Visiting Colleges- Does the order matter?

<p>Seriously, even HYP track interest. I attended at on-campus interview session at one and those present were asked to fill out a card with certain information. The staff was most insistent that EVERYONE fill it out because "We do keep track."
One of those 3 has a reception in our locality for everyone who is a National Merit Semifinalist or on various other lists. You get an invitation in the mail. When you get there, you have to identify yourself and there are admissions staff members who find your name on the list of invitees and mark off your name. (Just showing your invitation is not enough.)
When HYP send representatives to various high schools, they do note who shows up and who doesn't.
If you live in Wyoming and are asking for financial aid, it's not going to hurt you if you don't visit Princeton. But unless you are applying ED, if you live in Baltimore and aren't applying for tons of financial aid, there's no record that you've visited Princeton and you did not show up when a Princeton rep visited your high school either in your junior or senior year (and your guidance counselor didn't tell the rep a VERY good reason you didn't), it's going to hurt.<br>
EVERY college cares about yield and if there's no indication of your interest other than an application received in the regular round and you live within a distrance of 3-4 hours travel time and a rep from the school visits your school, you really could hurt yourself if you're not a superstar.</p>

<p>Now now, xiggi-- are we being a little sexist?? The adcom/Spanish teacher is a SHE. And I do not believe she was speaking from opinion, she was sharing the information from experience (and I'd heard it from our HS college counselors about this specific college even before the adcom/former adcom came on board).</p>

<p>Yup, got me there! I thought I saw a "He" in the post in which you described the teachet. I guess I was too eager to understand the exact meaning of your question. </p>

<p>On the second part, I thought to agree that that her opinion mattered because it was based on prior knowledge when I said, "There is no doubt that [s]he knows a lot more than I do -being nothing- about what did happen or is still happening at the school [s]he worked."</p>

<p>PS Why is their not a word as teachress for female teacher if we have mistresses and misters? Actually did they not use to refer to mistresses and teachers ... in the older days? Ah the fun of PC!</p>

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<p>For a little while back in the early 19th century female physicians were sometimes referred to as "Doctress", but it never really caught on.</p>

<p>Weather seemed to have been a major factor here. Thinking back, most of the schools visited on warm, sunny days got a nod. Most notably, we visited Penn in September '03 (Junior Year) on a beautiful, warm Sunday when tons of students were out sunbathing, reading, playing frisbee, etc....the green was full of people. And, a couple of students were playing interesting looking musical (African looking drums and something else I couldn't make out) instruments on a patio overlooking Locust Walk and about 50 students had gathered below to dance to the intoxicating music. I knew that day would be hard to beat. I remember his words as we walked: "Yeah! I can see myself going here." I'm sure that scene is replicated on most campuses. But, our timing was never right to find anythiing even remotely close to the "bikini party" we found that warm September day.</p>

<p>By the way, xiggi, my original "question" about the former adcomm making a career change was rhetorical :)</p>

<p>actually, my favorite schools were the ones where the weather was worst! (pouring rain or snowing....)</p>

<p>RE: adcom burnout. It certainly is a younger person's job...can involve lots of travel (depending on school) with esp. crazy fall travel, much evening or weekend work for campus events or interviewing or appl. review and the pay is usually not great. It is a hard job to do once you start a family. You will usually see recent grads alot and then adcoms whose children are much older (upper grade school & high school age)...</p>

<p>"We did 2400 miles in 5 days, including a 10-hour sprint from Nashville to Durham in torrential rain and intense fog - the worst drive of my entire life."</p>

<p>Oh, I know what you mean. We drove from New Haven to D.C., through NYC. Mapquest said it would take about 5 hours... it ended up taking 10 due to the worst traffic I've ever been in (and I drive regularly through Los Angeles) through the Bronx. We were surrounded in our tiny rental car on all sides by massive trucks, stopped dead for 30 minutes on a bridge... then creeped through NYC at 15 mph. It was raining the whole time. The entire state of Maryland had just oiled their highways for the winter, so it was slippery, wet, dark and smelly for hours. A car in front of us skidded and did a 180 and headed right back at us going 50 mph. But we finally made it to DC at 1:30 a.m. after getting lost from the numerous DC "circles." It was ugly, and I don't know how many times I muttered "we should have taken a train!" </p>

<p>It was the worst drive H and I had ever been part of, but strangely we remember the good laughs we had with the kids the most.</p>

<p>My son's close friend who applied to HPY this year and has been accepted ED to Princeton did visit all three schools, and said there was no check in or anything that tracked the visits. My son also applied to all three, did not visit any of them and we do live close enough to drive to any of them for a say's visit. He was accepted to Yale EA. The college counselor at his school says they do not track or care, aand some of my sources with the schools say the same. I doubt if most families and students do not visit HPY if they apply to them. They are usually first on the list for the visits and kids tend to over obsess about those schools, much to their detriment as the demonstrated interest should be used for some schools not quite so selective that do track. It's a matter of knowing when it is important and when it is not.</p>

<p>Trips D and I took from our home in Michigan:
Trip 1 - August 2003 - fly to LaGuardia, drive to Yale, then Brown, back to NYC and Columbia. Great weather, loved Yale!
Trip 2 - Fall 2003 - driving trip to Chicago - Northwestern and U Chicago. Great weather, went to a women's soccer game at Northwestern, with Lake Michigan in the background. Spent Saturday night in Evanston. Liked both schools, but really intrigued by U Chicago.
Trip 3 - Easter Week 2004 - The big one - 8 days...Drive east, stopping at Hobart/Wm. Smith, Colgate, Cornell, Williams, Dartmouth, Tufts, Harvard, Vassar (a drive-by), Princeton, Penn, Johns Hopkins and Carnegie-Mellon (another drive-by). Rained cats and dogs at Princeton and Penn. Liked Williams, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton and Hopkins.
Trip 4 - Up to Ann Arbor for Michigan (M&D alma mater) weekend of M v. MSU football game. Nice morning, very cold in late afteroon. Left game early, with Michigan losing - big mistake.
Applied Yale EA, Dartmouth, Stanford, Cornell, Harvard and Williams. Other apps incomplete pending Yale EA decision.
Accepted EA at Yale - that's where she'll be attending.</p>

<p>Oh, also applied and accepted to Michigan.</p>

<p>hey umdad - you guys must be kicking yourselves for leaving that game! the atmosphere was incredible - the big house rocking at night. anyway...GO BLUE</p>

<p>UMDAD- Wow!!! Congrats on the Yale acceptance.....and on accomplishing all of those visits! </p>

<p>Even for kids who decide early on (prior to other visits) where they want to go (like my S did)....the visits help to ease everyone's mind that the choice was made as an "informed decision".</p>

<p>I don't know about Harvard or Princeton, but according to the Yale admissions website (<a href="http://www.yale.edu/admit/faq/applying.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.yale.edu/admit/faq/applying.html&lt;/a&gt;), they don't keep track of visits:</p>

<p>**I have visited campus three times. Does that count in favor of my being admitted?*
Not at all. Unlike some schools, we do not track your contact with us or your visits to Yale. Similarly, it is not necessary to be in regular contact with the Admissions Office. Admissions officers are happy to answer your questions, but excessive e-mailing, for example, can be very distracting.*</p>

<p>I believe them, especially since they didn't even take my daughter's name when she attended an information session there.</p>

<p>To add my daughter's experience to the answers to the original question: I don't think the order--or even the weather--is a reliable predictor of a kid's response to a particular school. Yale was the last school (out of more than a dozen) my daughter visited, and pretty far down on her list, especially since she'd just come from a summer program at Brown and thought Providence seemed much more appealing than New Haven. On the day we visited, her sore knee was bothering her and it was raining like mad; the tour had to take refuge from the weather several times. But the student tour guide was smart and charming; the buildings where we took refuge were gorgeous; and my daughter fell in love with the idea of the residential college system (which, now that she's a freshman there, she likes just as much as she thought she would).</p>

<p>When my daughter and I were planning our college visit road trip, I found a great US map that shows most colleges. It's called Professor Pathfinder's US College and University reference map (available at Amazon last I checked). We were able to see what colleges were on our way to College X, and decide if they were worth visiting.</p>

<p>Fireflyscout - I remember you mentioning that map but I had forgotten the name. I think I'll check it out. We are going to do a Wisc - Illinois- Indiana - Ohio - Maryland trip over spring break (will be using some cheap fares for some in between travel) so it might come in handy.</p>

<p>Carolyn, I am seeing some great deals in those areas for college. Ohio Wesleyan, Wooster, Wittenburg, Ohio U look pretty good there. Lake Forest and DePaul in Illinois, Beloit and Lawrence in Wisconsin. St Mary's, Goucher, Washington College, McDaniel, Salisbury State (there is an airport in Salisbury that connects thru Philly and DC).</p>

<p>Digmedia; My youngest son would love to be one of your son's crew. And he would learn a lot too. And congrats on finding a college and scholarship too!
At any rate, I think the real shock for us was going to a state u. after a private college. Poured moulded concrete buildings- what is that style anyway! Masses of humanity as opposed to well dressed and obviously better off students. How can one combat this if someone is not in that financial realm ?</p>

<p>We purposely visited the NE schools (the first trip) in the dead of winter, and California in the heat of summer. While visiting campuses in the spring can be a beautiful time to see them, it may not be representative of the weather the majority of the time. My s. thought it was very funny when the locks on the car froze at Williams (it was four below zero at the time..), and some poor kid darted across campus in a tshirt and shorts, telling our tour guide that he overslept.. (gotta give him credit for wanting to get to class, though a quick grab for a coat might have been a decent idea..). The cold didn't deter my s. , but at the other end of the spectrum, Cal Tech lost points when they said the dorms weren't air conditioned. There are other "freak" things that can affect a visit in addition to the good/bad tourguide experience. We happened to have a flat tire on our way to Rice for a 9 am interview. We called in a tizzy and the secretary and the staff were wonderful. Some nice person led us to a nearby gas station to get air in the tire. It certainly turned a bad start into a better experience,As for bad experiences, we happened to visit Yale the day after a propsy fell out of a window from a party and did not survive. <shiver>. The weather was dreary, too, and a relative who happens to be a semi-retired faculty member had car trouble and couldn't make it back in time to take us around as promised. The previous planned visit to Yale was postponed because of the staff strike affecting the food service staff and office admins. We considered offering to bring the admins breakfast during the strike, but I doubt we were the first to think of it.</shiver></p>