<p>first time to bat…spring of junior year…fall of sophomore year 2nd time around because we happened to be visiting older sister</p>
<p>My son and I went on two visits just recently in April of his SENIOR year. One was to visit a school he was waitlisted at to show interest and make sure it was a fit in the first place (it paid off!) and another to a school he was accepted at to see if he liked it. We had also visited a bunch of schools his junior year. This most recent visit gave me a chance to really reflect on the point of all the prior visits. While I really loved just being with him on the junior year visits and exploring all those places, and am glad I had that once in a lifetime chance, it was expensive and I am not really sure if it helped identify which schools he would apply to in the end. I would say it helped more to rule places out than make discoveries of new places to apply. (And I did get awfully tired of hearing about the blue emergency polls on every single campus.). So I wonder if it almost makes sense to make strategic visits after the applications are in, rather than before. One college student I spoke with before starting the whole process said, “Don’t visit until after acceptance so the student doesn’t fall in love with a school he/she gets rejected from.” Perhaps this advice is a little pessimistic, but in some ways, it makes sense if on a budget or applying to a lot of reach or simply very competitive schools.</p>
<p>S began visiting schools over the spring break of his Junior year. He really wasn’t that into it and complained that none of his friends were visiting yet. Visits were set up through each school’s website. On our first tour, we saw 5 schools, including a dream school that didn’t quite measure up. By the last school, S at least was able to rank schools based on various criteria. This helped with identifying other schools to visit in the subsequent months because S was better able to really pinpoint what he wanted in a college experience.</p>
<p>We continued visits through the spring and summer. We were sure to include schools where an interview was important and we revisited some favorites, this time with H along. By August, S had a great list of schools and could then focus on the applications.</p>
<p>The upfront work paid off when S was accepted ED into his top choice. We wouldn’t have had the confidence to go ED if we hadn’t visited so many schools and really sought to weigh the pros and cons with each.</p>
<p>Hey, Jym. I stick my nose in occasionally. </p>
<p>I can tell you I’m much more detached at the far end of the curve, fretting over an entirely new set of questions where I have virtually no input and zero control.</p>
<p>For 1st I was really clueless. Jr. year, and then I only went to 2 with him. He went to several on his own at the schools’ expense.</p>
<p>For #2, 8 years younger, I guess it was her first visit to #1’s university for Family Weekend. She declared his school “too big”. We visited lots for her, many because they were in or near a city that her year-round EC took us, so soph year on. </p>
<p>Ironically, she starts a fully funded PhD program at the uni she deemed too big.</p>
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<p>ha ha ha! 
:)</p>
<p>We liked the idea of starting casual visits summer prior to Junior year, while back East visiting family. The school choices were not precise… more of a sampling to learn about important factors. (With the first kid, we also learned that there is no merit aid at most of the top schools - I didn’t know about CC back then). It was a bit like looking at open houses for fun, where no pressure yet to decided. </p>
<p>We also had a memorable CA trip for DS’s junior year spring break. Some time was spent on San Diego vacation fun, some time in Claremont and Pasadena. It’s a cherished memory, different from our usual visit-the-relatives trips.</p>
<p>Our D did not want to visit any colleges before she applied to them. She knew she wanted to go to a school within 6-8 hours of home. She further narrowed down her choices by only considering ones that offered a degree in comp sci. We waited until she received her acceptances to make our visits. However, she only applied to five colleges. She was accepted at all five. After visiting two of the six, she made her decision. She has been very happy with her decision and has no regrets.</p>
<p>So for us, it was very easy and straightforward.</p>
<p>OP here,</p>
<p>I thought you all might want an update on how our first visit went. We were visiting a friend of my son’s who lives very close to our State Flagship. It was gorgeous day and we had a couple hours to kill between picking up the child and a movie they wanted to see. I seemed to remember seeing a few basketball hoops by the dorms so I thought we’d go find one and the boys could play. My goal was 90% to have them have fun and get some exercise, but the thought was in the back of my mind that letting them see the campus might plant some seeds. </p>
<p>Well, it turned out to be a mistake because there was some big event on campus and parking was impossible, turning around was also impossible so we ended up inching our way through the campus for about 1/2 an hour. The boys were entranced and asked me lots of questions. They found some things particularly amazing: the beach volleyball lot, the fact that there was an entire building for computer science, the size of the football stadium (both boys are football players). However, far and away the thing that blew their city child minds the most was the sheep at the agriculture department “Mom, I need to go to school here. They have sheep! Sheep!” They plotted how they’d sneak out at night, and steal one to keep as a pet in their dorm room. </p>
<p>I told them they both needed to study hard, because if only one got in they odds of finding a roommate who would tolerate a sheep were not good. They laughed and tried to decide what to study. My son voted for either computers or something involving ancient Egypt. His friend asked my opinion on majors where they don’t expect you to read any books, at which point my son helpfully suggested he study film. </p>
<p>I’d say the visit went well, but I’m hoping those of you who said that their interests change is right. I’d rather not see my child expelled for grand theft: herbivore.</p>
<p>My wife and I drove S and 4 friends 3 hours to visit UW fall of sophomore year. We ate lunch on campus, sat a class, toured, visited honors, and then split up with 3 visiting the premed advisor and 2 to the engineering advisor. Then we had dinner and drove home. All students are high-end and all had a blast, and all had a much better picture of college to start their planning with.</p>
<p>This summer, we are visiting NY and DC for a family vacation. We fly into Pitt to visit CMU, drive to Cornell, and then drive to NY for vacation. In DC, we will see Georgetown (for DW, not S since they don’t have engr). We may hit Johns Hopkins before we fly out.</p>
<p>My DS competed in a sport that took him all over the Southeast and beyond. During his junior year we began doing campus “drive-bys” - basically just driving through campuses in the towns we visited, regardless of whether or not that particular school was on his radar. It allowed him to get a look at a variety of different campus styles - eg. Georgia Tech vs. Sewanee vs. College of Charleston.
This had the advantage of removing the “is this the right school?” pressure from the equation while allowing him to get an idea of the type of environment that appealed to him.
He made his only official visits to schools that were recruiting him, but by then he was already familiar with the campus and surrounding areas.</p>
<p>I personally think campuses are just fun to visit in general. About a year or so before we did “official” college tours, I spent a week in Boston for business purposes and while I was there, drove and walked around Wellesley, Boston College and Brandeis which were near my hotel. Little did I know D would wind up at one of those. We were in Charleston SC recently for a long weekend and we walked through the College of Charleston campus. If I were to go to WashDC, I’d probably walk through the Georgetown area. The protestation that “it’s not necessary” seems rather pointless - well, higher education isn’t strictly necessary, going out to dinner or taking a vacation across the country aren’t strictly necessary either – but if parents enjoy doing these things with / for their children, what’s the big deal? I still remember my own college tours with my parents 30 years ago, up and down the east coast - and in hindsight, if we’d only known better, I would have looked at schools in other parts of the country, too.</p>
<p>This has likely already been said (or at least in a combination). We started summer before junior year (D really had seen many campuses prior with her lax travels). I would likely do it a little differently, but start at the same time - just more locally. First, I think, you need to determine if your kid wants a small, medium or large and that can be done locally (for most) summer before Junior year. I would have then taken spring break junior year and summer after junior year to visit schools that fit/reach academically based on what part of the country.</p>
<p>We started out with geography - looking at all sizes, but it was evident fairly quickly into first trip that she hated large universities - and we had like five on the list that trip 2000 miles away!</p>
<p>One thing I wish I had done was insist that my younger child ALSO sign in at info sessions when his older brother was visiting the schools. He refused to sign it at schools where he didn’t think he had any interest. Now he has some interest in those schools, and since some of these colleges track “interest” and visits, I regret that he never signed in, since he went through the whole info session and tour. Perhaps he can let them know he visited several years ago. But still, it takes just a few minutes to sign in. I really suggest that all younger H.S. siblings sign in.</p>
<p>It’s fascinating to read the different ways parents/students went about the college search. I think what works really depends on the kid and the circumstances. My two are very different people, and their searches reflected that. My spouse had just one in-state university that was appropriate for her ambitions, and her parents had a strict in-state-only bias. That was a very simple search, as the one a cousin provided her children … “You’re all attending ABC Evangelical.”</p>