How many college campuses did you visit with your DC prior to them applying?

[Anonymous]

DC is a junior and we are planning to visit some colleges over spring break. We are trying to visit the ones they are most interested in/ have the stats for, but it feels like they keep adding to the list every day. One friend's advice was not to visit any college before they get accepted, but I feel that is a bit too extreme.
What is a good happy medium of how many colleges to visit before applying?

[Anonymous]

I think we did 7, but they were spaced far apart. We couldn’t have handled more than two in a single trip. They start to feel repetitive and mentally exhausting.

[Anonymous]

There’s no right or wrong answer, whatever your budget and time allows. We enjoyed them and treated them like exploring new areas, hit a bunch on a spring break road trip to the north.

[Anonymous]

23

[Anonymous]

First born (with stronger stats) toured two, quick walk around at three, and drove by a few more. Ended up at one of the ones they toured.

Second kid toured three, and spent time at older sibling’s school a few times. Will attend one of schools they toured.

[Anonymous]

Safeties - Critical to visit! Believe me. You want to demonstrate interest, which affects whether they give you acceptance or deferral in EA. Must do!

Targets - visit those interest your DC. Sampling. Get a feel.

Reaches - you want to visit your potential ED schools. High reaches usually don't care about demonstrated interest, yes you can skip them.

[Anonymous]

Visited 13 over the course of maybe 5 different trips. It is most important to visit colleges that have ED and where your child may want to apply ED so I would focus on those. Visiting some caused my kid to decide they did not want to go there, so that saved the kid time on working on that application. Yes, it's expensive but I think it's worth it. Unlike the PP, I enjoyed the trips a ton - I loved spending time with my kid and seeing parts of the U.S. I have never seen before.

[Anonymous]

One bc we happened to be in that city and it was convenient. We decided to wait for acceptances otherwise. One done post acceptance one planned for the next few weeks. Three decisions outstanding, so maybe one visit from those.

Jr year visits would have been a waste of time in our case bc his list completely changed. Currently accepted at 4 schools (the school visited jr year and three new schools from this fall). Of the three schools we are waiting on, he’d only picked one of those last year and for that school his SAT was too low to get in until he retook fall of senior year.

Meanwhile he cut about 10 schools off his list he was sure he’d apply to last year.

[Anonymous]

15 - top 2 choices, we visited twice. Some we did the official tours and some we just walked around ourselves

[Anonymous]

We did regions of the country vs colleges - Boston, Pacific Northwest, Southern California, etc. Let the kid pick out colleges in those areas. Kid was not interested in the south east so skipped it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Safeties - Critical to visit! Believe me. You want to demonstrate interest, which affects whether they give you acceptance or deferral in EA. Must do!

Targets - visit those interest your DC. Sampling. Get a feel.

Reaches - you want to visit your potential ED schools. High reaches usually don't care about demonstrated interest, yes you can skip them.

+1 especially important to visit and find safeties you can really like.

#1 visited 7. Probably would have seen more but he was a junior when COVID hit. We were glad we'd done early visits to get a sense of size/setting preferences.

#2 tagged along on several of #1's visits. Saw 12 specifically for her search. Spread out between spring semester sophomore year and fall semester senior year. She was focused on LACs and I think in those small schools it's really important to get a sense of the vibe/fit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One bc we happened to be in that city and it was convenient. We decided to wait for acceptances otherwise. One done post acceptance one planned for the next few weeks. Three decisions outstanding, so maybe one visit from those.

Jr year visits would have been a waste of time in our case bc his list completely changed. Currently accepted at 4 schools (the school visited jr year and three new schools from this fall). Of the three schools we are waiting on, he’d only picked one of those last year and for that school his SAT was too low to get in until he retook fall of senior year.

Meanwhile he cut about 10 schools off his list he was sure he’d apply to last year.

Similar to my kid’s situation. He’s only visited Gtown, as it’s in the area. (Didn’t even visit our flagship UMD). Attending admitted students day for a likely commit during spring break. Will probably visit another one if a better option comes up in RD.

[Anonymous]

Probably 12ish for each. Some were quick ones (like sophomore year check out a campus) but most were full tours. Ironically DC2 ended up a college we didn't visit - first time on campus was for summer orientation. DC ended up loving it, so it all worked out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think we did 7, but they were spaced far apart. We couldn’t have handled more than two in a single trip. They start to feel repetitive and mentally exhausting.

A different take on this, we did 5 proper visits/tours over spring break of junior year. My DS felt that seeing them all right in a row helped him compare schools more effectively. Although it was exhausting! But we were aiming to visit more "types" of school - urban, rural, large, small, etc.

In the end he applied to only some of the ones he visited although one of those is still in his top 3.

[Anonymous]

We did 8, 1 in PA, 1 in DC, 3 in VA and 3 in NC. All of which DC applied to and were a combination of safety, target and reach.