<p>When scheduling visits, would it be better to try to do a similar school in the same day? For example, we are looking at all 3 of the all-male schools. Should we try to visit Salisbury and Old Avon in the same day (30 miles away)? I'm thinking it might be easier to make a more accurate comparison? Or does it confuse things? Or does it not really matter? Being that we have a bunch of schools in about a 30-45 mile radius we could combine any of them in a single day fairly easily - just trying to see what makes sense.
THANKS!</p>
<p>I did 2 schools in the same day- bad decision.
the first school was about 6/7 hours away so i had to leave my house at 5 (early interview.) First interview was great... but by the second... I became incredly tired and uninterested in the school so my second interview was horrible</p>
<p>I would advise against scheduling more than one visit on the same day. Tours & interviews can have schedule delays for a variety of reasons beyond your control. In our experience, each interview (parents are interviewed, too) & tour, left us quite drained. There is so much to absorb with each visit: the physical plant, the students, faculty & staff, curriculum,and looking out for that special "fit" and of course, the big interview.</p>
<p>Pick 2 schools that you like but are not top choices. Try to visit these 2 in a day if they are close together. Then you'll discover if you can tolerate it. We had no problem visiting 2 in a day, but others feel differently. We didn't drive further than 2 hours to the next school. We were never late because we allowed extra time. It's true that some schools get backed-up giving tours & interviews. We even befriended a few people who were also touring the same schools over Veteran's Day & Columbus Day weekends. How many yearbooks & school newspapers can you look at while waiting? </p>
<p>As far as seeing similar schools or not on the same day, I never got that granular. I can see the spreadsheets now!</p>
<p>I brought a small digital camera. I first did this while house hunting and found that I was mistaken for recalling that the house on the shady street was the one with the half bath off the master bedroom and the house with the enormous kitchen was the one that had no basement. All the images and experiences start running together. The pictures provided some visual markers that helped me job my memory.</p>
<p>We did 2 per day several times. He also had several interviews prior to the tours, so some of those tours were tour-only. So maybe that's why it wasn't as stupefying and exhausting for me or him.</p>
<p>BUT...I recommend against separating the tours from the interviews if it can be helped. The tours provide excellent fodder for a lively interview and make the interview more productive/practical: "Hey, what's the deal with the collapsed roof over the science building?" versus "That picture on p. 23 of your viewbook looked neat!" Also the interviews can lead to some excellent added discoveries that make the visit more rewarding. The schools that we only toured (having taken care of the interview component previously) tended to leave both of us unimpressed. We were just going through the motions instead of being actively engaged.</p>
<p>In fact, the schools that made the best impressions were the ones where my son had set up additional meetings with faculty members and instructors to learn more about his academic and extra-curricular interests. These were on top of the standard 2.5-3.0 hour tour-interview experience. I would highly recommend these added meetings. Plus, perhaps, a visit to the bookstore. </p>
<p>If you really want to soak it all in and get the most out of a visit, then you actually shouldn't have time for two in one day...unless (perhaps) we're talking Middlesex and Concord or other schools that are just minutes apart.</p>
<p>So it isn't the confusion or the exhaustion that I warn against. It's the disadvantage you create for yourself in terms of information-gathering. I looked at the tours and interviews as items to be checked off. In a few cases, where my son had scheduled additional activities at a school, we both walked away with a real sense of the school and a connection. But that left us comparing apples to lemons -- schools we connected with and schools that we had quick run-throughs with. The better way (I think) would have been to compare all the schools after a thorough visit to each of them.</p>
<p>If your schedule permits and you want to do a first-rate job of gathering information, then spend in excess of 3 hours at each school. Gather phone/e-mail information about coaches and faculty you might want to meet. Meet with the minister or youth minister of the church your child would likely attend in that community. Attend a school event, such as a sporting event, a concert or even a rehearsal. Set up a full day around your tour-interview and leave time to travel to your next destination in the evening or around dinner.</p>
<p>If you want to, I think you can do 2 in a day. It wasn't really that bad for us. But, in retrospect, I think it was a half-assed way to take advantage of an already limited opportunity to get to know a school firsthand.</p>
<p>I felt it worked fine for me. If you do two schools in a day, be sure to take a break such as a long lunch or something between schools. Then take a notebook and write down all the pros and cons of the schools because (my Headmaster told us this and I think it's true) after you visit all these schools, you're going to be so overwhelmed with the information and you'll be like "I love how this school has conference periods... but was that Middlesex? No, Deerfield.." And at the end of each visit you'll exclaim about each one but won't be able to decide objectively at the end. </p>
<p>But that's just my experience. Bottom line: if you do two or more in a day (I wouldn't advise three or more), then be sure to have breaks in the middle to digest the information.</p>
<p>^^Everybody has good points. I'd just like to say that I did Exeter and Andover in the same day and it was fine, but I had a less favorable impression of Andover because I was tired and the weather was bad at that point.</p>
<p>I would not recommend doing more than one in a day. Even when the schools were located close by, we did not, and in fact, doing two in one weekend (columbus day weekend we did two) was more exhausting and difficult than separating them by one a week. We have been through this with all three of my kids (they all only applied to one same school, so we really visited a total of almost 20). However, I do want to say that we did not stay overnight anywhere since we live within 6 hours drive of all the schools.</p>
<p>Thanks for the insights.<br>
I think then if we do more than one school, we'll avoid seeing the all boys schools in the same day (they are all with in an hour of each other) and see ones that are more different (how's THAT for stellar grammar?) in an affort not to get them confused.</p>
<p>I like the idea of trying it first with two that are not on the top of his list. </p>
<p>If we wanted to meet with faculty or coaches, do we contact them directly or ask the admissions office about it? </p>
<p>We will definately take notes after each visit - even if we do one in a day - in order to not get them confused. I like the picture idea too.</p>
<p>THANKS AGAIN!!</p>
<p>Exeter sends a list of campus contacts to applicants for the purpose of setting up these appointments (directly). That's what clued us into that possibility. My son took it from there at a number of schools. If he couldn't figure out who to contact from the web site, he contacted the admissions office. Sometimes the people would ask him to stop by during the tour itself. Sometimes they made arrangements to meet following the anticipated time for the interviews to end. If you schedule additional meetings on your own, be sure to let the admissions office know, so they can keep you on track. Whether they are impressed by that sort of initiative...I can't say. But it certainly lets them know that you're seriously considering that school and not just throwing in an application over the transom just to see if it sticks.</p>
<p>One music person who we met in a hallway asked us to drive back to campus after our second interview at another school to attend a rehearsal...and that was an incredible experience and well worth the added hours of travel (back from the second school and then to our hotel that was near the next day's schools). It was, hands down, the highlight of the entire application process for both of us. Man that was a crazy change to an already hectic itinerary, but you'll get pleasant surprises like that if you allow yourself to fully engage. (That last point holds true for anything you do in life, not just BS interviews.)</p>
<p>We visited Andover and Exeter a day apart staying overnight in Andover because we live in the Midwest. I think we could have done both interviews in one day but it would have been rushed even though the two schools are only about 45 minutes apart. I think the interviews are crucial to the admissions process. The applicant should be rested and completely focused on the school he/she’s interviewing at. That can be hard if the kid is stressed out at all by not enough time between interviews, or schedule changes, etc. (In our own case, we were a few minutes late for the parent interview at Andover because our rental car had a big slash in a tire and the car rental company delivered a replacement vehicle, right, you guessed it, just as our interview was about to start!) While some kids could handle two interviews in one day, others might find it difficult.</p>