<p>I've been thinking of taking my son on a quick trip to Southern California to visit a few colleges that might be a fit for him. The list is a bit quirky, but there's a method to the madness. S is a senior, around a 3.7 weighted GPA, average SAT and ACT scores, and wants to play golf at the college level. Academic interests are a little vague at this point, perhaps business or humanities. The list so far is weighted towards D3 colleges.</p>
<p>The question: flying down to LA on a Thursday, how many of these colleges would be possible to visit with a flight back on Sunday? One of the colleges (Chapman) has an open house scheduled from 9-2 on a Saturday, so that's the limiting factor.</p>
<p>I'd welcome feedback on these colleges as well.</p>
<ol>
<li> Chapman University</li>
<li> Whittier College</li>
<li> University of LaVerne</li>
<li> University of Redlands</li>
<li> California Lutheran U (probably too far to go)</li>
<li> UC Irvine</li>
<li> UC Riverside</li>
<li> CSU Dominguez Hills</li>
<li> Claremont McKenna College (reach?)</li>
</ol>
<p>My DD and I did a Whittier - Chapman day and they are about 30 minutes away from each other. You might be able to go to UCI on that day as well, but Chapman is in the middle - so you would want to do UCI-Chapman-Whittier (Or Whittier-Chapman-UCI). Otherwise you will be stuck all day going back and forth.</p>
<p>Claremont Mckenna and La Verne are about 10 minutes away from each other, and about 10 minutes from Ontario. So you could fly into Ontario and hit CMC & La Verne. Riverside is about 30-45 minutes south. I think you could hit all three on Thursday as long as you do your own tours and get there early enough. UCR is large - I don’t know how much time you want to spend at each college. Redlands is about 30 minutes from Riverside (and about 1 hr from Claremont/La Verne). </p>
<p>I don’t know where Dominguez Hills is. Cal Lutheran is pretty far Northwest of everything else and a few hours away.</p>
<p>I would suggest you get a Southern California Freeway Map and plot them all out. It all depends on if you want to go in and view everything, meet with people, etc. - then I would suggest no more than 2-3 colleges a day. If you just want to do drive-by’s then you can probably get them all in - the LA freeways can be hard to navigate for those who are not used to them.</p>
<p>Summer '08 we did the California trip with D2 who said she wanted to “play golf at a school in California”. She is now attending Scripps College (a Claremont school) and playing golf. Her gpa was also about the same as that of your S and her ACT was 27. The only other school on your list that we visited was Redlands. It is very pretty and the people were extremely nice. They seemed willing to provide generous merit aid to her. The school just didn’t feel right for her though. </p>
<p>We visited 5 schools in 5 days and even that felt like a lot - although we covered more miles than you are planning - from Santa Clara University in the north to Redlands in the south. I think that 2 schools a day would be the max. It was a wonderful adventure, but also a bit of a grind.</p>
<p>Before our trip, D wrote a letter to the golf coaches at about a dozen schools D1 - D3 and provided a resume (e-mail would probably be even better) and gave the dates of our trip. Five coaches responded and those were the schools we visited. She loved one of the five and applied ED to Scripps last fall. </p>
<p>lion0709, what yr was your D when you made these college visits? I’m assuming her junior yr? My D would also like to golf in college and I’m trying to figure out the ins and outs of finding golf teams and schools - I hear most colleges don’t recruit for golf due to budget constraints. Would you mind if I asked what your D’s resume looked like? You can PM me if you’d like. Thanks.</p>
<p>Lion, reading about your D’s response from the golf coaches was eerily like my D’s from orchestra conductors. The Columbia conductor responded to her e-mail with, “Get admitted to Columbia, come to the audition, then we can talk.” The conductor at Smith College set up a time to meet her on the day were there, came over to meet us as well, and when he found out we weren’t leaving until the next morning invited D to attend rehearsal that night so that she could sit with prospective section on stage.</p>
<p>Scripps is often described as the “West Coast Smith.” Fwiw.</p>
<p>Dominguez Hills is about 30 minutes north of Irvine off the 405. I don’t know the actual city it is listed in but it is on the border of Carson and Long Beach and some might say Compton. Or it might even be better to hit Dominguez Hills from the 91. I would group those two lists into two areas. UCI, Chapman, Whittier and Dominguez Hills. They are not right next to each other but they are an easy drive. Depends also on how much time you are spending in each area. If you could fly into Long Beach or John Wayne you could visit those 4 and head out to the Claremont area and see La Verne, Claremont and UCR and fly out of Ontario. Long Beach is a really easy airport to fly in and out of. The Marriot at the Long Beach airport sometimes has great rates on the weekends.
I don’t think you could see Cal Lutheran on the same trip. Totally opposite direction.</p>
<p>I don’t have specific advise on any of the schools on your list except UC Irvine. The one piece of advice I do have based on our Southern California road trip is to allow at least double the amount of time that any map says. There was traffic everywhere and for no apparent reason and my husband used to live in LA. We were almost late to every tour etc.</p>
<p>If you are planning to tour in the next few weeks be warned that some of the schools may not have guided tours because of the beginning of the school term. You need to check the website of each school for the times of the tours. Self guided tours are the least satisfactory but give you the most flexibility. If you are flying Southwest, for convenience you can fly into one airport and out another, 2 one way tickets.</p>
<p>Our trip was in June after her junior year. We did a lot of research on schools and teams during the winter. I think she sent her packet out to coaches in March or April. She followed up with e-mails through June.</p>
<p>Her resume started off with basic contact info (address/e-mail/phone/high school contact info)
GPA/Class Rank/ACT (wanted to show right off that she was academically eligible for the school)
Height/Weight/Date of Birth (this seems to be info on the college athletic websites so we figured they want to know - we also included a school picture so they could put a face with the resume)</p>
<p>Then had a section for her athletics divided by sports - divided her golf experience by high school year and put the highlights from each year. She is a good, but not great, golfer (about a 40 ave for 9 holes) not much in the way of summer tournament experience. She included her other sports because golf coaches seem to like “athletic” golfers. So her experience on the boys’ wrestling team especially caught some attention (she actually won a conference title in her weight class). </p>
<p>She followed the athletics with a section on her other school activities (mainly band) and her hobbies.</p>
<p>We also sent a copy of her high school transcript and her ACT report. This seemed useful when we met the coaches because they could see if she was taking the necessary classes to be admitted and allowed them to determine whether some merit aid might be available.</p>
<p>Her sister is a DI track athlete and we had taken a similar approach with her - although we started getting her information out after her sophomore year.</p>
<p>A friend’s daughter just started her Sophomore year at Chapman and she’s been extremely happy with her choice. She loves the school, her classes, her roommates, her fellow students – an overall very positive experience.</p>
<p>Agree with others - Cal Lutheran would be a haul, just to see one school. Might also suggest skipping Dominguez Hills, if you are looking to shorten your list.</p>
<p>TheDad, I agree. S liked the Chapman campus when he stayed there for a summer camp. We didn’t think much of Cal State Dominguez Hills when we went there for a sports tournament.</p>
<p>Thanks to all who posted. Sounds like it will be worth the expense of flying down to see some of these schools. We’ll skip Dominguez Hills since S has other more appealing safties among the CSUs.</p>
<p>I’ve got everything on a Google map which I can view on my phone’s GPS.</p>
<p>I have family currently at Chapman and another one is a Chapman graduate. I also have family who graduated from UCI, feel free to ask any details.</p>
<p>“Most people” at UCI seem to leave the dorms after year 1 and move to the beach, living in Newport, so you might check the drive to the Newport peninsula and get the feel for that aspect.</p>
<p>I also have a kid at a Chapman like school; personality would be the deciding factor for me. My UCI DD would have had a much better experience, I think, at a small private, but after a small high school experience, she wanted a big school and not not have every one 'all up in her business" She got what she asked for, but she got a bit lost in the crowd for a while.</p>
She got what she asked for, but she got a bit lost in the crowd for a while.</p>