Planning East Coast College Tour

Parents Forum
41

All you can do at this point is find out all the dates and see where overlaps, conveniences, and inconveniences are. Dates are out now, which is how you can make a rough calendar and see potential overlaps. You’ll know by Mar 20 or so what to cross off the list. Your financial aid packages will also help you edit down your list–it certainly did for us! My calendar is full! My D doesn’t know or see it, it’s just for my info so I can plan in case she is lucky enough to have a lot of schools to visit.

As far as hosting, yeah, some kids are a lot better at it than others. Expectations should be low here. She’s getting a floor to sleep on (possibly without carpet or vacuuming) and walked to the dining hall, and that’s pretty much the extent of the obligation at most schools. The women’s schools try a little harder with this, i think, with entertainment events etc. Having done it a couple of times, my D was like, yeah, no thanks.

42

@Terramar

We just planned my D’s trip to visit some colleges during her spring break. She has been accepted to 3 of 4 and will be visiting the 4th at the same time because the schools are clustered together (OH and PA). Of them, she visited two over the summer and has not visited the remaining two. We live in the west, so we wanted to be efficient with travel time and cost. We also have done many summer campus visits (campus tour, info session and sometimes an interview). At the school where she is waiting on an admissions decision, applicants are allowed to sit in on classes.

We decided to not do overnight visits because 1) they are too random - a great or odd host can really skew your child’s opinion of the college 2) they are time consuming 3) your child might not sleep too well and it will add to the fatigue of the trip.

We decided to emphasize class visits, because IMO, one of things you are buying at an LAC, is classroom interaction - both the quality of the professors and the students. Sitting in on a class will give you a sense how engaged the students are in their learning, how collaborative and/or constructive they might be, etc.

At this point, your child has already applied so the info sessions are likely to be somewhat superfluous. There also tends to be some overlap in information between the campus tours and the info sessions.

I also now believe that less is more - two a day is possible but tiring. One a day allows time to visit a class or two, tour the campus, eat in the dining hall, do some people watching, and to get to know the surrounding neighborhood a little bit.

I am somewhat skeptical about admitted student events - the college will obviously be putting its best foot forward and will be generating a lot of excitement. An ordinary visit on an ordinary day is probably a more realistic idea of what being a student there would be like.

If you’re concerned about locking in travel arrangements, you could lock in your dates, airfare (maybe on SW to avoid possible change fees), and reserve a rental car and then wait on the specifics until your child has more information in hand. As was mentioned earlier, nothing will be happening on Sundays so flying out on a Sunday and returning the following Saturday would enable you five substantial campus visits M-F (assuming Good Friday is an available visit date). By avoiding overnights, you can use that time to travel to your next destination. Which 5 of the 7 would depend on your and her assessment of fit, likelihood of acceptance, and her interest. One place where you might consider doubling up would be Amherst/Smith/MHC, given their close proximity to one another. Also, should she not get accepted to all of these schools, you could do some last minute shuffling among the ME and MA campuses.

Good luck and have fun!

43

Agree with @mamaedefamilia about the overnights – my kid did very few overnights, although he applied to and was admitted to about 8 LACs. The most useful tools for distinguishing among schools, in his experience, was setting up a full day visit which included a tour, class visit, scheduling meeting with faculty in programs of interest or special tour of a particular facility (arts building, faculty who teach student’s instrument etc.) and eating in the dining hall. So I second the idea of planning closer to full day visits, with class visits, dining hall, etc. The tours might seem superfluous at this stage, but our experience was, you could really get a feel for campus life by watching how the current students interacted around campus as you toured.

The overnights – like tour guides – can be very random and not representative. My kid was turned off by students who partied, or didn’t go campus events which everyone else seemed to be going to. Plus, sleeping on the floor with strangers was not a good start to a long day of campus visits. Good luck, and hang in there, this period of waiting is tough, and I understand wanting to feel like you are doing “something” to move the process forward!

44

The one thing about accepted students days is that they always have things for the parents to do-- we visited all schools before applying and then also visited on accepted students days and I always learned a lot more on accepted students day. To me the general day is like scoping out the neighborhood, and the accepted students day is when all the houses are open and you can actually walk through them yourself (not literally). Yes, it will be a little zoo-like. But I think it’s worth it if you can swing it, at least for some schools, because the bells and whistles they are pulling out might be resources that you (as a parent or a student) might want to call upon later. It’s also a chance to see the incoming class and it’s a chance to scope out all of the departments and clubs there–usually they have a fair of some sort and a departmental presentation with professor and student panel as opposed to a general one. But there is no one ideal answer for every family. We all make our choices and have our preferences. Do what you can, and all of this will be a lot easier to fathom once those acceptance letters and financial aid packages are in hand.

45

@mamadefamilia On your skepticism of Accepted Student Days – yes, the school is putting its best foot forward. And if you don’t like the best foot, there isn’t going to be another one. And much of the randomness that can come from a regular visit day is smoothed over.

When these day are on a weekday, a student can attend classes in the morning – all ones that are offered on that day --, eat in the dining hall, and then in the afternoon, meet with faculty, coaches, career center, etc… Schools that typically don’t tour dorms include those in the tours on that day. What we found was that we NEVER managed to see everyone we wanted to on a regular day visit – someone was either away at a game or not on campus, etc. – but that everyone was in attendance on this day. Frankly, that was pretty valuable. (Right down to nutritionists who were there to help students with dietary restrictions!) So yes, the weekend ones are a little more staged, but still quite valuable because of their all hands on deck nature.

I have heard that at very large schools, they can be a madhouse, and as DS had only smaller LACs on his list, this wasn’t our experience. What I’m saying is that although they are “marketing events”, they still may provide a very good, perhaps the best, look at a school. And yes, customizing a day will probably give you much the same, but without some of those other resources. ANY day is going to just one, and it may or may not be representative.

I agree that OV can be very random and host-dependent. But they do give students an opportunity to see a larger slice of student life on one random night.

46

Why does your daughter want to get as far away from you as possible?

47

We visited both Bowdoin and Amherst when my D was looking at schools. She’s now a junior at Penn, which is close to Bryn Mawr. We used google maps when planning the drives, and it helped greatly. You can create your own map which will show you the routes and distances between locations.

As to your question, you can definitely do these in one trip, with some planning!

48

We did a bunch of tours before decisions (~16) then a few after decisions. In the end our S picked none of the schools he went to accepted student day and one he had barely toured and spent no time meeting students, going to classes, etc. If anything, the schools he did do it with was far more likely to be eliminated. He and I both went to to a two day Accepted Student event at Middlebury for example. I was impressed with everything I saw and heard. He was okay during the day of classes, neither super interested or disinterested. But the overnight turned him off big time. They clustered 4 prospective students with one suite of current students, all of whom were athletes. The highlight of the suite was a permanent, dedicated beer pong room. They had a get-to-know-you discussion where everyone discussed what substances they like to party with. Separately he attended a band practice and those kids laid it out for him that the school is divided between “Bros” and (whatever they called the non-Bros, I don’t recall). As others have noted, the problem with these experiences is they can be so colored by the randomness of your experience. His may not reflect the school at all.

Perhaps the best results we had were when either or S or my wife or I could identify another former graduate of his HS that he knew (or we knew the parents) and we would show up and do the regular tour then take this person to lunch or dinner and just chat about their experience. We did this at a couple schools he was accepted at; at another we parents took the regular tour and our S walked around by himself with someone who graduated his HS a year before him. This more personal experience where they had shared perspective from HS was far more informative than the standard tours, info sessions or accepted student days. Speaking of info sessions, having attended at least 15 of them, they were mostly useless and my S found them super boring and repetitive (between schools). It only made him look forward to the tours less.

Our D is a HS Sophomore so she’s coming up on the process next. Our overall plan is less tours than last time before acceptance, and far less info sessions. We’ll go to a couple if the schools is very high on her interest list only. Everything you get from those sessions you can get yourself online. We’re visiting Southern California this summer (where my wife and I went to school) and interspersing college visits and a fun vacation. We’re only doing the formal tour and info session at one school, doing our own drive-through only of another and walking a third on our own. With the exception of the one we’re doing the full tour and info session, none of the tours with dominate the day. That’s enough flavor for her to decide to apply or not (or at least decide to research them more before applying). If she gets accepted to one we didn’t formally tour and it rises near the top of her short list, we could do a last minute visit spring of senior year.

In terms of how much can be visited in a day, a lot can be done if you are disciplined and a glutton for punishment. We did Cornell, Colgate and Hamilton all in one day, with info sessions and tours for each. They are far further apart than some of those on the OP’s list. We did 2-3 a day several times. The downside besides how grueling it was is it gave our S a more negative impression because he would be burned out by the afternoon and when he would later consider the schools the tours kind of blurred together.

Good luck.

49

When I was on the circuit with my kids, we would run into these families from the West Coast doing consecutive two-a-days for a week. It’s physically possible, but you could see in their eyes how burned out they were after a few days. People should only plan back-to-back two-a-days, not to mention three-a-days, if they really don’t care about the colleges. I understand that it’s hard to choose which ones to look at if you have no idea what they are like, and traveling from the West Coast is expensive, etc., but in the end you have to figure out how to have a valuable experience. Trying to see 15 colleges in a week will not be a valuable experience.

Hamilton, Colgate, and Cornell in one day, with formal tours and info sessions, is just ridiculous. Those things together take 2-1/2 - 3 hours apiece, a bit longer at Cornell (which is enormous), and there’s probably at least 90 minutes of driving involved, minimum. There are enough hours in the day, but who schedules late afternoon tours and info sessions? At a place like Cornell, you really need to look at off-campus, too, because kids live there, and because it’s a huge part of the experience.

50

For the most part extensive touring of elite schools is probably not very productive since so few students will end up admitted to any single elite school. At our HS I saw parent after parent touring HPYS etc when in reality few if any of their children ended up with any such choice. On the other hand touring is very important once you have acceptances in hand. Touring probably only makes sense if the student is deciding to go ED.

51

Touring seems to me extremely important for deciding what TYPE of school appeals initially (you can often extrapolate after seeing an assortment), and then once again after acceptances are in, to determine which amongst a small subset is the actual winner.

52

Airport recommendations. If you’re doing ME and MA on one trip, you could fly either into Boston (BOS-Logan Airport) or Manchester, NH (MHT). (Manchester is on SW Airlines’ route system.) From my experience it’s less hassle and less driving traffic if one uses Manchester, unless one really needs to be IN Boston. Either airport will be about the same distance to the Maine destinations, but Logan is more of a pain to use. In future, if your daughter were to attend one of the Maine schools, then flying into Portland (PWM) would work well.

53

Hi there,

You can definitely do this in the time you have allocated. By early April you should start hearing from some colleges, and can build in longer visits to those.

Do 1/2 day visits to the ones you haven’t heard from to manage expectations.

Day 1
California to Boston or Manchester NH (arrive evening)
Drive to Portland ~2 hrs
overnight in Portland/Bowdoin area

Day 2
Visit bowdoin am
Visit bates pm
Overnight in Bowdoin/Portland area

Day 3
Return to bates/ bowdoin for anything you missed
Travel to Northampton ma ~4 hrs
Overnight in noho or Amherst

Day 4
Visit Amherst am
Visit smith pm
Overnight in noho

Day 5
Visit Holyoke am
Return to smith/Amherst for anything you missed pm
Overnight in noho or drive to Dickinson

Day 6
Drive to Dickinson ~5.5 hrs
College visit
Overnight in Carlisle pa

Day 7
Drive to Philadelphia area ~1.5 hrs
Bryn mawr am
Area College or museum
Overnight in philly

Day 8
Morning visits
Travel from Philadelphia to CA

you could maximize your time at the colleges by moving the driving to the evening, but I find that makes me very tired.

It will be a lot to process. Your Student should use her phone to take pictures and annotate her impressions.

Sometimes they know right away the school is not for them, and then you can ditch the tour and do something fun. My d fondly remembers our visit to the Eric Carle museum after she decided Hampshire looked too much like ‘a farm.’ :slight_smile:

hope you and your student have a great trip!

54

The problem with flying into Manchester or Portland is that you’re unlikely to find a nonstop from the West Coast, meaning you’ll have two spend time switching flights. IMO it’s better to fly directly into Boston for a trip like this.

Like many others, I’m not sure it makes any sense to arrange your itinerary until you know what your daughter’s options are. In any case, if you decide to go for the full week you should plan to build in some touristing as it’s not likely she’ll be admitted to every school.

If she ends up visiting Bates or Bowdoin I’d recommend staying in Portland because it’s a great little city with easily walkable shopping and restaurants in the Old Port area.

I always found the long drives were best done in the late afternoon/evening because they give you and your child a chance to reflect on the day at leisure. While I drove my child would take notes on what they saw and write thank-you emails to interviewers or hosts. It also gives you an opportunity to preview the location of the morning school so you can go to bed knowing how you’ll get to your first stop.

I agree with others that overnights can be a mixed bag, and not usually as useful as one expects. So much depends on what night the student visits. On a Tuesday night toward the end of the semester they’re unlikely to see much because their host will be too busy studying, and studying is dead boring to watch. On a Friday after midterms the whole campus will seem to be one big party, so that won’t be a balanced view of campus life either.

55

The problem is…part of this trip encompasses Good Friday and Easter weekend when I can almost guarantee…most admissions offices will be closed.

Also, they need to take the Bates spring break into consideration.

56

I find it easier to fly into Boston. Twice last year my flight into Portland was cancelled and I ended up going to Boston. If there are problems with weather or planes, there are limited flights into Portland, where there are many Boston options.

Have you toured at any of the schools prior to this trip? I would wait until you have acceptances in place and then rank and prioritize the top 3 or 4. I don’t think it’s realistic to tour 8 schools. Physically possible, yes of course. Enjoyable? No, not likely.

57

@Atyraulove

I think for this college visit trip, folks were suggesting flying into Manchester NH, not Portland.

58

My S is at Bowdoin and so far only one of his flights out of Portland has not had a significant issue – major delays, cancellations, re-touring to other airports, etc. And because there are relatively few flights when there is a problem more likely than not you are scrambling to grab a bus to Boston (or less likely Manchester) for your next available option. In one case he was at the airport in Portland, flight was cancelled and he had to Uber to the bus/train station (which has no connection to the airport), take a bus to Boston then take a flight to not the nearest airport to where we live where we had to pick him up in the middle of the night. The airport itself is small but nice and super convenient. And we’ve all had more luck with inbound flights (although they make you check even carry-on sized bags in some cases and left ours out in a rain storm on the tarmac and everything in them was completely soaked).

But the bottom line is, as others have noted, book flights in/out of Portland at your own risk.

59

Generally speaking, there are more backup plans to be had flying in and out of a major airport.

60

Manchester isn’t any closer to Bowdoin/Bates than Boston. There may be less traffic to contend with, if you have a flight that arrives late in the afternoon, and of course there might be some specific price or convenience advantage, but it’s not closer.

Portland, of course, is meaningfully closer. If you are driving to the colleges from Boston, you get to drive right past the Portland airport about 25 minutes before you get to whichever place you are going. Portland is a lovely little airport, and much easier than Logan to negotiate, as long as the times and prices work for you. I haven’t flown there in a long time, but there was a period when I was going to Maine every so often, and generally I thought Portland flights were less subject to problems than Logan flights, but there was a definite price premium for flying to Portland, and a lack of alternatives if there is a problem with one flight.

I would not take the advice of one poster to stay in Portland while visiting the colleges, though. It’s true that Portland is cuter and has better shopping and food than you will see in Lewiston or Brunswick, but from the colleges it’s just far enough away that going there is a special treat, not something you do all the time, so it’s really not what you want to be looking at if you are thinking of going to college there.