<p>Out of my campus visits so far, I've only felt one place that felt somewhat "right" for me, but ironically it was my last choice to go to though their program is great, but it's just too close to home and too many familiar faces.</p>
<p>Am I really supposed to feel at home when I step on colleges, or am I supposed to get the feeling over time while looking for certain things? All the campuses have been nice, but I haven't grown fond of any of them during my visit. I was surprised Cornell/Ithaca didn't win me over, though I thought it was stellar. Just wasn't for me...=/</p>
<p>You definitely need to like the college and feel comfortable at it before you send in your deposit. That doesn’t need to happen as soon as you get on campus for the first time though. Don’t throw out colleges just because you didn’t feel that “feeling,” but don’t keep them if you feel uncomfortable/out of place there either, because that is what the visit is for: to see if you can see yourself as a student there. If you really don’t care for the colleges you’ve visited so far, keep looking. I didn’t discover mine online until October, and then I didn’t visit until March. I felt ambivalent for the first few hours, but as the visit progressed, I slowly fell in love with the college. There wasn’t anything specific; it was just a general feeling of rightness. </p>
<p>Don’t feel stressed about not finding “the place” right now. It’ll come. And really think about that college that’s close to home. From the way you talk about it seems like it could be the place, unless you think the familiarity would be too unbearable.</p>
<p>I think the main value of campus visits is generally to rule out types of schools that you just can’t imagine attending: It’s just too big and you feel lost or too small and you feel claustrophobic. It’s too urban or too isolated. The dominent culture (whatever it is) makes you uncomfortable-or, on the contrary, feels great and you want more schools just like that. This clarifying kind of experience helps you to define categories of schools rather than a specific school.</p>
<p>Ruling out a specific place based on one visit happens for lots of people, but you run the risk of over-generalizing based on a few very narrow experiences. (One guy dropped a school because the campus seemed too quiet and deserted on Saturday morning. Had he been visiting the night before, he would have probably dropped it because it looked too much like a party school.) It’s too easy, for example, to dislike a specific tour guide, hate the weather that day, or sit in on the one boring class that you hoped to love-and walk away saying, ‘nope, not for me.’ </p>
<p>Love at first sight is also misleading-but at least it doesn’t rule out applying anywhere else.</p>