s/o when to do college visits?

[Anonymous]

I have seen the debate on another thread about whether to start freshman year, and the advice not to go in the summer. So when do people go? During the school year, and if so, do the kids miss school? Is going on a weekend a waste of time? It seems like spring break is the only time when there are week days when your kid's school is out but the college might (or might not) be in session. Also, do you sign up in advance with the school? Are the kids interviewed at these visits? TIA from a parent of two freshmen who is clueless about the college process.

[Anonymous]

I haven't been through this yet, but my thought is that we'll do some casual visits in 9th and 10th grade to local schools or schools within a few hours drive. By casual I mean no official tours, just a chance to look around get a feel for the place, and think about questions like big or small? Urban or rural? HBC or Predominantly white? I'm also hoping to so a couple summer programs where he sleeps in a dorm and gets a feel for campus life from the inside.

By casual I mean, walk around campus, maybe go see a sporting event, maybe a tour, but no official events or interviews or anything where we need to give his name.

Then, in junior year start looking a little more strategically, traveling to schools that meet his criteria and seem like good matches. I can see taking a couple days Junior Year, and maybe spring break. Senior year is when I'd pay to fly out to see a more distant school.

[Anonymous]

We started the summer after sophomore year. We did do tours as they give much more of a feel for the school than just driving through. We did some long weekend trips junior year to see 2-3 schools. We found that colleges were in session during Columbus day, presidents day, etc. We did a few the summer after junior year but at that point they were less useful since school was not in session. It was a good time to do interviews though ( which most schools won't schedule until junior spring at the earliest).

My DC did do a couple of camp programs at 2 different colleges. Neither were on the list but it was still a good experience.

My DC did 2 visits alone, one by plane and one driving. Both for interviews, and one overnight.

We saw about 15 colleges and I think my DC missed 2 days of school. So it worked out.

[Anonymous]

My DS is a junior, and we spent our spring break travelling to out of state colleges for admissions sessions/tours. Yes, you need to sign up in advance, especially for those over spring break, which is a very popular time to visit; the spots fill up quickly. All of the admission sessions polled the audience to see what grade the attendees were in, and in only a few cases were they in a lower grade than 11th. The universities my DS is interested in do not require any type of interviews.

I would also recommend that if you happen to be travelling near a school that your children might be interested in, take advantage of the trip and at least walk around the campus, even if you can't get into a tour. You'll be able to get a feel for the campus and the students, at least.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I haven't been through this yet, but my thought is that we'll do some casual visits in 9th and 10th grade to local schools or schools within a few hours drive. By casual I mean no official tours, just a chance to look around get a feel for the place, and think about questions like big or small? Urban or rural? HBC or Predominantly white? I'm also hoping to so a couple summer programs where he sleeps in a dorm and gets a feel for campus life from the inside.

By casual I mean, walk around campus, maybe go see a sporting event, maybe a tour, but no official events or interviews or anything where we need to give his name.

Then, in junior year start looking a little more strategically, traveling to schools that meet his criteria and seem like good matches. I can see taking a couple days Junior Year, and maybe spring break. Senior year is when I'd pay to fly out to see a more distant school.

This is pretty much our plan, as well.

So far, we've done one casual visit (daughter is finishing up 9th grade) because we happened to be vacationing in a city with a college that she finds interesting. It was veeery informal: we walked around campus and had lunch in the student center. Next year, we'll visit a couple of local campuses.

[Anonymous]

21:01 here. I should clarify that when I say we saw 2-3 schools I meant in a long weekend, not all of jr year. It might have been 2 on a Friday and one Saturday, or 2 on Monday or whatever. Saturday tours are surprisingly rare but tend to be on holiday weekends when they know kids may be visiting.

I liked the short visits vs the spring break road trip. Maybe not as efficient but less overwhelming.

[Anonymous]

We have 2 kids in college and a HS junior.

With my kids, visiting schools freshman year would have been too much. They were still trying to find their place in HS and their academic interests were not fully developed. We are big proponents of taking things one step at a time.

We started our visits the summer after sophomore year. During that summer, we took the official tours at 5-6 schools with different profiles (big urban, small urban, big state, etc.). Only summer school was in session so it was not a full on experience - but it did give the kids a feel for the campus (size, aethestics, location etc.). During junior year, we timed visits with our kids' breaks. Luckily, very few colleges that we wanted to see had breaks at the same time. We did 5 visits junior year and each kid did 2-3 informal overnights with college kids they knew. Junior summer and senior fall, we visited all the schools on their list and a couple more.

[Anonymous]

We did start the freshman year. We knew we were starting early, but at that point only visited during the summer to get a feel for the campus "vibe".

During her junior year DD set up interviews at her favorite schools for spring break (as not all schools have spring break at the same time, most schools she visited had some activity going on) and for summer vacation. In the fall of her senior year she took the schools up on their invitations to spend the night and to sit in on classes. She found this to be time very well spent as it helped her make her decision when all of the acceptances came in.

Also, DD preferred to do the overnight/class thing on a weekend when the school did not have a big "accepted students" shindig, as she felt being there w/o a lot of other prospective students made it easier to assess the campus.

[Anonymous]

We did some visits the summer between 10th and 11th grade, then stepped up the visits during spring/summer of junior yr. I will tell you what I noticed -- my son's ideas of what he wanted changed a lot between 10th and 12th grade. Sometimes I think it pays to wait a bit to do the visits for this reason.

[Anonymous]

I'm a former college admissions officer who has gone through the application process three times with my own children. My advice re visits would be to wait until at least the summer before junior year. In fact, it's probably better to wait until spring break of junior year. Kids change so much and so quickly that visits during 9th and 10th grade are unlikely to be helpful 2-3 years later when you're making decisions about where to apply. Also, until you have SAT scores and at least one semester of junior year grades you won't have enough information to assess your kid's chances at any particular school, so it will be hard to tell whether it makes sense to visit there.

In general, I think folks tend to place too much emphasis on visits. Our approach was to focus on school work and activities during the school year, so we visited a few schools during spring break and a few during the summers. In all, we saw 8-12 schools with each kid. The tours and info sessions were fine, but they do start to blur together pretty quickly. What's more helpful is just spending a few hours walking around the campus -- have lunch or coffee at the student center, go to a sports event or theatre production, people-watch, etc. Of course if you try to do this it means you can't do the forced march of 2 visits per day, but your visits will be more productive and less stressful.

Probably the greatest value to doing a road trip -- or even shorter visits -- is the opportunity to talk with your child about his/her reaction to the school. This is a chance for him/her to sort through all the factors to be weighed as part of this decision. We had some good conversations with our kids when we visited schools, and we actually had a lot of fun. Finally, re interviews: very few schools offer evaluative interviews any more; even fewer schools require them (I can think of only 2 schools that do so -- Haverford and Bowdoin, which are both quite small and emphasize their close-knit community). More schools offer non-evaluative interviews with an alum in your area. These are generally a fairly minor factor in the application process.

[Anonymous]

Thank you all from OP. This is helpful information. Freshman year would have been too early for my DCs, and I think we won't do anything this summer. We have been on a couple of campuses for sporting events, and I think the idea of a summer program at a college to get a feel for dorm life is a great idea (although it seems to me a bit of a racket -- colleges taking money from hopeful families who think it will increase DC's chances, when it almost certainly won't).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a former college admissions officer who has gone through the application process three times with my own children. My advice re visits would be to wait until at least the summer before junior year. In fact, it's probably better to wait until spring break of junior year. Kids change so much and so quickly that visits during 9th and 10th grade are unlikely to be helpful 2-3 years later when you're making decisions about where to apply. Also, until you have SAT scores and at least one semester of junior year grades you won't have enough information to assess your kid's chances at any particular school, so it will be hard to tell whether it makes sense to visit there.

In general, I think folks tend to place too much emphasis on visits. Our approach was to focus on school work and activities during the school year, so we visited a few schools during spring break and a few during the summers. In all, we saw 8-12 schools with each kid. The tours and info sessions were fine, but they do start to blur together pretty quickly. What's more helpful is just spending a few hours walking around the campus -- have lunch or coffee at the student center, go to a sports event or theatre production, people-watch, etc. Of course if you try to do this it means you can't do the forced march of 2 visits per day, but your visits will be more productive and less stressful.

Probably the greatest value to doing a road trip -- or even shorter visits -- is the opportunity to talk with your child about his/her reaction to the school. This is a chance for him/her to sort through all the factors to be weighed as part of this decision. We had some good conversations with our kids when we visited schools, and we actually had a lot of fun.

This. Exactly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We did some visits the summer between 10th and 11th grade, then stepped up the visits during spring/summer of junior yr. I will tell you what I noticed -- my son's ideas of what he wanted changed a lot between 10th and 12th grade. Sometimes I think it pays to wait a bit to do the visits for this reason.

Did you find that the visits helped clarify the way your child changed? I know for me, when I went looking the first time I thought I wanted tiny and rural. My mom set up one giant trip for spring break. I went to Williams, Dartmouth and one other school that I forget, and told my mom I wanted middle sized in the city. Coming from a city I couldn't really imagine what it would be like to live in the country until I visited. I ended up going to a midsized urban school sight unseen, because I ddin't have time to regroup and plan a new trip.

So, while I don't expect that taking my 14 year old to UMDCP will result in him choosing that one school, i can see him discovering "wow, this feels really big and overwhelming" or "That football game was awesome, I'd like a big school with competitive D1 athletics". I'd rather know which way he feels before I pay for him to fly to Oberlin or the University of Illinois.

On the other hand, I don't expect my 14 year old to be able to evaluate academic programs, or to see his own strengths and weaknesses.

[Anonymous]

The thing is, though, what might seem overwhelming to a 14 y.o. could feel just right to a 16 y.o. who has become more confident and adventurous. Or the 9th-grader who loves big time sports evolves into a junior who's more interested in a great film schools. A true life example: throughout 9th and 10th grades our middle son was most interested in attending either a military academy or a Big Ten school. He also thought he might want to study engineering. By spring of junior year, however, he had participated in his school's college counseling program and now wanted to attend an urban research university where he could major in math or physics. Over spring break and early in the summer we visited several big city schools as well as a couple of Big Ten and similar schools. Based on these visits he was leaning strongly toward the former, but, wait -- late in the summer he asked if we could go see a few SLACs. So, we did a swing through New England and saw 3 of them, confirming that wasn't his cup of tea. He ended up applying early to Columbia, getting in and is a rising junior double-majoring in math and philosophy. He has never been to a college football game (though he is a varsity athlete) and while he is no longer considering the military, he is interested in Teach for America.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a former college admissions officer who has gone through the application process three times with my own children. My advice re visits would be to wait until at least the summer before junior year. In fact, it's probably better to wait until spring break of junior year. Kids change so much and so quickly that visits during 9th and 10th grade are unlikely to be helpful 2-3 years later when you're making decisions about where to apply. Also, until you have SAT scores and at least one semester of junior year grades you won't have enough information to assess your kid's chances at any particular school, so it will be hard to tell whether it makes sense to visit there.

In general, I think folks tend to place too much emphasis on visits. Our approach was to focus on school work and activities during the school year, so we visited a few schools during spring break and a few during the summers. In all, we saw 8-12 schools with each kid. The tours and info sessions were fine, but they do start to blur together pretty quickly. What's more helpful is just spending a few hours walking around the campus -- have lunch or coffee at the student center, go to a sports event or theatre production, people-watch, etc. Of course if you try to do this it means you can't do the forced march of 2 visits per day, but your visits will be more productive and less stressful.

Probably the greatest value to doing a road trip -- or even shorter visits -- is the opportunity to talk with your child about his/her reaction to the school. This is a chance for him/her to sort through all the factors to be weighed as part of this decision. We had some good conversations with our kids when we visited schools, and we actually had a lot of fun. Finally, re interviews: very few schools offer evaluative interviews any more; even fewer schools require them (I can think of only 2 schools that do so -- Haverford and Bowdoin, which are both quite small and emphasize their close-knit community). More schools offer non-evaluative interviews with an alum in your area. These are generally a fairly minor factor in the application process.

While students do change a lot between freshman and junior year, it can be very helpful for parents who aren't as conversant with the present day college application process to start well before spring break of junior year. If you want to be able to guide your child (and I'm not talking about making the decision or even driving the decision but providing helpful input) there's really a lot to know these days. Also, in our experience many of the LAC's strongly urge interviews including Bates, Colby, Wellesley, Smith, Connecticut College, Holy Cross, Hamilton, Wesleyan, Hobart and William Smith. Other schools suggest them but do not strongly urge them, for example, Trinity, Franklin and Marshall, Gettysburg. Our private school college counselor made the statement during a parent meeting that most colleges don't conduct interviews and it left us scrambling to schedule them when we discovered that the schools my child was interested in did, indeed, urge them.