Now that it looks like even virtual revisits will not happen (or at least be super meaningful since many campuses are going to be closed to kids), lots of folks are trying to make major decisions about where to spend the next four years of their lives without having the luxury of visiting or seeing the school in action.
I’d love for us to share ideas about how to get a feel for a campus, its students, classes, and general fit without going to campus.
I’ll share an idea that someone more experience shared with us last summer: Read the student handbooks of the schools you are considering. They will tell you a lot about the expectations, but also the school’s tone.
I think watching the school’s YouTube channels and especially the channels of students who go to said school will help because it shows how the students act on a day-to-day basis. Though they’re not always reliable, Niche reviews could help and you could always go on a school’s website to see if you fit them.
Follow every single official social media account the school runs - sports, performing arts, and so on. What do they think is important enough to post? Watch videos of the teams, the choirs, the musicals.
See if you can get connected with current students/parents who have similar interests and strengths as your kid and ask them about their experiences, including in depth questions about their experiences in your child’s area of interest.
Things may not always be as they seem and superficially, so ask questions about things important to you and also assess the person you’re talking to and how similar the child is to yours, and figure out how much of what they’re saying may or may not apply to your child.
Talk to as many current and recently graduated students as you can…parents should speak with current parents…try to get connected with students in your areas of interests, athletics and arts. Try to get connected through the school’s parent association and perhaps you can connect with students in your local region home for break. The admissions office at
can help with this I bet.
@HarrietMWelsch I agree with this totally. We followed a school’s EC and saw how praxis aligned with a school’s mission and noted this when communicating with them.
Take virtual tours:
While virtual tours aren’t as good as visiting in person, they are still a great way to learn more about a college. Most college websites offer a virtual tour under the visit page, or you can head to Campus Reel, which offers 15,000 videos, tours, and experiences on over 300 college campuses.
Contact admissions:
Reach out to the admissions offices of all the colleges on your list to let them know you have to postpone or cancel your trip. Ask them if they have any virtual options for connecting with their admissions team. Some colleges offer phone calls or might be willing to set up a video chat with a student admissions ambassador.
Use your family network:
Make it your family mission to find friends of friends who have students at the colleges on your teen’s list. Reach out to these people to set up a time to speak with them about their experience at the college of interest so you can get a first-hand take on what campus life is like.
Use social media:
Many students prefer to use YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter to learn more about colleges. It certainly requires discretion, as there are a variety of students representing colleges on social media. For that same reason, it can give your student a more realistic view of a school—the good and the bad. It’s also great to follow colleges on all social media platforms.
I second reading the handbooks and course catalogs. Dive deep into the websites. Find links to videos. For example, the parent organization at Cate videos their meetings. They always have a summary of goings on from the Head of School, announcements for specific events, and a student panel involved with various activities/opportunities.
You can also find videos of the weekly senior talks, which are total gems.
Also worth digging through are the “Headmaster’s Notebook” entries - a collection of the regular communications from you guessed it, the Headmaster. Weekly photos, game recaps, there is a lot of stuff posted on the website, but some takes digging to find.
Also feel free to connect with many of us long time parents and more importantly our kids!! I know over the years we have met many newly admitted families for coffee to share our experience and our kids have done the same. I am happy to connect any newly admitted Exeter families to one of our kids to share their insight and ask questions. With technology this can be as easy as the kids texting back and forth. Sometimes that takes the pressure off of speaking via phone.
I also highly suggest seeing if you can find the school newspaper online and look at what clubs they offer and see if they appear active on social media etc…
I suspect that the handbook of George School might “read” the best. Should that have an impact on a decision which might rule out Andover or Deerfield Academy ? Or Hotchkiss or being a Loomis Scholar ? Kent ? Mercersburg ? NMH ? Of course not. It just means that one might hire the firm which wrote & assembled the handbook as one’s PR firm.
@Publisher You make a good point – let’s never forget the source of anything. However, I do think that one can get a real sense for rules and expectations, which vary by school. Also, even if they hired an outside firm, they have approved the tone, which can also vary. Who we let represent us, and how we let that happen, says something about us I believe.
But again, your point is a good one, and this would be one data point to place in the hopper, with all kinds of caveats (just like any other single data point).
All of the advice above is wonderful, but I would spend equal time making sure you are all absolutely clear on what are “must-haves” vs. “nice to haves” and really understanding the relative importance of different criteria.
When we went through this two years ago, we each listed 5-7 things that were important to us and then ranked them and gave them weights based on how critical we thought they were individually. (For example, parents gave more weight to logistical and cost considerations than the kid did… no surprise there!)
Then we rated each school across the criteria and multiplied by the rank-based weighting on our individual score cards.
Before we did that, we each had a different favorite. We just couldn’t agree.
But when we actually counted up the points using our rating system with weighted criteria, we were surprised to discover that our kid’s current school was at the very top of ALL of our scoring sheets. It wasn’t even close.
@publisher, I can only speak for myself, but I am not looking for style or wordsmithing when I read manuals. I have concrete questions about policy. How they do lights out, study periods, medications, dress code, signing out to go off campus, girl/boy dorm visits, late night snacks, hours of the dining hall, how advisors work, dorm assignments, etc. All of those things collectively tell you a lot about a school’s culture.
On top of that, look at how they structure the required courses and how well integrated the arts are into official courses v extracurricular. Eg is the kid run a cappella group totally a “free time” thing or does it fit i to the academic schedule.
@CateCAParent: Thank you for your response. Makes sense. But, no matter what a handbook states–within reason–it would be tough to turn down certain schools such as Andover, Deerfield Academy, or Hotchkiss & others based on a statement in the school handbook assuming that all options are equally affordable.
@Publisher - for US, the handbooks factored into who we applied to. Suffice it to say, based on fit, including info we learned in the handbooks, two of the three you mentioned didn’t make it into our “apply” pile. Does that equate to us turning them down? Shrug.
I will say, we would have been happy to have kiddo to go to any of the schools to which he had the good fortune to be accepted. Reading the handbooks after the fact would maybe help make fine distinctions between schools, but not help on determining whether the overall vibe is the best for kiddo. There is nothing like being on campus for that.
The question is what people can do to help make a choice if a visit isn’t possible, though. All I am saying is handbooks helped us compare and contrast. Honestly, the academics are all stellar at the schools you listed, so you have to find something else to go by. Manuals were a wealth of information for us. Ymmv
I think this is really tough. If you really understand the vibe of a school, it’s possible to see how it’s reflected in a lot of their materials. But it’s a lot harder to look at the materials and construct the vibe. It’s going to be tougher to choose for sure.
This morning I heard a piece on NPR about an escaped cow. She has been adventuring for some time in spite of numerous attempts to return her to a less wayfaring life. Some of the comments in her missing notice include “jumps well” and “is faster than she looks”. Okay. Now that you know the context, you know what those comments mean. But if I just gave you the comments, would you guess that she has confounded law enforcement and her owners for weeks? So it can go with marketing materials.
My guess is that the schools will do their best to show who they are virtually. But I know that for us, we were swayed – indeed sold – by how many people offered us directions, the humor and grace of the students we chatted with as they walked with us to the building we couldn’t find, and the ease and warmth with which such a diverse community interacted with each other and us. I really don’t know how that, which happened spontaneously and personally, gets captured virtually.
Then again, this may be the year that mixes it up a bit because it’s a little harder to find your tribe. And that might not be a bad thing either.
If there are recent alums in your area it could help, but ideally, you want to meet quite a few. The sample of one or two can be misleading.