<p>My daughter and I attended a preview day at a college she's interested in. She decided not to apply, partially based on her opinion that she would not be a good fit with most of the other prospective students. She was fine with the attending students, although 95 percent of the attending students we saw were helping with the preview day, and therefore not a representative sample. We saw very few other attending students. It's a suitcase school. Only 3 students were visible in the library. </p>
<p>Now, the school had some tangible characteristics that would have not worked for my daughter anyway. But I'm wondering if I should avoid future preview days at colleges and just take her to visit on a regular day. Has this been a problem for anyone else? Or should we assume visiting high schoolers are representative of who eventually enrolls?</p>
<p>One of our experiences at an accepted student visit last spring helped drive D2 away from what she thought was her first choice college because too many of the other prospective students were really obnoxious. Talking in presentations by deans, acting like all around jerks, just thinking they were soooo cool. This is a top university, and we suspect most of those students will (did) attend this fall. This isn’t the only reason she decided not to attend, but it sure was a contributing factor. I for one am glad we went to this event so she could get a look at who her classmates would possibly be. She is very happy at a school where she also attended the accepted student visit and liked almost all of the possible future and current students she met. </p>
<p>It is just one more data point on the list of things to check out… but not necessarily to ignore.</p>
<p>I think the students at an accepted students day, are not quite the same as one organized for students who are still in the process of applying. My kids attend accepted student events and felt they were useful.</p>
<p>How can you make a decision based on a bunch of HS students, many of whom won’t even be applying to the college, and another large chunk of whom will apply but won’t attend???</p>
<p>This strikes me as a very bad use of information. Your D should be evaluating the school, the environment, the resources available, and yes, to the extent possible, the student body. Not a bunch of other 17 year olds.</p>
<p>SecondToGo wanted to go to as many accepted student days as possible to check out his potential classmates. FirstToTo wanted to avoid structured events run by the school if possible and see current students in the natural day-to-day life as much as possible. I’d say each applicant has their own preferences. (Personally, I fall more in FirstToGo’s camp.)</p>
<p>^I think ideally you do a little of both. Without the structured event I’m not sure my youngest would have realized just how much Tuft’s Global Leadership Institute could offer and my oldest would not have fully realized how fully committed Carnegie Mellon is to creating a world class program for computer science. (It’s the only place in the country where it’s organized as a separate school instead of a department within a larger school.) Carnegie Mellon used the Monday after the weekend events for students to attend classes and see the school as it operates on a normal weekday. My younger son had visited Tufts on a normal school day the year before.</p>
<p>There’s a big difference between how many kids act as high school seniors and then as college freshmen. College is a time to reinvent oneself–even some of the kids who seem obnoxious during the visit days might tone themselves down if they ultimately attend the college.</p>
<p>I’d encourage my kid to pay attention to the actual students at the college, not the prospects.</p>
<p>The most obnoxious people at the schools we visited were usually the parents, not the students or prospective students. My daughter knew she wouldn’t be attending classes with those braggarts (“Should my son retake his SAT? He only got a 2290.”), narcissists (“When I was at HARVARD, we…” said on a tour of STANFORD), and helicopters (“My snowflake has an extra special medical condition requiring extra special care.”), so attending the preview days was helpful to her.</p>
<p>We mostly visited on regular days because we wanted to see the school as it really was. We would wander around, find random students to talk to, follow up on what they said. For example, if kids said there was a speaker coming, we would go see the speaker, or if they said this was a busy time for the gym, we went to the gym. It was a more hit or miss experience, however.</p>
<p>We went to the scheduled open houses, too, if less frequently. I did want to hear the party line on the college and eyeball the other people who were very interested in attending. I wanted to hear what questions people asked. Even on these official trips, we went rogue, however, and sought out regular students doing regular things. </p>
<p>I preferred going on official trips and then skipping out. I did like to see the college present itself at its best.</p>
<p>Although I would observe everything as a whole (which includes prospective students), I would take more stock in actual students than prospects. Also, as others have said, aside from the official talk and tour, I suggest walking around campus and going to places where students hang out, (dining halls, library, etc.) to get a feel for the student body and what an actual “day in the life looks like” to see if my student could picture himself or herself there. That’s why I wouldn’t do a visit when school was out of session or in the summer if I could help it.</p>
<p>The only such event I went to was an accepted students day at Umich, and the students there were REALLY obnoxious. Complete with one girl at my table who whined to her father incessantly that it was just WAY TOO COLD in Michigan (in March) and she needed to leave RIGHT NOW-- eventually he relented and they left in the middle of a presentation. I ended up attending and actually encountered very few people as obnoxious as those at the admitted student day, although I assume many of them did, in fact, attend.</p>
<p>Perhaps in a very small school where you are going to bump into everyone in your class all the time this is another matter, but I find the thought of being chased away from a large university because of a few students at a tour to be laughable. I’m certain I never laid eyes on any of the kids I met at the tour or even at orientation ever again.</p>
<p>@Ema, I’m not sure why you would think the students who were accepted to a college who showed up to an accepted students event wouldn’t be representative of accepted students. If those students are obnoxious, it might indicate that the admissions committee cared more about things other than attitude and personality. The students on a tour wouldn’t be very representative, since they may not even apply to the school anyhow and the obnoxious ones might be weeded out in the admissions process.</p>
<p>No, there are obnoxious students everywhere and whether you run into them or not is chance as much as anything else. Now, there are cultural differences and matters of fit that are a little more complex. My D rejected one school that many rave about within a few seconds of stepping on the campus. But I’m reasonably certain obnoxious kids can be found or avoided anywhere. How in the world would an adcom weed them out? IMHO some adcoms are obnoxious. LOL!</p>
<p>@mathmom - CMU is not the only school with its own CS school/college, but it does have a top notch program.</p>
<p>The reality is, these are the students who you would be attending with, so to totally discount the impression you get from them seems potentially problematic. At the same time, putting a bunch of kids together like this will result in some jockeying for position that does not necessarily reflect what they will be like in “real life.” And you are also seeing a whole cross section of students, not the type of people you specifically would hang out with. At my orientation, there was a point at which I ended up in a group of people who were trying to one up each other on who had had the craziest high school parties. I was vaguely terrified of all of them, but luckily I never had to deal with any of them again and found a great group of friends instead.</p>
<p>I think preview days are still good, though, to give you the types of details that you don’t necessarily get on the general pre-admission tour. For one school that was trying to recruit me, this included coffee with the dean of the college. It’s also good to get another perspective on the school. Visiting a school more than once is also a really good idea; for one thing, it’s amazing how much the weather influences your impression of a college. But don’t just stick to the pre-planned activities at preview days; spend some time wandering around campus and just people-watching. That I found was a big influence on my impressions of the school.</p>
<p>My older son went to accepted student open house for a college he was excited about and came away feeling just “meh”. It actually was helpful going because we had a different view of things during that visit vs. our first. For him, it wasn’t so much the other students though. It was so crowded and it felt like - to him - he was being herded through. We actually felt that the experience was valuable in learning where he didn’t want to be.</p>
<p>On the other hand, my younger son went to an accepted student open house and had a great time. He did an overnight the evening before which really convinced him that it was the place for him - the open house just solidified that thought. It’s so interesting what sways our kids. He loved the fact that he and his host were sitting with several other prospective students and their hosts at dinner in dining commons. They noticed another young man sitting by himself and invited him to join them. The friendliness and accepting culture was what did it for him. The open house was just icing on the cake. He met several potential students who now are attending his college and they are friends - so it worked nicely.</p>
<p>Why are you making an evaluation based on who is at the open house? If it’s because your kids don’t want to attend with those kids then it is useful information to have, isn’t it?</p>
<p>Or, put another way, if you don’t go to the open house, won’t those same people be there? </p>
<p>Not attending doesn’t change who is going to the college, it only changes the information you have available to make that decision. Once you have the information you can choose to ignore it, why deprive yourself of the information?</p>
<p>The library and study areas were pretty telling for D1- especially if we happened to be somewhere on a Sat or Sun.</p>
<p>If the preview days are completely open, agree you get a random crowd. Same for tours and their info sessions. </p>
<p>D1 did a preview that she applied for, where they only invited some applicants. Otherwise, we skipped all that sort of thing. I was with her and her host at lunch and several of the host’s friends came to talk or sit with us. Priceless. D2 went to an accepted students day and made some friends.</p>
<p>We also skipped local college fairs, after the first one was a madhouse.</p>
<p>We did a preview over the summer at a small school, and it was actually useful because they got most of the kids who were on campus (mostly doing research) over the summer into the cafeteria at lunchtime, so prospective students could eat with current undergraduates. Yes, food is a great attraction! It was useful to see how many undergraduates there were on campus for the summer (many, there were almost as many undergrads at lunch as there were prospective students, and most were not working for the admissions office, so they hadn’t been trained in the party line) and D got to connect with someone working in an area she was particularly interested in.</p>
<p>DD’s dream school throughout high school was Georgetown. She had visited there several times both on official tours and informal walk throughs. Loved it, admitted EA, attended first admitted student weekend. For the first time, felt something amiss now that it was real. Fabulous school but not for her. Graduated from Oberlin, and says never regretted listening to inner voice of “not me”.</p>