<p>Has anyone else done this? Did it work out?
Do most colleges allow this?
What kind of paperwork / authorization would you have to go through? (depending on the school)
Can it frustrate professors (to the point where you / they feel like crap) if they're contacted ahead of time, or just see a stranger (aside from their students)?</p>
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<p>I'm just considering my options as a Junior in high school, with my mom constantly beating into my head that I must look into my colleges (not saying that's a bad thing, though).
As for school choice, I'm looking into one centered or strongly supporting Computer Science, Engineering, and the like.</p>
<p>Many colleges have weekends for prospective students sometimes you spend a night , they pair you with a host student and you experience "campus life"- classes, cafeteria, etc.
Depends on the school how extensive it is. Some have very loose programs, others have permission slips to complete and conduct codes to sign ahead of time.
Check out some schools web sites for info. Or call the admission office to see if they offer this.</p>
<p>You can arrange to sit in on a class when you officially go to visit. I wouldn't go on a designated preview day- that is when the college is at its best and the profs know they have large amounts of visitors coming. Arrange your visit for a normal school day for the college, and request to sit in on a class when you book your visit.</p>
<p>I would not suggest you follow the advice to just "pretend you're a student." It's common courtesy to go up to the professor before class and introduce yourself as a visiting high school student who is interested in applying to the school, and ask if it's okay if you sat in on the class.</p>
<p>if you dont want to bring attention to yourself it would be fine just acting like you are a student. no one in the class will notice/care and neither will the professor.</p>
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if you dont want to bring attention to yourself it would be fine just acting like you are a student. no one in the class will notice/care and neither will the professor.
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<p>Yep if the class is sufficiently large (>70 students) noone will notice.</p>
<p>I've visited classes at a bunch of schools (mostly LAC's, but some smaller universities), and the procedure varies. Sometimes admissions will assign you classes to visit, sometimes they have a list of 'approved' classes, and sometimes they give you a schedule and map and let you choose. I would ask the admissions office at each college what they want to do. Whenever I visited, I made a point to introduce myself to the professor, ask if it was okay if I sat in and where he/she wanted me to sit. Afterwards I always thanked them. Occasionally, we struck up a conversation, which is an excellent way to get another perspective on the school. Of course, YMMV depending on the size and focus of the school itself, but at all the schools I visited, the profs were all very accommodating.</p>
<p>I would certainly to be helpful to visit lectures that people say are good, but some of the best classes I've had (and, I would say that these are more representative of the college experience than the humongous lectures) are the tiny 5-person seminars, which can be harder to "sit-in" on.</p>
<p>I sat in on two Cornell classes randomly and introduced myself both times. Both professors had no problem with it and I enjoyed both classes. I was even able to follow one of them a bit, and that was an upper level engineering course. (I took notes and tried to act like I knew what I was doing, haha)</p>