<p>I feel it is instructive to visit schools during the junior year and before applying so that you can narrow down the list of schools to apply to. Why apply to a school that you feel after visiting is the wrong fit for you? Talking with students and faculty on campus along with information sessions and tours are a great way to evaluate colleges.</p>
<p>Well, if you go on visits when there aren’t student around and all you have is the tour guide, it may very well not be worth it. However, if you go when there are students on campus you can get a decent vibe, which may help you decide if it’s worth applying to a college. I started my visits fall of junior year so that I wouldn’t have to take any days off school (I wen ton teacher planning/marking days) and would have visited them all before I started doing applications. I did two visits when most students weren’t around (there were people taking summer classes but not a full campus) and those were because one was a last minute consideration and I live too far from the other, but was much closer when visiting my grandmother, which I didn’t get to do until summer.
Also, visiting will let you see the condition of the facilities. One college I was seriously considering had very apparent water damage and peeling paint, so I slashed that one; you don’t see that sort of thing if you don’t visit.
And, much as you shouldn’t judge on a tour guide alone, if you ask them questions relating to their major (most will say it) and they struggle, it says something for the quality of students/education that isn’t very desirable.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t spend a ton of time visiting schools before the acceptances. It can be expensive and time consuming. You kid should do research, talk to counselors and apply. If they are accepted they can then take the time and money to go. My eldest applied all over the country. With the exception of schools in Boston(and she could see many on one trip) we waited until she was accepted and really wanted a school before she visited.</p>
<p>Visiting colleges was the biggest motivator I needed. I was getting a good number of B’s my freshman and sophomore years, but then I visited UCSD the summer before junior year. I fell in love, and I immediately started trying harder, receiving straight A’s with a rigorous schedule that included 4 AP’s and CC classes. It seems silly to me now that I got B’s in Auto Tech or Spanish 1. College visits are what students need to have as a reminder of why they’re going to school and where they can go if they keep working.</p>
<p>If you visit on a regular day, you can get an idea of the student population. Of the schools we visited, the student populations were very different. </p>
<p>Plus, food service and dorms can be very different. And, you can often meet professors from the subject areas you plan to study to find out if their program is even one of interest.</p>
<p>There were campuses we disliked that we expected to love and vice versa.</p>
<p>By college visits we come to know about the college. Its principles, students life in it, the college’s activity during working days and other days. Before joining a college we can have a visit to the college, which will clear the nervousness and makes us to know it very well about the college because these things can’t be experienced from the prospectus.</p>
<p>Let’s skip the visit to that college - they have such nice photos of one white student, one Asian student, one Latino student and one African American student (who are all good looking) laughing while holding books under the one tree on their campus. It must be nice.</p>
<p>For my DS, the college visits were very important. There are certain cues that can be picked up on, not necessarily the canned speeches from the Admission Rep or the normal tour from the student guide. One college was crossed off his list when we visited on a Saturday…the campus was very deserted. On the dorm tour, we could tell there were few students there and the cafeteria was empty except for the people on the tour. Suitcase school…dead on the weekends.</p>
<p>On the other hand, he ended up attending a university that he really didn’t want to visit in the first place, but as he walked around campus that visit, he really liked the “vibe.” This caused him to make more visits, as well as sit in on classes and stay over night with a current student to get the full impression. The univ is well-respected for his major, and that sealed the deal (along with a great scholarship)!</p>
<p>Our experiences with college visits were uniformly helpful, even the ones where our S decided “definitely not.” The whole process these days is both much more involved and, IMHO, much better for the kids than what I went through back in the coal-fired days. That’s because the whole process makes them really consider “What do I really want?” “Who am I?” “Why would I be a good fit at X school?” because, way beyond having to tell Mom and Dad, they have to write it down, in lots of different ways in response to some excellent prompts. It really helps them figure out BEFORE they leave and start spending your money who they are and, importantly, you find out in much richer detail just what makes that child you love so much really tick.
But re tours, I recommend going to visit 1-2 schools early, maybe freshman or sophomore year. Do a walk-around and meet a few of the kids; this may as noted above help light the fire under your S or D if they see what they might be able to do if they work JUST a bit harder in high school. In our S’s case it kicked in after he got a ridiculous PSAT score but it accelerated after we visited a upper level flagship campus. I also agree that you should be careful about taking the “package tours” - they do provide a LOT of information but there is also the “Sanitized for your protection” aspect to them. Allow time afterwards to wander and meet students in an unvarnished setting also. Our S also learned that in his case he should cross SLACs off his list - we visited 2 excellent ones outside of Philly and while he liked them and could tell they were top-notch schools he also realized that for a grad of a 3200-student highly diverse HS they were too small (and too monochromatic) for him. On that same trip we visited one more-commuter-oriented, solid tech school, one urban Ivy, one larger ACC campus and one mid-sized urban private. Of those, he included the urban Ivy and the urban private on his list - but seeing the full range helped him, um, keep his final list in the very low single digits…</p>
<p>Last summer, when I visited campuses, it really helped me decide where to apply (I had a list of about 20 schools, no joke), where I wanted to focus most of my time for EA/ED, etc. Even though there are no “students on campus”, if you visit a school in a busy place like NYC or Boston, you still get a sort of feel of how it would be. The only school I visited that actually had students there was NU, but since it’s an “open” campus like BU, the only difference was the bookbags.</p>
<p>Seriously, the entire time I was walking around NU, in my mind I was like “this is my school, I have to come here”, and before my visit, I was considering crossing it off my list.</p>
<p>planner03: Back in high school, one college seemed ideal for me - a women’s school with a cross-registration programme at MIT. About fifteen minutes into the tour, it went down the list; by the end of the tour, it was a no-go. The tour guide spent the entire time talking about the great things to do off-campus, which gave me the impression that she did not particularly like being on-campus unless class was involved.</p>
<p>My sister crossed my father’s alma mater off the list when the tour guide talked about nothing but partying. (He also stopped his generous yearly donations.) </p>
<p>After the hour-long tour of my alma mater, I knew that I could spend four years there - four years that I could never get back, never do again somewhere else - and it would be four years well-spent, a great use of my limited time on Earth. (One of the neat things was that the tour guide was pre-med, a RA, played in a band, and, while tired, still had time to do all those things while taking the pre-med track. The other really neat thing was that a lot of students smiled and waved at us as they walked by. “Hi! Come to [school name]!” It was really spontaneous and showed how much everyone enjoyed being there.)</p>
<p>It’s not a quantifiable, rational thing - but any kid who is in tune with herself will know if she likes the people there, if the professors and students are really engaged with the material, or if the classes are taught by grad students who are terrible teachers. Colleges also will set students up with the best professors, so if the classroom experience is bad, you know that it only goes downhill from there.</p>
<p>We’re a little unconventional. We visited only 5 schools, only applied to 2 of those we visited, and applied to 2 others we did not visit. Before we started visiting schools, my son thought he knew what he wanted: a small, rural or suburban college. But after visiting those types of schools, they just weren’t appealing to him. Two other colleges were large schools in big cities and he loved those. He just liked the vibrancy of the big city life, surprising himself and shocking me. </p>
<p>Information sessions are a waste of time IMO. You can get the same info and more online. Even the student tour guides seemed to know less about the school than I learned from the school’s website. The campus vibe, atmosphere and friendliness of the students and staff was key for us.</p>
<p>College visits were great for both my kids. We had no choice but to do some visits in the summer because there is only so much time during the school year, especially with activities and other kids to consider. The other reason to do visits is that this can be focused quality time for the kid to reflect on what they want in a college and how to get there. </p>
<p>I didn’t find that summer visits were all that different than Saturday morning visits in many cases - not a lot of kids were around the campus. Most campuses have morning info sessions and virtually all kids are still asleep or still in their dorms! Or, even on a weekday, not a lot of students are just wandering about during the day, they are either asleep, in class or doing something. It also helped to see the surrounding area. </p>
<p>Both my kids wanted a real campus, even in a City, so some schools were out right away. They found some schools too isolated. One school was crossed off the list when the Info session video focused almost exclusively on the great athletic traditions of the school, which was not something that interested my son. During junior year visits we typically did not go into classrooms, but after acceptances. </p>
<p>Certainly visits can be costly and may not always be worth the effort, but visiting at least a range of schools (small LACs, large Us, urban, rural etc.) is very helpful.</p>
<p>Plus, I really enjoyed the one-on-one time I got with each kid when we did visits alone. It was nice bonding, even when they were listening to their iPods (and good for their driving skills too).</p>
<p>I think visiting on a normal day is preferable to accepted students day when everyone is on their good behavior and the staff is overwhelmed.</p>
<p>In support of visits, if you know specifically what you want to study, you can indeed glean a lot from sitting in on classes (but it’s better to arrange a freshman AND a sr. class, for example, to get a feel for the department.) This is especially true in performing arts, music, etc. But since my son had intended a dual degree, we did both sides of the equation, and learned just as much sitting in on some of the “regular” BA classes too.</p>
<p>But visits are what you make of them. If you are fortunate enough to be able to connect with a department head, audit classes, interact with students, and in the case of musicians, have sample lessons with studio instructors – I do think you can glean a lot of useful info and get a strong “sense” of fit or no-fit.</p>
<p>I guess to my mind the more germane question might be, would you buy a $240,000 house sight unseen? Would you tell your kid to study up online to take a $30k car loan but not test drive a few cars in the process? Today, with the cost of college, (whether full pay or part loan, because even with FA just about anyone will be on the hook for 30k) it seems worth the expense and time to kick tires – BUT IN A MEANINGFUL WAY.</p>
<p>In all of our visits, we pre-arranged department meetings, class audits, full campus tours and in the case of two, appointments with the FA department. Those were in junior year, and made all the difference in the world.</p>
<p>You have to be careful drawing broad conclusions based on experiences during a visit. </p>
<p>I think the biggest value of a visit is it gets your student away from their daily life, and lets them spend some quality time thinking about the prospective school, talking with the accompanying parent, and gaining some additional knowledge about the school at the same time.</p>
<p>One time vistis are vital is if your kid wants to or is interested in applying ED.</p>
<p>For D1 visits helped her defiine the type of school she was interested in (urban mid sized schools that offered public health or pre-med programs) and helped eliminate types of schools (large public universities). Vistis also confirmed that she was not dead set on one school so she chose not to apply ED (although she did apply EA at one). Also for her subsequent visits after acceptance proved vital in her choossing her school. She ultimately chose Univ. of Rochester over NYU even though she thought she wanted NYU.</p>
<p>With my son, in addition to his sister’s visits that he was dragged along on, we visited 15 of the approximately 20 schools he was interested in. The vistis took place in his junior. From these visits he eliminated several schools because he realized thay were not the right fit (i.e UC Berkeley, Claremont McKenna, Illinois (our home state school) and Indiana). The visits also narrowed his school list to 10 and identified a clear cut #1 which he applied to ED. HE subsequently got into his 1st choice ED (Wharton School at Penn) which eliminated the time and effort required to apply to many of his other potential choices.</p>
<p>What students look for - they can’t/won’t always put into words. As a parent, we aren’t going to know.</p>
<p>I think campus visits are definitely really helpful, but the time you visit, also does matter a lot. It also depends on the specific visit, but I know that through visits I was able to get a better idea of the campus environment and what it would be like as a student there. The issue I find is that a lot of times, online reviews, posts, and articles, are all very helpful in getting one perspective of the school, but many of these reviews can also be sort of subjective and so visits help you to sort of come up with your own perspective. </p>
<p>Through visiting, I was able to learn a lot about the specifics such as how friendly and helpful is the general student body, how happy do the students generally seem, what options are there around to eat, how laundry and mail works, what are things you can do around the school’s environment, how diverse the school is, and certain unique aspects about the school. Even with diversity, I found a few times where I would look up the ethnic diversity statistics for the students online, yet when I visited the school, I’d find the school more or less diverse than it was made out to be. Through visits, I could also often get an idea of the personality of the community of the school, as some schools are very intense, some are a lot more laid-back, and some are a bit of both.</p>
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<p>That is for colleges that care about “level of applicant’s interest” in admissions (see the Common Data Set or [CollegeData:</a> College Search, Financial Aid, College Application, College Scholarship, Student Loan, FAFSA Info, Common Application](<a href=“http://www.collegedata.com%5DCollegeData:”>http://www.collegedata.com) ). Many colleges do not care about that (the super selective schools and most, but not all, public universities, particularly the admit-by-gpa-rank-test-score-formula schools).</p>
<p>Of course, that is a hidden advantage for applicants from wealthier families who can afford to take them on visits before application time.</p>