<p>@onesonmom you hit the nail on the head. I see so many parents going to so many colleges up and down the coast as if WE were free to decide were our kids go to school. The truth is that things are getting a lot tougher this days. I have seen kids rejected from safeties schools with amazing stats. One has to have a broad view of the college process: Urban x college town, small x large, public x private. So keep your options open. This process is SO long. If you EA you still have time to visit the school and decide. Also read about some up an coming schools. They are offering great merit scholarships and give preference for the good student that is not just using their school as safety, meaning, they might wait-list a 4.0 student and accept a 3.4 (of course with a good ACT and EC).</p>
<p>To follow on from wegotin’s final excellent points: the “up and coming” schools offer real opportunity, as do others who fit a particular stats profile. In fact, we switched strategy mid-search (after the ED HMFR reach rejection) and targeted those schools where my son’s ACT score and GPA placed him in the top 25% (where we really needed merit) or at least at the top of the 25%-50% of the college’s mid-50 range. Very successful plan, very happy kid. We both realized he’d be happier and the “fit” would be better where he was not (potentially) the most struggling student who barely got in. There’s no prestige or “marquee” value that’s worth four years of that kind of experience…and in terms of competition for limited resources such as research, internships etc, he wanted to be near the top, not the bottom.</p>
<p>Visiting a campus is very beneficial. It allows the student and parent see the advantages and disadvantages of each campus. The student can tell what her favorite school is and what it is like.</p>
<p>We visited every campus on DS’ shortlist, several more than once. We were often surprised by how different a campus actually physically appeared in-person than on the web-sites’ and brochures’ well-chosen and sometimes cropped/editted photos’ visualization. One campus in particular didn’t look much at all like its staged appearance in its promotional material.</p>
<p>We also found that visiting campus during school session gave a good sampling of school’s general atmosphere, student body profile, and campus spirit, all which can’t be gaged long distance from photos.</p>
<p>College is an enormous personal and financial investment. Would you buy a house sight unseen, relying on the photos and description on the MLS listing-sheet?</p>
<p>onesonmom, that is EXACTLY the strategy we used with our son, and it paid off brilliantly.</p>
<p>Just did visit #1 with sophomore daughter today, and I am SO glad we did. Not only did she really like the school, the admissions presentation gave her a third-party perspective on what she has to do for the next two years (i.e., not switch to a new language this fall). It’s a great feeling when your child says “I could go here” for the first time.</p>
<p>Thanks for the great, down-to-earth suggestions. We have checked out those links for the 3.3 to 3.5 GPA and found them quite helpful. I absolutely agree that one of the most important elements of ‘fit’ will be finding the right academic climate. She spent her first two years of high school in a very selective and competitive math/science center in our area where she had to work her keister off just to stay in the middle of the pack. She really didn’t enjoy the experience and is much happier in a good, solid public high school with a more balanced array of classmates. We’re looking for a collegial, not competitive environment with good teachers who care about their students. </p>
<p>Having gone to a huge state school myself, I’d like to see her in a place where it’s not all about giant lecture halls and mostly scantron-scored tests. She is great at the one-on-one, discussion, writing…why not play to her strengths? She’s more concerned with finding a school that has a strong field biology program so she can get research experience - many of which reside at larger state schools. Hopefully this summer’s travels will give her a chance to see the range of options that fall within her range of possible acceptances. I like the idea of focusing first on the safeties to be sure she has a few great schools on her list that she likes and can most likely get into.</p>
<p>She has a strong tendency to undersell herself, so I really don’t expect her to LET herself fall in love with Bowdoin or Middlebury or Duke. She’s more worried that she won’t get in ANYwhere, which seems highly unlikely with a 3.6 GPA. But we will definitely keep that in mind as we begin to explore. I keep reminding her that this should be a fun and interesting process…and somewhere, there is a great school for her.</p>
<p>Again, thanks all - really love this parents’ forum!</p>
<p>don’t want to beat a dead horse, but since I’m waiting for DUKE decision (tomorrow) and my HW is done, and Arrested Development doesn’t come out for another month on Netflix…my mom asked me to jump on and give my 2-cents. it gives me something to do besides obsess about possible rejection letters!</p>
<p>what I thought was interesting on college trips was what the kids looked like (happy/stressed) on campus in general, and also what the facilities looked like. </p>
<p>I’m Mech. Eng. and the lab at one school was about as big as our living room, and the lab at another school was like a huge warehouse. Guess where I would get more time on the equipment in off-hours? right. </p>
<p>One school had LOADS of rooms (different sized rooms) full of computers and desks and chairs and whiteboards. These rooms were only accessible by Eng. students with their key-card so there would be plenty of space available for students to meet to plan group projects or have a quiet study group area. I thought this was great. It would be hard to meet in the cafeteria, dorm room or outside and get the same results. The fact that the rooms were reserved for Eng. students made it even better–no need to fight fine-arts majors or Sociology majors for private meeting space–PLUS all the software we needed (CAD, etc) was loaded on those machines–which wasn’t the case in the library.</p>
<p>Understanding how “big” a 5K student campus was, versus a 15K student campus, versus a 50K student campus is also something you can ONLY do in person. During a week-break in sophomore year (when colleges were in session) my mom and I took a road trip to colleges here in California. Some were schools I didn’t care about at all, she just made me go to experience that “size” of campus. We didn’t have the $ to go flying around the country, looking at ALL the schools which interest me…until I was accepted. THAT trip was very helpful as I was able to rule out several sizes of small schools, and found that I didn’t mind so much the large schools (as long as I take my bike!).</p>
<p>Here it is, the last week of decisions, and we’re ready to buy plane tix to any of the schools I’m accepted to (with enough Merit or Need Aid) so I can finally step foot on those campus’ which are on the East coast. Only made it to the Midwest last summer (family wedding). </p>
<p>A friends mom though, has a totally different perspective “If you get into Harvard, do you really need to go see it before you decide to go? It’s HARVARD!”</p>
<p>The other thing about visits, if you only go on a student-led visit, you’re not getting much more than the virtual tour. My mom scheduled meetings with the assistant deans of Engineering, Honors colleges, financial aid, admissions, etc etc so the visit day was an entire day of exactly who I needed to talk with to get more info on the programs that I was interested in.
I don’t know if it counted directly, but I got extra merit money from a lot of the schools I visited (the Engineering school, or the honors college) and this $ wasn’t advertised on the website, like a scholarship you apply for, it’s like a slush fund that they dole out somehow. </p>
<p>Understanding the differences in the environment around the school was something else I wanted to see…one school, while beautiful ON CAMPUS was very boring off campus, and was like a boring suburbia-land for miles and miles. </p>
<p>It was worse than where I live. We’re kind of rural, and it is 6 miles to civilization/library/gas station/grocery store. At suburbia-land there were just houses upon houses and then a big street with all kinds of stores. and it was just wall-to-wall development, but not cool development like old stone architecture or tall building, just boring houses and stores. </p>
<p>Not what I wanted at all…and also realized it would be tough to get out and shop for anything or go anywhere, based on how the city was set up. </p>
<p>No college bus option either, only the city bus and everyone complained about being stuck on campus. Another school had a bus service (I think once a week) to Target or Walmart locally, where the store actually re-opened for “students only” in the late evening and the college bus system drove kids back/forth all night. THAT was a great idea for kids without cars.
It IS a pain to go on these trips at the last minute though…I wish the decisions came out earlier and were lined up with my spring break. Hope this helps.</p>
<p>Dory: here’s one more thing I wish someone had shared with me two years ago: GPA may not mean what you think it means. Here’s why: high schools all do it differently, and colleges also have a surprising degree of variation in how they handle GPA. How grades are weighted (honors, AP, IB, academic) at the high school level, on the transcript or just reflected in GPA for class ranking, is only half the the picture. </p>
<p>Then on the college side of the equation, there’s how any particular college converts to its own scale (there’s even variation on converting to a 4.0), whether it weights at all, or what it weights and how much, whether it “counts” advanced coursework in middle school, whether it includes only academic or all courses, all content courses but not PE, etc. And colleges don’t always disclose all the details.</p>
<p>So be aware that what you think the GPA (uw or w) is will vary by college, and the GPA is what that college says it is… for admission purposes but also for merit or scholarship cutoffs.</p>
<p>And, of course, with each semester the grades change.</p>
<p>Another reason to cast a wide net for applications and/or visits.</p>
<p>I visited one school and loved it, everything was fabulous, but I did not see many kids like me. Most were from the same part of the country, and I was from the opposite. I just did I not think I would fit in. I would never have known this unless I visited. Since I do have choices, I will choose another school, it just makes sense to " plant will you will grow" . However, I do recommend visiting schools once you are accepted so you are not attending 30 schools, if possible, aply EA to as many as you can.</p>
<p>We’re in the visit after acceptances camp. Of course, the kids have been on all sorts of campuses over the years, for various reasons, and so they had some idea. </p>
<p>they were just too busy to visit schools until they knew where they might go.</p>
<p>YMMV</p>
<p>I waited to take my son to the university that was the farthest away and that was the most competitive until after he was admitted. It was not only a matter of saving time and money, I was also concerned he would fall in love with it, and then be set up for a huge disappointment in admissions. As it turned out, he loved it during the visit, and before he left said “send in the deposit now.”</p>
<p>For the small LACs in particular, not only do they track visits to gauge your interest, but a visit is a big help when you have to write the “Why Whoville College?” supplemental essay. Being able to talk about individuals you met, your experience in the class you visited, the funny story about you and your dad getting lost in Whoville, etc., helps you write an essay that isn’t cookie-cutter. Too many of these essays end up parroting what’s on the college web site, but it’s darn hard to get around that when the web site is your main source of information.</p>
<p>Based on visits alone, my D’s first choice was ruled out, and her last choice became her first.</p>
<p>We’re struggling with visiting after acceptances. D was accepted at too many schools, in far-flung places, to visit them all. Some were safeties that are no longer under consideration. But there remain some schools that have accepted her (and offered nice scholarships) that I think she really should see. She visited the two earliest acceptances in Feb., and intended to visit three more this week, spring break, but got exhausted after two overnights and canceled the third. Now she says she’s done and wants to decide between the three she has visited and liked. I think if we’d done a little more visiting before or during the application season, she would have a better basis from which to make the final decision. My H was adamant about not wasting school days and money on visits before knowing the outcomes, and we really had no idea that she’d have so many choices in the end.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>LOVE this! :p</p>
<p>Yes, I can see where that could be an issue with the after acceptances visits. Youngest was one and done, so… Oldest had quite a few options, but we eliminated by type as well as campus, as we went. So some were not “visited” in actuality, only in concept.</p>
<p>Good luck to you.</p>
<p>We did many college tours from sophomore year until early senior year. I believe school visits are crucial. It’s like buying a car, wouldn’t you test drive it first? Many schools described the type of students they are looking for, let you know how many applications they receive per year, how many students are accepted etc. Highly selective schools may want to see several years of AP courses, how they calculate students GPA etc.
Campus vibe is crucial, how do the students interact with each other, do they look friendly, strange, do an you see yourself on this campus? Ask questions to students in the cafe, bookstore or in passing.</p>
<p>I am a parent of a current college freshman. I had a friend who told me that visits didn’t matter and that you should wait until after you were accepted. That choosing a college is about your major, the quality of the education and price. it is not about the dorms or the lawn or the quality of the tour. You need an overnight visit to evaluate and many schools don’t allow those type of visits until senior year. I will say that my daughter applied early to a school and two weeks later she visited that school and another school. She really wished she had applied early to what she had thought was her “second choice” school rather than the other one after she spent the night on both campuses. So, I think a balanced approach would be to evaluate each school for cost, decide what you can afford that meets her academic needs. Then, decide if you are going to apply early to any of them. If so, maybe visit that school and any close runner up to make the early app choice. Then visit the rest after acceptance. I don’t know. Just thinking out loud about this.</p>
<p>I just gave a high school classmate, her husband, and their 9th grade daughter a private tour of UCLA and it was a life changing experience for her. Its important for children to see what’s possible. She is a sometimes great/sometimes mediocre student but the experience has really inspired her to push herself. I guess when you are a senior waiting for acceptance it may seem less magical, but if you have younger children…by all means, expose them to college campuses.</p>
<p>We did also visit the alleged “first choice school” when she was very young…and it did inspire her to work hard…so I agree that visiting campuses as a younger student is also very valuable. But, I am not sure that the whole “college tour” thing is all that valuable. For an example, I know a family that took their kid on 20 college visits during junior year, she really really liked School A, and liked School B. She applied to many including her state schools. She didn’t get in to B and she got into A. But, A was 55k for her family contribution and they couldn’t do it. She went to the state school and is one of the few that I have heard of who are just never going to be happy. (I just saw her mom this week and she was telling me how miserable she is at the state flagship). She wants School A. I think it is really important to make sure you know how much schools are going to cost for you (most have calculators on their websites or at college board) Its a big waste of money, time and emotional energy to take trips to schools that you can’t or are not willing to spend the money on. But, that school that would have cost their family 45k would have costed me 4k. It is not a bad time to figure this stuff out, talk to your student and see where you are headed.</p>
<p>To add to collegebound about the size;</p>
<p>I think that’s a huge factor. Looking at number of students is not an accurate way of determining the size of a campus. I visited 2 schools and the both had 2500 students. One ENTIRE campus was 1 square block, the other was 110 acres, with several fields, major specific building, and extra services. And believe it or not; 110 acres is not huge, the entire campus is easily toured on foot.</p>