Hey! I was planning on visiting UPenn, NYU, and Columbia this summer, but I am scared of not having a great experience and not being able to get a good feel for the school if I go during the summer. Are schools completely empty in the summer? Do you think my view on the school will be different if I visit in the fall when students are there and things are happening than if I visit in the summer when it is empty? It will be a lot easier for me to visit in the summer but I want to be able to get an accurate feel of each school, so i dont know. Let me know what you think, thanks!
Avoid visiting in summer if possible. We visited several colleges in the summer when we first began. We had to revisit several of them. A college without students is just a bunch of buildings. My D was completely unable to get a feel for any colleges until we visited in the fall and spring.
If there is no other time, then you have to make the best of it. So on the flip side, my kid did eliminate two colleges in the summer, but that was not due to the students. In one instance, the campus was ugly, in the other, she didn’t like the way there was a sports field in the middle of campus. All of the other eliminated colleges were solely due to the student vibe.
I think that you need to visit in the Fall when school is in session, so you can get an accurate “feel” for the school and determine whether you can visualize yourself as part of the student body. The least satisfying campus visits I took with my high school junior were to schools that did not have classes in session at the time, and had no students on campus. None of these schools made the final cut for applications.
In my opinion, visiting a school without students there going about their student business is similar to looking at the pretty pictures in the brochures or videos that the admissions office sends you.
For practical reasons visiting in summer can make sense. If you have a big list, it is difficult to visit all your schools while school is in session as you would need to miss many days of school, while trying to keep your grades up, participate in ecs and finish up testing. And Saturday visits in the fall are not necessarily better than summer visits as many students are sleeping in! It can be a good idea to do some tours and info sessions in the summer to get a feel for what you like/want in a college. You can rule some out and then if there are a couple you really like you can do a revisit in fall/winter.
At research universities, there will tend to be more students on campus in summer than at smaller LACs. End of August will usually have more students on campus due to preseason sports, and many schools do begin classes well before labor day.
My daughter and I visited Penn in the summer. The campus wasn’t empty. The main negative to me was that it was so hot we were really cranky by the end of the tour.
^^^^While the campus wasn’t empty it was likely filled with HS students doing summer/camp programs rather than typical Penn students. IMO it is better to visit colleges while in session if possible to get the best picture of the school.
Summer’s better than nothing, though. Not everyone can take multiple days off of school during the fall.
One thing to consider is that all those schools are in urban areas and there will still be many people around.
I agree with the consensus: if you can visit on a weekday when school is in session, you’ll get the most “accurate” sense of the place. If you think that you might ED at any of these schools, you will need to get back there when students are on campus before you pull the trigger. But realistically, it’s can be hard to coordinate visits in the fall with academic demands, and doing some of your visits in the summer can be a good strategy. Remember that if you get in RD, you can return for an accepted students day. (The only way you might find yourself trying to make a decision without having seen the school in session is if you are admitted off the WL – I wouldn’t plan around having this problem!)
I’m assuming that you have some other schools on your list that are less selective. Summer can be a good time to schedule on campus interviews. And as noted, at an urban school, the neighborhood will be the same regardless of whether students are there or not, so you’ll be able to check that out.
I visited a local LAC on a summer weekend, and it was deserted. But, I visited Fordham that summer, and it was quite lively. I think it depends on the school, but I’d rather have a summer visit than nothing.
Visits when classes aren’t in session are ok to eliminate a college from your list, but not so good to confirm it. Like you might find it’s in a neighborhood you don’t like, or is too spread out, or ugly, or too isolated. But it is hard to confirm that its really just right for you unless you see the students .