It’s an interesting question. I wonder when it became prevalent to visit colleges before applying? Disclosure: Back in the Dark Ages of the mid-1970s, I applied to the only local 4 year college I could afford as a commuter, and didn’t step foot on campus until my first day of classes. Times have changed.
In my opinion it’s simple… you just haven’t found “the” school yet. You’ll know it when you get there.
Our school visits were super helpful. We also had the opposite impression and found that each school had a very unique vibe. My daughter nixed more than 1/2 the schools on her initial list after visiting. On paper she loved Notre Dame and would have ranked it #1. Absolutely hated everything about it when we visited. It was definitely the visits that helped her realize what was truly important for her personal search.
The visits were also more than just doing a generic tour. She visited the department of her intended major on all of our visits, met with professors, sat in on classes, talked to students, and ate in the dining hall. She went back for second and third visits at the top choices.
I also think it’s more difficult to write the “why us” essays if you’ve never set foot on campus.
I went to college in the late 80s and did the college tours with my mom. We took a very long two week road trip.
Please visit - at least a whittled down list. We took our S1 to many schools, some with and some without all the family. One school in particular seemed perfect on paper - read about it on the Princeton list and how it described the vibe and the “typical” student etc and all seemed to totally fit my son. All 6 of us walked away from that visit with a “no way - no fit” decision. Never would have done that without visiting and would have paid the app fee and he could be there now!
Also important to see area around the school - while that is not always a deal breaker if you are not from that general region you have no idea what is there. We tried to look at as many as possible and those that were too far away at the time we waited until he got in and then looked.
I had the very same mindset (and I’ve been to quite a few schools myself) until I actually started visiting schools with my son. There is a relatively endless number of little details that you can’t possibly pick up without going there in person. Regarding tours, you’re a captive audience getting a full on pitch but they do give you valuable information. There is no substitute for walking (and driving) around and looking things over.
I went to my college sight unseen (no money for visits). I basically picked the most prestigious institution I got into - mistaken thinking although I got a fabulous education, graduated in 4 years and it was a great thing for me. If I were visiting for my kids I would be really specific about the conditions in their major. 1) ease of getting into classes 2) condition of science labs including stocking and safety or, for the other kid, condition of art studios. 3) eyeballing the foreign language department to see if it seemed like students could actually become proficient. There are other things you can glean, too. I took a group of underrepresented minority student on an Ivy tour once. One of the kids asked about the percentage of Black students in the student body. The tour guide had zero clue and seemed surprised that anyone would ask. I could literally hear the mental click of all those kids suddenly flipping the switch to HBCUs because the guide gave them the clear impression “you don’t belong”.
@millie210 says what I was thinking, but in a much more eloquent way! Visits to me are maybe more about the people and less about the buildings. From the people, you can get more of the feel the culture of the school. Yes, in some ways, many buildings, campuses and especially dorms look the same, but what is spoken about, emphasized, and what you see and hear in the student body was a valuable part of visiting.
“Back in the Dark Ages of the mid-1970s,… and didn’t step foot on campus until my first day of classes.”
I did the same thing, except that I showed up a couple of days early since I was back in the very dark ages where you had a day to move into the dorm and then a day to sign up for classes.
If I had done school visits back around about 1970, then I think that I would have made a different choice (between a “top 6” school versus a “top 30” school), and I probably would have been happier for four years. I think that visits would have been very helpful.
I think that @TS0104 said it well in post above. It is about the people, the culture, and the feeling for the school.
A college visit can be a life changer for some. My family took a cousin (he was finishing up his sophomore year in hs) who had no real thoughts of going to college (which is okay, but this kid is pretty smart) on college tours to a state directional along with 2 HBCUs and he had no idea that a college could be so different from his not so good inner-city high school. He was doing okay as a student (3.1 UW), but what he saw (resources, friendliness of the student body, dorms, the social life of the students, and sitting in on a class that was interactive and fun) changed his entire view on what was possible (All A’s and one B with a few weeks to go this semester). A college visit is just a small window at how life could be at a school, but what if it is a glimpse at a life never imagined?
Times probably have not changed for the majority of college students, who attend a local commuter-based community college, non-flagship state university, or lesser-known private school.
It is only a small segment of college students who will have the residential experience at a state flagship or more selective private school, and who have the luxury of considering fit aspects beyond cost and academic offerings and the luxury of being able to visit non-local schools before applying or attending. But this is the segment that is most heavily represented on these forums.
Everyone has a different perspective about college visits. Speaking just for myself, the most important thing about colleges is the academic reputation and quality followed by personal taste. Your personal taste is adjustable to the environment. I don’t know of a single college that’s all negative nor all positive to any students, and you don’t choose a college purely on “vibes” or social scenes alone. In other words, you go to the “best” college based on its academic reputation and its quality programs and then fit yourself in. For any college, large or small, I’m sure there’s plenty to like about. Since so many kids speak of their “dream school,” this particularly works out very well if one does get into that dream school.
So, that’s how we approached it, i.e., we only visited two from the list of colleges that offered admission to my son. Since these two colleges were easily accessible from one trip, this approach saved us a plenty of valuable time and money. I’m not advocating this approach – post-admission visits as opposed to pre-admission – to anyone since everyone has different needs. If you can spare the time and money needed for pre-admission visits, I don’t see why not.
With all things being equal sometimes one campus /culture just feels right to the student.
Have you ever gone to a job interview and thought, “wow, I cannot imagine myself here!” even though the job sounded perfect on paper?
Visiting schools is similar. I recall a friend (back in the 70s - some people visited even back then!) feeling so uncomfortable at one school that had recently started admitting women that she decided not to apply even though it was #1 on paper. Often, the social vibe will be apparent to kids in a way that it’s not to their parents.
Most schools offer an excellent education. The residential environment is often was differs most.
As a data point, I graduated from high school in 1980 and I absolutely visited schools. I was hardly the only one I knew to do so. And it was common enough that both Yale and Wesleyan were definitely arranging overnights through the admissions office and I think Amherst and haverford probably were, also.
Another data point: I graduated HS in the late 80’s, my dh in the mid 80’s and we both visited schools. It was much later then now since it seems that everything post HS related took place ONLY senior year back then. I took a 10 day college road trip with my girlfriends. We were certainly not the only ones touring and visiting. Maybe a shift between the 70s and 80s?
@simba9 wrote: I disagree. If you go to a big state school, you’ll almost inevitably be sitting in huge lecture halls with hundreds of other students for introductory freshman classes.
I must disagree and perhaps this is something people can learn about on a tour. First hand knowledge of my DD’s huge state school experience is that she has not had any classes in huge lecture halls. She is in upper division classes now but has not yet had a class over 80. Most are in the 25-30 student range and a few much less. This is an honors college perk. Are there “huge lecture halls with hundreds of other students”? I’m sure, but that is not a given. To contrast that, I went to a very small LA college and had multiple class lectures of over 100. Broad generalizations about the quality and experiences at large or small schools just don’t match reality.
The school I had made an official visit to was the one I attended as a freshman. I loved it during the visit, but by the end of my freshman year, I was ready to leave. I ended up transferring to a school that I had never visited, and it turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made.
There are no guarantees that a school is right for you, even if you think it is during your visit.
I wondered about the value of visits too. On the whole I agree with the OP that most colleges look and feel a lot alike. However, in D1’s case it made a difference. Two schools that on paper are very similar are Purdue and UIUC. They both are state flagships with excellent STEM programs, both are spread across two moderately sized towns/cities, both are rather rural and Midwestern out side of those areas and both are about equidistant from Chicago. The experience at the visits were very different for my D. We visited them both over a two day period and saw UIUC first. She came away from UIUC not liking it at all, she didn’t like the campus, the presenters, the buildings etc. she didn’t apply. Just the opposite at Purdue. She loved the campus, she felt welcomed and it was one of the best engineering presentations she attended. She graduated this past May from Purdue and the experience was everything she had hoped. I am not saying Purdue is in anyway better than UIUC, nor that if my D had gone to UIUC she would not have had a good experience, only that the visit had a profound impact on her decision. On paper UIUC seems to be the slightly better choice for a budding engineer, it was the visits that made the difference.
This is a lot of it, IMO.
But there’s soemthing to be said for “the feeling” you get on campus too. Legit or not, it’s real.
Think of it as a test drive. If you’re paying for a Lamborghini, you don’t want it to drive like a Ford Fiesta.
“Think of it as a test drive. If you’re paying for a Lamborghini, you don’t want it to drive like a Ford Fiesta.”
I’d liken it to going to a car show. You don’t really get much more information than you could on a computer but you do get sit in it and touch it. It’s not the same as driving it and living with it for 4 years but you get a sense of how you feel in it.