<p>Next year, i've got one week off for spring break. Partying? no. Video games? nope. Visiting colleges and studying frantically for standardized tests? hell yeah. </p>
<p>I do have a couple of questions though.....for one, how much do adcoms care about campus visits and admissions tours? and how much does it matter for me? like, i've heard of some people changing their application decisions because of college tours, but is it really THAT commonplace?</p>
<p>Also, which colleges should i visit? I'm intrested in QUITE a few....</p>
<p>Close to home: University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, Northwestern University, and University of Chicago. </p>
<p>West Coast: Caltech, Stanford, and Berkeley. </p>
<p>East Coast-ish: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, University of Pennsylvania, Carnegie Mellon, University of Michigan Ann Arbor</p>
<p>keep in mind....as much as i'd like to visit every college i've ever heard of, i have time constraints. thank you! :)</p>
<p>you ca actually learn a lot about schools through just free material you get, phone interviews, and ESPECIALLY online material. You gain a lot more from tours but it’s a small fortune to go all the way everwhere. If you really want to go to one of these schools AND are well within the grade requirements, then take the trip - otherwise it’s a waste unless you’re a trust fund baby</p>
<p>i have pretty much time for one trip, i was thinking maybe to a couple of the east coast colleges. i don’t have nearly enough funds to visit everywhere…though i could probably drive myself to uchicago and northwestern for a tour in the same day. I’ve definitly looked through a lot of online stuff so far, too. how much does it matter to a college if you take the time to visit them?</p>
<p>Food thing about an ivy league trip is that you can visit 6 of them on the amtak/i95 corridor. These schools, visited in the right order are all within an hour or so of the NeXT.</p>
<p>which other ones would i be able to visit on train? I know Princeton and Yale have amtrak stations. also, would you say taking a train is more efficient, or renting a car and going with that?</p>
<p>
You can search in the forums to find colleges that take “demonstrated interest” into account. That information is also available in the Common Data Set info the colleges provide. </p>
<p>Personally I would not recommend spending precious time visiting schools where admission is very selective. Unless you know something more about your chances (legacy, recruited athlete, etc) then spending time visiting a school where your chances of admission might be 5% or less is time that could have been spent visiting your matches and safety. “Precious time” means this is your only shot to visit schools in the area, where do you go? Its fine if you live in the East coast to go to Ivy’s that aren’t too far of a trek, but coming from the Midwest I’d save the money and time until you’re admitted (at which point you can go to admitted student day).</p>