<p>I've been thinking about it and I've come to realize, if you're torn between 3 places and are therefore not applying ED anywhere, is there any point to visiting schools?</p>
<p>I mean, is it smarter to just visit schools senior year AFTER you've been accepted places and just apply to all the schools that you're interested in?</p>
<p>You want to visit so you can show the school that you are interested in attending. This applies especially to schools that will be a reach for you.</p>
<p>My daughter is holding off until she is accepted because it is just too expensive to visit everywhere she applied. One of her top choices has now offered to pay her expenses to visit the school, saving us a ton of money!</p>
<p>“You want to visit so you can show the school that you are interested in attending.”
that doesn’t apply to top schools though~</p>
<p>What do you mean?</p>
<p>for LAC’s i would visit, for public’s you can hold off.</p>
<p>We visited 12 schools during and right after my son’s junior year. After the visits he crossed six of them off his list. It help him decide on where he was going to apply</p>
<p>for top schools, I believe that they don’t want to give disadvantages to students who live far away or can’t afford to visit, so they simply don’t care if you visit or not</p>
<p>I visited most of my schools before I applied. However, I visited some schools, including Duke and Rice, after I was accepted. It’s really up to you. To be honest, I’m glad I visited Rice and Duke after I got in because they were far away, and I think it would have been a waste for me to visit beforehand since I wasn’t guaranteed admission.</p>
<p>Waitatshu has a valid point… Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Duke, and some others do not take into account “demonstrated interest” in their admissions decision. Schools like Emory, Rice, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, WashU, and Carnegie Mellon do. However, there are many other ways to show interest besides visiting, such as ordering a VideoVisit DVD (Emory and Vanderbilt), meeting with a regional admissions officer at your high school, going to a local admissions presentation, etc.</p>
<p>You ought to visit enough schools to get some idea of what fits, what turns you on or off, in terms of size, setting (urban/rural), social atmosphere, facilities, etc. They don’t even necessarily need to be the schools to which you’ll apply (yes, you can visit those after decisions come in) but it’s not ideal to just pick school N through M on a ranking list unless you are sure you are completely adaptable on the “fit” issues. A visit might make you realize for the first time that something you had not even considered is a major turn-off or inspiration.</p>
<p>We took two family trips the summer after S’s sophomore year, and toured a few colleges and unis that happened to be in the areas we visited, selecting different types of schools (large public, large private, urban/rural, etc.) From that experience, S decided that he preferred isolated LACs over urban schools or larger publics, so that’s what he focused on later. So yes, it was very useful for our family.</p>
<p>I agree 100% with tk21769 and sunmachine. While I did end up visiting most of the schools I was considering applying to, and ended up apply to one ED, I certainly could have held off from ED and just visited after, and it would have been fine.</p>
<p>HOWEVER, I did do some college visits to various kinds of schools early in my junior year that were incredibly valuable. One of the schools was one I thought was my top choice, only to discover that I thought it was too large, and didn’t like that it was in the city. The other visits were to suburban LACs that were kind of close by. Although I didn’t end up loving either of those two LACs enough to apply, I learned that I was attracted to the general idea of an LAC. </p>
<p>Without those visits, I may have ended up applying to completely the wrong list for me.</p>
<p>If you already have a short list of schools you for-sure want to apply to, I don’t see much of a benefit. But if you’re attempting to whittle a list of 20-30 schools down, visiting schools to decide whether or not you like certain environments is a great idea (though you may end up like I have, where you like schools regardless of location and based instead on how well the entire vibe of the school works as a composite. Which makes my parents crazy–they don’t understand how I can like Brown and Columbia.).</p>
<p>I agree that many visits during spring break may not be necessary, especially when visits in May or June may allow you to interview at the same time. LACs (other than Amherst which doesn’t interview and maybe Williams) do care about demonstrated interest, so if you are trying to get a slight advantage at a reach LAC, visit when they interview. Similarly, if you have a back-up LAC you want to make more solid, visit when you can interview. Any visit that can help you decide about size if also helpful—especially if you can stay overnight. Visit one LAC, one mid-size and one large school, for example.</p>
<p>I think it’s important to visit your safety school! If you hate it, then it’s not a safety. </p>
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<p>You might only have a month after you find out you’ve been accepted before you have to make a final decision. That might be too little time to be able to visit multiple schools, especially if they’re in different parts of the country. Some people like visiting during admitted student days, to see who might be their classmates. Other people like visiting without the dog and pony show, so they can get a better feel for a school’s true nature. </p>
<p>You can search for a school’s Common Data Set, or CDS, to see if the school considers “demonstrated interest”. Not all schools post their CDS, but it’s a good starting point. Some schools also have a reputation for really wanting prospies to visit; hang out on the forums for the schools on your list to find out if any schools on your list care.</p>
<p>Visiting schools with our kids was one of the high points of junior year. We had uninterrupted time to talk and hang out together, we added some ‘regional tourism’ into the mix so it wasn’t just one school after the next, and I got to watch my kids sort out what mattered to them and how they responded to a wide range of new environments. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world-apart from “demonstrating interest,” confirming that a safety was really safe, and learning more about each school.</p>