<p>D has already visited a class at one college and is scheduled to visit classes at a second.</p>
<p>Now I want her to consider a school where officially only high school seniors and transfers are permitted to visit a class.</p>
<p>Just their refusal to permit a junior to visit classes will be a black mark in her book.</p>
<p>Has anyone gone around such a prohibition successfully?</p>
<p>Of course I could just call but if admissions is nasty about it I will have to proceed with a prejudice against this school and as we are having a hard time coming up with acceptable safeties, I hate to lose this one....</p>
<p>first of all, good for you that you were able to do this already…we are only on the “first look around” stage…</p>
<p>If you know a freshman at the school in question, couldn’t your daughter just go to class with them? I guess this is the way I would try to approach a class visit anyway; HS student may be more comfortable entering a class with someone they are acquainted with…</p>
<p>I don’t think it is unusual for schools, especially smaller ones, to limit this kind of visit to seniors–or to juniors at the end of the academic year, when it is basically the beginning of the new admission cycle. I would not consider it a black mark if all else added up. Some schools do host junior days around now, to prepare for the next round, but keep in mind that this is the beginning of a busy time for admission offices since they are now reading the RD apps of this year’s seniors. I do not think schools appreciate having unannounced/unofficial guests in classes though and it may put a professor in an awkward position to be asked to countenance a visit that is not officially permitted.</p>
<p>^^^ This is the argument against asking for an exception to be made, but if they actually aren’t getting that many requests to visit classes, perhaps it is not that big a deal to permit one junior to attend a class.</p>
<p>Don’t think of it as a black mark. My kids are doing all their visits as juniors and won’t be able to do overnights (unless I arrange them under-the-table). Sometimes it would just be a free-for-all and they have to set a standard. Maybe you could ask politely if there is a way to make an exception if you are traveling from a long distance, blah blah blah … But if not, don’t worry about it.</p>
<p>In defense of the school, it could be that their classes are very small, and they don’t want to have them overrun with prospective students.</p>
<p>Different schools deal with this differently. Some (like Swarthmore) tell the students that they have to get a permission from the professor to sit on the class. Some (like NYU) only allow visitors in huge intro freshmen classes, so 20 extra people won’t even get noticed.</p>
<p>My daughter wanted to sit in on a class as a junior at a college where the admissions office said visits were for seniors only. She emailed the professor, said she was interested in the school and the class, and said she’d sit quietly in the room; the prof said of course she could. </p>
<p>I would suggest she check the course schedule directly contact the person whose class she wants to sit in on; make sure it is a class she could plausibly follow, a class she is likely to want to take at the college, a class with a reasonably large number of students in it.</p>
<p>My D attended a few classes last year as a junior. We found that the larger the school, the less likely they were to make an exception to their policy. We also found, however, that the colleges that were a further distance from our home allowed for a class visit, even though it was not their policy. They understood that it might be the applicants only visit so they tried to accomodate.</p>
<p>MidwestMom2Kids_, yes, that is the scenario I would hope for, and I would think that in most cases a professor would be pleased that a student wanted to visit his/her class.</p>
<p>The first class she visited was a philosophy class, which I wouldn’t expect to be exactly overrun with visits from high school students.</p>
<p>agree that the admissions off ice may not want to arronge visits with professors but there is no harm in contacting a professor and asking him/her directly. If the prof says “these things are handled by the admissions office.” then I wouldn’t ask for an exception. If she/he says “yes” you are set.</p>
<p>historymom, that’s a good suggestion - only drawback is that this school doesn’t have a class schedule on-line, so it is difficult to figure out which classes would be in session on the day in question.</p>
<p>FWIW, we did a visit recently to a particular LAC – we know a professor at this college (family friend), and he let D sit in on his class (small class, maybe 15 students) – but he also just walked across the hall to a colleague of his teaching in an area that was of interest to S and said, “Hey, I’ve got a prospective kid here, can he sit in on your class?” and it wasn’t a problem at all. S isn’t particularly interested in this college (it was more something to do while his sister sat in on her class - it was that or hang around with the 'rents, LOL), but enjoyed the classroom experience / topic. So much that he took notes!</p>
<p>You can always ask the admissions office and if they say no, just quietly email the prof. They’ll probably say yes ( they probably aren’t aware of the admissions policies anyway). Colleges do this because they tend to get a lot of visits from juniors without much specific interest in the college, and they don’t want profs to feel overwhelmed by junior visitors. Senior visitors are fewer and more narrowly focused, so they’re not as much of a burden on class resources. Kind of silly as most juniors probably wouldn’t visit classes even if they had the option, but there you go. Anyway, these are very rarely set in stone policies.</p>
<p>S visited several colleges. In some cases, the admissions office told him the name and contact information of the profs he was interested in; S then contacted the profs to visit them in their office. He went to lectures and introduced himself to the instructor beforehand. In other cases, he contacted the profs on his own. A number of classes (usually discussion classes) would not be open to visitors as it’s too distracting, but lecture classes in general are fine. S was not turned down by any prof. In fact, one suggested he listen to a guest speaker. S was a sophomore then, though planning on graduating early.</p>
<p>fendrock go to the school’s department websites. Typically the professors and their contact information are linked to the dept. page. In the email let the professors know when you will be in town and ask if they would be teaching an appropriate class at that time. Hope that helps…</p>