<p>Dear CC community,</p>
<pre><code> At this stage in the college process, none of us have any time for direct, actual tour to our dream colleges. I bring this question since I understand that it is a great help to include personal experience with the colleges on my supplement essays. However, will a details from a virtual tour suffice? I want to demonstrate interest in a college but now it is too late for direct visits. Thanks!
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<p>I don’t think that you can have a dream college w/o visiting it in all honesty. And no, the details on virtual tour s (5-10 min) are significantly watered down in comparison to actual tours!</p>
<p>(1 hr - 2hr)</p>
<p>My kids got into schools without visiting. Just read the websites in order to get information about the programs and philosophies of the various colleges, so that you can write a specific Why college X essay.</p>
<p>From my (limited) experience - researching the school and it’s opportunities for you should be good enough. Take the University of Michigan for example - I’ve never visited the school, just heard really great things about it. I researched it, and found out about their dual major program, which interested me a lot, as well as their center for entrepreneurship (in which you can combine business and engineering). Both of these really helped me get interested in the school and decide that it was a good fit for me. For another college I wrote about the many major options available, as well as the numerous extracurricular activities I could get involved in.</p>
<p>IMO, essays about college interest basically ask “how will you the opportunities at our school affect you?”. Not why the college would benefit from you attending, but why something specific at the school attracts you and how you plan to use it.</p>
<p>One thing you may or may not know is that U of M’s School of Engineering is 2 miles from the main campus. They have bus service between the two, however, it was during the visit that D1 decided she did not like the separate campuses. The main campus is beautiful, the engineering campus felt like a branch campus to her.</p>
<p>One good thing about actually visiting the campus is being able to talk to students, professors, administrators about the school and opportunities there. And you will get to see everything, whereas an online tour might show only the well known or more scenic portions of campus. Get the good and the bad. For example, I visited a school that had a really nice campus, but the surrounding area is a notoriously bad place in terms of crime and violence. I wouldn’t have been convinced of that assessment without having visited there in person (so I’m glad I did).</p>