How are you contending with your (student’s) college search and endeavoring to assess fit if colleges are closed to visitors due to COVID?
Certainly, with Naviance, school websites, public info, reading posts, etc, one can begin to evaluate class size, campus size, Greek life (or not), LAC vs RU, availability of Honors Program, overall class rigor, majors, Professor contact, etc — but how are prospective students getting a sense of “fit” absent a visit while school is in session?
Knowing admission statistics, and uncertainty of on-site campus visits, we are trying to figure out HOW to develop realistic/meaningful list, and perhaps hone in a school for EA/ED (considering early deadline), without college visits.
Any tips or advice?
Here is what we know:
Prefers prof contact
Would not love huge classes (sure, a few are unavoidable)
May prefer smaller feel
May be happy with a smaller program (eg Honors Program) within larger U
Wants research oppy
STEMy - Bio-Chem or the like
Likey PhD or MD/PhD path
AP (5s) and credits from dual enrollment
UW GPA 4.0
1580 SAT (800, 780)
PSAT 225 index
SAT II - 800 math II, 790 chem
OK ECs: 3 sports, robotics tm, science olympiad, history team, math team, job, volunteer (tutor 2yrs), regional athletic council (not sure what this is)
Try to figure out what “fit” aspects, if any, require a visit to determine and which “fit” aspects are those where information can be gathered without requiring a visit.
Class sizes can often be determined by looking at the college’s on-line class schedule to see what they are like for courses of interest. Note that popular majors tend to have larger class sizes, particularly at the frosh/soph levels. Classes taken by students in other majors or for other purposes also tend to be larger (e.g. biology and chemistry courses that pre-meds take).
Since you’re asking about developing a list, I assume (hope) this is for next year. My D is in the same boat and I assume campuses will be open for visits sometime next summer. Not ideal, but there should be time, after narrowing down the list based on factual data, as noted above.
Visits can occur as late as April 2022, though it may require a few more applications if your can’t eliminate some schools based on visits prior to applying, so that’s a fairly long period of time.
I do feel bad for students applying this year who didn’t get a jump on visits before this Spring. From my older D’s search, campus visits are quite important. Facts, glossy booklets, and slide shows can’t give you the same feel. She quickly narrowed her list to two where she would “fit” based on visits.
Our family was lucky enough to have been able to do a lot of visits before applying. My D visited her college without me, so when she said she wanted to ED there, I visited on my own, and had a bad, unimpressive visit. Tour guide was a flake, admissions presentation was disorganized, and they wouldn’t let you into the dorms at all. The guide made a sad joke about how awful the dorms are, how res life does a horrible job matching you with a roommate, and how bad the food is. My visit was during the summer, so couldn’t see what the true vibe was; they had a strong summer performing arts program so lots of those kids around, but almost no STEM kids were there.
Anyway, my point is that even if you visit, you could walk away with a totally inaccurate picture based on who happens to be on campus at the time, or what time it is in the semester (unhappy kids during mid-terms), or any number of other reasons.
CC actually helped me a lot with learning about the overall repetitional vibe of a school. Look up the schools you are interested in, and you will see lots of threads where people post asking for differences between several schools. You will see some great answers that can give you a really good idea as to flavor.
Some other avenues were our HS GC knew the flavors of different colleges well. And I looked at who from our HS went to which colleges during the prior several years. It was really interesting seeing the types of students the various colleges chose. And I talked to friends with older kids in other towns, and got feedback from them as to the kids they knew that went to that college and whether there was a common trait or what the experiences of those kids were. Finally, I looked on-line at the school newspaper to see what the hot button issues were.