I understand that the best time to visit colleges is when they are in session (September-April), so that you can sit in on classes, eat in the cafeteria with students, talk to professors, get a superficial feel for the culture, etc. I’m sure I’m not the only one, though, whose child doesn’t want to miss school to go on visits because of all the missed content and make-up work!
Is there a way to get a genuine feel for a college by visiting in the summer? What can we do beyond the usual info session and campus tour? (We’ve been to five of those so far, and they are so similar as to be indistinguishable.)
Do any of these campuses have summer classes going on that might make a summertime visit more worthwhile?
Wooster
Denison
Grinnell
Macalester
Knox
Kenyon
Beloit
Kalamazoo
Emory University
Summer visits are not optimal, but sometimes they are all that timing, finances, or logistics allow. We certainly did a few with our two kids. I will say that my son fell in love with both Macalaster and Grinnell in summer visits when the campuses were pretty empty, so it is still possible to get a flavor of what the schools are like. Emory is considerably bigger than the others on your list and more likely to have stuff going on during the summer.
We know most of those schools pretty well, after my kid went through sports recruiting at all but Mac and Emory. I think it would be hard to get a strong enough feel for any of them during the summer to be able to say whether they stay on or come off a list. Putting aside Mac and Emory, since we didn’t visit, the rest don’t have summer classes. While there are going to be tours, the students on campus will be there for research or employment, and there just won’t be enough of the “regular” college vibe to know whether it’s a good fit or not. All wonderful places, just hard for a student to walk away from a summer visit saying “yes” or “no way.” The only summer visit we made was to Grinnell, where the visit was enough for my kid to say, “ok, worth another visit.”
Emory might, but LACs usually don’t. We still had good summer visits. One kid ended up at a school where her first visit was a 100 degree day in early August.
@naryurf I’m not sure he’d even be able to articulate what it was he liked. Clicked with the tour guides, liked the look/feel of the campus and surrounding areas (which were pretty different from each other), was impressed by the facilities and resources. One thing that stuck out for him at Grinnell was that we were early for our tour and while we stood out at a map of the campus, three different people stopped and asked if they could help us with anything. My very urban boy was struck enough by the friendliness of that that he wrote about it in his “why Grinnell” essay.
Other than Emory and maybe Kalamazoo, those schools can lend themselves to two separate trips (depending on what part of the country you are coming from). During my kid’s junior year, we used various long weekends – which colleges generally don’t observe so are full of activity – so Labor Day, Columbus Day (if your high school observes it), Presidents Day.
Denison, Kenyon and Wooster are a loop from Columbus airport. You could fly into Columbus on a Sunday night, visit Denison and Kenyon one day (they are about 45 minutes apart), hop up to Wooster (an hour from Kenyon) at the end of that day, see Wooster in the morning, then fly back out of Columbus. Or do the reverse, drive up to Wooster on Sunday night, visit Wooster and Kenyon on Day 1, then Denison Day 2, and easy 25 min drive to Columbus airport from Denison later on Day 2. Grinnell, Mac, Beloit and and Knox are another, slightly longer trip. Fly into either Twin Cities or O’Hare, and make a loop. Kzoo is tricky to get to on either of those trips, since it is about 2 1/2 hours east of O’Hare, whereas the WI/MN/Iowa/IL schools are the opposite direction.
We visited these schools during school year and summer, as part of recruiting process. Summer is worthwhile as a way to show interest, learn the basics. At least for my kid, there were no deal-breakers from summer visits, mostly because you just don’t know to what extent things which might feel “iffy” in the summer, without students, really won’t matter when there are students.
Not to make your list longer, but Lawrence and Earlham have a lot of overlap with these schools.
You already understand the downside of summer visits. But it is a good time to interview, which most of these schools want you to do. And you will have more time to chat with the folks who are there. If any are being considered for ED, you will want to see those in session.
Concur that Denison and Kenyon can be done in one day.
We found all of our summer visits worthwhile and were able to cross of a few schools after talking to faculty and students. For those that stayed on the list and didn’t have classes in session, we circled back.
Do what you have to do…we didn’t interact much with students on tours.
After your child applies and is admitted, then they can go on campus for admitted students days for the top 2-3 choices and see the campus with school in session.
We found that it’s impossible to get official visits in at more than 2 schools per day, and even then that’s hard, and most schools didn’t offer official visits on Sundays. So during the school year we did unofficial visits at multiple schools over a weekend, and used the summer to do an official visit at the schools my D was more interested in, in order to check the demonstrated interest box. I also took notes during the info sessions to try to determine what each school was looking for, which helped for the “why us” question. I found that the schools really did portray themselves slightly differently, but it was very nuanced. It’s really important that your kid take notes of his/her visit immediately after leaving the college grounds, or else all the schools will start to run together.
From roughly June 4-June 16, Denison has its is “June O” orientation programs for incoming first years, so there will be about 100+ incoming first years, parents, and June O staff on campus at intervals during that period – there are breaks between Orientation sessions so there will be June O staff, but not necessarily incoming first years, every day. It will not be a “complete” snapshot of the incoming students, since international students generally do an August orientation/registration rather than travel twice in the summer to campus.
@Midwestmomofboys Where did you visit over Labor Day? We have the prior Thursday and Friday off, so would like to make use of it, but it’s hard to find schools in session then.
@allyphoe – many midwest schools, other than the trimester ones, begin class towards late August, as compared to back east where it is more likely to be after Labor day. I took a quick quick look at the academic calendar and saw that Wooster and Earlham begin class Aug 22, 2018 and Grinnell, Denison and Kenyon begin Aug 30. Oberlin and Macalester both begin after Labor day though.
If you are flying out to see the Ohio schools, I would suggest flying into Columbus or Cleveland and back from the other. If you start in Columbus, the pattern would be Denison, Kenyon, overnight, Wooster, Oberlin. Starting in Cleveland, reverses the order. If you wanted, you could replace Wooster or Oberlin with CWRU.
I agree, if Oberlin is on the list and you want to minimize travel time, then using Cleveland airport makes sense as it is about 45 min from Oberlin. But, if surcharges for rental car drop off at different location, or flying out of different location, make it too expensive, then Oberlin is about 2 hours to Columbus airport so not an awful drive. Granted, living in the midwest, we are used to driving 2 hours to the airport!