given how spread out my son’s list is–one Chicago, two Minnesota, one California, two Virginia, five New England–and his difficulty in establishing his priorities, he has only seen three of his schools. Two high reaches, one low match. Yes, if he gets into more than a few schools in March, he’ll be scrambling to visit, but it will be so dependent on which schools he gets into that I just can’t formulate any kind of plan. My kid is quirky, with better test scores than grades, and I doubt he’ll be the kind of applicant who gets in everywhere. The upside is that although he has favorites, he’s not indelibly attached to one specific school. The downside, of course, is that, especially if he doesn’t get into any of his front runners, we could be taking a lot of trips.
Try to find out when each college has their accepted student days, so you can plan ahead. If they haven’t announced them yet, look at last year’s online - usually they are the same days of the week and time of the year. Save some of your vacation days for those trips, and try to avoid any conflicting commitments. At some colleges, the most popular dates for accepted student days fill up fast (such as the first or second Saturday in April for regular decision students).
D applied to quite a few schools with late March/April decision dates. We considered visiting some over Spring Break, but since they were all reaches, we decided to just wait and see where, if any, she was accepted. Fortunately (or unfortunately?), she got into almost all of them, which gave us just a few weeks to visit 5 schools scattered from coast to coast. One of those weekends was Prom, another was a State competition for her main EC, and factoring in the expense, we only made it to one school. Two of the schools she had to pass up were pretty high on her list, and it was really heartbreaking to have to eliminate them simply because she never got the chance to see them. She wound up choosing a school she’d been admitted to EA (which she loves and couldn’t be happier at), but I still feel terrible about the schools she never got to visit. Kind of like being given a gift and throwing it away without even opening it.
We visited every school my daughter applied to (except for 1, which she added late in the process) before she applied. The trips weren’t expensive, we drove, we brought a cooler with food, we stayed in cheap hotels, and most of the schools gave her application waivers for visiting, so she applied to 10 schools and it cost $65 total. She removed two schools from her list after visiting.
Look at it this way (since it turned out well): It made her decision easier. I’m a believer in open doors. One door opened for her, the others closed, and she ended up where she was meant to be.
My D did apply to one school she did not visit as it is 10 hours driving away. It is like a blind date, but they waived the application fee and essay requirement while they have one of the best program in my D’s intended major so she did apply to it. If she expressed any interest in that school, we would visit it before the final decision. However, my D has her heart on the in state flagship for years so she did not even want to visit that school after admission notice although it turned out to be even cheaper than our in state flagship after scholarships. She did visit the in state flagship 3 times even we know the school inside out already. 
Stop the madness! I think in some ways the college visits have gotten nuts. Obviously if some schools are on different coasts, you might take one trip. And go somewhere near where you live if you applied there. Otherwise I would just wait until you see how it shakes out. Then pick the top ones.
In advance, really, you can figure out a lot. For instance, you might not want a college that takes all day to fly to, with layovers and then a two hour drive. It just might get off the list fast.
Your kid might not really want to be in NYC. You might check out local rural and if your kid can’t stand being with the cows, you can eliminate those. There are virtual tours online.
I can’t imagine visiting 20 colleges, as someone said. I hope I don’t have nightmares tonight - although in all fairness, they might have been bunched together on the east coast. @-)
Are visits considered more important now than a generation ago? Seems that, despite much greater information flow now, people on these forums seem to think that it is vital to visit colleges before attending. I don’t recall the urge to visit to be particularly great among students when I was a high school senior. I would not be surprised if many of the students in my high school class first visited a college the day they showed up to register for classes at that college (even for the local community college or state university).
@ucbalumnus agreed! BTW, I’m a UCB alum as well.
We visited all schools applied to for both our daughters. Most were within a 5 hour drive, but a few were 8-10 hours away and one needed a airfare. It was all well worth it though.
Thinking back, we probably could have taken a nice vacation with the money we spent on visits, testing fees, application fees etc. before the first tuition bill even came! Oh, what we do for our kids! 
For me, visiting colleges was kind of a nice vacation. I didn’t get to go away to college, so it’s probably something I should talk about with a therapist, but I love visiting colleges.
Back in the day that was certainly true. But I also know 2 people from this era who enrolled sight-unseen at a college that was within easy driving distance from LA but didn’t bother visiting, and ended up transferring. Both said they knew right away it wasn’t the right fit for them. So I guess its YMMV.
Some of the problems kids face attending a college they haven’t visited are easily avoidable- Wellesley is all women; it’s not in Boston (it’s in a gorgeous and very upscale suburb of Boston, but you can’t leave chem lab and be at your internship at Mass General Hospital in 15 minutes); it’s a liberal arts college which does not have a lot of pre-professional type programming or support.
To me- all of this is easily learned from the website or from reading a couple of blogs. If you are looking for an active coop program in IT or to be downtown or you want coed classes- you shouldn’t need to visit W to figure out that this is going to be a poor fit.
So I have little pity for the kids who seem deaf dumb and blind before heading off to college. If you can download music from the Grammy’s, you have enough technical skills to do basic college research.
But some of the kids I know who’ve been unhappy and have transferred are NOT like the Wellesley woman I know. They had some intangible/hard to describe issues, where visiting would have cleared things up right away.
So YMMV.
I think it is best to visit before hand if possible…prioritizing those that are close and are not a pain to get to, and those that consider Demonstrated Interest. After admissions, you should be able to narrow down the choices based on cost and any other research that has been done since applying. You should be re-visiting a much smaller set and maybe getting to those that are farther away.
“So I have little pity for the kids who seem deaf dumb and blind before heading off to college. If you can download music from the Grammy’s, you have enough technical skills to do basic college research.”
Yes, but basic online research is a far cry from being on campus with students and faculty, however briefly. The most insightful moments for us tended to occur in the college cafeterias, in line at the coffee shop, and in the case of one LAC–watching some students tear down the set of a play that had just been performed.
At the very beginning I asked D to visit each school that she intended to apply to, before applying. It took 18 months. We saw 20 (and she ended up applying to 8, plus our state U flagship). We visited in clusters, also saw close-by relatives, and mixed in some vacation. It wasn’t cheap. But it was a great experience for all of us. It gave D time to process, and to compare.
Since acceptances started coming in beginning in November, D has been more relaxed than I might have expected. She’ll do 2 or 3 accepted student visits next month, but her mind is pretty much made up already.
Basic research- is a school isolated or in a bustling metropolis. Basic research- is the music conservatory (where as a non-conservatory student you hope to take classes) next to the main campus, or a 30 minute shuttle ride away, so that a 45 minute music class becomes a 2 1/2 hour time sink? Basic research- are Honors students in the regular Freshman dorms or on their own floor in another building? Basic research- of the three faculty in the department you want to major in, how many of them are emeritus (and answer- if it’s more than zero, this is likely not enough classes and professors to craft a major). Basic research- if you have to apply to the major you want after Freshman year and a 3.6 GPA is required to get in, how many kids DON’T get in and end up leaving the college?
I think visiting is extremely valuable. But not every kid can visit every college, and I think it’s smart to conserve your financial resources for a finalist college. But showing up somewhere in August in the age of Google maps and every other online tools to discover that the college is not near public transportation, or the nearest supermarket is a five mile walk… seems a little crazy to me.
Visits can capture much more than looking at photos/videos online or reading various reviews on a college or even the college materials themselves. While getting information/doing research on a college is important, to me, getting a feel for the campus and meeting a few students or faculty is really key. If you can’t visit before, it’s really important, IMO, to visit after you’re accepted.
Personally, I applied to schools that appealed to me because of the research I did on them. I only visited three schools: two schools are near me, and I stayed overnight with friend at another.
I applied to 18 schools, so visiting all of them is a little insane. I’m waiting to see where I get in before visiting. It just made sense to me - why visit a school that isn’t statistically likely to accept me?
We did both. Saved our sons the expense and wasted time applying to colleges they ended up crossing off the lists as soon as they visited. After the acceptances were in, we re-visited a couple to solidify their decisions.
Another issue: If you S or D plan to study in a specific area, the chance to sit in on classes and interview with the other faculty in the department is pretty darn important, IMO. They are going to be spending a ton of time in classes with this faculty–they better like them!