The article suggests that talking to current students or recent grads would be a better approach (although I personally can think of some good reasons why that would be equally flawed – it’s not as if the prospie is going to be able to find a statistically random sample to query).
(Note: I personally don’t agree with the premise that the visit itself should be scrapped, but this might be a word of caution to do do a lot more pre-visit prep, to counteract the possible issues the article highlights about the pitfalls of making decisions based on brief impressions.)
Very interesting. In fact, I have to agree with this in many ways. My kid attends a college she did not get a chance to visit as an accepted student. She had visited in the summer and liked it, but no students were on campus, save the guide. She based her final decision on all the research she had done and student review websites. Her college seems to be the right place for her.
This also happens commonly for international kids, and it seems to work for them, at least at my daughter’s school. D has several international friends who never set foot on campus until move in day. She also has two friends who live within a day’s drive of the college, yet neither of them visited before applying ED. So despite what we here on CC think (that surely everyone visits a college prior to enrolling) that is not always the case. Perhaps it is simply a case of making the best out of a given situation because there isn’t another option.
Tours are one small part of the decision process. Tours should be taken…but taken with a grain of salt. The best tours are those that are privately arranged with students or professors, when possible.
In fact, the “Comments” section is infinitely more valuable than the article itself. The comments are a direct cut and paste from College Confidential. LOL
I think it is really important to visit a school once accepted. Even if the school was visited before applying. But the tour and info session can be skipped, yes. And I am not sure whether those accepted student days are the best way to go either. Generally hanging out on the green, if there is one the dining hall, if accessible, the bookstore and talking to students informally can work really well- plus going to a class if possible.
Accepted-student day was the first time my son set foot on the campus of the University of Chicago. He did an overnight, and the next morning I asked him how he likes UofC. His answer: “This will do.” Done.
Kids have different amounts of time and interest in making college tours. Our son didn’t want to make any, and so he didn’t. I put all of the colleges on his application list, after checking with him. He was too busy (debate, debate; newspaper, newspaper). If he hadn’t liked Chicago, next step would have been to visit Carlton, which had also accepted him. He had visited Williams after being admitted there and didn’t like it. Fallback would have been University of Michigan. Our daughter, on the other hand, definitely wanted to make visits in advance, and she was admitted to her first choice (RISD). She wanted to visit another school – MICA – after being admitted there but the timing wasn’t good for us! And so she didn’t visit any schools after admission. She was okay with that.
D1 did an early overnight, before applying, knew from the kids she met, their habits (the good, the social interaction, studying, off to rehearsals, meeting a prof in her area, etc, and some of the less great, typical college behaviors,) that this is it.
The admitted days can be more rah rah, a different slice.
Very YMMV.
Btw, we never had an official tour of that college. The vibe was so clear, both from students and admin.
Our S never stepped foot on the campus of his U until we all showed up to move him onto campus. He said he would bloom where planted and did. Back in the day, neither I nor my sibs ever stepped foot on campus of the colleges and grad and professional schools. We all bloomed where planted.
S said that he thought visits were over-rated as each U would only show you its best.
I never visited the college I attended before orientation and it was literally a 5 minute walk from my HS.
We visited D’s college after she committed. S17 visited his school on a diversity weekend (don’t ask HOW he got on a diversity weekend) and liked it, he has committed but I have not seen it yet and won’t till orientation.
I tend to agree with @HImom 's son about the visits.
Sometimes, though, you visit a school and just know that the other people there are not your tribe. And sometimes, nothing on the website would have made that apparent.
I think the visits are less important for fact gathering and better for picking up a vibe. Sometimes, a good CC can help make that “vibe” match bUT only if they know the student and the school’s well.
It is an expense and time, especially when the U is 2500 or more miles away and the kids are busy with SR year. I’m not so sure how much if a “vibe” is accurate in larger Us. I believe kids can find their tribe more easily at a bigger place than a tiny one.
The thing about looking at how our kids took to a school once attended in hindsight is, for most of our kids they would have ended up happy and productive no matter which school they attended, certainly between the subset they were considering after accepted. Most people adapt to their reality. And it’s impossible to know whether they would have done better or worse at a different college. My son’s doing great at his college. I am 100% confident he would be giving similar vibes from any of the five he was torturing himself over in the end, whether he toured or didn’t tour, etc. Visiting before or after acceptance is one of many decision making tools, but there’s no magic. Their decision only look right most of the time in hindsight because they say they are satisfied.
College tours are valuable, but not necessarily for deciding on a particular school, IMO. (Well, maybe with some exceptions for cases where it really is a quite different school from the norm, like, say, Hampshire or St John’s or somesuch.) What they do give you, though, is some insight into different types of colleges.
So, after touring way too many colleges ranging from small LACs to open-admissions universities to ultra-high-prestige places to state flagships to regionals to [insert some other types here] with my D17 and D19 over the past few years, we learned that my D17 is a LAC type, and my D19 is all about the state flagships and near-flagships.
This is immensely useful information. Were the tours helpful in selling them (or me) on specific schools? No, not really—but we all came out of it knowing where D17’s and D19’s application efforts should be focused, and more importantly why.
The info session and tour is one way to demonstrate interest. It should be easy enough if its within close driving distance, and not held against you if too far away for the student.
I am wholly in support of the tour since DD just got picked as a tour guide for her college. Go Sagehens!
On a related note (still on topic), we’re dealing with that “demonstrated interest” dilemma with our second child. She informally attended many of the tours her older brother did, but would not have been officially registered as attending with the school as she would have just been one of the +3 or +4 in his group. Some of the schools don’t even track who tours, but many of the LAC’s due and she’s targeting LAC’s. But we don’t want to tour most of them again. She has a strong memory from the previous tour and most were not close enough that they involved special trips. We’re just debating whether that hurts her where she will not have checked all the requisite “demonstrated interest” boxes. She’s still interview with local alum, of course, for those that offer it. Anyone think it actually matters?
Your kid can “demonstrate interest” by sending emails with questions to the admissions office.
The point is simply for the ad com to be able to discern among applicants who are reasonably likely to attend if admitted, and those who have simply added the college to a long list of perceived safeties. So a few emails with specific questions about academic offerings or school amenities will also telegraph the message.
