<p>D1-visited a lot–but no big visit tours. Most we worked in with vacations beginning soph year. So: visited 13 schools, applied to 6 of those plus 3 not visited.</p>
<p>Was accepted to 8 of 9; of those, had 6 choices that work financially with merit aid, and 2 that did not work financially for us at all. She had almost too much choice come April! It was hard to decide b/c she liked 4 of them very well.</p>
<p>D2-visited 7, has applied to 5 of those plus 4 more that she did not visit.</p>
<p>So far, accepted to 1, a state school where she applied back in early Oct-- most applications were finished up at the end of November, so hopefully she’ll start hearing back end of the year/early Jan.</p>
<p>D1: Official visits at 6 schools, plus one where she wouldn’t get out of the car based on what she saw on the drive into campus. Forced her to visit local state flagship before she applied, thinking that the huge classes etc. would discourage her. She skipped the info session and sitting in on a class, visited a coffee shop, admired the cherry blossoms in the quad, and ending up going there. She had also been to lots of other college campuses for debate tournaments.</p>
<p>D2: Visited six. Applied at 8, one of which was a geographically distant lottery school added at the last minute because the GC thought she needed a reach. Is attending one of two where she had overnight visit.</p>
<p>D3: Current senior. Visited 8. Applied at 6, including one she has not visited.</p>
<p>Back in prehistory, when I applied, I wasn’t even aware that you could have official tours of colleges and universities. Maybe they didn’t offer them. I had been to several colleges and universities for debate and drama competitions. In addition to some of those, I applied to a women’s college in a distant state, and attended there sight unseen. It was fine. I ended up transferring, but not because it was a horrible fit.</p>
<p>DS3 is applying 6-8 schools. We visited 6. He said that he would enjoy at any of them. The most important factors are: aid based upon NPC, the strength of the program related to his concentration, and the required curriculum.</p>
<p>My DS applied to 18 schools… in hindsight WAY too many…but we needed aid and he was a very lop-sided student. He visited 9 schools, and of those he only got accepted to 1. He was accepted to most of the schools he never even set foot on. It made for a VERY stressful April to say the least, with his accepted students days scattered from one coast to the other. He fell in love with one of those schools, and will be heading across the country this August after this years gap year.</p>
<p>I think the breakdown for both kids was 1/3 visited first and then applied, 1/3 visited and DID NOT apply, and 1/3 applied but didn’t visit first. </p>
<p>With both kids, they will or did pick a top 4 or so, and revisit, or visit for the first time, AFTER acceptances are all in.</p>
<p>5Boys 18 wow, wow, I don’t think my kids would have had the stamina for 18 applications! We’re tipping the scales of manageability with 9 for S3 and that was because his scores were lopsided. I’m assuming he visited the one hes ultimately attending? Glad it worked out for your S, if I recall he had many schools my boys had on their lists so I followed you last year for awhile and for some reason I didn’t realize he took a gap year.</p>
<p>I can’t even come close to some of these numbers!</p>
<p>DD did 3 campus preview days, visited one school without a tour. Applied to 5 schools, only one that we haven’t visited. Figure we could visit if she were accepted.</p>
<p>Visited 7 applied to 8. Could not have convinced son to visit more schools. </p>
<p>One school I thought he might want to apply to had a supplement full of “why do you love us” which he did not visit so I figured it was a waste to even try to fake that one.</p>
<p>I did official visits for 11 schools. Of those that I visited, I will be applying to 6 of them. I will also be applying to 3 (maybe 4) schools that I haven’t visited if I get rejected from my ED school.</p>
<p>FirstToGo - about 10 formal tours … and about 10 drive-by or self tours … was applying to most of the formal tour schools and no others when she got into ED school.</p>
<p>SecondToGo - about 15 formal tours and about 20 or so drive-by/self-walk tours. Applied to 10 schools … 8 formal tours; 1 self-tour; and 1 not visited (although in grandparents town so knew the town and seen the campus from the edges) … and naturally picked the school he had not visited before he applied (he did visit during an accepted student’s day).</p>
<p>Forgot about the drive-by schools…S1 had one of those and S2 had 3 of those. S3 had no drivebys…he wanted to keep on driving when we got to one college, but he bucked up and stayed for the info session and tour.</p>
<p>visited 20 schools, applied to 18(10 visited, 8 will visit after acceptance). What we learned - beware of open houses/campus exploration type of visits - was complete waste of time (for our family at least). The best visits were planned in advance regular weekdays tours + interviews. We are not planning to attend the official admitted students weekends either - will just do overnight with class visit in the morning.</p>
<p>DS visited 15 schools, applied to 9 of those plus 3 unseen schools.<br>
His situation is different than your typical CC’er, in that he has a truly low GPA (2.9) and a high ACT (33 composite, incl. 36 in math, 35 in science). I just couldn’t guess what would happen with his applications, let alone if he would get any measurable merit aid, hence the long list of 12 schools applied to. So far the results are really, really good, too! He’ll have to decide if overnight stays will be necessary to help him pick just one!</p>
<p>Youngest applied to two schools, one that she toured, one she didn’t. She also toured five additional schools that she didn’t apply to.
Her sister applied to five schools, four she toured, one she didn’t. She also toured four additional schools.
Both were accepted to all of their schools.</p>
<p>Disagreeing with psblstnr that open house visits are a waste of time. They can show you a different side of the school than a private visit (official or unofficial). My D1 was inspired to reject several well-regarded privates, some w/merit scholarships, thanks to a really terrific open house day at our state flagship. A prolonged conversation with two engineering students advertising their animatronic dinosaurs exhibit at the local science museum really got her excited about the school. She’s a very happy freshman there now. </p>
<p>D1 visited almost 3 dozen schools. But some were walk-throughs during family vacations, some hosted her camps/ECs, and some occurred before she was seriously in college-consideration mode.</p>
<p>She had “officially” toured all 11 schools to which she applied. She had also visited several of them informally, sometimes for extended visits with kith or kin. (We have some sort of personal connection to every school she applied – family living nearby, friends that work at the college, cousins or friends’ kids attending, etc. I guess we’re pretty well networked.)</p>
<p>She re-visited 4 schools in April before finalizing her decision.</p>
<p>D1 applied to 13, visited 7. Three of the visits were after acceptance. </p>
<p>We did not visit most of her reach schools before applying because we figured, on the off-chance she’d be accepted to one, we could visit afterward. She ended up getting into most of them, and then we didn’t have time to visit them all. I still feel guilty that she was never able to see some of them and give them a chance. But she did definitely end up at the right place, so perhaps it’s a good thing.</p>
<p>Daughter visited 9 colleges, applied to 6 of them and one school she never visited. She was considering applying to a few more she had not visited, but an EA acceptance cut back on the number of applications.</p>
<p>Son visited 7 colleges, applied to 3 of them, plus 4 other colleges, one of which he was very familiar with (because it was local), and two of which he had walked around briefly on a family trip when he was 14. He also cut short his applications after EA, but would otherwise have applied to another of the schools he had visited, plus a college he had seen a number of times because a cousin had gone there and an aunt taught there.</p>
<p>Two observations from our experience:</p>
<p>It was good to visit some colleges and decide not to apply there. It helped the kids crystallize their thinking about what they valued and what they didn’t.</p>
<p>Son’s top choices came down to a college he knew very well from a couple of visits, and the one he had never seen (and there was never a good time to visit). I am generally not a big fan of college visiting, but it was effectively impossible for him to give fair consideration to a college he had never seen compared to a college he had seen and loved.</p>
<p>My D applied to 9 schools. Of those she had visited 6 and went to local information sessions and an interview for a 7th. She was accepted to 3 of the schools she visited and 1 that she did not visit. She visited one school and decided not to apply after visiting. She is attending the school where she spent the most time.</p>
<p>Visited 7, applied to 5. Applied to 2 others, one we did not visit but went to a big hoo-rah recruiting event he was invited to that was closer to home, and the other is about an hour and half down the road and he has been there many times, just not on an official visit.</p>