I think that tours are really overrated. They are too highly influenced by your tour guide. Even if you do an overnight your results are a function of where you stay. I would wait and pick your favorite out of the acceptances. Then go visit that one to make sure that there are no critical flaws. Don’t get stuck in analysis paralysis.
I do think it’s smart to be hesitant to get too attached to schools until admission offers are made, but eight schools would be next to impossible if you wait until RD dates. Of course it also matters where you are located (I know you said the schools are on the east coast, but are you?).
Check out past threads showing when decisions are typically sent out. If mid-March, you’d have time to buy plane tickets before fares go up dramatically (typically 14 days before flights). But if Admitted Students Day is the first weekend in April and decisions don’t come out until April 1, you’re out of luck.
I like what the person above said about prioritizing. Perhaps you can tell each kid they can each pick two or three schools to visit and hope for some overlap?
Senior year with twins sounds so complicated but it will be nice to have the admissions process wrapped up for both by May 1!
S19 applied to 13 schools. We visited all safeties and most matches/high matches. Saw one reach but didn’t see the other three. He was accepted to all safeties (3), all matches and high matches (5), accepted at two reaches, waitlisted at one, denied at two.
Re-visiting was particularly rough because we were waiting on the last reach which was an Ivy and the decision didn’t come until very end of March. If he got in, his list of re-visits would have been different. He only had one EA school and the rest were RD so his decisions almost all came in a slew of portal updates in a two week period.
Of course it did not make sense to go back to ten schools. He had some preferences among the schools he had already visited but the school he thought he might like best was visited in the summer so we really had no idea if his gut feeling was right about the school. We only had three weeks or so to get back to some schools and he runs track and had a heavy load of classes so it was very stressful. He decided to go back to the two reaches where he got in (both of which we had already visited) and to two matches (one of which gave him some merit). We are full pay and wanted him to consider that school. We were able to drive to one of the schools. The other three were flights and hotel stays. We were lucky that no accepted student events overlapped.
How did he decide which schools to visit? He did a lot of research on each school as acceptances came in. If we knew anyone at the school, he texted them and set a time to talk to them and ask questions. He ended up putting aside the schools he had not visited but been accepted. He felt like he had options that he liked that he’d already seen. Could have been a real miss. Maybe one of those schools would have been great for him.
He went back to the school that gave him merit. Went back to one of the high matches and then went to the first reach. Was overwhelmed with the feeling that this was the school and we cancelled his trip to that last reach. Then it took us a week as a family to really get behind that decision and send a deposit since it was $20k more per year than the school that gave him merit. We were kind of ready to be full pay but it was still hard to bite the bullet.
He’s happy as a clam. I dare say it’s a perfect fit. It was a pretty exhausting search both for him and for me! Something like 20 supplemental essays, eight interviews, lots of travel to visit,.Like someone said above, I can’t imagine doing two at a time! Good luck!
My son visited three additional schools after admissions decisions. All three decisions were before the final RD decisions. His RD decisions did not shake things up or we would have had more traveling to do. It was doable.
If anyone’s interested, we are making progress.
D20 has narrowed down to 4 schools, one of which is RD and we won’t know if she’s accepted to that one until March. We are visiting the other 3 in February. The final one is geographically close to us so it should be easy. So she’s all set.
S20 is all over the place but we should have the whole month of April including vacation week to focus on him after RD decisions come out. Right now I’m imagining a final 4 for him too.
Feeling a little better.
So then you shouldn’t even visit any schools before applying. It’s the same logic - you don’t want to get too interested in a school you might not get into.
We have twins graduating this year too. I definitely think it adds to the chaos. I did not want to pigeon-hole either one of them, so we started early and looked everywhere. They did not come to any reasonable conclusions from that, however, because I think they are secretly holding out to see what the other one chooses. There are a few schools that we are going to go back and visit this winter/spring after all acceptances are in. I don’t have any great advice for you. I just wanted to say that I feel your pain and understand the challenge with guiding two kids to making their best choice without outside influence. Good luck! I can’t wait to read about what they decide. 
Yes, you can do a lot of research online to narrow it down.
Do the kids not have some sort of current ranking of which ones they are most interested in? If they really don’t, have them come up with a ranking. If visiting any of the schools wasn’t an option, they would still choose one to go to. So have them go through the process of picking their top two or three, and plan to visit those.
But then you risk wasting time and energy on applications on schools you’d have no interest in. There were schools my D hated the moment she set foot on campus, that she would have applied to if the list had just been based on “research”. There’s a happy medium somewhere.
Just a quick note when visiting and there are threads on this subject,the student taking you around can make/break your visit and impression of the schools. Plus being tired /hungry etc. If our ambassador was dull and very quite we jumped ship and joined the loud outgoing student leader. It “does” make a difference psychologically. We had this experience since we had to go through this crazy process for high schools in our area. Do what’s good for you.
We took S to his schools that were far away only after acceptance, and it was hectic. But, he made it easier by cutting some out (he’d applied to more because we were looking for merit). Some schools provided reimbursement for travel/lodging as I recall (I think bc of merit? And one just bc we’re geographically diverse I think/far away). While it would be easier to visit ahead of time, we just couldn’t. And with twins, it’s even harder (we have twins too, graduating next yr, who we’ll probably end up doing the same with, only then H will have to go too for divide and conquer).
I really like the idea of chatting with a current student and, if there is a Facebook page, seeing if they’ll let them on. And, you can divide and conquer. H only saw S’s school after he’d enrolled and been there almost a yr. He’d planned to go for the 1st parents weekend but it got cancelled due to a hurricane. He finally saw it when our younger son had a soccer tournament nearby!
I would visit after acceptances. And make sure they attend class, eat in the dining hall, hang out on the green, go to the bookstore, attend a concert etc. etc. and even stay overnight if possible.
It should be possible, once acceptances are in, to narrow the choices too, and so just visit the favorites.
The only reason to visit now would be to “show interest.” Perhaps let the schools know that you are not visiting for financial reasons (and that you have twins!) but will visit if accepted and that the interest in the school is genuine.
We’re in the northeast and were able to visit the majority of the schools DS applied to by car. We made 1 trip in the winter of jr. year to DC/Maryland that required a hotel stay, but were able to see 5 schools on that trip so it was worthwhile (eliminated 3).
We decided early on that we weren’t taking our DS to visit anyplace that required airplane travel until after acceptance (3 schools). He did a phone interview with a coach and lots of online research about 1 small LAC (accepted with merit and a spot on the D3 team for his sport), a local 30 min. Starbucks interview with the admissions rep from another (still waiting to hear), and then randomly decided to apply to IU Bloomington because it’s near one of the others. I’m not sure what we will do. He has acceptances with merit from several northeastern schools as well, and to be honest, we’re all fried from the process.
We don’t have the money to travel to more than 1, so we made a spreadsheet that includes costs and rankings—US News, Niche, The Georgetown ROI numbers—color coded. That was powerful. Seeing that his reach (no merit) was ranked lower than our state flagship (and several of his other schools) in several areas was eye opening. I think it’s off the list. Two of the schools that require airline travel had the lowest ROI on the list. Once he hears from all of them we will decide, but I think the spreadsheet helped him see that it may not be worth the trip.
We live on the pseudo-west coast in an educational desert.
Our local state school (UNLV) is obviously the ultimate safety but oddly gave less merit aid and benefits than others.
Everything else is on the East Coast / FL
We are planning a total of 2 trips for likely February.
One to Philly/NYC where we can combine visits to multiple schools where D is already accepted with good Merit aid
Second to FL for UCF … she will likely go solo to that one and meet up with a grandparent for the actual visit
@CTCape I am just putting the finishing touches on a similar spreadsheet. And D has already told me she refuses to look at it and will go with how she “feels” about the colleges. Ha! Reality will set in for her.
No…those pre application visits help determine where the student might actually apply. Our kids both visited schools pre-application that the dropped from their application list.
But once the applications are sent…I would suggest waiting for decisions to come in.
I can’t think of anything worse than a student visiting a college where they have already applied, loving it, and then getting rejected. And yes, that happened to people I know who wished the had waited until acceptances were in before doing post application visits.
That’s no different than visiting a college, loving it, then applying and getting rejected. Either way they’re rejected from a school they loved. JMO.
ShawSon is seriously gifted and severely dyslexic. As a result, we had no idea which schools would rule him out of consideration due to the LD even though his academic / intellectual level was quite high. He applied to a number of elite schools and said, “Dad, I don’t want to visit schools at which I have a 10% chance of admission, fall in love with one or two and get rejected. I will apply to a bigger number of schools and then visit the ones that accept me.” So, we waited and he was admitted to 10 or 12 schools. He did triage (best small LACs), best artsy LAC, Ivies. Within each category, he picked the best: “Within small LACs, X dominates Y and Z. so I will visit X.” So we visited three school. Although the Ivy was inspiring, the non-artsy small LAC was so responsive to helping him with LDs that he chose it while in the meeting with the Dean of Freshman who would become his freshman year advisor.
Going after acceptance also enabled us to nail down what the schools would do with respect to accommodating his LDs. All schools mouth the appropriate platitudes before acceptance, but when you try to nail them down post-acceptance to commit to actions, life is different. The Ivy was less responsive and more evasive. The non-artsy and the artsy LAC were both willing to commit to actions he thought were helpful and the one he chose went beyond anything he asked for. The good news: it was a great fit and he did incredibly well.
@CrackintoPieces Lol. DS felt similarly at first, but I somehow convinced him. It is really ultimately about money for us. Helping him see that there are a couple of outliers that we can eliminate to narrow it down was totally worth it.
@shawbridge Please don’t take this as anything other than a real question without snarky intent.
Will he screen potential careers by which employers will commit to “actions” to accommodate his LD?
I am glad it worked out for your S at the college level … but as one who interviews and hires a lot of fresh grads, any time an applicant so much as mentions “my LD” they are immediately removed from further consideration.
I did have one directly ask me how we were going to accommodate her LD … I may have laughed out loud.
There are many very successful people with LDs … but at some point one has to stop having help, yes?
We live in a geographically isolated part of the country, so college visits were logistically difficult. For my two older ones, it made the most sense to wait for acceptances to happen. Often the acceptances were accompanied by an offer to pay some travel expenses, which was helpful.
We had a huge road trip for my 2016 grad, which started with a flight to a scholarship weekend in Atlanta on April 9th. Went to Kentucky from there; quick detour to see friends in Arkansas, then a long drive to Pennsylvania. Went to New Hampshire for an accepted students weekend, then ended in New Jersey for another accepted students’ days visit. I think we got home around the 18th and she had decisions to make quickly.
My oldest got back from a college visit April 29th (and chose a college other than the one she visited last.) The college was willing to pay expenses, and that was the timing that fit with her dual enrollment classes.