Opinions on visiting schools…did you visit a lot of schools BEFORE applying or not until accepted. I want D to visit a few close by schools for open houses they’re having this fall (she’s a jr) but am afraid of that whole " fall in love " with a school and then being disappointed…thoughts? Experiences?
I’m a believer in trying to visit some or all of your schools either prior to applying or else at auditions, rather than waiting until acceptances are given out. This helps to create the list, as well as to determine what factors in selecting a college appeal to the student. As well, if one waits until April of senior year to visit accepted schools once all schools have sent offers, and if lucky to have gotten into several and have never seen any of them, that is a lot of trips to coordinate and fit in during a very tight one month period before you must commit by May 1. I prefer to use that time period to revisit the top choices to make the final decision (if not yet made) and attend accepted student day events. I realize visits are expensive and also more difficult for those on the West Coast interested in a BFA in MT. But one advantage of on campus auditions is that you get to do the visit and the audition and so that is a good option. Ideally, I like to use junior year for visits (which I did with D1, but it turned out that for D2, my MT kid, junior year was her admissions year wrapped up into one).
I agree with @soozievt! Some of the schools my older kids thought were perfect fits on paper, they crossed right off their lists when we visited. They had a sense of if it would be a fit or not. So it really cut down the app list. Now that said, there are a couple of schools for my current senior that we will not visit until the audition because of distance and time and money.
Both before and after if you can, but if you put a gun to my head and said pick one, I’d say after. (You will then only be in trouble if you have a zillion acceptances and schools to try to visit in April - a good problem to have.) Most schools are much more open and accommodating to accepted students than to mere applicants. You will simply just get to see more, and you don’t have to worry about your kid falling in love because they are already loved back <3. We had visited every school my daughter applied to except one. (And wouldn’t you know, that is where she ended up, and we actually visited twice to be SURE). We had a week of school break to really put the top choices up to the microscope, so I told her to pick 3, which felt manageable in a week. Once accepted and you know they want you, the feeling of the visit is so different, and getting in touch with the “can I see myself here?” vibe really takes over.
I would also say before and during auditions, if possible. And don’t be surprised if the schools at the “top” of the list change along the way…
My S insisted that he wanted to be in a school with a rural like campus FAR from the city…and so he applied to mostly to rural and suburban schools. He fell in love with one southern-ish school during an “Art Visit Day” during his junior year in HS. It was one of the first schools he applied to in September…however, after he passed the applications and the prescreens…he had to find room in his calendar for the auditions…and schools only have specific audition dates available. (Thank goodness for Unifieds) My S started his auditions in December…but wasn’t able to fit in an audition with the “his favorite” program until the very end of January. By that time he had already done 4 auditions at Unifeds as well as 4 on campus auditions. By then he began to better understand the differences in the programs and what he wanted. His priorities began to change. When he FINALLY got to do the audition at his “top choice”… he wasn’t nearly as impressed by the audition as he was at some of the previous auditions he’d done. He still liked the school…but suddenly it was no longer his favorite.
On the other hand during the Unifieds he was VERY impressed with one school…and felt a strong connection with the auditor…and he loved the school’s reputation and website…but it was far away. We decided that he would only go visit the school if he was accepted. He was, and we did go for a visit…only to discover that my S felt very isolated there… (We’re from outside NYC) and suddenly 4 years felt like a VERY long time to be so far away…
In the end, my S decided on a school with a beautiful campus, with a very quaint town, great reputation, terrific professors…AND only a short train ride from NYC. As I said…it’s an evolving process…
I’m a big advocate for touring ANY college campus you happen to be near throughout your child’s high school years. These don’t have to be formal visits. Drive through campus. Park and walk around. Talk to students you encounter. Go see the theatre facilities if you can. Go to big and small schools, rural and urban ones. Give your student a sense of what campus life is like in these different settings. It will make them think about what size and location type appeal most to them. We did this any time we were driving anywhere - these were not school specific trips.
If you can in the summers, participate in on campus summer programs. Try a couple of different ones. This gives more intimate knowledge of a school’s training and general vibe IF the summer teachers are also the year round faculty. Counsellors are often current students from whom you can learn lots.
My D was not a fan of touring schools the same day she auditioned. She found it draining and distracting. But others love the on campus auditions. Something to think about when scheduling auditions.
visits post acceptance were the most in depth and the most relaxed because you already knew you were in. but there was not time or $ to re-visit places we’d already been. So figure out what will work best for your student.
We could not afford visiting all 18 schools (or whatever the number was, I have forgotten). We visited one safety and one BFA program to get a feel. If the feeling wasn’t right at the safety we probably would have tried to make another visit to more safeties. We were taking a leap of faith…like most of this process is.
Before if at all possible. Otherwise she is spending app time & money in schools she may not even like. And the window to visit is small in the spring, students and parents are busy, and if you are flying tickets are pricey on short notice. I think it increases the stress to wait.
In my D’s case, we visited 4 of her 8 schools before applying/auditioning. We visited all 8 for campus auditions (no Unifieds). So, for 4 of these schools, these were revisits and we had already seen and done things at the school the first time. At the four that were a first visit on the audition visit, she did not find it distracting because we were there for more than 24 hours and so she got to see things or visit a class and/or see a show, the day/night before her audition. At one school, the audition was in the morning and afterwards, since she had a friend in the program, we had lunch with a bunch of MT students and also she got to sit in on a class, etc. and was already done with her audition. It was only at one school that she just didn’t want to walk around or do things on campus after her audition, though we did see the town it was in. She got in there, but I have a feeling she was less than enamored with the location or for some reason didn’t care about seeing the whole campus. We knew kids at most of the programs and often my kid did an overnight with the student or at least met up with them and met other kids and so forth too. Also, at most on campus auditions, there are presentations by the director of the MT program, and so you get that sort of stuff and not just do your audition.
We found visits very important to building the final list of schools where D would apply. As others have noted, several programs went up/down as the process evolved, but it felt good to start with SOME concept of the place we were looking at.
We would’ve done some visits before, but D was adamant that she didn’t want to fall in love too much with one before or during the audition process. So, she visited during the on campus auditions (she also did Unifieds) and then as an accepted student. (We went back and visited even those which had been on campus auditions after acceptances.)
Actually, she did visit one the end of sophomore year, but that was really just because a friend was at a dual enrollment class there one of the days D visited her, and D was curious about the program and campus. Despite the good visit and the fact that it has a great program, it didn’t make D’s list–just based on details of the program that didn’t suit D.
We visited 6 schools within driving distance over spring break of her junior year. Two came off her list b/c of those visits. Of the remaining 4, she applied to all 4, but she did fall head over heels with one. She walked on campus and said, “I feel like I’m on ‘Say Yes to the Dress,’ and this is the one I want to say yes to.” She never wavered that this one school was her top choice. She cried after her audition b/c she was so sure she had messed up and she wanted to get in so badly. It was hard. Luckily, she got in and is a junior there now. But if she hadn’t…it would have been very, very difficult. That being said, by all means go look at schools that are close to home BEFORE they even apply. B/c, as others have mentioned, some schools may come off. Others may rise to the top of the list, and there may be things you can do to improve your chances of getting into that school. For example, some schools like the kids who show interest…Ithaca took her pic and started a file on her when she visited in high school. She went a second time after that, and then, when she auditioned, they noted that she had been there twice. So THEY knew she was very interested in them, and I think that mattered to them.
If you don’t want to fall in love with achools before acceptance by visiting the ones to which you are applying, try to visit some different types of colleges that don’t have MT programs just to get a feel for the different types of campuses there are. Do you like large universities? Small liberal arts schools? City campuses? Suburban or rural campuses? try to see at least one of each type. This may help in finalizing your list of where to apply and with final decision making.
Hate to be the pessimist or realist if you prefer…but there is a high likelihood that when it comes decision time you will have no choices or only one or two. Worrying about visits may be a mute point when you only have one choice.
I like @vvnstar’s advice- and it was certainly something my D found useful. There are several well known BFA programs that are not a bad drive from home- and we visited all of them (ended up applying to 2). We also visited a dozen other campuses within the same distance to get a “feel” for what she liked in a campus overall. That helped us focus on what types of BFA schools we wanted to visit as we travelled further from home.
@bisouu, good grief! I know that your experience with your D was particularly stressful, but saying that worrying about visits is a “moot” point is a tad bit extreme.
Who knows what the outcome will be during this process, so gaining as much info (and worrying about the best route to take during the journey) is totally normal.
Yes, I realized I spelled moot wrong (it autocorrected before I could change it). Just adding a bit of realism…sorry if I offended you. The OP asked for opinions and I gave mine. Sorry if it didn’t agree with yours. I was one of the BIGGEST worriers and didn’t listen to those who had gone before me who said to relax and things would all work out. I wish I had listened. Visiting 10 programs that were on the east coast was not a possibility for us so we had to do unifieds and hope that we would snag an admissions. We snagged one but I am sure if my daughter had received more than one we would have visited after the fact. If you have the funds and the desire to visit beforehand by all means do so. It wasn’t in the cards for us. In retrospect we saved thousands of dollars that can be put towards settling into NYC once my daughter graduates. If my daughter had gotten into BU, or Emerson, I know she would have jumped at the chance to attend without a second thought or visit. She adapts easily and not seeing the campus would not have dissuaded her from attending one of these stellar programs. I guess your kid needs to know their abilities to adjust and work within what they are given. Mine has the attitude that she would have a wonderful experience no matter where she went.
@bisouu, it’s not about agreeing with my opinion :).
The OP asked for opinions about whether to visit before or after acceptances. You basically said don’t worry because it’s most likely the student won’t have any choices anyway. (I believe you said it was a high likelihood that she won’t have any or more than one or two anyway.). That’s why I said good grief!
I do think I need to take D to see some schools beforehand . If for no other reason as it will let her get a feel for size and atmosphere, rural or urban etc. she has no siblings, so she’s never had visits to colleges even to see a sister etc.
Lordy I sure hope we have at least 2 choices …lol.
While there are endless things in this process that are stressful-especially the odds of acceptance at any specific program are daunting, I wanted to make the college process as exciting and joyful as possible for my kid. I have wonderfully find memories of the roadtrip(s) with my parent to see different schools- and the excitement and fascination of making my first life choice. Granted, it was a different world- I applied to several good schools, got may acceptances, and made my choice. I knew there would probably be bumps in D’s road that hadn’t been mine, but I still wanted it to feel exciting. It’s one reason why we did the 3 safeties - so she would have choices no matter what. For us- visiting schools and “daydreaming” was one of the best parts of the process. Even at the schools that didn’t make the final list (like Emerson) we have fond memories. I strongly advise those heading into the process not to get swallowed up in the stress (advice I did not always follow) and focus on finding the joy in this very exciting period of life