Did you have your child arrange college visit or did you do it for them? Call?

[Anonymous]

They did it.

[Anonymous]

I gave them dates and made the hotel reservations, they arranged the visits.

[Anonymous]

I am arranging everything. If I left it to my 11th grade DC, he would decide to start visiting colleges in September of 12th grade. It doesn’t mean he won’t be ready to go to college in two years, it means he is really busy doing 16 year old things like homework, sports, ECs, etc. and doesn’t realize that 11th grade is the best time to do these visits. I have 3 kids in college right now, so I am confident that this is pretty developmentally appropriate.

[Anonymous]

Weird

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am arranging everything. If I left it to my 11th grade DC, he would decide to start visiting colleges in September of 12th grade. It doesn’t mean he won’t be ready to go to college in two years, it means he is really busy doing 16 year old things like homework, sports, ECs, etc. and doesn’t realize that 11th grade is the best time to do these visits. I have 3 kids in college right now, so I am confident that this is pretty developmentally appropriate.

The etc. part is where you have them carve out two minutes to fill out a form online. There are a lot of online forms throughout this process. Start them off with this incredibly easy one.

[Anonymous]

If I knew it was something that would fill up right away I would sometimes do it, but mostly they did the actual registration. I would have to kind of guide them through it though. If I knew we had free time (like a teacher work day) coming up, I'd tell them to go ahead and look at X university's website and register for a tour on that day. And if there were other supplemental tours/events (like if a specific department/major had a separate tour) I was usually the one that researched that and specifically told them to register for that too.

[Anonymous]

They all have very simple websites. I signed up for some, they signed up for some.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am arranging everything. If I left it to my 11th grade DC, he would decide to start visiting colleges in September of 12th grade. It doesn’t mean he won’t be ready to go to college in two years, it means he is really busy doing 16 year old things like homework, sports, ECs, etc. and doesn’t realize that 11th grade is the best time to do these visits. I have 3 kids in college right now, so I am confident that this is pretty developmentally appropriate.

The etc. part is where you have them carve out two minutes to fill out a form online. There are a lot of online forms throughout this process. Start them off with this incredibly easy one.

Yes, I know there are a lot of forms. This is my 4th kid going through this process.

[Anonymous]

None.

We didn't really do 'official' tours. He did a few sports camps at potential schools (not recruited) and we did informal tours ourselves.

I think there was really only one school that tracked interest--that one he signed up for official tour.

[Anonymous]

OP, everything about this process is online, including tour registration. Do it yourself, have your kid do it, doesn't matter. Just go to the admission website. Easiest way to find the page is to google the name of the school and admission tour.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am arranging everything. If I left it to my 11th grade DC, he would decide to start visiting colleges in September of 12th grade. It doesn’t mean he won’t be ready to go to college in two years, it means he is really busy doing 16 year old things like homework, sports, ECs, etc. and doesn’t realize that 11th grade is the best time to do these visits. I have 3 kids in college right now, so I am confident that this is pretty developmentally appropriate.

The etc. part is where you have them carve out two minutes to fill out a form online. There are a lot of online forms throughout this process. Start them off with this incredibly easy one.

Yes, I know there are a lot of forms. This is my 4th kid going through this process.

Yes, you told us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:None.

We didn't really do 'official' tours. He did a few sports camps at potential schools (not recruited) and we did informal tours ourselves.

I think there was really only one school that tracked interest--that one he signed up for official tour.

So you did do one official tour.

[Anonymous]

I did it, but DH and I both travel a fair bit, and I don't expect my kids to juggle our schedules. DS sat next to me, though.

[Anonymous]

OP, you do it if it is easier for your family or have your DC do it if they are interested. Scheduling college visits doesn’t make a teen any more engaged, mature or independent. Don’t listen to the PPs that feel they are superior parents because their DCs are scheduling their own college visits. That is ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, you do it if it is easier for your family or have your DC do it if they are interested. Scheduling college visits doesn’t make a teen any more engaged, mature or independent. Don’t listen to the PPs that feel they are superior parents because their DCs are scheduling their own college visits. That is ridiculous.

I completely disagree. There are so many parent posts on here about difficult and complex this process is and how they have to do certain things for their kids or they won’t get done. There are so many parent posts on here about how their otherwise brilliant kids haven’t done anything yet because they’re paralyzed with anxiety. This one is a such an easy win and literally one of the very first steps in the whole process. Stop doing every little thing for them and then complaining about how they do nothing!