Would a dirty air vent in a dorm that your kid probably won’t live in sway your choice? Really? That’s going to be more than offset by the mouse droppings you missed in the cafeteria of your final choice.
Regarding asking questions, we had a printed list of questions for each college that I carried. We printed them before leaving for the visit trip, and filled in what we could from the web site, Fiske, etc. We also copied the relevant pages from Fiske (too bulky to carry the book) and my kid re-read them the morning of our visit to refresh them in her mind. The tour and other visit activities walking answered a lot of the questions. We only asked a few on the tour. These sheets were very handy when kids wrote “Why College X?” essays.
Not as easy to find out these answers online and as other posters have brought up - student health services quality and student health insurance options. I might even visit health services and ask questions to the staff.
Also, the use of adjuncts v. full time professors.
Much of the other stuff can be either picked up by hanging around campus or by doing the research.
I think that for my girls the most important thing was getting the overall vibe and feeling for the campus. Sometimes you can sit in on a class. It is important to visit the student center, pick up the campus newspapers, look at what is going on - flyers, billboard postings, etc, visit a dorm if you are able. For one of my d’s she would need to get a bus to get to another campus for her voice lessons (U of R to Eastman) and it was important to see where she would actually need to be getting a bus from… somewhere on campus or some random street corner., also in her case where the music practice rooms were and how assigned. Ask or check-out the gym facilities if you want to be able to work out, play a sport, go for a swim, etc. The random tour guide is not going to know anything specific about the details of your intended major so if you can get an appointment to meet a faculty member that can be helpful but bear in mind that they are busy people too and not necessarily recruiters for the campus or their department.
Take a look at the area immediately surrounding the campus. This is particularly important if your student will be living off-campus at some point.
Another point: Physical libraries are much less important than they used to be because many services are available online. Nevertheless, many students want to have a place other than their dorm room where they can go to study. It might be a library, but it might not. Some newer dorms have study rooms, for example. You might want to ask where students go to study if the dorm is too noisy/distracting.
Also, no tour guide or information session leader is ever going to say (1) kids on this campus who don’t join Greek houses have no life, (2) our career services suck, or (3) nobody ever actually participates in our multitude of clubs. You have to find out those things on your own.
@lindagaf Funny, our Tufts tour guide also was very underwhelming. She was sweet but not very articulate. And regarding dorms - the one at Amherst was so posh that it made us giggle. I joked that the room was larger than my first apartment, which earned me a somewhat snotty retort from our tour guide.
We pretty much let the tours unfold and took lots of pictures and copious notes, because the visits do blend together very quickly. Took note of stuff like ease of parking or lack thereof (who knew that refilling the meter will still earn you a ticket in the city of Providence!), what’s the surrounding area like, how easy is it to get there and get away. In nearly every case we went to the student union for a snack and did some people watching. A fun question is to ask is “what can you tell me about student life that I wouldn’t discover on the internet?”
My D is focused on how nice the campus is, whether she can get a single as a freshman, what students are wearing, what percentage is involved in Greek life, whether the school has a good football team and how much school spirit the students have (she pays special attention to how many are wearing school swag), diversity, availability of tasty vegetarian options, nice fitness center and intramural opportunities, environmental clubs, strong honors program that will allow her to get multiple degrees in 4 years and study abroad, and generally the vibe and how comfortable she feels on campus.
One thing that was a big component of college visits with both of my kids was checking out areas of high interest a little more deeply. This was done outside of the tour/info session context and requires scheduling a bit more time for your visit. For instance, with my son, we always made a point of checking out the music facilities and theater performance spaces. If we ran into someone we could ask a few questions, we did. We ended up getting 3 or 4 personalized tours of theater or music facilities this way from faculty/staff people we encountered, as well as a spontaneous chat with the head of the music department at one school.
We also successfully found a prof to talk with us about the CS department at virtually every school we visited that was in session while we were there. It’s wonderful how willing faculty at liberal arts colleges are to talk to prospective students that are interested in their area of expertise. So, I guess my general advice is be brave and don’t be afraid to poke your head into open office doors or accost people. We found it extremely fruitful during our visits.
I also second that we made it a point to give the surrounding town/community a good look everywhere we went.
@thumper1, I don’t think the OP meant that she asked all of her 13 points. The OP stated “here’s what made an impression/what we asked about:” I assumed these were important points that stood out to her in the information session and tour, not necessarily that she had to ask all these questions to get the information. We didn’t have to ask many questions on our visits because most were usually covered. I let my daughter take the lead really and rarely felt the need to speak up. I think the OP is soliciting suggestions for things to look at that she may have overlooked. I agree that the getting a feel for the school is the top priority. Trying to relax and absorb the atmosphere while being aware of the details is important.
I can be analytical, but no way I could get my girls to run through a 13 point checklist, ever. They wanted to feel the vibe and get an overall impression of the looks of a place. We let them cut visits short, if they didn’t feel it. D1 wanted to see the library (she wanted an idea of how studious the kids are.) After the first dorm room or two, they had that figured out; some are good, most aren’t luxurious. They never sat in on a class, I had to insist we at least walked through the dining hall. But yes, we had vetted ahead of time for their interests.
I find it interesting that it is always suggested to ‘go have a cup of coffee’ in the dining hall. At all the schools we looked at, it would have cost $12/ea to go into the cafeteria as they’d charge for a meal. We could and did go to the student union and eat or have a snack, looked at the bookstore, looked at the bulletin boards, but the cafeterias were not open to the public. My daughters did go in the dining halls when on overnight visits. Had nothing to do with their picking their colleges.
When visiting my daughter at college, I have paid the money and eaten in the cafeteria. It wasn’t life altering at all, and in fact it was a little confusing as there were stations for different types of food - grill, sandwiches, entrees - and I would not have had a good way to judge after just one meal. Even if I’d gone a dozen times and really liked the cafeteria, I’m sure I would have been sick of it after a year just like almost every student is.
^ We had passes from admissions, where needed. Some schools checked the meal card or id at checkout, not to get in.
Lindagaf - must be, as we toured Haverford in 2010. S then re- toured with my father who lives in the Philly area.
Most of our colleges gave at least our kid a free ticket to eat in the cafeteria if we asked in admissions. Parents usually had to pay. We found it well worth it to observe students. Also, I doubt health services knows much about the quality of the health insurance plan offered by the college – it is a valid question to ask, but they probably are not the ones to ask.
As a parent and newbie to the tours I love the list of questions but I’m wondering … Do you really ask these questions? And who does the asking? The parents or the kids? At a recent tour there were 5 parent questions and only one question asked by the prospective student.
@carachel2 , that is funny! Okay parents, speak up if your kid or anyone else’s kid ever asks questions on tours. Is that crickets I hear? Just kidding carachel, don’t be surprised if 90% of the time it’s parents asking questions. We did at least ten campus tours, maybe more, and people (usually not kids, because heaven forbid anyone looks at them, especially strangers!) usually ask questions as they arise. Often though, people ask questions they have clearly thought of before, but you ask them at the right time. Questions about campus security when they tell you about the blue light system, for example. I personally don’t ask complicated questions about particular departments, etc… The student guides are not versed in every single aspect of the college. You can always ask more detailed questions back at the admissions office, or research online.
Re getting a cup of coffee or food, sometimes we were given vouchers for the cafeteria, other times we would just go to one of the smaller snack stands or little cafes. Wherever there is food, there are students. Even at smaller colleges there will usually be a coffee and pastry stall and tables in a common area. Just find a place to sit and observe the creatures in their native habitat:-)
No. It would mean that particular dorm would be at the bottom of the list. I’d also know how much the school cares about student health if I peel back the onion and see what the dorms look like as a whole. Dorms and food are some of the first things to go when a college runs out of money.
My kids asked questions both during the tours and to the tour guides afterwards. I doubt they cared a lick what anyone thought of them. Both were tour guides at their high school so the whole process was comfortable to them. We parents asked as well. Fortunately, most of the tours we took were smaller in scale. The best were the one-on-one tours.
And FYI these are questions I ask myself not something I ask of the tour guide or whatever. If that’s what you’re looking for I misunderstood what you were asking! Now with a freshman in college and talking to other kids parents at other colleges, the questions I brought up are things I would try to find answers to with prospective colleges.
I would often go find a campus coffee shop while my kid was in class, and people watch for a while. Once I had a half hour interesting conversation with a couple of clerks in the campus bookstore. Another time when we were short on time, I ate in the cafeteria while D was in class (the coconut cake was delicious, and D ended up attending that college 
).