<p>Is it too early to visit schools the summer between sophomore and junior year?</p>
<p>Absolutely not! My brother is a sophomore and visited a few colleges this spring (well, they just “happened” to be colleges whose lacrosse teams he is a big fan of who had games the same day, but…). Don’t make it high-stress, but it’s a good time to start visiting colleges- junior year is busy.</p>
<p>We visited colleges the summer between soph and junior year. We incorporated the visits into another trip, and the purpose ended up being a way for my daughter to narrow down her criteria. We visited a large urban school, small rural school, small suburban school, etc. </p>
<p>In some ways it was too early – so much changes junior year; you usually don’t know their SATs or their grades (and what I learned is you can’t assume that junior year grades will be at the same level as the first two years). So I think it’s a good idea to make these trips exploratory, and keep them fun.</p>
<p>It is a good time. Mostly so they are used to the routine when they visit schools in junior year.</p>
<p>i was listening to an interesting podcast suggesting that you have a few visits: one to just walk around and check it out (maybe look at a large uni,a lac etc), then tour the ones you are serious about, then re-visit the ones you are accepted to.</p>
<p>on the other hand i know people who applied to one sight unseen, got in,and attended that one school…</p>
<p>It was also very useful for us. S decided he really couldn’t handle a very rural campus or one with LOTS of snow (like Rochester). It also was helpful for D to see some of these places, tho it was “incidental” to a family trip we were taking for other reasons.</p>
<p>That was too early for our boys. I think you have to see how your child feels about it. My kids were very happy to go on visits into the junior year, but felt “pushed” and told us they felt “pushed” to discuss visiting colleges much before. Everybody is different. Our school holds a parent meeting in late fall of junior year to talk to parents about college and that seemed to be a trigger for our kids, so I’m assuming that there is “talk” beginning in the high school between the GCs and the kids with the advent of junior year coinciding with the parent meeting.</p>
<p>My son wanted to see a few colleges following his freshman year, so I agreed to take him. We had some nice visits, but the best thing was that he found out what he needed to take to be competitive for some schools.</p>
<p>Agree with momofthree (I am too!) that if your child is instigating this, great. However, dragging them off because you think it’s time or it’d be fun (which it is!) (when they’re interested) is pretty much a waste of time. Some kids are thinking college in middle school. Mine don’t really focus til senior year. And to those who think there isn’t enough time during senior year, really, there is. Makes for a busy year but if you’ve done enough pre-research and come up with a reasonable list, it is very doable.</p>
<p>If they are interested, I think this could be the best time since the junior year is so very important. Agree with momreads that it is eye opening as to what it takes to be competitive. Around that age, Mom and Dad don’t seem to be as smart as they used to be to many teens and hearing those things from admission staff can make the lessons hit home.</p>
<p>Different kids will be ready at different ages to take on the full court press of college visits, but:</p>
<p>My DD found that she need to visit about three colleges before she even began to have a critical eye of what to look for and what kind of questions to ask. There is a learning curve to visits; better to get it out of the way early, rather then panic in Fall Senior year!</p>
<p>PS: D’s prep school is nearly screaming, as are the parent of seniors, that students really really need to write college essays in Junior summer. Which means that the target list of colleges need to be fairly refined by end of Junior year. At her school 82% of student submitted fall (October) Senior college applications (EA, ED, rolling, engineering, or Umichigan’s “apply early” ).</p>
<p>I think kids often don’t have an idea of the logistics of visiting colleges. A high school student that is involved in an after school activity will have very limited time to visit colleges during the school year if they wait until the second semester junior year or later.
We did that with our daughter (waited until early Spring junior year) and it became quite stressful trying to visit colleges and get the applications done, plus participate in school activities and work a summer job. </p>
<p>With our second child we did some casual visits, a few with friends, starting late summer rising junior year. Some he picked and some I picked. Each one gave him a better idea of what he liked and what he didn’t like. I think the important thing is to make the visits enjoyable, yet productive.</p>
<p>We have a soph-junior son and I plan to stop at a couple of colleges along the way to Florida in June, including a visit at his brother’s college in Virginia. My SIL and her family have a daughter the same age (rising Junior) and may also stop at my son’s college to check it out for her.</p>
<p>We did it and I thought it was very productive even though out of all the schools we saw D only really liked one.</p>
<p>We did it with both D’s, and it was productive. Both were academically accomplished, so the primary purpose was to expose each to different colleges and universities. (Loved Bryn Mawr, hated St. Joes, liked Drexel but felt uncomfortable with the surrounding neighborhood, etc.) The rising Junior visits made the rising Senior visits very easy.</p>
<p>We were in the Philadelphia area the summer after DS#1’s sophomore year, and decided to tour Penn. He hated it, (city location) so that narrowed things down considerably.</p>
<p>We visited 8 schools the summer between 10th and 11th grade. My son found 5 schools that he liked from those visits. </p>
<p>I do think that some late bloomers will see some reach schools that will become match schools. Also, some students think that they want a certain type of school, but when college becomes more of a reality they might want something else. For example, someone from the east coast might think that they want to get as far away as possible and might be focused on the west coast. They might rethink that when they realize that they might want to be a bit closer to home. Others who were looking closer to home are ready to look a bit further from home as they become seniors. Same thing can happen with regard to big vs. small schools, or specialty schools.</p>
<p>Somehow I almost put visiting between sophomore and junior year into buying Christmas presents in July when they were much younger! By the time December rolls around, they may have changed their minds (several times!) about what they want. But that is just the way my four children were; other people’s children may be different & know what type of school they want & actually stick to it! </p>
<p>My S is high school junior & he stated about 2 months ago that he wanted a rural campus. If we had trotted all over the Northeast last summer looking at urban colleges, that would have been a waste of time & money and gasoline.</p>
<p>We did most of our cross country visiting in that time period. We looked at one school that was fairly close with some of DS’s HS friends. It was a good time frame in the sense that a couple of the kids who were of the “well, whatever, I’ll go to community college” kids were motivated by touring UCLA and worked harder in their Junior year to make sure they had the grades to attempt admission at the top tier UCs. YMMV</p>
<p>That’s when we started. There is a dearth of colleges which were both on my girls’ radar and within a day-trip. We don’t have a ton of extra money laying around for a visit budget so we started early in order to get it all done.</p>
<p>College visits have become some of the best memories I have shared with my kids so here is my advice for how to make the trip a pleasure, not a turn off.</p>
<p>1) give them ownership of the trip. Include a fun sidelight or two in the town(s) you are visiting, let the student pick where you eat, which in-room movie to watch etc</p>
<p>2) give them the right to bag the visit at any point and to bag certain parts of the visit as well. This is especially important for the student who, like my D, resents feeling forced. As soon as I told her that she didn’t have to tour or go to info sessions and could sit and read in the coffee shop instead, she became 100% more willing to participate. With one school DDs sat in on a class first thing and that was enough. They didn’t want to see any more of what the campus had to offer so we thanked the admissions staff, told them we had a long drive and were anxious to get on the road and said goodbye. Remember you are a consumer and it isn’t bad-manners to change your mind about the product you are being offered.</p>
<p>Giving my kids that control made them both more willing to visit other schools.</p>
<p>3) Asking a couple of questions is fine but don’t expect to necessarily get a multi-syllabic answer. Don’t badger for information.</p>
<p>Enjoy these early visits. They set the tone for the later ones and the re-visits you will be taking between January and May 1 when your student makes her/his final decision</p>
<p>If you know your child has a lot coming up in junior year, visit when you can. We did a few summer between sophomore and junior but not as many as we could have. Now D’s schedule doesn’t permit, so we are coming up to the end of junior and haven’t visited enough schools, have no real list because she didn’t like any of the schools we did visit, and her summer is absolutely packed.</p>