Did you accompany your kid on every school visit, or did you send them off by themselves?
I’m tempted to put my kid on a train or plane to go see some schools. I’m not worried about his ability to handle the travel, but I’m curious how schools will perceive an unaccompanied student.
Does anyone have any experience?
Train to a school within an hour or so? Fine, provided the kid is used to traveling around on his/her own. Flying & needing to get from the airport to school (and presumably hotel)? No.
My kids went with their cousins, my brother, to sporting camps and games. There is no problem with a student doing this (and I think sometimes the admissions people might prefer it if parents weren’t there), but are you going to want to have input into the decision based on what you’d think of the school?
My daughter went to one weekend visit, and even though I was there and went on the public tour with her, at no time did anyone discuss the school with me, the programs, the finances. When it came time to discuss the school, I couldn’t add anything. She also had some options about schools she’d looked at without me (usually negative opinions) and I couldn’t say anything about those schools either.
Hotels generally do not allow minors to check in alone.
Exactly. It can be done – and I’ve done it in a pinch during an East Coast storm that canceled D’s flight, but it’s not easy. Fortunately, she had the actual credit card that with the number that I was able to give them as the main person on the account, but it still took some talking, and I would not count on being able to do that in “normal” circumstances.
We took our D on the first round of visits, and she went on an organized trip for the second. It was pretty affordable since the kids fundraised to do it. The added benefit was that there were adults supervising them at all times, also there to work with the hotels, car rental, etc. Even better, the group bonded so well that they’ve met up many times since and attended each other’s graduations. For local visits that don’t involve hotels, going alone is fine. We had unaccompanied students at several of the tours we took.
I did one region of the country with my child, and he did the other region alone. In the middle he met up with an uncle, (who returned him to the airport and provided shelter the night after he did his overnight at the college where he toured and sat in on a class), but arrived in that city on his own.
After traveling with me, and going off on his own at some schools as I sat in on the info session, he was fairly clear on what he was looking at and listening to at the colleges. This helped him to learn to listen and focus with so much coming at him.
We arranged for his shuttles on the other end, and he always had the name of a college or university officer with whom he was to reach out if there were complications. There was a huge problem getting into the Pittsburgh area so that he could make the school’s planned visit weekend events and I am so proud of how he handled it.
When his flight out was delayed due to fog, and the next flight got him there hours behind the connecting flight, this mild mannered, super polite kid walked to the airline counter and told the agents it was imperative for him to get on the next flight out, and he explained why. I was checking the stand-by list online and his name never appeared there (because he was a minor?), and I was worried that he would be shunted about because adults would command the attention of the agents. But no.
He told me he was the first one called off the standby list, and after he landed he caught the shuttle that the university told him frequently ran to campus, and everything turned out alright. He missed some things, but was not shaken by his experience at all.
I had given him his very first cell phone the day before his flight, and he didn’t lean into it at every moment to call and update me.
I will not say that having our kids take off and fly out on their own is second nature for parent or child, but after the first successful trip out, the others just seem like milestones reached. I think, at least in my family, Mom, Dad and Kid all grew from the experiences. It made sending him off to school so very, very easy.
He really wants to be in a big city on the East Coast, so all the schools we’re looking he could reach with a commuter flight or Amtrak or a bus trip of a few hours. He could travel out on an early morning flight/train/bus, and come back that night. I’m not worried about his ability to manage the travel.
What I wonder is how it would look to the colleges. Would they think he was less serious because he didn’t bring a parent? Would he feel awkward on a tour where everyone else had someone with them, and maybe ask fewer questions?
My thought is that he’d go and do some initial visits. If he loved a school and got in, we’d go back together before he made a final decision.
If anything, I would think the colleges would see them as MORE serious. I didn’t see the young people on our tours treated any differently than those with parents. Not everyone can afford to go on these tours as an entire family. Fwiw, several of D’s friends are attending schools that they didn’t see in person until the day they moved in. She also has some classmates at her own school who are doing the same.
Colleges won’t notice or care either way. But it is your money, and kids tend to have a bit of a myopic view of the college process. You are running the risk that they will like someplace that is actually pretty unsuitable, and they don’t even know what questions to ask.
Intparent, what kinds of things did you learn about on a tour, that might make a school unsuitable, that you wouldn’t have been able to figure out from the website, and emails with admissions staff? I’m still trying to figure what I should be looking for and asking on tours and at info sessions.
^^^True (@intparent):
My son did say, gleefully, that the girls at one college were really pretty. The food there blew him away, too. Still, he was not swayed to accept their offer of admission.
CuriousJane, the feel of the school. I went on more than one tour and afterward thought “This isn’t at all what I thought it would be like.” Some better, some worse, but just not what I thought.
If you are planning to visit the schools again with your son after he’s narrowed the list, that’s fine and it’s even fine if you don’t feel the need to visit. I just wouldn’t have felt comfortable not having seen the school at all. I did only visit one school with my daughter after she’d decided it was ‘the one.’ She’d been there earlier with her uncle, sister and grandparents. I was just more on board when I’d seen it too.
I don’t think colleges would notice or care that he didn’t bring a parent.
A kid might not notice things like campus safety, disorganized administration (which is a pain in the neck for parents later on), and might not think to look at the building that houses courses for their major and check out the facilities in that area. They might be distracted by students on their tour, who are NOT the same as the admitted pool of students, and also are not the students who end up actually attending the school. They might not pick up on nuances mentioned on the tour about getting the classes they need to graduate on time or they might gloss over negative things that come up on the tour. A kid might not think to pick up the student paper and check out the latest controversies or disciplinary actions on campus (mine would have forgotten to get the paper even if I had suggested it). Kids are not very adept yet at seeing beyond the marketing message, but we adults (hopefully) have more practice at it.
When I was in high school in the 80s, I visited all the schools myself. Did planes, trains, and automobiles through much of the midwest and east coast. Checked into hotels myself as well.
Before the college visits, my parents had to travel overseas for some pressing matters and I was home alone for weeks at a time.
I managed fine, but today if I did the same thing, someone would call child protective services.
Can confirm that this is not true 
I did most school visits by myself or with friends. Admittedly, we were too poor for me to fly anywhere but I never had a problem getting a room or anything, even under 18 (I don’t think all that much has changed in a few years). I had to have a credit card on file though with a rather large hold on it.
Call the schools and ask. Your kid isn’t the first one to travel there alone. They might even have dorm rooms that prospective students can stay in.
I also like to check out the surrounding area. I always try to eat a meal in the nearby town, walking from campus to town. But I do agree with @twoinanddone’s comments.
Fall of his high school junior year, my son and some of his classmates drove to an admissions open house at the flagship university of a neighboring state – he reported that they were the only kids there without parents in tow. I thought that was kind of impressive, but I am sure the university didn’t take any notice. Being his first college visit, he didn’t have anything to compare it to.
In the spring, he and his girlfriend spent a weekend with the girlfriend’s sister at the college the sister was attending, for an unofficial tour. Of course no credit for “showing interest,” so we (son and parents) did eventually go back for an official visit.
Thinking back to my time, decades ago, I am pretty sure that I visited a number of colleges on my own… but these would have been within driving distance (day trips or staying with a friend at the school).
I wouldn’t send my S17 alone on a college trip but my daughter (mid-20’s) has been taking him around and will take him to some more schools. She is actually a better judge than I am because she went away to college and visited many other schools as part of the music group she was in and just to visit friends who attended other schools. My intention is to visit the true contenders with my son.