<p>Are the visit days worth a 4 hour trip or should we plan an individual trip? Are the visit days beneficial when we're not certain about he school? Thanks.</p>
<p>I’m a parent. A day off from work and 8 hours of driving can be expensive. But if on that day your child decides to speak to you because there’s nothing else to do in the car, the eight hours of driving could prove worth every hour. I try to make all these trips, visit days, tour days, whatever, into an adventure for student and me. Sometimes that works. I make her navigate using a map. We talk about driving and navigating situations, and I have her drive home some part of the way.</p>
<p>We did a visit day at URichmond that really helped to clarify for me the nature of financial aid and how it worked at schools like Richmond. Any time I have a chance to get inside an admin’s head is helpful for my understanding of how he or she thinks about a subject. So the visit to Richmond was worth it because I could apply so much of what I learned in two sessions with administrators to other schools D was considering. The marketing component I could do without. The rest of the day was spent on a tour that was no better or worse than any other tour I’ve been on. Some are really good and some are the largest waste of time. I think if you go there with particularly gaps in your understanding of the process that you’re trying to fill, a visit day might be worth 8 hours in the car. For D the day was like any other tour day where she had a chance to see how the students dressed and acted, if they looked you in the eye, etc. We had set up in advance a 15 minute conversation with the professor who runs the program in which she was interested, and he let it go 30 minutes and D learned a lot. I don’t know that he would have done that if it hadn’t been an official visit day, but D was obviously interested in the program and college.</p>
<p>So, yeah, they can be helpful if you put a little prep into the visit day and you think of it as, at minimum, a chance to get to know your child a little better. But the tour, meh, hit or miss.</p>
<p>Finally, D was interested in the school and the program but ultimately decided that the students weren’t enough like her that she wanted to apply there. So the visit helped her work that out, but i’m not sure that a tour wouldn’t have done the same thing.</p>
<p>Visit days for admitted students were very useful for my son. Sure, the school is working hard to show off, and it is bound to be impressive. But my son particularly appreciated the change to look around and see who his peers might be. </p>
<p>As a parent, there were also differences among schools in the level of professionalism demonstrated. Very interesting to see the well-organized vs. the not so much schools. That can make your life easier in terms of getting answers on financial aid, tuition payments etc.</p>
<p>And, agree, that time in the car with your senior is irreplaceable. We both have great memories of those trips, even with the disagreements and frustration that came with them.</p>
<p>It doesn’t really matter if you go to a visit day or do an information session/tour on another day. We did a mix depending on what made sense for our schedule. Just try to plan visits for when the school is in session. And yes, I learned a lot about each of my two kids from doing college visits and going through the college selection process together.</p>
<p>We did a mix as well. Some of the group Visit Days where required because that is when scholarship interviews were.</p>
<p>DS preferred the individual visit. He felt too much down time in visit days. Also, every Visit Day seemed to have “that” prospective kid who annoyed him.</p>
<p>I preferred the Visit Days for the reason MidwestMom stated – I liked seeing the organization of the school.</p>
<p>There’s no good answer to that question, as others have suggested. We “forced” our daughter to look at a school we thought would be perfect for her and she fell in love with it after our private tour. When we went back to the Admitted Student Day group open house it was such a disaster and she learned so many negative things about the school it went from number 1 to off the list.</p>
<p>Other times the individual tours did not impress as much as the Admitted Student Day tours. I do believe you can see some of the administrations organizational skills during the larger open house events but honestly, once you’re admitted you have very little to do with the Admissions office.</p>
<p>We are doing a mixture but mainly because we can’t always schedule a visit during the Visit Days. I like the individual visits because the groups are way smaller. During the open house, the tour groups had 10-15 students (and also parents) while during the individual visits, the tour groups have been around 5-6 students. The Open Houses, however, usually provides more information about various programs and financial aid.</p>
<p>Thank you! D has about 6 schools she is interested in. I am trying to plan to go to at least 5 group visits in the spring–(and one quick drive by) and then in the Fall plan individual visits. I guess my confusion is on where we talk individually to financial aid people? I plan on scheduling interviews for the Fall individual visits but would like to know more FA info before applying–more personally–not just the big picture that I can find out online. Can I scheduled a meeting (or is there a chance to talk one on one) with the FA at these larger visit days? Thank you so much. This is quite a lot to work through as a first timer and a not very well planned one–funny I think feel like she was just crawling.</p>
<p>In my experience, the FA sessions at Visit Days have a Q&A session and a little time afterwards to answer individual questions. I don’t know if these are good days for interviews; I haven’t tried to do that. </p>
<p>By all means, set up a time to talk to the FA people. They are more available during the summer, or more flexible, as least. I have had success talking to them during the school year by phone, but then often it’s a back and forth series of 5-10 minute sessions as they’re returning phone calls at the end of the day. And some schools seem to have more staff than others, as you might expect. Getting call backs out of state schools during the school year has been harder. The FA people have left me with the impression that they have almost as much to deal with concerning applications as the AOs do–not that they’re making admissions decisions but that they’re processing the FA component of apps.</p>