When did you start visiting colleges, and how did you start?

Parents Forum
1

<p>My parents and I didn't start looking at colleges until I was in my Junior year, and the list was quite random. Even though I had some pretty clear reactions to some of the early schools we visited (e.g. I went to Williams and realized pretty quickly that I couldn't be comfortable in a town that small, went to UT Austin and knew the school was much too big), it seemed too late to actually change the list of visited schools. As a result I ended up applying to almost none of the schools I visited, and choosing a school sight unseen. That school was a decent fit, and I had a good experience, but I still think that other schools might have been a better fit.</p>

<p>Anyway, that's a longwinded way to say that I'd like start earlier with my kid, and think of it as a two step process. I thought that maybe we could visit a bunch of schools in our region (we're close to DC), not necessarily because those specific schools are options, although some are, but to get a sense of whether he likes urban, suburban or rural, whether he prefers big or small, whether he prefers and HBCU or a PWI institution. Then in sophomore/junior year we can take those preferences and go further afield. If he loved Howard, maybe make the trek to Morehouse or Xavier or TSU. If he loved the small LACs, then maybe a road trip to Ohio is in order. If he thought UMDCP was the bomb, then look at other State Flagships. etc . . . </p>

<p>I should note that I wasn't thinking that a tour made the most sense for a young kid. My 16 year old goddaughter is hopefully visiting this summer or next, and if she comes we will take a bunch of formal college tours and I'll probably drag him along, but otherwise I was thinking of things like going to a football game at Howard, and one at Shepherd University in WV and comparing how they feel. Or, since he likes music and theater, attending a play at AU or a concert at Catholic. Or just taking the dog for a long walk around UMDCP. When picking summer activities for him, I might give extra weight to those on college campuses, even if they aren't the kind of thing that gives you a real leg up.</p>

<p>I'm wondering if other people have done this, and if it worked or backfired, and also what variables or schools we should consider. We like to take little weekend road trips, so I figure up to about 3 hours from DC is fair game for this, plus maybe farther schools if we happen to go on a trip for another reason (e.g. drop in on UNH if we visit my brother). My son's too young to chance for colleges, but he's a fantastic kid, hard working, curious, lots of ECs, a really kind funny person, but he's not a natural academic talent. If I had to guess, I'd predict that he'll graduate high school with a B/B+ average, but a challenging course load. I say this because I don't want to focus on just the very top schools (UPenn, Swathmore, Georgetown, UVA would all be close examples) and then have him learn that none of them were actually option. I'd rather see a wider variety.</p>

<p>OK, that was really long, but I'd just love to hear what other people did, and how it turned out.</p>

2

<p>Junior year is plenty early. Before that? kids need to be kids (IMO), and they’re not thinking about it, none of their friends are, and they don’t know what they want to be when they grow up -</p>

3

<p>We did some the summer before their junior year mainly because that is when we had time. Those were the long distance visits. The rest we did throughout this school year (junior year). We have a couple more to make this summer. Because of their schedule, they need to have their applications, etc. ready before school starts, or as much as possible. They are applying either EA or rolling to most schools, one school is an April notification so they will know where they are accepted before Nov or so, with that one exception. Most of this is out of necessity because they can’t really take time off senior year to tour because of the classes they are taking and their weekends are taken up by their fall activity.</p>

4

<p>I guess it depends on how big a net you’re casting, as well.</p>

<p>There were plenty of opportunities during DD’s junior year (it feels like schools are off, more than in, now days). Even with DD’s spring/summer activity, fast-pitch softball for H.S. and summer club team, we were never stressed for a visit. All in all? we hit 12-15 within 500 miles (and a couple out lying options), well before the application period set in during the start of Sr. year.</p>

5

<p>giterdone–our kids have no time in the fall, at all, to visit schools. They have required practices for their activities every day and every weekend they have competitions. In the spring, same story. We were fortunate with weather this year that we got in a few visits during the winter. DD has 7, yes 7 days this summer that are not already committed to various activities. During those 7 days we are trying to fit in an out of town trip that will take up 4 of those days at least. Add in that we are tying to get visits done for 2 kids and we needed to do what we did last summer. They were thinking about college as sophomores (and earlier), their friends were thinking about college, many were doing visits last summer for the same reason. School vacation days don’t always work either. Our large fall break is already taken up by their fall activity. Christmas break doesn’t work for the college side, we did do some visits this past spring break but other than that, they couldn’t go on days off of school for various reasons. You have to do what you have to do. The visits we took last summer were to schools that were 9+ hours away. The one we are trying to fit in this summer is 18 hours if we drove (but we are flying). If all you are looking at are schools in your state or neighboring states where you can get there and back in a day, sure, taking a day after school some day to do that works.</p>

6

<p>Sounds tough. You get the schedule, life, pace, etc… you make for yourself. Being booked for all but 7 days this summer, already? sounds crazy to me. Good luck.</p>

<p>And having geographic boundaries does help. If you’re going to consider “coast to coast?” on top of that schedule… like I said; you get the schedule you make…</p>

7

<p>I consider us “early starters” – and I think your kid(s) could end up completely burned out on the college search experience. You really have no idea what your kid’s actual grades, test scores, EC interests in college, desire to go away, possible majors, etc. will be when they are in 9th grade. They change so much between 9th & 11th grade. Any campus you have visited in the early months will be so remote to them in memory (especially if you have visited a lot of campuses) that they won’t be able to readily sort it in their minds anyway. And even the kid who loves college visits (eg, my D1) eventually got tired of them. Most kids will see through the “walk the dog on the campus” routine pretty quickly…unless you really have an interest in the activity on the campus, that could backfire.</p>

<p>Regarding summer programs, I think it is MUCH more important to have your kid pursue their true interests vs. go to a campus they might consider attending later. Passion and depth in an EC will do a lot more for their college admissions. And likely make him happier.</p>

<p>I would suggest you consider some of these steps:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>Plan a couple of visits for spring of sophomore year. The kid can at least envision going to college at that point. And it can give them a motivation kick start for junior year (the most important year for grades). For our D2, we were in DC for spring break, and we did two college visits in the area during the week of vacation.</p></li>
<li><p>In spring of sophomore year, get a Fiske Guide to Colleges. Spend time with your kid looking through it early in the summer and make a list of colleges to visit. (Note: D1 did this with me, D2 asked me to go through and mark some schools based on a few criteria we discussed, then we discussed the 30 or so schools I flagged). It is much easier to target your visits if you do.</p></li>
<li><p>We did a lot of visiting junior year. Some weekends, spring break, a few in the summer before. We combined some with other trips (eg, D2 went to a camp in Reno, I flew out and we hit several California schools for a few days after camp). I recommend making your visits count… arrange for your kid to attend a class, go on the tour, eat in the cafeteria, meet with a coach or prof if he has a special area of interest. We don’t go much for info sessions (a couple just to give D an idea of how they go, but once you’ve been to a couple…). Interviews are your choice. My D1 was a great interview, so starting spring of junior year (when she had enough maturity to handle it well), she often did interviews if they were offered. D2 is pretty shy, so far we have skipped the interviews. She will likely do some fall of senior year where necessary. I guess I would say better to have a thorough visit that really gives you a feel for the school and several different views vs. a “drive through” visit.</p></li>
<li><p>Focus a LOT harder on possible matches than reaches (honestly… if your kid is a B/B+ kid, don’t even bother to tour the very top schools unless he has something huge like a top national EC). Also consider cost… there is nothing sadder than a kid falling in love with a school their family can’t pay for in the end.</p></li>
<li><p>Fall of junior year, lay out a plan for testing. That is a very time consuming process if your kid wants to take the SAT, the ACT (in case they are better suited to it… my D2 just took the ACT and got an awesome score with essentially no prep, while she has prepped hard for the SAT and has good but not great schores), and subject tests. You want to leave some time/dates for re-testing, too. This is at least as important as visiting colleges. ECs can affect this, too (D would NOT miss the state or national competitions for her favorite EC for anything), so getting a jump on that calendar for spring of junior year is important. And making sure they have prep time for the tests is important.</p></li>
</ul>

<p>I am just saying, you could make your kid crazy. At some point they may stop talking about college altogether if you make this a four year process. I know (oh, do I know!) how much you want to think about this, talk about it, take action on it. My advice is to keep his (and your) focus during freshman & most of sophomore year on high school.</p>

8

<p>We went on one campus visit the summer before junior year when we were visiting relatives in the area. We started in earnest during D1s junior year. We are fortunate to live near Boston, so we took advantage of looking at a variety of schools to see if D liked small, urban, large, rural, etc. Once she figured out her criteria, we went on a few road trips during junior year spring break.</p>

9

<p>We started fall of my son’s jr yr. looking at several schools in NYC when he was there for a XC meet, but didn’t do any official tours. Feb break of Jr yr we visited a college nearby so my son could get an idea of what a campus tour was like and what questions to ask, etc. Then we did a whole week of visits over his spring break - from western NY to New Hampshire. He disliked more schools then he liked on that trip (he was also completely burned out by the last two days and really snarky about the last two schools and to me.) He visited one school he was very interested in over the summer and loved it, then one more in mid October of his Sr. year (the school he ended up attending.) His three top choices he applied to he had visited and had visited 3 others, but 3 he never saw at all and only visited one of those after he had been accepted (he was accepted at all his schools but two went directly into the bin sight unseen after other acceptances came in.)</p>

10

<p>^ditto on that! I think we visited too many - DD did get burned out and “snarky” towards the end. And the visits actually served better to eliminate options, than include them.</p>

<p>DD eventually applied to 7, was admitted to 5, but really only had 2 that she chose between (the other 3 were mild considerations that didn’t really factor in the end).</p>

11

<p>S visited OOS friend summer before junior year and visited a few schools with their family. I had suggested this and since friend is same age, they both got something out of it. We visited more Spring break junior year. S visited two more while on OOS trip with my sister and nephew who is one year younger. Finally S flew OOS to visit one on his own. Another cousin was interning in that city and that made it easier. For my S, I think college was not on radar prior to summer before junior year. Even though he toured 7 schools, plus one visit without a tour, 8 total. Would have been nice to have toured more. I suggest visiting schools with relatives and friends, also, if possible.</p>

12

<p>

</p>

<p>Yep, they get the schedule they want, get to spend time with all of their friends doing what they love, nothing wrong with that at all. They have a blast all summer long, great life for a kid.</p>

13

<p>if you say so…:p</p>

14

<p>Beginning the spring of Sophomore year, we would be conscious of where schools were if we happened upon them in our travels. So on a trip to Worcester, MA we explored Wesleyan on the way back. We met relatives in New Haven and walked the Yale campus. We went up to the Hudson Valley and visited Vassar.</p>

<p>In the summer before Junior year, we went on longer travelling vacations to areas that had schools D might be interested in: Boston and DC. We scheduled campus tours for some schools, for others it was just a drive or a walk around the campus.</p>

<p>By Junior year, I had begun to educate myself much more about the college process and costs. We began to formulate more of a plan–certain criteria that were important were established–schools that gave merit aid and schools that had a Jewish presence of more than 15%.</p>

<p>D established a preliminary list of 8 to 10 schools–some of which we had already visited on some level. By the end of Junior year we began returning to some schools to schedule interviews and tours of departments. This continued into the summer before senior year with visits upstate NY and back to DC and Boston. By senior year, we ended up revisiting some schools to audition for scholarships.</p>

<p>In the end, we narrowed down the list to 7 schools that D applied to. We had visited all and she was very familar with what they offered.</p>

15

<p>I am actually not a big fan of college visiting with friends & relatives… this is such an expensive, personal decision for your family. Your kid might enjoy his trip more with a buddy along, but if the buddy doesn’t like the school he can influence your kid’s perception. It is also hard to focus on the things that are specific about your kid (eg, my daughter is interested in immunology and wants to go to a bio class that is related and talk to a bio prof – she also wants to walk through the studio arts building after the tour) if they are with a friend. I also want my kid focused on the school and the people there, not on chatting with her friend.</p>

<p>Relatives can be an issue (they may love or hate the school, and have plenty to say about it when it comes time to apply – even if they are not paying the bill).</p>

16

<p>My husband got some advice along the lines of what uskoolfish said–even early in the process it can be a good idea to swing through a campus if you’re in the area. We haven’t taken any official campus tours yet (my S is a sophomore) but we’ve visited 3-4 colleges when we’ve been nearby them. Visiting different types of campuses can give them some idea of what different types of campuses are like, even if they aren’t interested in a particular school. They can get some sense of what they like/dislike about urban vs. rural, small vs. large, and that kind of thing. That can be useful information down the road.</p>

<p>We live very near our state flagship so he’s been on that campus a good bit. He probably will apply there although he really wants to go away (which I understand, and will certainly support that to the extent we can afford it and he finds a good program for his interests).</p>

<p>We will probably visit a few more schools this summer and maybe even take an official tour or two. My son did have an offical tour of Rice when he was in Houston with an academic program trip. He loved it, so that’s currently his dream school but he knows it’s a long shot.</p>

17

<p>Our first college tour was spring break of junior year and it was part of our usual vacation. We simply added a couple of days to the schedule to stop at colleges on the way to our destination. We officially toured three schools, stopped in at a fourth, and drove-by a few others. The second tour was summer after junior year and involved official visits to five schools, with some non-college sight-seeing thrown in for variety.</p>

<p>Many teens (maybe most) are operating on limited information and inexperienced notions of the world and college options. What they think they want is based on exposure. A kid whose primary information on colleges comes from ESPN may be tempted to curtail his choices to Big 10 schools – and Big 10 schools are awesome but not necessarily the best fit even for an avid football fan.</p>

<p>Unless you have one of those rare kids who knows exactly what he wants and seems destined to do it, I would suggest maximizing variety on college visits. Small, mid-size, large; rural, urban, suburban; etc. My son insisted he didn’t want a small school before we made our first college tour. I said he should at least look at one before he rejected the entire group, and he loved the LAC we visited and admitted his preconceived notions were faulty. He’ll be attending an LAC this fall.</p>

<p>Junior year, or the summer prior to junior year, is probably early enough for most kids to make planned visits to colleges, but you could expose your child to campuses prior to that, even if it’s only a drive-by. Also, in some cases, a college visit early in high school might be motivational. One friend told me her daughter, who was not academically motivated, got herself in gear after visiting colleges late in her junior year; her mom wishes they had started the process earlier, although no one knows if she would’ve had the same reaction in 9th or 10th grade.</p>

18

<p>We also started early, maybe around the summer before 10th. Just some look-sees. You don’t have to do the whole tour and info session thing on every stop. We’re driving distance to a range of colleges, so this worked for us.</p>

<p>Absolutely agree the kids can get burnt out- too many colleges on one trip can become a blur, no matter how you try to counteract that. The parental pressure to evaluate each visit is more than they’re ready for. We’d do one in driving distance, have lunch. When we made longer trips, we did not try to maximize the experience. Eg, overnight near one and drive throughs at two others, on the way back, maybe a stop in admissions to get info. We skipped nearly all info sessions. We didn’t make them eat in the cafeteria.</p>

<p>The early idea is, as someone noted, to give them an idea of big vs small, prestige vs a broader range of students, close to a city vs rural. Things tend to evolve and you can filter a bit. After a few visits, D1 knew she liked LACs, didn’t want a mega-U. She became intrigued by how many kids were in the library or study areas, what the buildings that housed her major looked like- so we always tried to check those. On some campuses, we never parked. Her dream school was our very last visit, an afterthought- and she is very, very happy there. </p>

<p>I also think it’s important to have some idea of what the kids want to study. By late junior year, one of our filters was the school had to have her major and enough profs working in that. That’s often parental homework.</p>

<p>Senior year, my kids got 2 excused absence days for college visits- not enough to wait that long. You may need those days for interviews. And, since you want a chance to visit some schools while they’re in session, use jr year wisely.</p>

19

<p>I’m in my second round of this, and I have to say that kids mature and change so much just over the course of junior year that starting much before isn’t particularly helpful. Even having grown up on college campuses, gone to summer camp on a college campus, and gone on many college tours with his older sibling, my jr DS changed his mind completely during the course of our April break tour about the size and type of school he wants and now has a completely new list.</p>

20

<p>“I am actually not a big fan of college visiting with friends & relatives… this is such an expensive, personal decision for your family. Your kid might enjoy his trip more with a buddy along, but if the buddy doesn’t like the school he can influence your kid’s perception.”</p>

<p>You have a point, but in our case everyone was objective. Friend was also interested in UCLA and went to Chapman as a favor to us. They were very positive. S tagged along with his cousin on vistis to University of Chicago and Northwesten while vacationing and as a result sparked some interest in NW. I took him to the schools he was most interested in on another trip to CA and he went to NYU on his own and was lucky to be able to stay with a cousin interning there. It just made it easier for us to fit tours in while visiting different parts of the county with friends and family. But, I agree, if they do not know enough to be objective and positive, it would not be a good idea.</p>