<p>I'm a junior, and my parents want me to start planning our college visits. My parents, having never gone through the US college process, are quite overzealous about it. They want to visit every college that I'm interested in.</p>
<p>So far, my long list includes:
Georgetown , GWU, American
Tufts, BU
Macalester
URochester
Brown
Princeton
Yale
Bucknell
Connecticut College
Kenyon
Carleton
Colgate
Duke
Northwestern, UChicago
UMich
Penn
Vassar
WUSTL
Columbia</p>
<p>UDenver - will be visiting over winter break when we go skiing
Stanford, Cal, Claremont McKenna, USC, UCSB and UCD- I won't be officially visiting UCD because a good friend attends and I stay with her all the time. Stanford and Cal are already planned to visit in January because I have a random day off school. UCSB, USC and CMC are super close, so I can just go when I have another random day off.</p>
<p>So, this is where I need some help. What would be the best way to split up all these colleges?
I have one week in February and 2 weeks for spring break. I'm in CA, so I would obviously fly.
I was thinking maybe doing the midwest for the one week trip, and the east coast for the 2 week trips. That's as far as I've gotten.</p>
<p>Thanks for your help!</p>
<p>NOTE: I am aware that this will be very expensive. Cost is not an issue for us.</p>
<p>Look on the college websites for their campus visits times. Oftentimes, you can only visit one college per day unless the colleges are very near each other and one has morning touring times and the other has afternoon touring times.</p>
<p>So, divide your list up geographically and then start looking online for their tour times. Reserve your tour times early since sometimes they get booked up. You can always change a time if needed as you plan.</p>
<p>Also, try to visit when the colleges are in session, so check out each one’s calendar and avoid when they are on spring break.</p>
<p>I’m a big believer in “fit” and college visits and I do not think you need to vist all the schools in which you are interested before you apply … I would suggest a student visit all the top contendors after they receive their admission offers. Before applying I’d suggest visiting enough of the schools so you have a better handle on research school vs LAC, big city/college town/suburb, west coast/mid-west/east coast, etc attributes. Given your list after checking out the schools relatively near home one trip to the midwest and one trip to the Northeast (or one trip hitting both) should allow you to see a lot of your schools and different kind of schools. When my oldeest went through this we spend her spring vacation week looking at schools planning on 2 schools a day (the colleges were in session) … which is a lot but it was doable.</p>
<p>My one big caveat is if you thinking about applying ED then I’d suggest you do visit your top choices in advance … applying ED without visiting seems risky to me (if visits are a possibility)</p>
<p>Far be it from me to tell anyone how to spend their vacation time, but its hard to imagine how you will benefit by visiting 30 schools in less than a year. I can only see it getting in the way of your ECs, your studies and your test prep, especially since you can realistically only do one per day and get much out of it. Pick your top 10 (a LAC, a public and a private university so you experience the range) and stick to that untill you get admitted.</p>
<p>If your parents really want to delve into the schools, have them check out the common data set for each school (love those parental spreadsheets!), read the student newspapers on-line, check out the faculty and their areas of research in the subjects you are interested in, look at the course catalog on line for breadth and depth in your subject area(s): There are tons of ways of keeping over-enthused parents gainfully employed without being dragged all over the country and sitting through tons of boring info sessions where they repeat the same tired formulas again and again.</p>
<p>My suggestion would be to only visit schools where you either know someone, or would have access to a student host. College tours aren’t really all that helpful, and you can just look at photos online if you want to see what the campus looks like.</p>
<p>If you have an unofficial guide, you’ll have a chance to get a feel for what the school is really like, and that’s the true purpose of college visits.</p>
<p>Use each school’s online/virtual tour to try to eliminate some choices. Use each college’s website to look at academic offerings, recreation offerings, housing offerings.</p>
<p>Do you have any climate preferences? If so, you might be able to eliminate some choices that way.</p>
<p>Also, do you prefer a lot of off-campus leisure choices? If the school is in the middle of nowhere, that may also eliminate some choices.</p>
<p>Also, convenience to airports. If you can’t easily get to an airport to come home on vacations, that could also eliminate some choices.</p>
<p>It is helpful to visit schools that offer on-campus interviews when those are available, which may not be until May, so check on that. Also, I don’t think you need to visit all your back-up schools. However, the smaller schools that are slight reaches for you may value the show of interest and it may help your cause if you have visited. So you have to do an honest assessment of back-ups and reaches. You only have a few small more remote schools (Kenyon etc.), so you should visit at least one of those to compare to the bigger places. My daughter and I took a weekend in the fall of her senior year to visit and interview at Brandeis, Wellesley and Tufts, so you can do 3 in two days—even without a car. Good luck!</p>