This discussion was created from comments split from: Parents, What Did You Like Or Dislike About Individual Schools?.
What generally occurs at the revisits? Are they different for different schools?
@korab1 Specifics of revisit days will vary, but there may be time together, and separate programming for parents and students - mine had a host student whom he shadowed (it was not a great match, and due to scheduling they ended up with down time - that was good DS got to go to see his dorm) while parents had separate programming.
@MA2012 thanks - thats about what I figured. In your bad match up, did your child have a strong interest in a particular activity that was known to the school? I would hope that they would try to match the kids up with a student with a common interest, although I can imagine that would be a logistical nightmare.
@korab1 - I don’t know if they tried to match them, but they didn’t seem to have much in common. The school knew he liked math. He went to history (where the class was doing research in the library - fun for a visitor!), and Spanish 1 which was in the dining hall identifying food (DS had taken Spanish for years, so a pretty basic assignment), then lunch block. This day was also long class blocks. It was just not as exciting as he had hoped. He ended up there and does really like the school.
@MA2012 I cant imagine how excited the kids must be during a re-visit to see the things they are most interested in - it must have been disappointing to have such a sub-standard experience, but it all worked out in the end, apparently!
I am starting to panic about revisits. We will not be able to attend official revisit days due to logistics and prior commitments at our current school. We scheduled an “informal” trip so my husband could see whatever school (s) that my DS was accepted to…but with the official scheduled days there seemed to be conflict. Am I setting us up for failure? Will it be so different from interview days that we would change our mind?
@buuzn03 I am sure the schools work with families who can’t make the scheduled re-visit days. Its easy to ship your child off with a student for the day - less easy to re-create whatever programming they offer for the parents.
Don’t panic @buuzn03 , this happens. What we found most helpful about revisits (official or not) was the opportunity for DD to attend classes, sit at lunch, and meet/spend time with a bunch of current students. She had a few key questions that she tried to ask as many kids as possible, to get an idea of the range of answers. Revisits are more relaxed, authentic & in-depth than the tour & interview. You will hear many stories here about people who changed their minds about ranking after revisit days. I think that it’s pretty common so I would make every attempt to go if you can (even if you can’t make the official date).
@buuzn03 You can only do what you can do. There are posters here whose kids never visited a school before making a decision and all turned out well. For folks who live overseas the visit(s) can be quite impractical. Just make the most of whatever exposure you have to each of the schools and trust your head and your heart.
@buuzn03, we never visited daughter’s school before the opening weekend in September, and couldn’t make the parents’ weekend either. Yet she is thriving at Grier School.
But I had discussions with the person in charge with daughter’s curriculum. Studied their programs carefully, and was confident.
Thanks for the reassurance! I find that the wait makes me more anxious about everything! Lol!
@buuzn03 I know what you mean. Impossible to plan as we don’t have much notice after M10 before revisit days. But if you’ve already visited the school, I wouldn’t worry. We weren’t able to visit a few, and if DS admitted, hope to make the revisit day. Does anyone know, if you can’t make that date, can you go on an independent visit or casual self-guided tour on another day?
@GnarWhail my kid was the “big picture” one, while I was the one caught up in the detail. After all visits, she had strong preferences based on “vibe,” while I had a huge spreadsheet with data.
For each of our 4 revisits our kid was matched up with an athlete in my kid’s primary sport. My kid is also very interested in math and science and at least 2 hosts didn’t have a math and/or science class during the revisit period. My kid was keen to see a class of each at each school and spoke up about it to the hosts. At a couple of the schools the hosts were able to hand off my kid to a friend for one of those classes.
@AppleNotFar that’s the way I would expect them to go. Thanks for sharing your experience. Your child is partly responsible for the experience they have. If they want to see something in particular, speak up and the host will pass them off to a friend. It’s what my college searching older child has experienced as well.
Has anyone started a list of dates for Revisit days 2017 like they did last year?
Looks like Andover revisits will be March 24, 27, 31 and April 3.
Deerfield 3/31, 3/4, 3/6, 3/7
They should all be more or less be in the same time frame. It looks like most schools are coming back from spring break around 3/27.
We don’t live near family so I need to figure out child care for younger child because I would like to go to parent programs.
Peddie revisits are Thursday 3/30, Tuesday 4/4, and Wednesday 4/5.