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<p>What is the difference between your college hunt for your DS and DD? </p>
<p>In addition, you have said you’ve filled out that your DD is the first one in the family to attend college, please don’t do that for your DS’s applications unless the school specifically said “first one in college in the US”. To my knowledge, no school specifies “US”.</p>
<p>Just at thought. It sounds like this is a trip to get a feel for the schools. We did those kinds of trips as well. Our DD didn’t sit in on classes at that point. DS had private instrument lessons…but his situation was a very different one. Once DD got her acceptances and had a sense of choices 1, 2, 3…we INSISTED that she spend the night at each school (all were very far from our home) and attend classes. She did so…and actually found one campus to be very much NOT to her liking. Spending the night, she found this particular campus to be a bit quiet, not particularly friendly, etc. And she didn’t like the classes she attended (all in areas of high interest for her). This was in contrast to her final two top choices where the overnights were terrific, she felt very comfortable and at home, AND she liked the classes…again in areas of strong interest.</p>
<p>Info sessions may not always have sufficient positive information but when we were going through the grind two schools eliminated themselves on the basis of the info session. Negative data is useful.</p>
<p>Agree about hanging out in the campus center, observing, and letting S/D go off on their own to chat with students. D eliminated one Ivy from consideration on that basis, based on what students talked about and didn’t talk about…I think she was pretty shrewd in that regard.</p>
<p>A tale of contrasts: D plays one of the more “desirable” musical instruments (in terms of filling out an orchestra). She e-mailed the orchestra director at the aforementioned Ivy, trying to set up a meeting when she visited. The reply was, “Get admitted, come to the audition, then we can talk.”</p>
<p>She sent a similar e-mail to a Top 20 LAC and an appointment was set up for the day we were visiting. When the orchestra director found out that we weren’t leaving until the following day, he said, “Look, we’re having a rehearsal tonight and the piece with lots of brass will be rehearsed starting around 8:30…why don’t you come by, if you can, and you can sit with your section while we rehearse.”</p>
<p>That attitude, the “what can we do for you,” taking the extra step, pervaded virtually all aspects of her LAC for four years and she put together a spectacular academic record along the way, to the extent she doesn’t have to make concessions competing against anyone, Ivy grad or no.</p>
<p>I confess that TheMom and I had biases in favor of research universities but that experience with the LAC orchestra director began to change our minds. (And TheMom has worked for a major research university for almost 30 years.) Now, we’re converts. Of the sorta fanatical kind.</p>
<p>X-posted. Thumper makes a good point. Even schools that sound similar on paper (or website) can have a very different feel to them. For many students there’s an almost chemical? alchemical? aspect to “fit” that I think one disregards at peril.</p>
<p>A previous poster wrote this very good advice:
“I am from the Philadelphia area. Driving around there is like sticking knives in your eyes. Be prepared for that- and that INCLUDES the Main Line where Haverford is (out to K of Prussia) AND the Swat area. I was just there- it continues to be a nightmare”</p>
<p>You can not imagine how awful the rush hour traffic is around the Philly and Princeton areas, so factor in rush hour times or you will be very miserable.</p>
<p>Also, if your s is preppy/ sporty at all, you might want to expand your search to the Lehighs, Lafayette type schools. Very different from the Haverford, Swat vibe.</p>
<p>“What is the difference between your college hunt for your DS and DD?”</p>
<p>Nothing, except that Dad II hopes he can use the phrase “first male in our family to attend a 4 yr college in the US” to paint a first-generation college picture, which is disingenous given that he himself obtained a PhD in the US and they’ve already gone through a college search with the dd.</p>
<p>I second the Doubletree Plymouth Meeting linked to above; I stay there all the time for business!</p>
<p>^ When visiting Philly area colleges (or any other major urban center, for that matter) we tried to stay out of a.m. and p.m. rush hour traffic. This usually isn’t too difficult as most places a.m. rush starts to wind down by 9 or so, while college tours and info sessions often start at 10 with perhaps a second round in the early p.m. It might counsel against trying to make morning sessions at Princeton while staying in suburban Philly, however.</p>
<p>I too strongly encourage your child to sit in on a class, especially if this might be the only trip before applying. Or, at least speak informally with students other than the tour guide. </p>
<p>My son visited the 3 places on your list during junior year. CMU & Princeton did not feel right for him. Oddly, because he came to prefer LACs, he also did not like Swarthmore, which came from having an unimpressive tour guide. There wasn’t an opportunity to speak with any other students so I believe he did not get an accurate impression of Swarthmore. </p>
<p>I believe the tour guide was a fluke, but if you can try to avoid one impression coloring your view of an entire campus, then please interact with more students. Sitting in on classes help one see what the educational experience is like. It’s very important to feel that you’d want to discuss what you’re learning with your peers.</p>
<p>Just a question…is this DadII son’s first college trips (for himself…not sister’s)? If so, who made the list of schools? We took DD on her first trip to see schools and the parents made the list. We wanted her to see large, small, urban, rural, suburban, private, public so she could get an idea of what was out there. We visited 7 schools in 10 days (combined with visits to family and friends…a driving trip). I will say…DD was underwhelmed with these visits. She did apply to one school from this trip (her second choice actually). That trip was summer before her junior year. Spring break of her junior year, we took another trip. DD CHOSE all but one of the schools on the trip. Again…7 schools in an 11 day trip (this one was a “fly across the country” trip…combined with visits to family and friends). She loved these visits, even the schools she didn’t end up liking…as SHE chose the schools. She applied to two of these schools (she only wanted to apply to these three schools…but she added a reach at the last minute and we made her apply to one school closer to home). </p>
<p>If Dad II son has had a hand in crafting this list, he probably won’t mind all the driving and running around. If not, he may not show a lot of interest.</p>
<p>Like MidwestMom, my first S was focusing on a specific major and was looking for particular components specific to the department. He emailed profs before visiting, was always invited to sit in, some gave assignments and he spoke to most of them after class. This was essential to his decision-making process, as it eliminated a number of fine schools where the fit, departmental emphasis or opportunity for early upper div/graduate work were incompatible with his needs.</p>
<p>Dad II – I strongly recommend walking around the department(s) your S is interested in. Reading the walls gave us a pretty good assessment of how the department viewed undergrads, accessibility to profs, as well as what recent graduates of the department are now doing. At Mudd, professors popped out of their doors to say hello and answer our questions. S went to the CS department without an appointment and talked to an advisor for 1.5 hours. A Chicago HUM professor invited S to visit her office after sitting in on her class, and he talked to a couple of profs at MIT in his intended area of specialization (which has since paid off in other ways). In contrast, S visited another top school and it was deathly dull – nothing on the walls, no profs around, nothing on their doors to give any sense of personality or availability.</p>
<p>S1 made three visits to his three top choices – one in the summer prior to/during junior year; one during fall of senior year w/an overnight stay, where he sat in on classes and interviewed; one in April after acceptance. The April trips were all solo, as was one of the fall trips. Frequent flyer miles, Amtrak points and being on a Southwest non-stop route to one of the schools made this affordable. (Another top choice was local, and he was there on a regular basis for other reasons.)</p>
<p>S2 has a field in mind, but it can be accomplished via a couple of academic paths, depending on the school. His job is to sort out the subtleties between IR departments vs. concentrations within history, polisci and econ, and figure out where he can best craft the program he wants. OTOH, he has 17 schools of varying stripes in the mix right now, and he is trying to narrow that a bit with this first round of visits. (Neither he nor I want to deal with that many applications in the fall!) </p>
<p>S2 came out of his classroom visits this week with a sense of the intellectual vibe at each and how he felt he stacked up in comparison, and was able to articulate what he wants to see in a classroom. To me, THAT is worthwhile knowledge for him to have gained, and is something he would not get in an info session.</p>
<p>IMO Philly traffic and driving is NOTHING compared to traffic in places like Boston, NY, DC, LA. Do avoid rush hour, but chances are you will be fine barring a traffic accident or weather issues.</p>
<p>Visiting two campus a day is not easy, I think.</p>
<p>It’s good to stay next to UPenn. You don’t want to drive around UPenn campus area. You will lose a hour from one side to another if you are at the wrong time. I’ve done that several time. UPenn does not require its campus visit. You don’t leave any record you visit there. How you spend time their is all up to you. Their admission session are very basic and dry. Although students there were very friendly and helpful, their administrators of departments were not to us. The professors were not willing to talk to us without appointments at least. We did not need much time after info session/tour.</p>
<p>Once you get out of Phil, you are at Swarthmore in short time. Swarthmore requires your campus visit and you leave your visit record there. Info session does not end until your questions or others are answered, which would be after the official session. You are free to walk around their campus. Our kids spent time with few professors in their office (not their scheduled office hours). We also had few conversation with few professors at the libruary and cafeteria. Spent well over a half day there. Good area to stay overnight there. Or drive to Princeton. You love to eat and to stay overnight at the Princeton. Few excellent restaurant there.</p>
<p>Princeton also does not require the campus visit, so your leave nothing. However, you will spend more than you plan, I think. You have so many things to see. You may end up talking to a famous professor. </p>
<p>You need more than 2 hours driving from Princeton to Columbia. Extra time going thru the tunnel and city drive. Or extra public transportation time if you leave your car in NJ. You may visit Yale. It should be 3+ hour drive if you can beat a traffic, from Princeton.</p>
<p>Do you want to go further north to Williams and others? Just few hours from Yale.</p>
<p>Why stay next to Penn and pay twice what you would pay out in the suburbs?</p>
<p>UPenn is not located in Phil’s financial area. Not all hotels/motels are expensive there. OP plan shows tight schedule in day 2. Considering wasting time in morning, locating parking spot and fee, it’s not that bad, at least to me. The cheapest is not always the best choice to me so many time. </p>
<p>I don’t think it is no point of making “twice expensive” and excluding an option. I’m sure you can find a third of cost somewhere, if you want.</p>
<p>Just thought I would throw this site out with Philadelphia College info: <a href=“http://onebigcampus.com/college_profiles.htm[/url]”>http://onebigcampus.com/college_profiles.htm</a></p>
<p>Just a few remarks from our own exhaustive tours.</p>
<p>If pressed for time, I say to skip information sessions. We rarely learned anything in the information session that was not readily available on the web site. After a while, every info session sounded exactly like the last. Time spent on tours, however, was invaluable. (If you skip the info session and join the tour, do not ask questions during the tour that might have been covered in the info session. That’s annoying.)</p>
<p>If child doesn’t like a school, just leave. We visited 18 schools, and there was never a time when D had an immediate negative reaction that could be changed by a tour.</p>
<p>I think it is a good idea to stay overnight near one of the schools. In this way, your child can see what the surrounding community is like. My daughter disliked the area around Lehigh so badly she refused to set foot on the campus. Go figure.</p>
<p>Touring colleges is like going to Disneyland with a toddler. If you push to do too much in a day, they will melt down. We scheduled a drive from DC in the morning for a morning tour at Penn and an afternoon at Villanova, driving afterward to Lehigh to spend the night and tour Lehigh the next morning. D stayed up late the night before and was exhausted. By the time we reached Villanova, the fatigue and the heat caused a Major Bad Attitude with accompanying Meltdown. Villanova never stood a chance with her in that condition.</p>
<p>Anyway, have fun with it. I had some wonderful bonding moments with my daughter during our many college trips. It was exhausting to see so many colleges, but D went from thinking she wanted a small, LA college in a quiet town to deciding she wanted a larger school near an urban area, so it was worth the expense to find that out now.</p>
<p>Cindy – who was experiencing major poison ivy during that Pennsylvania trip and almost halted everything to try to find an emergency room</p>
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<p>We know your son is a top student and would probably like to look at top tier schools. I’m also going to assume you could take a whole week to visit schools. Some comments on schools.</p>
<p>Philly day … while it would be stretch you can also fit a drive-by for Haverford and Villonova into that day.</p>
<p>If you head south for a day you can hit Johns Hopkins and Georgetown in one day … with GW and American drive bys.</p>
<p>If you head north for one day you can hit NYC and Columbia and NYU.</p>
<p>If you head north another day from NY you can hit Boston and Harvard, MIT, Brown (on the way to Boston), Tufts, etc.</p>
<p>Pittsburgh to Philly is pretty long haul … not sure how your family travels but that leg is going to chew quite a bit of time.</p>
<p>I’ve done a 1 week east coast tour (didn’t head to Pittsburgh) … it’s pretty doable if you don’t mind being in the car 2-3 hours a day.</p>
<p>a couple of thoughts (having now read all the posts). </p>
<p>Cindy’s post had tons of comments I think were dead-on. To me the biggest is this is the kid’s trip and I would not suggest arguing about their instant reactions/decisions … for example, we had planned on 1/2 day at Swarthmore … after seeing how small it was and the town (my daughter eventually picked a school in Manhattan) we didn’t even stop to walk around campus never mind take the tour … instead we checked out Byn Mawr, Villanova, Haverford, and Drexel.</p>
<p>Given we did the whole east coast in one week we paid a little more for convenient hotels for two reasons … one, to make the logistics easier (after visiting 2-5 schools and driving 2-4 hours each day spending 1/2 hour slepping to hotels just was not appealing) … two, we wanted to stay in the neighborhood of one of the schools to get a feel for the neighborhood and the campus vibe (pretty tough to do from the Motel 6 10 miles away).</p>
<p>I have to say I’m a bit surprised by all this fuss over Philly traffic. It doesn’t seem any better or worse than any other major city to me, rush hour or not. What gives?</p>