Questions to ask on a college visit?

Hi, does anyone have any suggestions for what to ask when visiting a college? I hope to have some non-cliche questions whose answers I cannot find on the official college website

If pre med. ask about pre health counseling. Number of students that start pre med and how many make it through committee. If there is a committee approach. How many students applied to med law mba schools and how many were admitted for each specialty. Can you access career services post grad. If business oriented ask about on campus recruiting and specifics if you can. Also assistance for obtaining summer internships and research opportunities with professors.

These are some that I can think of for you.

Ask if there are dorms that are smoke/drug free. In fact there are all kinds of dorm questions and restrictions you should ask that rarely would show up on a website.

Think about what is important to you and develop questions accordingly. My two kids asked very different questions as they had different academic, social, and EC interests.

If you are looking for “one off” questions to ask to make some kind of impression, don’t bother. They won’t notice/ remember. So ask what you really want to know.

My kids got a lot out of doing things not on the tour. They asked if they could eat in a cafeteria if one was open. They checked out academic buildings not in the tour (like one liked visual arts, so we’d go see that building/ classroom space). One had an unusual study abroad interest, so we would stop by that office. If classes were in session, we’d ask ahead of time if they could sit in on a class.

Tour guides & info session people can’t answer really detailed questions anyway in my experience.

Interesting to compare the student services offered (counseling, career, academic, etc.) They all have them but they are not all equal. When S went, some just handed him a brochure and whisked him out of the office. Others sat down and had a lengthy chat about lots of things. You can get a sense of what they really do. Fast forward, he had more academic, student services and career counseling during orientation than I had my whole 4 yrs (not an exaggeration). I know it’s different today but some excel at it.

We found it most helpful to ask specific, personal questions to tour guides. Who was your favorite professor? What was your favorite class? What’s your favorite spot on campus? What could the school do to make it better for you? I always felt we got more passionate, more detailed, more real answers when they are talking about themselves. It gets them off script and talking about how things are at the school, what it’s like to live and learn there.

If you are visiting a number of schools, I advise someone take notes, including who did the info session, who was the tour guide (and something about them), what stood out, what was not desirable, even what was funny or amusing or interestingly out of place, which can really jog memories in the future. At least three times, one of mine was asked in an interview (formal and informal) who had been there tour guide. So it might be nice to keep that in mind.

And if you are traveling on visits, especially to multiple schools, it’s nice to build in some side trips, to break up the college thing, then it more stays a fun trip than a real slog. For example, we visited a couple of midwestern schools and down south from there. In Madison, we took a day to visit Taliesin and take a boat tour out on the lake. It was very nice.

Have fun!

In other words you want to appear to be a diligent student who is seriously considering the school and has spent some time doing research into the college.

My question is: why not actually BE that person?

In HS PhyEd we started each class with calisthenics. One teacher, Mr Y., could see some of us slacking on the pushups and situps and jumping jacks. “You guys”, he would bellow, “you’re only cheating yourself”. Same thing for college planning. Someone else’s list of catchy questions isn’t YOUR list.

Doing this the right way means reading thru the websites of the colleges you plan to visit. It means thinking about what is important to you in college, what you hope to study, what you hope to experience. It is not a 10 minute process. In fact it’s iterative; you’ll see mention of something you haven’t thought about on a collee website, you’ll have to think about whether that matters to you, how much, and the topic in turn may raise other questions in your mind. The reward isn’t asking an adcom a non-obvious question, it’s the benefit you gain from spending some serious time thinking about & exploring what you want in college that puts you in a better place to both visit and decide.

One question I was glad I asked on a recent tour was “What would you be doing now (it was a night time tour) if you weren’t doing this?” It gave some good insight into what there really is to do at night.

My favourite question was something my mom and sister gave me for college visits and it always starts important conversations about safety-- How well lit is the campus? Seems weird, but can reveal important information the university may otherwise try to hide about their campus.

^^ That’s another thing about having that one and only evening tour-- I got to see for myself. And it brought up the question of those security escorts without our needing to ask.