Many high schools limit the number of applications their students can apply to. For these families, visiting the schools is important for getting the list of prospective schools right.
^^^^ Yep!
“Visits outside of parents alma mater are a waste of time. All my children are private school lifers. Worth every penny. Other major expenses are summer programs and private tutoring.”
We toured somewhere between 12 - 15 schools for our twins. Worth every penny. We found it important to know what schools are like before applying to them.
Primemeridian why would they? If so what’s the average?
One of my kids’ HS limited it to 10 applications. I guess it was to prevent the families from wasting the teachers’ & counsellors’ time. Many of the families were super wealthy and could easily afford getting a private college counselor to assist in shotgunning applications to 3 dozen schools.
@Pizzagirl Glad to hear Midwesterners can get into elite colleges. Hope it applies to us as well in the South. Hope the adcome at Reed and Bryn Mawr (Reaches!) have heard of Raleigh. Or Lewis and Clark, a match for my DD, and what I figure to be a pretty good school, despite it’s 60%+ acceptance rate. Well, we had fun visiting them and 10 others, at least.
I can see that and seems like a fair amount. Thought maybe it was limited to 3.
I wonder where that leaves kids who will be the first in their family to go to college, or whose parents attended foreign universities. In my personal opinion, that statement is not great advice. But of course, travel to schools might not be in the budget at all. It certainly wasn’t for me. I went sight unseen. And yes, I was the first in my family to attend college.
To get more directly at your question, in our case with my kids we did visit schools (quite a few in fact), but I think this step is clearly something many will not be able to afford. Plus we made a kind of vacation out of it. But thank goodness for the Internet and online campus tours and the like. Is it a great substitute compared to actually visiting in person? No, but necessity is what it is. Most students are adaptable enough that they will be fine on a campus they have not actually visited, assuming they are comfortable with the parameters they do know such as overall size, geographic distribution of the student body, etc. Again, the Internet is such a wealth of information. along with visuals, that it is a lot better situation for you than it was for me pre-Internet, and I did just fine. So my advice is not to get too hung up on the visiting part.
If expenses are tight, take advantage of application fee waivers and the like. It really can add up. Same for having to send test scores and such. Also, do as much research as you can about schools that fit your desired size, location, likely affordability, etc. Then limit your applications to a few schools towards the top of your statistical range (if that is part of your personal aspirations), a juicy set the middle, and a few where you are very likely to get accepted.
You’ve gotten some good summaries on here of typical spending patterns of all kinds, but don’t be afraid to utilize every cost saving measure available to you if you quality. Don’t let pride or shyness about a family situation get in the way of maximizing your reach for this extremely important life decision. In other words, don’t limit yourself unnecessarily.
Another thing we found was that a lot of colleges, even many of the “Top” schools, held local events. Not all off the mail you get is junk / marketing fluff. Worth taking the time to scan everything that comes in! Carnegie Mellon, for example, sent mailings with invites to local events where you got the chance to interact with your local Adcom. UChicago also sent invitations to local NYC events. There were also a number of “consortium” events - where 4 or 5 schools sponsored a joint local event. Registration required. Your HS most likely has a number of colleges that will visit your school. Check with your guidance counselor and sign-up.
My public school kid happily sits beside his private school counterparts every day. Seems to be doing just fine.
I would like to second what @dyiu13 said about slipping in a visit if you are at an academic conference or something EC-related. Like the family vacation strategy, it is easy to take a couple hours out of the day to do a short visit. Actually my only visit to a school I will apply to was in such a situation. I had the opportunity to tour Vanderbilt while I was in Nashville for a science competition, and would otherwise not have been able to go. (There would otherwise not have been enough reason to justify the drive and hotel costs.) Granted, that was in summer and it was really empty, but I did get to speak with some locals about the campus and students.
@hamlon - doschicos and lookingforward mentioned fly-in programs – my D did three of these last year. Along with a free trip to each of these campuses, she also received tuition waivers to apply to these schools. Just another way to keep costs down. There is an old thread about all the various fly-in programs. Oh, and I forgot to add – some of the schools were willing to accept unofficial score reports for my D, so we did not have to send “official” ACT reports. There are ways to cut expenses. Good luck to you.
I applied recently.
I took the SAT twice - 50 * 2 = 100,
For prep resources, purchased the blue book, and Erica Melzer’s guide and DH 1 and 2 - 100
SAT IIs = 50 (I had to write them twice because I took them once when I was unprepared)
CA = 7 * 100 = 700
Canadian Schools/safeties = not very much, if at all.
Flight to visit Columbia = 400
Hotel = 110
~1460, plus some misc, so 1600 or so. If you count APs, then 2000. My APs were utterly useless at the college I attend, but would’ve been helpful had I gone to a public university.
In retrospect, it is quite expensive. I only visited my college after I was accepted and attended two other tours at schools I’d been accepted at/safeties I was visiting for an academic competitions. My family was planning on doing a US college visit tour prior to the start of my senior year, but it was expensive and annoying to plan, since we were going to have to fly from Western Canada to the East Coast and book hotels, cars etc. We went on a family vacation to a national park instead.
In retrospect, I don’t regret not visiting. During my visit to Columbia after being accepted, I didn’t like it at all because I was shy and had just come from an interview for a program that I, at the time, strongly preferred. I also visited a smaller, rural university during my interview in Canada, and I didn’t really like it either, mostly because the idea of going to college was scary and weird. I enrolled in Columbia. In hindsight, Columbia is not a perfect fit for me - I would’ve preferred a place that is in a less stressful and more beautiful environment than NY, the lack of community (besides Bacchanal) is tiring etc. etc. A smaller, more isolated university, with a stronger sense of community would’ve been a better fit for me, but my parents would not have paid for it, especially since I got several major scholarships in Canada.
At the same time, these precise facts were not evident to me after visiting, so I wonder how much is truly gleanable. I think you can figure out whether you like the campus or not, but I question how much you can truly get from a <12 hour visit. People complain about school and stress culture and whatnot all the time at my college, despite enrolling. I guess I don’t think anything in life is necessarily perfect, but a lot of the time it’s good enough.
If I were trying to save money, I would go check out local schools with similar attributes, be very careful about the list you’re making by realistically evaluating your chances and needs, and selectively visiting after acceptance after weighing financial aid and opportunities for renegotiation. I think test prep to a certain point is worth it (i.e. buying books), because it really does raise your chances for schools that admit based on stats and makes you a contender on others.