Re: Finding health insurance info before touring:
I was able to find the prospectus and cost for the student health insurance plan on most colleges’ websites. I just wanted that information for planning purposes. I would not have my D choose or decline a college because of the health insurance they offer, but it might make a difference in what plan I choose for our regular health insurance at a future open season.
The five plans I looked at ranged from $1046 to $2174 for 12 months.
Re: Eating at Dining Hall:
We both got into the dining hall for free at most of the colleges we visited but even when we had to pay, and yes it’s a flat fee, we found it a good way to get a feel for the student body. The food that was actually served was not very important (unless it had been really substandard, which none of our meals were).
Was it chaotic? Did people eat and run or visit with their friends? Were the staff and students friendly with each other? Were the students respectful, throwing away their garbage? Did different races, etc, sit together? Were any students sitting and eating alone and looking glum? Were students helpful if we looked lost or didn’t know the routine or asked a random student a question?
We actually planned our visits to allow for eating at each college. I think there was only one (out of five) where we couldn’t work it in. I do see that it could get expensive if you have more than just one parent and one student, and probably the colleges are less likely to hand out three or more free passes.
At one college where we would have had to pay, the students behind us in line let us in as guests on their passes, then showed us the ropes and invited us to sit at their table! I was sold, but D had a much broader outlook than just one random act of kindness.
Re: eating in the dining hall:
Again, I’m all about being bold and extracting as much info as one can on these visits. So we’d intentionally sit fairly near some students (maybe one empty seat away), and, at some point during the meal, try to engage them in conversation. Thankfully, my kids don’t embarrass easily, so they didn’t go all “Daaad!!” on me when I did this. And we got some good information that way! For instance, at one school that was otherwise very high on my son’s list, a student we got chatting with in the cafeteria told us how the orchestra had been something of a disappointment and was not as good as his youth orchestra. That was valuable info! I have many other examples of useful nuggets emerging from these types of conversations.
It wasn’t something we did every time – it was kind of a mood thing – but whenever we did manage to get talking to students outside of the controlled environment of a tour, it was almost always fruitful.
@intparent wrote
That is such a good idea.
At one school, we had a great student tour guide who managed to elicit responses and questions from almost all the high school students. He was genuinely curious about the kids and somehow connected on one level with each one. My daughter tends to speak up in class but in the information sessions, if she saw parents dominating the questions, she kept quiet. She would go up afterwards and ask questions or chat with the admissions rep. I also figured out that if I kept in the background, my child would be more involved in the visit (that took me a while).
We usually also found it helpful to go to the Career Placement Office.
In some schools, it seemed to be a closet in the basement. There was no one there to speak to, no material to take, no fliers on the wall and we were in and out in a matter of seconds.
Other schools obviously put a lot of resources toward career placement. You would walk in to a big suite of offices in a prominent location on campus and you could engage someone to tell you all about the career services offered to students - programs by class year to help the students get internships, coops, and permanent jobs; the school’s career fairs; the resume workshops; the practice interviews; all the facts and figures regarding job placement, etc. They would hand you brochures on questions to be prepared for at an interview, how to negotiate an offer, etc. Some schools’ Career Placement Offices were quite impressive.
We also liked to find out as much as we could about the academic support the school offered. Some schools had quite comprehensive programs: students being assigned an academic advisor right away, meeting with this advisor once a month in the first semester, staff knocking on doors of dorms just to make sure that no one was depressed and just sitting in their room, professors handing in cards requesting assistance for students who they thought were struggling in their class, seminars on time management skills, seminars on organization skills, etc.
Some schools had virtually none of the above mentioned items.
YMMV, but we found looking into the Career Placement Office and into the academic support offered in detail to be worthwhile.
@dadinator Those are great ones that we will remember for future visits. We didn’t visit career placement offices but asked lots of questions about them and academic support. One school got off our list immediately when we were told that tutoring had to be paid for by the hour.
The best thing we ever did on a college visit was spend an hour or two driving randomly all around campus and the surrounding neighborhoods. We did this the afternoon/evening before our official visit. I wanted to walk but DD was horrified at the thought of looking like a highschooler and her parent checking out a college. The awesome thing about driving was we were completely free to talk without fear of being overheard. She wasn’t self conscious about it. We got a really good feel for the campus and area and the level of diversity of the people.
Be aware that some of those early morning visits may make the campus look a bit dead (especially Saturday monring visits!). At times, there were not a lot of kids around and we sometimes had to leave in order to get to the next campus for the afternoon program.
We always tried to eat in the cafeteria, at times we got vouchers but a lot of time we had to pay.
Most of the tours we went on the parents (myself included) asked most if not all of the questions. The kids might answer if the tour guide asked them something.
Try to keep an open mind, even if a tour is terrible. They really vary in quality and it is hard to not feel negatively toward a bad tour guide.
We also toured the area around the campus, trying to get a feel for what was in walking distance and what the area was like. In some cases, that really made a difference (no place to eat, a little too isolated or a little too run down).
My kids were not all that excited about the athletic facilities, as they kind of thought most of the schools had similar offerings.
If you have time, it can be useful to just drive around, as the poster above suggested. We actually eliminated a fairly prestigious college this way once. It just looked unkempt and unloved. It fell off the long list after that drive. On another occasion, we drove around a super swanky neighborhood and we actually didn’t like it, as it felt too perfect and manicured. In retrospect, that should have been the thing we paid attention to. We later went back to visit that college on a proper tour, and it felt just like that neighborhood–too perfect, too manicured. Off the list.
There was only one school where DH was worried about the surrounding neighborhoods, but more because some iffy kids (a superficial reaction, yes) from those neighborhoods were hanging about on campus. I had negative feelings about one prominent LAC based on reports of Greek life out of hand, numerous times over the years. She still applied. Our bigger issue was finding a school where D1’s major had its own emphasis, wasn’t just a couple of classes. We vetted the profs within that larger dept at all colleges, to see who taught that field and/or could mentor her. At another LAC, we had two bad tours (one was just a guide and DH/kiddo; the guide took the opportunity to complain.) D1 still applied, had confidence she could get what she wanted. D2 would have, but ED’d elsewhere.
I think our case is different because, though we did a lot of looking, casual and more formal, the right match just happened. Ironically, this was the last visit, in November of D1’s senior year, strong armed by the GC to go for a hosted weekend. We never had an official tour, didn’t ask about career planning or health services. It nearly immediately became our top choice and she was very happy and productive there. Many complain about that local town, but kids spend most of their time on campus. It tuned out to be a great match for her academic interests, the right level of competition, and a great social match.
Just want to point out that the greatest career office in the world won’t help a student who is reluctant to take advantage of it. Just saying that some students won’t…
Some career offices reach out more than others, I think. D’s has all kinds of interview, cover letter workshops and resume help and such - fine, so do many - but these are required if you want access to a certain subset of internships.
The informal, unscheduled points of contact – our server (a student) in the restaurant in town where we had lunch post-tour, a student working in a campus museum, a salesperson in a shop I visited during D’s interview, the professor who took time to help when we were clearly lost – are surprisingly memorable lo these many years later. Reading campus newspapers, eating in the cafeteria, and people-watching were indeed helpful, and we were lucky to have had a number of knowledgeable and poised tour guides, but the kindness of those who went out of their way to tell us about their experiences made a powerful impact. Schools which inspired that kind of devotion and/or attracted such generous people definitely picked up points!
All of your questions are great but I found that we answered many of those before the visit. We only visited schools that we knew, from an academic standpoint, were a fit. My DD wanted a large school with school spirit and limited Greek life. We found that talking to random students was the most helpful. Several schools stood out where the kids immediately smiled when asking questions about their schools (and wore school swag).
@OHMomof2 , I am so very very sad I didn’t see these until just now. I am a game fanatic! The good news is, I will be doing this all over again in a couple of years for my son. Boy oh boy, will he be excited when I tell him we get to play a game when we go on tours :))
Those bingo cards almost make me wish I wasn’t done with the college application process for my kids. I’d love to be on a tour and hear someone yell out, “BINGO!” 
@doschicos , me! I am the ultimate embarrassing parent. 
My D just got back from school and we were both cracking up at the bingo card categories. Too funny!
Lots of well thought out suggestions. I wish I had this thread when I started. I have now been on over 40 tours, and retired!~ YAY!! Most of my suggestions are covered, but two additional things D1 (now a college junior) looked for on visits, 1)she liked to see kids on campus wearing their own school shirts. If there were lots of students wearing their own schools shirt it meant kids liked their school. 2) She always wanted to go to parts of campus the school didn’t take you on the tour - to see the worst parts of campus they weren’t showing you. 3. My D liked to see an undergraduate focus. She had her own criteria for deciding, it wasn’t always based on numbers. 4. My D liked to pick the tour guides, and pick the ones “like her”. Those were the guides she would talk to after the tour.
I also think we didn’t worry that my D would be homesick, and so when she was, we were really grateful for the support the school provided through the RA and her freshman advisor. So for D2, I always ask about Freshman support. It is quite common to have an adjustment period for freshmen.
Our son had these two criteria only:
- Strong engineering program
- On-campus (N)ROTC
He didn’t care about location, diversity/other students, food, dorms, city/country, large/small, weather, clubs/activities, spirit, campus, nothing. He didn’t want to tour anywhere either; he felt he could get everything he needed to know from a school’s website. Sometimes I wanted to wring his neck. He chose a service academy.
…or the government mandated them.