible. The first day was the official tour/information session and the second was touring it ourselves and walking around town, eating at local restaurants.
We wanted our D to see if she can picture herself being a student there in its full capacity, including all the amenities of the town/city.
On a side note, we always try to stay at either a Homewood Suites/Residence Inns/Embassy Suites/Springhill Suites. They usually have these type hotels near college campuses and are the same price (often much cheaper) with a lot more room to spread out and can accomodate 4 people without having to get 2 rooms.
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Another reason why I realized Naviance may be even more unpredictable for our school : The graduating class of 2023 in our school would have higher GPAs (weighted) than the graduating class next year because of the Covid policies that were applied in 2020 where everyone’s grade got bumped up in liu of a final exam. If you had a B+ in a course, it was made an A- for the final grade.
in our school APs are allowed from Jr year. This means that the Freshman year class in 2020 did not get as much benefit as the upper classman who had many APs.
I am guessing this may apply to many other schools with similar Covid related policies.
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Interesting- in our district they all just did Pass/Fail which def screwed some kids out of A’s. But interestingly,. S24 says this particular graduating class of 2023 is “really smart” and there were some pretty nice admits to schools kids do not usually get admitted to from their high school so maybe he is correct.
One thing said by an admission counselor really stood out and I think I will keep it in mind during my son’s college application journey: when you apply, you are competing with many of “you”.
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Advice please because we’re overthinking SAT registration today… the last day of school for DS24 is June 2, 2023. Today he is signing up for the June 3 SAT. For the question of grade, he should put junior, correct? Or should he put senior since the test is after he is finished with his junior year?
Put junior. The SAT year runs a Aug to June.
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Thanks!
Ugh. On the SAT registration, for expected graduation, the answer is May 2024 and the next question “Grade” as 11th and got a warning that “Your grade level and expected graduation date are inconsistent. Would you like to edit your selections?”, I guess we’ll select “No, I do not wish to make changes. Accept my response.” So strange.
We have a similar situation at my DS24’s private high school. Our school quadrupled in size during the pandemic closures and only a handful have left now that all schools are open. Nearly all of these students transferred from public school, where they were allowed to take AP classes starting in 9th. Our school has a rule that students have to take prerequisites in order to take AP classes, usually a related honors course, and receive a minimum grade in the course in order to enroll. It always took until junior year to meet the prerequisites before, even for advanced students. They also limited the number of APs per year until 2022. They lifted the limit due to demand from the parents who transferred in. I have no idea how those of us who started at this school and remained with it, following their rules as they changed them over the past few years, will be ranked or perceived in relation to their classmates with different backgrounds in early high school. I’m not sure our HOS knows, either. We had letter grades throughout the pandemic, and students who transferred in with pass/fail credits had to start taking classes for letter grades for courses at our school. I had to ask for a class rank for DS for an application already and the HOS would only give a decile. I think this is why.
DS actually prefers the school with more students from a social standpoint, but ranking this class is going to be relatively meaningless because their backgrounds are so different.