<p>Tried a search for this, but didn't come up with any directly helpful hits. D #2 is a jr and we are facing a search completely different from the one for D1. D2 has had tremendous health problems this year so we haven't visited any schools with her and really can't pull her out of additional days of school to do visits now. We have compiled a great list of schools for her (creative writing is her focus with continued Oboe playing). We will be able to mamke one Saturday Jr. visit day at Goucher in a few weeks.</p>
<p>I'm looking for input on whether we should find some way to make a trip to Boston to visit some schools before the academic year ends or just wait until summer. How informative are those summer visits? We would let her visit the 2-3 schools she narrows things down to next winter/spring before making a decision so these visits are to help naroow the focus and refine our list while hopefully having a couple of schools that emerge as top choices.</p>
<p>While they're not ideal, they can be helpful. My d did some summer visits, and I know several kids who only did summer visits. It lets you see the campus in person and get a "feel" for the physical plant. It also lets you see the surrounding area, which for my d was very important. In the Boston area, that also counts - you can easily see the distinctions in campus life between, say, Boston University, Boston College, Northeastern and Brandeis.</p>
<p>Unless you can visit in the next two weeks, you're running into the finals period, with reading weeks and exams taking up the most time. IMO, visiting during those times is not particularly helpful.</p>
<p>My d also applied to several schools sight unseen, based on websites, brochures, DVD tours, and recommendations by people who know her well and whom she respected. She visited those schools after acceptance and is in fact attending one of them.</p>
<p>Short answer: visiting during the year, but not during exams, is best; visiting in the summer is better than not visiting at all.</p>
<p>We visited a sch. on S1's list in the summer. We were surprised at the large number of kids in the tour group. The tour guide was good and it was more relaxed without having to dodge your way through crowds of students. Summer school was in session at the time. That kept it from feeling like a "ghost campus". There were students and staff out and about on campus. It was also nice to leisurely peruse the uncrowded student bookstore and have a meal in the student cafeteria without having to fight for a place to sit. It was definitely worth the trip.</p>
<p>Also, she might want to look into summer camps/courses targeted at music or creative writing on the campuses she is interested in. This can be a way to get to know not only a school and surrounding area, but also some profs, current students, and other high school students who are looking at similar schools. The network my daughter stumbled on by doing this was really helpful in deciding on her final list of possible colleges.</p>
<p>We visited schools both during the summer and during the school year. The summer visits helped to weed out some schools, so they were definitely useful for my kids (their lists were ridiculously long, and we had to start somewhere). In the summer, everything is clean and pretty. You can't tell whether facilities are overused, if the dorms are cleaned, or how the food really is. On the other hand, you can check out others on the tour (potential classmates...some of them will admit as you walk along whether it's their first choice or their parents are dragging them there) and can answer many of your questions.</p>
<p>Visits during the school year showed another side of the school. You may be able to do a few of them in the Fall of your kid's Senior year. They can also work as weed out visits (we were visiting one big state university when there was a change of classes, and the sidewalks were filled with clones wearing the the university tee-shirts...one of my kids hated it, and the other one thought it was cool). </p>
<p>IMO, some of the most useful visits are the ones for admitted students in the Spring. You kid will see prospective classmates and the school makes its last pitch, rolling out all of the information that you need to know. Many of those admitted student days include great departmental presentations or meetings. One of my kids moved #3 up to #1 based on an admitted students day - in fact, we bought the bumper sticker before leaving the campus that day.</p>
<p>I'm planning on doing some summer visits with my D, and the college road trip will probably have to be over the summer because my spring break and hers are different, and her HS does not consider college visits excused absences. She'll be a jr next year, so hopefully we'l work in some visits druing the school year. I plan on seeing if she can sit in on a class in her area of interest.</p>
<p>agree especially with Chedva....school year (not exam time) >> summer >> not visiting.</p>
<p>In my kids case, with a long shoping list & too little time, there is (was) no avoiding summer visits. S, now a college freshman, did visit his ultimately selected school during summer, but it didn't stand out until he visited again during April after his acceptance. I think summer visits can help with some binary decisions, but only visits while in session can help one discern between close calls.</p>
<p>One other piece of advice: figure out well ahead of time which schools on the list interview, & schedule those interviews while visiting. Its very easy to say you'll do them later, but difficult getting back. Some schools place more importance on interviewing than others. Start with a low risk prospect to get practiced. And figure out which interviews are "evaluative" versus only "informative." I found that interviewing also helped in the maturation process by having someone other than a parent placing importance on college-adult stuff.</p>
<p>For us, the summer visits were a lot better than no visits for all the reasons you've already heard. My son thought he learned enough to cut his list in half. He did want to revisit his favorites after he got acceptances.</p>
<p>My son visited an Arizona college in the summer (!!yikes!!) and the visit went well enough to make it his first choice school. We also visited a St. Louis school for an official visit day in September, but it was on a Saturday, so classes were not in session then either (and most students were still sleeping, I think, during our campus tour). Both were fine for getting a flavor of the schools.</p>
<p>If distance limits the opportunity to visit, I would just go whenever. It's better than relying on internet videos.</p>
<p>Agree w/ most of the above. IMO your child can get a very accurate impression of a school in the summer. We did most of D's visits in the summer, due to scheduling issues. None of the schools we visited were completely empty, and none of the info sessions/tour groups were "one-on-one" due to lack of other students. The whole concept of you must visit while school is in session is really not as big an issue as many make it out to be -- again, IMO.</p>
<p>Thanks so much for all the responses -- sounds like summer visits will suffice with follow up vistis next academic year for schools she is serious about in the end.</p>