She has been on some tours already, but now it seems like we’re getting closer, especially since the goal is to apply ED somewhere in the fall. We scheduled tours/info sessions at a couple of schools next month. There was the option to sign up for interviews, but I didn’t do that. My idea is that we see schools and then when she has a few favorites she can register for interviews and to sit in on classes. Is this the way to go about it?
Also, I notice that there are many Junior Visiting days at colleges, but we just signed up for regular tours since the timing works out better. Is there an advantage to going on these special visiting days? More excitement and activity?
Junior days can be a whirlwind – our experience was that it was more about pumping up interest among the visitors than about sharing concrete information about the school. I think a regular visit is more useful, though I dragged my kids to a few junior days to get them engaged in the process.
As long as a return visit to interview on campus, or get an alumni interview is feasible, I thought that waiting until my kid was a little more comfortable with the process made sense for interviews. Your mileage may vary!
We did a mix of some open houses and regular days that fit into our schedule. My daughter didn’t like the open houses as much. As far as interviews, I guess it depends on how far away the schools are. Our goal was to do the tours and return for interviews where she was interested. However, she had a lot of schools on her list and quite a few were far away, so when we visited the far away ones (mostly early in her senior year–we were running out of time!) we started scheduling interviews at the same time as the tours. I’d say if you are traveling a distance you might as well schedule some interviews, especially if the schools looks like a really good fit on paper and if an interview is considered important by the admissions department.
One suggestion on interviews: She might start with a school that is not as high on her list of possibilities, or at a school that she might consider a “safety.” Sometimes students can be nervous about interviews, and interview or two can show them that they are generally just conversations and that most interviewers are friendly and consciously working to put students at ease. She would not want to feel like she had it nailed by her 3rd or 4th interview but had interviewed first at her dream school and learned a lot since. Of course, she might be very comfortable with them, but if not this might be helpful. Good luck and have fun!
You should check with the schools regarding interviews, because some don’t do them until summer before senior year. As for special visit days and open houses, sometimes they have more events available like student and professor panels, and special tours of different facilities, but it varies by school and since there are so many people there, can feel a little impersonal. Almost like you are getting more of a feel for the applicant pool vs the school sometimes
We did a mix of junior visiting days and regular information sessions/tours depending on what was available when we happened to visit. We tended to prefer the regular information sessions/tours and often felt the big visiting days were overcrowded and became a bit too much of a “show” as compared to seeing the school on a normal day.
My D applied ED and we had a similar plan to you. We used junior year visits to narrow down her favorites and eliminate schools that were just not the right fit. In the early fall we revisited her two top choices, she attended classes at both schools, and interviewed. It helped that the schools she focused on were all within 2-4 hours of home. She also interviewed near home with her 3rd and 4th choice colleges (which she could see herself attending) in the fall of her senior year just in case she had to go further down on her list.
Good luck as you go through the process. I do think you are on a great path.
Thanks so much everyone. Very helpful info.The schools we are seeing during her spring break are driveable so we can easily go back if she loves them. @happy1 The way you did it is the way we will probably do it. We’re just trying to come up with a reasonable list of schools. It’s tough when you want to do ED since there is so little time. I refuse to visit colleges during the summer while school is not in session so that makes it rough.
Since you have all been so helpful, do you think it’s necessary to sit in on classes at every school you apply to or just your top 3 for example?
@citymama9 - Not all schools interview - and most don’t - so that might make it easier for all as you tour. AFAIK - You can expect interviews at small LACs and Tippy-Tip schools. And at some top schools, like Northwestern, interviews are optional only. And they mean it! I had 2 kids admitted to NU, one ED and one RD - and neither one interviewed.
The good thing about visiting days is they often have representatives from every department available, whereas on a tour you just walk through without stopping anywhere - and we found at many schools the science building, which was what my kids were most interested in, typically got little love as few of our tour guides were in the sciences.
My kids were looking at smaller schools and targeting merit, so they were above average for the student bodies. What we found most useful was to contact the department they were interested in attending and ask for a departmental tour. This might not work as well at large schools, or those with significant name recognition, but the schools my kids were targeting were more than happy to arrange tours and meetings with a departmental faculty member in order to recruit strong students to the department.
If the schools factor in interest, it’s of benefit to sign up for the formal tours - we typically did the tour then the kids went on the department specific tour. We met so many wonderful faculty who took us “behind the scenes” - for example, at Butler we got a private tour of the observatory.
My kids really didn’t get much out of sitting in on classes, but your mileage may vary. They also weren’t terribly interested in doing an overnight visit. We did some preliminary visits in the summer - not optimal, but it allowed us to rule out a few schools so we could optimize visits during the school year.
We did go to accepted student days at their top 2 or 3 schools to help finalize the decisions.
To answer your question, the number of schools you visit in the fall is situational. After the initial tours our D had 4 match schools and 1 safety that she could see herself attending. She also had a very steady top 2 schools (both of which were solid matches) that she was debating between as her ED choice. We only went back to those top two in the fall for her to revisit and sit in on classes so as not to confuse things. So based on this experience I would try to limit the re-visits to the very top choices. Things worked out well for my D because after the two fall visits she became very sure of where she wanted to apply ED. Happily she got in and loved the school.
I think if my D did not get into her top choice ED we might have paid a second visit to one or two other schools on her list before deciding if she wanted to apply ED2 anywhere. Also she did interview in the fall with all four schools (the safety did not do interviews) so she would be in good shape in the event the ED school did not work out.
FWIW we also did not do any college visits over the summer.
Have you thought about how many schools your D wants to visit altogether? If you do the info sessions and tours for each school, you will only have time for 2 per day.
For us, we really enjoyed the process and went a little overboard by casting a really wide net initially. I think our family had serious FOMO. Since the best time to visit is while the college kids are in school, and since we only had Spring Break to do this, we wanted to visit a lot more schools than we had time. So we skipped the info sessions and formal tours and just looked around ourselves and hung out in the student center and the cafeteria to people watch, and walked through the libraries, looked at all the billboards, and grabbed the student newspaper. The positive to this is how many schools we visited - BTW, it’s critical to make a journal entry for each school while you are there and also rank them on your own point system, or else you’ll merge everything together. The negative is that it didn’t count for “demonstrated interest”. But this worked for us because we went back over the summer for info sessions/tours at the schools she was interested in after seeing the students to check that box and to reinforce our impressions. Then in the early Fall she picked two schools to do the formal rah-rah Prospective Students Day/Weekend and visit classes.
For interviews, some of the schools had meet and greets in our area and my D went to them to meet the regional admin rep, and hopefully put a face to a name (but not in the, ask stupid questions or hog the dialog kind of way). Most schools that she applied to didn’t have formal interviews except alumni interviews which we’ve been told don’t really count for much. But if you go back in the summer and the schools do interviews, it seems like that would be a good time to do it.
My D is a Senior and after seeing the impact of ED apps at her school, I think it is really important to be careful with this. First off, if a kid gets rejected ED and hasn’t received an EA acceptance from any schools that he/she would really like to go to, it’s hard on them emotionally to be sitting on a rejection (or deferment) for 4 months until RD decisions come in. Second, I’m not too sure just how much ED helps. When you are looking at the statistic of half the seats in the class being gone by the RD round, you assume that ED is everything. But look at who the accepted ED kids are. Most of them have a hook of some sort - legacy, URM, athlete, geographic need, kid of rich/famous. Once you back the number of hooked kids out, what’s the ED accept rate for unhooked kids? Third, are you prepared to accept or reject the FA offer - you can’t negotiate it because you most likely won’t have a competitve offer from another school in your pocket. Fourth, your kid has to really, really love his/her ED school. There are some kids who merely like their ED school and then have regrets when their friends are choosing between several RD schools. But, with ED being so popular now, it’s also hard on a kid to sit and wait on hearing from his/her RD schools when so many of his/her friends will know where they are going by December.
^^^ I do agree that it is a great idea to have a EA/rolling safety school application(s) in along with an ED if allowed. That first acceptance does take a lot of pressure off of the process and can soften the blow in the event of an ED deferral/rejection. My D’s safety school was rolling which was a big plus.
However, I IMO it is impossible to make a blanket statement about the value of ED in admissions since ED is viewed differently from school to school. I will say that for the LACs my D looked at (and I believe the OP has some of the same schools on her D’s list) there IS a big benefit to applying in the ED round for unhooked applicants. My D’s LAC takes about half the class in the ED round and applying in that round provides a definite boost for all applicants and the admissions office made that clear. So it is important to gauge the value of ED at each college one applies to. One should only consider ED if 1) he/she is absolutely certain of the top choice school and 2) there is no need to compare financial offers.
And just to add, the class visits were nice and useful but just as helpful was the time that my D spent on campus with current students during the day. At the school she ultimately applied to ED, she felt that she fit in really well with students she met , she enjoyed the classroom visits, and she saw different interactions between students and student/teachers – I think all of this is what made her feel confident in applying early there.
In response to the question about how important are class visits – my LAC kid’s experience was that visiting classes helped him develop confidence that he belonged at these schools, but I’m not sure that the specific experience on any campus could be generalized to that school as a whole and used to compare across different schools. Like an overnight visit, a class visit can “put off” a student simply because it was a flat day – the class after a midterm, for instance, when energy might be low.
I second @InigoMontoya’s comments about scheduling department visits – my kid generally set up meetings for both his fine art and music interest, which usually involved tours of the facilities and extended conversations with faculty. That experience helped him see whether, and how, he could see himself at that school. We too were searching for merit, so were not too worried about whether he would get in to his list of schools, more whether the merit would be enough and whether he would flourish at a particular school. Junior Visit days can help streamline some of that, if there are department “open houses” where you can drop in and talk with faculty.
My daughter found it valuable to plan to attend a class at each school she visited. Interacting with the professors and seeing the students in action were more valuable in her decision-making process than the info session or the tour.
@InigoMontoya Thank you. Can you tell me about Butler?
@melvin123 Lots of good points that you made. Is there anyway to find out what percentage of EC acceptances are unhooked? In your HS were kids who were rejected or deferred from the ED schools aiming too high?
@happy1 You are always so helpful! How does one go about finding out how unhooked students fare at a particular school in the ED round? Do you figure out how many varsity athletes attend and get an idea that way? I noticed that some small LACs can have over 30% athletes
@Midwestmomofboys Thanks, as always. Thoughts on Denison these days? We’re hoping to see it at the very end of summer/beginning of fall when school starts. Are you still a fan?
@citymama9 I saw some threads here on CC last year that provided some information about who the ED and who the RD kids were. I bet when all the RD decisions are in this thread will pop up again. Frankly I think it’s amazing that some people manage to get access to that information and then run the numbers; I’d have no idea where to get these numbers from. Re whether the ED rejected/deferred kids at my D’s school aimed too high, well I don’t want to say things that would be taken as being generally applicable elsewhere, because I only noticed the kids this year, and only know about our school, but here’s what I noticed. The kids who aimed for HPYS were all absolutely qualified and amazing kids - perfect or near perfect scores, big spike in something, etc… It looked like the unhooked kids got deferred whereas the legacies and URMs got accepted (we didn’t have any big-time athletes apply…I think they are the most hooked group of all). For the next group of super prestigious but not HPYS schools, from what I know the ED decisions looked consistent with what we all thought would happen, except there were a couple of Asian kids who got deferred and I would have thought they’d get in. For all the schools after that, the ED decisions were consistent with what I would have thought. It would be interesting to see if what I noticed at our school for this year is consistent with what happened at other HS.
I would ask straight out at information sessions if there was an advantage to applying ED for a student who is not a legacy, athlete etc. At most LACs the answer was a resounding yes.
Our guidance counselor at the HS was outstanding and felt strongly that there was a significant ED admissions advantage for the particular schools my D was most interested in. He had a more detailed version of Naviance that was not available to the public (I guess it would be easier to pinpoint the student) that had admission results from ED broken out from RD and I think noted (or he knew) which were hooked applicants. So for her top choice he thought ED would be a good idea. I think each HS handles Naviance information differently but if you have a good guidance counselor it may be worth asking especially when you are down to a final few schools.
The school my D attended (Lafayette) actually broke out stats for ED acceptances out in their class profile so you could see there was a difference.
In interviews a few admissions officers noted to my D that there was an advantage to applying ED if the school was the top choice.
Anecdotal information (sample size of one) - I knew a student my D’s year who seemed to have similar academic stats and did not get into her college in the RD round. He ended up at a mid-size college that was in the same academic range as my D’s school. I do think my D had stronger ECs and more demonstrated interest but it makes me think that applying ED provided a boost to her application.
It is probably an art more than a science – but I trusted that admissions officers were being honest, that our guidance counselor had good information, and that statistics online were accurate. For small schools that take half the students in the ED round, it just makes sense that ED is an advantage admissions-wise even for unhooked applicants. Of course ED will not get a student into a college he/she is not otherwise qualified to attend. But my sense through the process is that if the student is in range for a LAC that takes a high percentage of its students in the ED round that committing to a school through the ED process can only increase the chance of admission.
Of course if your D is not ready to commit to one school by December or if you want to compare financial offers of different schools then RD is the better way to go.
For my D ED was an advantage in every way. She can be a nervous kid, she was set on her top school before the ED deadline, and it was so great to have her happily settled at a college in December. It made for a very relaxed second half of senior year.
@happy1 has an important point. How much ED helps depends on the school. We found that this topic came up a lot at the info sessions, and they were really forthright in saying whether it helps or not. I guess my comment is that some people assume it helps everywhere and you have to be careful with that assumption because there are some schools where I think it doesn’t help much at all.