Just out of curiosity , do either 33 or 18 physicial, on-campus visits by the time a child is a high school junior seem like too many? By Halloween of child’s junior year he had seen all four he applied to. Note - I live in the DC Metro.
Deleted. Off topic.
@mdflaparent we will be in the 20-30 range by the end of junior year. The first several were schools that our D thought she wanted, and only realized after visiting that they weren’t for her (large, with strong programs in her intended major). After narrowing her focus to small LACs she realized what a difference a visit makes for her. The places she’s really been excited about from her research (website, Fiske guide, etc.) haven’t been her favorites after the visits. She’s ended up liking the ones we’ve seen because we were in the area (Bryn Mawr vs. Haverford, Kenyon vs. Denison, etc.)… I imagine she’ll go back to 2 or 3 of them at some point next year.
We’re fortunate that we both enjoy and can afford to make these trips. We travel a lot anyway, both for vacations, and to see family (we live in Chicago but all of our extended family is on the East Coast). The visits been a lot of fun and super helpful.
My son found his dream school on a warm Tuesday in July. My daughter found hers on a cold Thursday night in February… .their first ever night tour. When it’s right, it’s right. So get there when you can.
Each family has to do what works best for them. Some parents have the ability to travel to many places, while others must only go by the information on college websites.
In our case, the process has been different for each of our three daughters.
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#1 was not academic at all, and it appeared that college might not be in her immediate future. She did convince grandparents to take her on a graduation trip to New York City, claiming she was interested in colleges in the area. She did go on a few tours, but everyone knew the odds of acceptance were incredibly low. A few weeks before the fall semester was to begin, she scrambled around to get registered at our nearest state school. She attended college for one year.
-#2 had big dreams of heading far away for college, and experiencing life in a different region of the U.S. We took several road trips, cashing in points for free hotel rooms, and flew once when Frontier was having a ridiculous sale. She wound up at a state school 1000 miles away, that wasn’t even on her initial list. But we insisted that we visit that campus, since we were in the area July 4th week.
3 is a current senior and still waiting on decisions from six colleges that do not have rolling admissions. Her choices were made by in-depth on-line research, but due to geography it was impossible to visit very many. Over Summer, we flew to DC & Boston and toured four colleges (she ruled out two), and over Fall Break we flew to California and toured two colleges (we tried to fit in a 3rd, but couldn’t make it work out). Those trips were costly, so we are waiting on financial packages to determine if any additional campus visits might be necessary.
- We did most of our tours spring break of junior year. Definitely a plus to have students around, labs working, etc.
- I like doing tours pre-application, so kid gets an idea of what they like and that helps refine the application list .
- Don't overdo the schedule. I mistakenly tried to pack ~7 schools in 5 days and it was too much. Kids shut down after a while.
- I found the info sessions pretty redundant and useless. We usually skipped these.
- There's a huge range in quality of tour guides. Must look beyond them.
- Our best visits, by far, were when we got to meet students or professors, or even dept Chair. If you have a friend of a friend who can make an introduction, it is very worthwhile. (I actually loved taking my kids on the college tours.)
It helps when they have a major in mind. It’s hard to set up meetings with professors and advisors when they have no idea what they want to go into. Once S20 figured out he wants to major in environmental science, he was able to set up meetings with people in the department.
I really enjoy it as well. The visits have been a great excuse for us to take some family trips and I’ve done a few with just me and S or D and those have been great one-on-one time.
Kind of in the same boat with our D21. We did a few last summer. Not ideal but you get the feel for the campus. But even the ones we did during the school year – Saturdays and holidays like Columbus Day you still dont see a lot of kids. Apparently they sleep in really late on Saturdays and the campus we visited seemed deserted on a 3 day weekend. While we are allowed to miss 2 school days per semester for visits, D gets very stressed out about missing school so to me I’d rather not have her stressed and just visit when we can. I kind of think the top contenders we would revisit again Senior year once we have the acceptances.
We took S18 to 3 schools within driving distance - small, medium, large - on a long weekend junior yr. He decided on small. We then took him to accepted days at a couple he was more interested in once he got in and another that he missed a day of school for when accepted. So, he didn’t see many schools, picked one, and loves it there. My guess is he may have felt the same about a few of them - he’s incredibly easy going and social. He also had no particular major he needed.
I think because each kid is so different, it’s hard to put a number on how many to see and when to do it. I also think it’s very important to see the LAC in session because you get a much better sense of the type of kids there, whereas at a larger school, they’re bound to find “their people.”
@Peachpie9, I don’t know if this is your oldest, but so far we have found missing school (for college visits) to be MUCH less stressful during senior year, especially second half, than it was during junior year. Junior year is tough academically; by spring of senior year, the stress level seems lower overall. The trick is fitting it in if you have other spring break plans or ECs that are active during that time.
We did college tours on days off from HS (Jewish holidays, parent teacher days, etc) weekends, spring break, and over the summer. Sometimes colleges were in session and sometimes not. You can google X school 2020 academic calendar to find out when their breaks are. Sometimes you can tour 2 schools in 1 day (1 am and 1pm) if touring city schools (Boston, NYC, Phl, DC) it’s exhausting but doable.
She had to take off HS for revisit days in April.
I have heard this many times on CC, but I’m in the minority on this. We found most of the info sessions helpful. We were all interested in seeing what the individual colleges emphasized. For example, Villanova’s presentation was VERY different from BC’s, Colgate was different from Hamilton and Bowdoin, GW was different from American, and Tufts was in its own category. My daughter didn’t even want to bother with the tour at Wesleyan after the info session, and the tour reinforced her dislike for the college. Skidmore and BC had student panels which we found extremely helpful, Bowdoin and Colgate had a student paired with an admissions rep, and Trinity (CT) actually did something different by having two current students lead 75% of the presentation. (That was one of my favorite info sessions!) The Provost at Dickinson conducted the info session there, and I loved his presentation on “Why a LA degree?” We appreciated the fact that Lafayette had a Latina admissions rep conduct their session, and she talked quite a bit about the college’s 5-year plan to expand their community and make it more diverse–in terms of both race/ethnicity and SES. She also mentioned that unlike many LACs, they did not see themselves set apart from the community, but an integral part of it. (Bowdoin emphasized the same.) Syracuse felt much smaller after we went to Whitman’s info session, and Fordham and GW felt much larger after very broad, general, and lackluster presentations.
So we found that overall the info sessions really helped us get a feel for the campus vibe and what each college thought was their strength. You can tell a lot about a college by what they emphasize.
FWIW, my D20 applied (and was accepted) ED to a college that was not originally on her list. We were doing a tour of upstate NY during spring break of her junior year, and I insisted we visit Hamilton since it was only 30 minutes from Colgate, one of the top schools on her list. Online, she was turned off by the thought of two distinct architectural styles that reflected the integration of a woman’s college (Kirkland) in the past. “That’s weird,” she replied after looking online one day. She loved it the minute she stepped on campus. Several visits later (including an interview on campus with a current student) and she was fully hooked. If we went based on the website and virtual tour only, she never would have even applied.
I agree with @ProfSD , we found the information sessions to be valuable, even (especially?) when they were boring. Although a lot of the information they convey can usually be found on the website, the info sessions can also provide useful insight into how the school presents itself, what they consider important, etc. - they can give you a better sense of the true personality of the school. I remember almost all of the info sessions we joined very clearly, more clearly in many cases than the tours.
Thank you @ProfSD. Perhaps I was a bit flip in dismissing the info sessions. I was mostly remembering the “broad, general, and lackluster presentations,” as you say. But I must agree that a few times there were panels led by students that were quite good and helpful.
I should also mention that we attended a number of local info sessions, which I felt better about since no days of school were missed, and they were not crammed into a tight schedule. When I am visiting a distant campus, it feels like the tours and just exploring is the best use of valuable time.
Tufts info session, yes…I remember being ushered into a huge auditorium which was filled. The first audience question was, “is it better to get a B in an honors class or an A in the regular class?” And of course the AO’s answer was, “Well it’s best to get an A in the Honors class.” 
I also found the info sessions to be very useful. After sitting through several I was able to hear nuances about what that particular school wants, and was very helpful for the “Why Us” essay, as well as helping our kid decide which schools she’d apply to.
I think our kid visited around 35 schools, I can’t remember exactly because she went to some with me, some with the other parent, some with friends, and some with other relatives. We made the mistake of visiting reach schools first, so we had to visit A LOT of other schools to find two safeties that she’d be happy to attend. It would be better to focus on finding safeties first.
Also, a majority of kids who start college with a major in mind end up changing to something else. So while it’s important that the college has a good program in the anticipated major, be sure that there are enough other good departments that might also be of interest to your kid.
@TS0104 Wonderful to know the stress decreases later in senior year! I look forward to that! 
We did our college visits during our spring break (which is later than college spring break). Most times it worked out fine, I think there was a case where it was the weekend or something and it still was fine. We visited U Mass and then did a self-tour to UConn…honestly big state schools are all kind of similar.
Dont’ take your kid out of school…you will be fine.
2 posts were split to a new thread: Planning College visits