<p>I would substitute Cal State Long Beach for CSU Dominguez Hills.
Cal State Long Beach is a much better school, slightly less commuterish, and Long Beach has seen some very nice development over the past 5 years. More to do and see on a road-trip, IMHO.</p>
<p>Quirky can be common at Redlands. The Ayres hotel in Redlands had some nice visitng Redlands rates. Ontario airport is closer than LAX, rates could be higher though. UCR isn’t far. Son loved UCI during open house, visited dead campus over a weekend and lost interest. He is a grad student at Redlands, knows UCR grads. If you have any questions, he usually will answer them for me.</p>
<p>Chapman sounds like it’s well worth visiting. Open house is Oct 31. My son needs to give more thought to the other colleges and narrow the list down a bit. I’ll update this thread if we end up taking the trip.</p>
<p>Thanks again.</p>
<p>One thing about hotel rates: when visiting schools with my son last year, more often than not the AAA rates were less than ‘visiting the college’ rates…so if you are a AAA member it’s worth asking about.</p>
<p>Son’s friend is at Cal Lu for golf and is having the time of his life. Great program and nice team. Very small but fun.</p>
<p>It is about 40 minutes (no traffic) from Burbank airport.</p>
<p>Reviving this thread with an update. We’ve decided to fly into SNA on a Thursday and will try to get to the 3:00 tour at Whittier. From there we’ll drive to Redlands and spend the night, doing a morning tour at Redlands and then an afternoon tour back at La Verne. That night we’ll stay somewhere near Chapman and attend the open house there on Saturday, flying home Saturday night.</p>
<p>S2 will contact golf coaches to set up possible meetings. He’s filled out all the recruiting forms but so far hasn’t heard from anyone - is this to be expected?</p>
<p>Thanks for the suggestion about hotels. The Ayres looks nice. I’m a AAA member so will ask for those rates.</p>
<p>Cal Lutheran was rejected by S2 because he didn’t want a religious school.</p>
<p>Redlands has market night Thursdays. While I have never gone, husband has and liked it. Son uesed to go all the time, maybe still does. Is downtown. Ayres Redlands univ rate was bettter than AAA or senior for parents so try everything.</p>
<p>Based on our own experiences, seeing a number of schools in one weekend can be over-whelming if you are not organized and prepared. Know what you want to discover at each school before you visit. Be sure to try to capture the highlights from each school while it is still fresh. It helps if you ask your kid to remember 1-2 very unique things about each school. After a while, they will start to blend together.
(We’re headed to SoCal this weekend to visit CMC and Pitzer.)</p>
<p>
That’s par for the course. Responses to recruiting forms are usually auto-generated or non-existant. A direct email or phone call to the coach generally works better.</p>
<p>Good luck with the trip and the process.</p>
<p>
Isn’t Chapman religious as well?</p>
<p>Chapman has a historical affiliation with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) but its website really downplays this and presents a secular university. We’ll find out more on the visit, no doubt.</p>
<p>Whittier is Quaker but so far has passed the low-key religion threshold.</p>
<p>The Redlands market sounds very fun, and if it goes till 9:00 (per the web) then we’d have time to see it, perhaps even find dinner there.</p>
<p>Is it ever worth the time to fill in the online recruiting forms, or should S2 just email the coaches directly in every case?</p>
<p>
From my kids’ experience, the more personal the contact, the better.</p>
<p>Personal introduction > phone contact > email contact > recruiting form.</p>
<p>For some of the schools on your son’s list (like Redlands and LaVerne which are in the top 20 (or possibly top 10) in the country in Div III golf, the coaches would probably contact him immediately if they were interested in him. However, for some of the other schools that are less competitive, it might mean nothing at all that you haven’t heard anything. Definitely make a point of emailing and setting up a personal meeting with the coaches at the schools, even if they did not contact you first.</p>
<p>You might want to check out Occidental for golf, also.</p>
<p>Just wanted to make one last plug for the Claremont Colleges. With the diversity in the schools, there’s a lot of bang for the buck in terms of college visits. We three very intensive visits in two days, so you could easily do at least two, and walk through a third, in one day. I’d strongly encourage you to visit as many schools as possible in the time that you’re visiting.</p>
<p>The 4 schools we’ll tour are pretty much academic matches for S2, but as SpiritManager points out 2 are golf super-reaches. I think the trip will inject a good dose of reality on his chances of playing golf in college, especially if he can arrange to meet all the golf coaches.</p>
<p>I’m concerned that Occidental would be a super-reach academically. S2 is a good student, but the kids who have been admitted from his hs in the past have had grades and test scores well above S2’s. </p>
<p>Pomona and Pitzer seem to fall into the super-reach category as well. CM looks like perhaps just a reach as opposed to super-reach.</p>
<p>The Naviance scattergrams tell a pretty bleak story for his chances at these schools. Will a plug from the golf coaches make a difference?</p>
<p>I think these are amazing colleges and would love to see S2 in a top LAC. But academics have never been his top priority, sports have always won out.</p>
<p>Just as a point of reference for athletics in the SCIAC conference - my son, who ended up playing golf for CMC was contacted within a day by the Pomona and CMC coaches, and not once by the Occidental coach - even after he was accepted there. For Div I schools like USC and the UC’s he sent an email and golf resume and then usually received an email back. Sometimes he had already met the coaches at tournaments as they followed groups of players (usually someone other than him!)</p>
<p>I do second that you check out Pitzer - it is not as difficult grade & score wise to get in - they are looking more for ‘fit.’</p>
<p>I agree about Pitzer. The results from our area high schools have been all over the place.</p>
<p>I posted a month ago on this thread about our California trip with freshman D who wanted to “play golf at a school in California” and how she did indeed end up going to California to play golf at a DIII school. With both athlete daughters we emphasized that they choose a school that they would really want to attend regardless of the sport. I am glad we did because California D discovered women’s rugby her first week at school and has already given up golf for the rugby team! Ah, those best laid plans.</p>
<p>That’s funny, lion0709. Life has a way of changing, doesn’t it?</p>
<p>Thanks to everyone who has been promoting Pitzer, S2 and I are going to take another close look at its website. We might tour it rather than La Verne, given the slim chances of golf at La Verne.</p>
<p>We’ve just returned from our trip so I thought I’d update this thread with our experiences. I’ll add more details in the college visit forum as I have time. My son had exchanged emails with all the golf coaches ahead of time and set up meetings; 3 on Friday and one on Saturday.</p>
<p>We flew into John Wayne and immediately drove up to Whitter. We sat in on the tail end of the information session, spoke with an admissions counselor, and then took the tour. The tour guide wasn’t very impressive but the campus was attractive. We saw practically no students which was quite odd as it was a gorgeous day; no one was outside in the sun. Son didn’t feel he got a good idea of what the school was about.</p>
<p>From there we drove to one of the Whittier home courses; S hit a bucket of balls on the driving range. Then on to Redlands - traffic wasn’t terrible, and where it was backed up the carpool lane was fine. We went to the Redlands market (just ok, not great) and checked into the Ayres hotel (very nice).</p>
<p>Friday morning at Redlands. The Redlands admissions office has a tour coordinator who had set up a meeting with the coach, a tour, lunch tickets, and at the last minute got S in to see an admissions rep. Coach was a kick, tour was great, campus was beautiful, food was good, students were goofy/quirky in a good way, academics seemed aligned with what S wants. The admissions rep was 20 min late and I felt I had to make it short because this same rep will be doing a visit to S’s high school next week, and we were due at Pitzer. </p>
<p>Not being familiar with the traffic, I left plenty of time to get from Redlands to Pitzer but as it turned out we were about 20 min early. Coach didn’t show for our scheduled meeting (at Pomona), so we walked through the Pomona, CMC and Scripps campuses to the Pitzer admissions office. Gorgeous day, the campuses looked great, lots of students outside. S had an interview with a Pitzer student and then we took the tour. Nice campus, very small but didn’t seem too small due to the other adjacent schools. Merit aid seems pretty iffy at Pitzer. Very internationally focused, with 70% of the students doing a semester abroad. S liked the vibe.</p>
<p>We were able to catch up with the Pomona golf coach after the Pitzer tour and chatted with him a bit. We then drove back to the Whittier home course for a meeting with the Whittier coach. From there, we drove down to Orange & checked into the Ayres hotel there (again very nice - great breakfasts!)</p>
<p>Saturday was the Chapman Open House. The basketball gym was packed with prospects and their parents for an address by the President (and his dog). Sessions in the various departments followed- we attended two, and S didn’t think either speaker was very interesting. My impression was that they were speaking to the parents, not the 17-year-olds in the audience. Lots of focus on rankings (top Master’s University in the West, top 50 business school, better than USC in this or that, women’s basketball team has highest GPA in the country, etc etc). The overall effect was not as impressive as the administration might have wanted - after hearing this for the 3rd or 4th time, we started to think it was overkill. Dorm and campus tours were good, the campus is beautiful and dorms seem fine (most freshman rooms were triples). A quick meeting with the golf coach was useful, then we drove to the Chapman home course for S to hit a bucket of balls at the driving range. </p>
<p>We had time before our flight to drive to Newport Beach, see the ocean, then flew home. The trip was actually pretty exhausting, but well worth doing.</p>
<p>Overall impressions were generally favorable. All of these schools have the same small college mantra: small class sizes, courses taught by professors rather than TAs, professors available during office hours, students encouraged to get to know them, easy access to LA if wanted but plenty to do on campus, flexible meal plans, nice athletic facilities, lots of intramural sports and other activities for active students, fairly nice dorms, wireless everywhere, most had an orientation week for freshmen before classes started in the fall. Whittier seemed like it had the most potential for merit aid, with Redlands a close 2nd. </p>
<p>S will be applying to all of these colleges, but I think his gut feel is that Redlands is the best match so far.</p>