<p>When people apply to boarding schools and fly to the northeast for interviews and visits, realistically how many interviews/tours can one do in a day? Two max? Is squeezing three in a day too stressful? I.e. Having to rush to get from one city to the next, etc?</p>
<p>In our experience, two a day is the max, and if distance is an issue, only 1 may be doable some days. Even then, we had to push back one interview. Fortunately, the school was understanding, and did ultimately extend an offer to DC.</p>
<p>Even so, my daughter was burned out after 2 days. Luckily that was as much as we scheduled.</p>
<p>It’s not like you just show up for an hour appointment and then are on your way. You’ll get a tour, of varying length, both child and parent(s) will have interviews (not simultaneously) and you may be invited to see something special on campus, have a meal, wander around campus on your own, etc. You really don’t want to be saying “oh sorry we can’t stay” when those extra experiences may enhance your ability to make a good school choice.</p>
<p>If you’re applying for 2013, it’s too late to do this, but we made a spring trip to kind of test the waters and let my daughter get a better idea about what BS is like. Then in the fall we formally visited four schools, had interviews, and eventually she submitted full applications to those four. Two were schools we had visited in the spring, two were new.</p>
<p>Depending on the school you might wait a long time for your interview. The waiting room can be big and awkward when there are twenty families in there. If you have two in a day make sure you have a lot of time between them.</p>
<p>We did five in three days. We flew into Boston and drove to New Hampshire for two the next day, then drove to Connecticut that night to arrive at #3, then back to Massachusetts that night for the final two the next day. Exhausting, but a great way to see schools close enough to each other to get a full sense of their similarities an contrasts. I agree with the previous post - one in the early morning, the second in mid afternoon so you have time to grab something to eat in between. If you map out the schools in advance (location and distance) it’s doable to create a route that isn’t over taxing.</p>
<p>We saw 8 schools in 5 days and in hindsight it was quite a crazy schedule but I’m glad we did it. We live on the west coast and this was our only shot (and our son missed 3 days of school for the trip - we planned the visit around his school’s professional development days meaning no classes.)</p>
<p>We flew into Philly and went to one school the next day then drove up to Conn. and saw 2 schools a day until the last day when we saw one school and headed to the airport in Boston to fly home. I scheduled us in the first appt. slot on the days we saw 2 schools - so we’d see one from 8:30 - 10:30 or 11 am. Then we’d go have lunch and drive to the next one where that appt would be 1:30 - 3:30. That worked pretty well. My son’s school gave the 8th graders a HS evaluation sheet to fill out after they visited schools so he would do that after he saw every school which helped to keep them all straight. (It asked them to evaluate academic program, pros and cons of each school, etc.) I spent a lot of time beforehand mapping out distances and figuring out hotels and trying to figure out what was realistic, etc. We put about 800 miles on the rental car but overall it was a good trip.</p>
<p>I think 3 a day would be too much and pretty exhausting. 2 a day with a nice break in between each school was just about the max for us.</p>