<p>“Your main impression should not be formed by a tour, one should already have a pretty good idea before they ever see the school, imo.”</p>
<p>I agree, absolutely. Actually, I agree with the rest of what you say too. The “stupidest reason your kids rejected a college” thread often has me shaking my head-rejecting a school because too many kids are wearing the “wrong” pants or the wrong tee shirts or the buildings are the wrong color…either these kids really have other reasons they don’t want to go to that school or they give new meaning to the word superficial.</p>
<p>If one has never experienced certain weather conditions, maybe a vacation in the area of concern would be a good idea, but the college part should already be hammered out, imo.</p>
<p>To a certain extent if you are not used to bad weather, then you will be more influenced by it when you see schools. </p>
<p>This thread reminds me of house hunting. I preferred to see houses with no furniture rather than furnished so if a owner had already moved out that was best. I knew if I liked the house empty I would like it with my own belongs in it.</p>
<p>On the comment that people think more highly of a campus which they visit on a beautiful fall day, admissions people know that! On our campus, days like that are referring to as “PR weather” as in "we’ve got some beautiful PR weather out there today, so . . . "</p>
<p>And what is the alternative to visiting the campus and possibly being subjected to bias-- not visiting?</p>
<p>I invite anyone to be ready to pay a quarter of a million dollars for a college, sight-unseen, just like I invite them to buy a house or a car sight-unseen.</p>
<p>Reminds me of the old line: “I came to Casablanca for the waters.” “The waters? What waters? We’re in the desert.” “I was misinformed.”</p>
<p>I knew a guy a long time ago who decided he wanted to go to college at a beachfront campus. He applied, was admitted and enrolled in the University of Florida from out if state, sight unseen. It wasn’t until he arrived on campus to move into the dorm that he found out the beach was an hour-and-a-half away. I don’t think he lasted there too long! </p>
<p>I assume access to Google prevents those kinds of mistakes these days!</p>
<p>Actually, my son had a great time studying the many pictures in his viewbooks. He looked at the backgrounds of the classroom and interior shots to see what objects were scattered about, what exactly was written on the blackboards. He compared the books for clich</p>
<p>Visit, but try not to read too much into your 1-day experience. When you think about the weather at the school, look at what the average temperatures are during the months of the academic year instead of just recalling the weather on the day you visited. To judge the quality of teaching, give more weight to student surveys on this question than to the handful of classes you visited.</p>
<p>In my opinion, projection bias is most likely to be a problem when applicants stay overnight on campus with a student host.</p>
<p>They are almost guaranteed to get an atypical picture of what life is like on campus because people who volunteer to be hosts are atypical people. Yet the overnight experience is likely to be what stands out in their minds when they’re making a decision about whether to apply (or to attend, if the visit comes after acceptance).</p>
<p>It seems to me that for colleges, the projection bias mostly operates in one direction: to turn off kids from schools that might really be good fits. Most of the examples I read in CC are of that kind. But I also think that sometimes visits will turn off a kid for a good reason that doesn’t come through in the brochures and online information. On balance, I felt that visits were beneficial to my kids–in general, they felt that they could see themselves at all the schools we visited, which reduced the stress level somewhat.</p>
<p>Except for my daughter and Princeton. She didn’t like it, even though it was an absolutely gorgeous day.</p>
<p>I’m only in the midst of this process for the first child, but I’m finding the value of our visits to be immeasurable. We’re attending the formal open houses and such, and what I find fascinating and telling is HOW each campus chooses to present itself. </p>
<p>One campus played a long and fancy video of nice music and tons of smiling faces while we drank cozy hot chocolate and tea. (Focus more on appearance than substance?) Another didn’t even try to play on people’s emotions and got right down to business - how their academic program sets them apart. (The message was clear - “we are very serious about learning”.) A third had the president involved - he spoke at the luncheon and walked around introducing himself to and chatting with the prospective families. (Very personal.) And yet another didn’t even have us sign in anywhere to acknowledge our presence. (Why didn’t they care about knowing who made the trek there??)</p>
<p>I’m finding these visits fascinating when looking at them as objectively as possible and discussing them as objectively as possible. </p>
<p>And that first college? Well, that is head and shoulders the favorite of our 7 and 9 year olds. “MOM! Didn’t you see how happy everyone was there? Didn’t you see all of those pictures of everyone smiling?!”</p>
<p>Yea, I think weather CAN play a role. And maybe it’s not always a bad thing. We looked at several schools, pretty equal in terms of quality of education and offerings in the summer (mind you that summer in our region goes from mid March to October). It soon became forefront in our minds, on one particular campus, that the campus was VERY spread out and there was NO SHADE in the walkways. Something to consider for sure! LOL</p>
<p>But seriously, I think it’s our job as parents to help them look at the WHOLE picture, and not be too clouded (punny) with the season or the weather that happens to coincide with their visit.</p>
<p>This thread reminds me of the first college visit that I took my D to. It was a dreary, drizzly, cold early fall day. Before we even got into the car, I cautioned D to make an effort to filter out the weather’s effects as she looked at the school. Strangely enough, as we went on that drizzly campus tour, I found myself thinking over and over again “What a <em>gorgeous</em> campus!!”</p>
<p>Someday I should go back and see it on a good weather day :-)</p>
<p>My oldest son fell in love with Emory on a July day in the mid-90s, with humidity to match. It really was the only school he fell in love with, although there were others he liked a lot. Luckily he was accepted…and spent a fabulous four years there.</p>
<p>I should also mention that my son’s graduation from Emory was at 8 in the morning, on the Quad–they do it so early to avoid the worst heat of the day. His department threw a lovely breakfast honoring their graduates…at 6 in the morning, and in the invitation, reminded us to all go out to the Quad to reserve seats before coming to the breakfast. Seats with good sight lines but in the shade were primo!</p>
<p>After arguing and documenting with survey evidence that cloudiness increases the appeal of academic activities, I analyse the enrolment decisions of 1,284 prospective students who visited a university known for its academic strengths and recreational weaknesses. Consistent with the notion that current weather conditions influence decisions about future academic activities, I find that an increase in cloudcover of one standard deviation on the day of the visit is associated with an increase in the probability of enrolment of 9 percentage points.</p>
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<p>According to the study, visiting an academically school on a cloudy day increased the chance of going there, since the bad weather made academic work seem more inviting.</p>
<p>This March at a gorgeous accepted students day where the sun was shining and kids were all hanging out on the quad enjoying the weather, the admissions person said that when people see a school on a great weather day, they think the school has poor academics and are turned off.</p>
<p>My dad and I visited McGill University in Montreal over Thanksgiving weekend in November (not a holiday in Canada). We toured the campus in the morning with sunshine and an incredibly blue sky. By 3 PM it was snowing heavily and by the next morning there were 18 inches on the ground. The city and the university were fully operational under a beautiful coating of white. In Boston, the city would have been shut down for two days. I was sold on Montreal!</p>
<p>Later as a tour guide, I would give students full disclosure of what a Montreal winter is like, even if the tour was in the summer. To their credit, the viewbook does show the campus under snow and students bundled up and trudging to class. McGill is not a school for the feint of heart.</p>
<p>We visited two schools on a day it was pouring rain. One school handled it poorly, canceling everything. The other gave us boots, umbrellas, and warm drinks. The tour guide was cheerful and went on walking backwards through puddles like it was a perfectly sunny day and she was having a great time.</p>
<p>School number 2 was not high on the list before the visit, but it ranked more highly afterward.</p>