LOL! I’ve done the same. I learned the hard way with S24’s boarding school.
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HAAAA!! I just looked at S24s ED choice and they are sold out already!!!
Okk, the not as nice hotel a little further away had a few rooms left, omg, this is hilarious.
Look at AirBB. We use that a lot for sports travel and it tends to work out pretty well.
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Another tip that I learned late is see how far out they take bookings. Do they have a waitlist for high demand dates and when do they open those lists.
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Funny, my D24 is the same as your kid - 1 ED reach , 3 likelies applied to, no interest in her 5 other reach apps until after ED decision (makes me a bit crazy, but oh well!) . She also has 2 in state school acceptances. She just wants the process over with!
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oy! This NEVER occurred to me to do this - how do you figure out dates? How do you figure out which schools’ days to attend? Thanks!
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My D24 loved Rice for similar reasons. She applied ED.
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it was on the school’s website, just searched for schoolname admitted students day. Never occured to me either, older one is a class of 21 and these things were all online
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The only Ivy D24 is applying to the Ivy her twin brother is committed to for athletics. It is also the Ivy that “fits” her the most. She is a very high academic student but doesn’t want the perceived pressure of going to an Ivy/ HYPSM. There is a certain cohort of honors students at her school who are what she calls “Ivy Obsessed” and it is a big turn-off for her. If she does not get into her (non-Ivy) ED choice, she is more interested in the highly ranked LACs and what they have to offer.
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Had a really good talk with S24 last night about final list (due to the counseling staff 12/1) and other related things. I knew things were in flux in his mind but there were even more changes pending than I realized–colleges I thought were locked on are maybe getting cut, other colleges I thought were cut are maybe getting added back . . . .
None of what he is thinking is bad reasoning to me, so it is all good. But I guess it is getting really real to him, and his priorities are shifting a bit. Like, a college I thought was a lock might be cut because he has been reading not-so-good reviews about housing and dining. That is definitely a worthy consideration to me, and I think it is a good example of how the more real this gets for him, the more these practical things start rising in his mind.
The other notable consequence is I think we are now up to at least four colleges he did not actually visit. And he has suggested his not-so-great visit reactions to at least a couple more were maybe not really fair assessments (he was tired, the tour guide happened to be a bad fit, etc.). Again, I am OK with all that as long as he has well-considered reasons for keeping these colleges as options. But there are scenarios where post-admissions visits/re-visits could be really critical to his final choice.
All of which is basically making this more work and less certain, but I think it is also making him feel better about the process, so . . . OK, then.
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Same! I do have D27 so I can stalk next year and see where the applicants were this year, etc. I like data!
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I equate college choices to interviewing people for jobs. You do the research, get a feel on what they’re about and then make a pro/con list. But in reality, nobody knows if it’s the right choice until ex post facto.
I 100% agree with the housing and dining which is why for her, UT Austin was so attractive because she can live at an off campus dorm with great food and not the junk from Jester.
She also crossed off Michigan because it was too cold. Cornell because it was too remote (and too cold), and Dartmouth because of the Frat and drinking culture. These are real world considerations.
No matter how much you think you like the school, do you really want to be there for 4 years?
D applied to UNC and will apply to Duke and a few others that we never visited but will visit if she doesnt get into her ED choice. It’s a big decision and a big investment on our part so we want to make informed choices.
Thoughtful consideration and reflection is critical.
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Re: which Ivy does one’s kid prefer over others -
For our family, none. She doesn’t have perfect grades. Far from it (3.2 unweighted GPA). Doesn’t have perfect test scores (1200 SAT). Has done extracurriculars, but they aren’t ‘I’m the next Albert Einstein’ level of extracurriculars and doesn’t have any national-level honors or anything like that.
PLUS, our family can’t afford any of the Ivy League schools.
PLUS D24 doesn’t want to live for 4 years in any of the areas where those schools are located.
The “Your College Bound Kid” podcast recently wrapped up a 4-part interview w/Dartmouth admissions exec Lee Coffin, which I found to be really interesting. He touched upon how each of the Ivy schools have their own personality. Also explained a lot about Dartmouth’s culture. I really enjoyed listening to it.
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D24 thought long and hard about applying to Brown. Ultimately, she did not. She has the scores and grades to be a competitive applicant. The issue is cost. We are a full pay family. While we have saved for college, we have not saved that much. Interestingly, I had the same issue when I was choosing colleges. I was admitted to Yale, but had a full-ride to another school. My parents did not tell me until AFTER I received by financials that they had no money to send me to college. (We did not make that mistake with our kids) I appreciate that our kids are considering cost as a factor. I realize that for many prestige is a factor. Given my experience and that of my wife, I am a firm believer that college is what you make of it regardless of where you attend. So, D24 has applied to five schools. She has already been admitted to three. Of the other two, one is legally obligated to accept her (our in-state flagship), and I would be shocked if the other does not accept her. Then it will be a choice of which loves her the most.
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S22 has applied to one school that he didn’t visit and if we add another match we won’t visit that one either - just some “virtual” visits. I think that is OK for RD/EA schools where you aren’t committing up front and can check them out if you get in. We did that with S22 and it was fine. I don’t think you have to visit every school you apply to - sometimes it just isn’t feasible and may not be worth the cost if the student is not admitted (this is especially true for schools that are a plane ride away). To me it is better to spend the $$ if the student is admitted and its a contender.
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This was me with Harvard. We live in California, my mom became a young widow and it just didn’t make sense for me to move across the country and leave her. In those days Boston was like moving abroad, might as well leave the country. We did the best with what we knew at the time. This college process brings up a lot of emotion from our own past!
S24 is applying a bit shotgun style. Almost all UCs and lots of Boston & New England colleges. He grew up most of his life in Cambridge, we were there for husbands grad school,so for him that’s more home.
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PM me if he gets in. There are more options than you might think. 
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Yeah, we were late to the game with visits, S24 was also incredibly busy with other stuff, he wants to go to a college which is not too close if possible, so we did some efficient sampler loops, but . . . couldn’t do them all.
I’d also have a really high bar before I would support applying binding to a school we hadn’t visited yet, but if it is just an RD school that now looks really good to him on paper, given what he has learned in this process, and he is willing to do the application seriously–sure, hard to argue with that.
And yes, none of these are exactly autoadmits, so saving on visits anywhere he is not admitted (or conversely ends up dominated by somewhere he is admitted) . . . not the worst deal even if we end up with a few extra application fees.
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That is pretty much how I see it. We were lucky enough to visit all but one of the schools on his original list (starting last year) but anything added at this point will be a post-admit trip.
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Wow I hope they did not apply to those schools with diarrhea of the email! (Looking at you Case)