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<p>The Onion spoof was about Tufts, as in the “Tufts effect”</p>
<p>The Princeton admissions person who did the info session we attended was the opposite - kept emphasizing holistic admissions and how there was no cutoff for scores or gpa.</p>
<p>Princeton hasn’t accepted transfer students in years…and when they did, it was a VERY VERY small number. </p>
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To the Ivies and many other big universities, no, but to smaller LACs yes. Whether student interest matters in admission is specified in common datasets. And there was an article a while back about this topic. Lehigh University was used as an example of those that are “sensitive” to school visits. In general, I would try to visit the colleges you will apply if they are within a few hours of drive. Otherwise, unless you are traveling with the kids for other purposes and the schools happen to be on the way, it’s not worth an exclusive trip.</p>
<p>“We were at an info session this summer and my daughter was waiting to ask the admissions officer a question - when we witnessed another prospective applicant share some stats and ask her question, to be told bluntly “I would discourage you from applying, there is very little chance of you being admitted with that GPA”.”</p>
<p>While it may be discouraging, it puts the lie to the concept that “adcoms just want everyone to try to apply so it can drive their admit rates down and impress USNWR” (for which admit rate is only 1.5% anyway). What would you rather them do? </p>