Hi! Our 10th grader is looking for big school in big city, four seasons, wants progressive/tolerant environment. Bio major, pre-med, with current grades and ACT (so far! she’s only in 10th) she could be looking at “almost-Ivy” schools. Planning a Boston/NY trip for summer, and for spring want to do a DC/Philadelphia trip. Here’s list (so far) - anything else we should consider? Thoughts? We were planning to fly into and out of DC seeing one school a day with train up to Pennsylvania. Georgetown, American University, GW, Carnegie Mellon, Johns Hopkins, Penn, Drexel. Thanks for the help:-)
You’ll get a ton of suggestions, lots of schools other posters like. I’m just going to start with 1. keep it easy, have some fun, use it for some bonding. 2. You…do…not have to go to every info session or stay on long tours, if not interested. 3. Some schools she won’t like, from the get-go. (The joke is, just driving up through the proverbial gates.) That’s ok. Sometimes, you just indulge them, rather than insist.
My kids got a lot out of attending a class if school is in session. We generally would pick that over an info session if a choice had to be made. We also tried to eat in a cafeteria on campus if we could.
Be sure she is focused more on finding matches & safeties she would like – they are harder to find than teaches.
Also – honestly, I’d reconsider doing too much visiting soph year. It is a long time until apps are due, and you don’t have test scores yet. You can waste a lot of money and time, and your kid will barely remember the schools by fall senior year. We did a few visits soph year when convenient (already in an area for other reasons), but targeted most of it for junior year.
The problem with early visits is that your kid won’t want to revisit those schools later when it’s more meaningful. For my D2, not a single early visit resulted in an application.
Totally agree that you should wait until junior year. A lot can change between now and then in terms of how a kid sees himself and his future. IN fact, I’d hope that it would! It’s a period of enormous growth.
Run the NPCs ahead of time so you aren’t taking her somewhere you aren’t willing or able to pay for.
Another problem with early visits is you run the risk of your daughter falling in love with a school she may not get accepted to, or is unaffordable. The colleges know how to showcase themselves; almost all visits we made ended up with a new favorite school!
Any budget constraints?
We took our D on a college tour in the spring of 10th grade. We live on the west coast and figured we could look at West Coast schools in spring of 10th and East Coast ones in the spring of 11th if necessary. We chose to visit the closer ones first in case we needed to do a re-visit since it would be much easier (and less expensive) to go back to those. We decided to not do summer touring since the students and the vibe we so important to the search. By Spring we had my D’s PSAT scores, which we used to estimate potential future SAT scores.
My advice would be to add some good safeties and matches in the mix. No use taking her on a tour that only shows her schools that she might not have a chance to attend. As others have stated, it’s very easy to find good reaches, not as easy to find matches and safeties that a student would be happy to attend. Also, we were advised to mix it up a bit and look at large, medium, and small colleges, as well as urban, suburban, etc. I know your D thinks she knows what she wants, but it’s still early and she might be surprised and decide she likes LACs or schools that aren’t right in a big city.
Right, don’t visit the best schools first. Start lower or all else can pale. And, while you want to encourage interest, try to avoid her naming “dream” schools.
We did start visits early. Think about stopping by a few local schools, regardless of whether you predict they’ll become targets, to get an idea of fit and likes/dislikes. D1 identified very quickly that she didn’t want a large U. Worth the effort. After that, I think every other visit was to LACs. That left her time to focus on other aspects, what else mattered to her, (or change her mind.)
In some cities, eg, DC, it may be very possible to do two schools in one day. Otoh, it’s a great city,so you can fill the extra hours.
And we usually do say, try to visit while classes are in session. Get that vibe.
Agree
- wait until Junior year - gives time to be realistic and also many teens seem to discount the ones they saw earlier in the process
- Never do more than 2 in a day (easy in the cities you mention) - take photos, write down notes - they are easy to jumble together
- as someone mentioned, safeties they like are harder to find - so make sure you visit those
-figure out your budget prior to visiting anything
-on your list are all great cities/tolerant/diverse but suggest waiting until next fall
Good luck!
We always started spring of sophomore year during Easter break as there really is not much time especially if you will apply somewhere ED
Would recommend you rent a car as going from D.C. To philly is really simple straight up I 95
If you do Carnegie Mellon then also look at Pitt
In Philly if you look at Drexel and Penn you should tour Temple
Both of these state schools have good premed programs and give merit aid
Have fun and explore the cities
Go to a baseball game etc
Our family used these trips as fun bonding adventures
Enjoy
I would suggest focusing more on showing your student different types of schools to gave her a better feel for what is available in terms of size, location, liberal vs. conservative, etc and how to evaluate a school. Between 10 grade and senior year there can be a lot of changes in in what your daughter wants. We started out the process positive that our daughter would thrive in a small liberal arts school. The summer before senior year, she switch gears completely and decided she preferred a larger research orientated school. Looking at different types of schools even ones not in the running help her get a better feel for what would be the best fit.
Make sure daughter buys into the school a day idea. My daughter was VERY stressed out be the process and that intensive of a trip would have pushed her over the edge. I admit, I have read many posts here about this type of trip where it turned out to be a enjoyable, wonderful family bonding experience for everyone.
We went on our first college visits with both kids spring of sophomore year. BOTH applied to at least one school we visited on those trips.
We combined our college visits with vacations to visit family and friends. When we went on the CA tour, we visited relatives and friends in CA. When we went on the southeastern tour, we visited relatives and friends.
You mention medical school (although I will off the opinion that LOTS of kids lean this way and then switch majors). Are you able to pay the full cost of attendance for these OOS lublics ad private universities…price tags $60,000 a year or so? If not, you need to consider this. Anyone going to medical school should keep undergrad debt to a base minimum because they WILL have a lot of medical school debt. Your kiddo can fulfill medical school application prerequisites almost anywhere…and really…the ranking of the undergrad school won’t make as much difference in med school admissions as MCAT score, and GPA @WayOutWestMom and @mom2collegekids could you add to this, please?
But back to your question.
On our first college trips with both kiddos, we went to large schools, small schools, private, public, urban, suburban, rural. What our kids thought they liked didn’t end up being what they actually DID like. So please…offer your kid a variety of options. In addition, in 10 days, we saw no more than 7 colleges…and we never saw more than two in one day. Try to sprinkle this first trip with something interesting or fun…a great restaurant, or some site to see if it’s onlly all about college, your kid might run out of interest!
My biggest suggestion if you are driving…get to the next place the night before. That way, you can sleep in sort of…and you don’t face a long drive…and then a tour/infosession.
My instinctive reaction to your list is that it’s a mix of schools that are very hard to get into and schools that are arguably not worth the money. (I would put Georgetown, Penn, Carnegie Mellon, and Johns Hopkins in the hideously selective category and Drexel, GW, and American in the arguably not worth the money category.)
Your daughter might want to expand her horizons a little by considering schools that are more medium-sized than big and those that have easy access to a big city but are not actually in it. This would give her the chance to consider some schools that are a little less selective than the first group and either cheaper or more worth the money than the second group.
In the DC area, one nice choice is the University of Maryland at College Park. It’s right outside DC with easy access to the city, is at least as good as GW and American academically, and is a heck of a lot cheaper, even if you’re from out of state. It’s very big but not as impersonal as you’d think because it has a lot of special interest programs for underclassmen that make the campus feel smaller.
When you get to Boston, Tufts, Brandeis, and Boston College might be worth a look, although none are in the middle of the city and all are medium-sized.
Also, although it makes sense under most circumstances to take a train from DC to Philadelphia, perhaps this isn’t the best choice if you’re also traveling all the way to Pittsburgh for Carnegie Mellon. You might be better off with a rental car. The rental car might also be convenient for going to Baltimore to visit Johns Hopkins.
The thing about early trips is you’re not going in order to make choices, decide on targets. Ideally, imo, you’re doing what noname and thumper mention: looking at broad variables and factors, helping her learn what she does like and want. Often, the honing comes later, when you have scores and more academic stats, see how she’s fared with rigor, any stresses, what her major interests may be.
But I guess some of this will always be YMMV, depends on the kid’s maturity.
My advice is to interview while you’re there. It’s a pain trying to get back to the school or arranging coffee shop alumni interviews later on when they get so busy.
@redpoodles MANY colleges will not grant interviews to students in grade TEN.
@thumper1 The trip is for the SUMMER so the kid will then be in grade ELEVEN.
(adding) I mean one of the trips… try if you can get one, OP.
At least at the LACs (NESCAC and midwest) we visited, only spring semester juniors could interview.