Deciding what schools to visit

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ED is for colleges, recruited athletes, and suckers. Be sure you know which of the three categories your kid will fall into before you spend too much time obsessing about that part of the process.

Or those for whom cost is not a consideration.

No, there's not a fourth category. It's just colleges, recruited athletes, and suckers.

[Anonymous]

For prior to junior year we focused mainly on driving distance schools - VA and PA options. DD wasn't super into the search process and we didn't want to waste a flight if she wasn't totally bought in to looking. During Junior year the search fleshed out to other states.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:First school my kid visited was Wash U - just happened that way. When we got to dorms I realized what a mistake I had made. First school sets the standard and we have yet to see better dorms.

Yep, unlucky. We had the flipside experience (also by happenstance; no brilliance claimed here): saw Temple first and the kid totally could see their life there being so much better than HS--got them very excited about college generally and made us all realize that the floor was pretty darn high.

[Anonymous]

Agree with sentiment that they may fall in love at first sight - I would visit the school you think is the most likely actual school for them first. Then work from there. We visited a safety and they never came around to matches and reaches. Its worked out fine but I might have visited another school first if I were doing it again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ED is for colleges, recruited athletes, and suckers. Be sure you know which of the three categories your kid will fall into before you spend too much time obsessing about that part of the process.

Disagree, at least with respect to top slacs, u Chicago, northwestern, Vanderbilt, Emory, tufts. About half the class at dc’s private make good use of ed, I’ve seen many great outcomes for unhooked kids. ED/SCEA to Ivies, not so much— better to just go RD if unhooked and aiming there.

UChicago is the only school on your list (including whatever you're including in "top slacs") where a non-athlete admitted ED wouldn't very likely have been admitted to at least one equally or more selective school in RD. For kids/families who primarily are trying to maximize "prestige," applying ED to Emory or Tufts or wherever is just dumb--either they'll dinged (if they're not actually credible at that level) or they very likely could have done better.

Emory and Tufts are not the same level, and for ED only Columbia, Duke, JHU, NW, Brown , and maybe Dartmouth are better than Emory for ED. That's why Emory has ED2. The ones that apply Ed1 know they cant get into those.