College visits..

[Anonymous]

Do you have to go to an official college visit day, or can you just pop in? This coming weekend I would of like to drive to Philly and take a look around at a couple schools, but only see visit info' schedule during the week.

[Anonymous]

the only downside is you can't register (to show your DC was there)...

[Anonymous]

We found the info sessions and tours really useful. Otherwise you are just looking at buildings. You can certainly drive/walk through a few campuses but if there are ones your DC likes I would definitely go back for the real visits.

Most college do Saturday tours at this time of year (unless it is a catholic college - they are closed over the Easter weekend). None we came across did Sunday tours. You definitely need to sign up in advance for the tours at spring break because EVERYONE is out touring. There were 1000 people in the Cornell info session we attended last year at this time and every other tour was packed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:the only downside is you can't register (to show your DC was there)...

That's not necessarily the case. Some schools do let you sign in, even if you're not able to take a tour, to let them know you visited campuses and get on (e)-mailing lists.

[Anonymous]

Is your DD a junior or sophomore? IF sophomore a quick drive around to look at schools in a general sense even if no formal tours could make plenty of sense-Phillly is great because every possible type of school is within a few miles of each other: competitive inner city Ivy (Penn), coop school (Drexel), mid-sized Catholic (Villanova), and then the single sex vs hippie vs preppy SLACS (Bryn Maryr, Swarthmore, Haverford). After a while the tours all sound alike anyway, and much better in our experience is for your DD to reach out to anyone from his/her high school that is a student at any school of interest and see if your kid can have coffee with him/her or if your kid is particularly shy, ask the student if you can take them out for coffee or lunch (free food and the ability to talk about themselves and their school usually results in a positive response!)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is your DD a junior or sophomore? IF sophomore a quick drive around to look at schools in a general sense even if no formal tours could make plenty of sense-Phillly is great because every possible type of school is within a few miles of each other: competitive inner city Ivy (Penn), coop school (Drexel), mid-sized Catholic (Villanova), and then the single sex vs hippie vs preppy SLACS (Bryn Maryr, Swarthmore, Haverford). After a while the tours all sound alike anyway, and much better in our experience is for your DD to reach out to anyone from his/her high school that is a student at any school of interest and see if your kid can have coffee with him/her or if your kid is particularly shy, ask the student if you can take them out for coffee or lunch (free food and the ability to talk about themselves and their school usually results in a positive response!)

Thanks all! She's a junior. The bolded ones above are on her list. We did a couple formal visits locally last year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is your DD a junior or sophomore? IF sophomore a quick drive around to look at schools in a general sense even if no formal tours could make plenty of sense-Phillly is great because every possible type of school is within a few miles of each other: competitive inner city Ivy (Penn), coop school (Drexel), mid-sized Catholic (Villanova), and then the single sex vs hippie vs preppy SLACS (Bryn Maryr, Swarthmore, Haverford). After a while the tours all sound alike anyway, and much better in our experience is for your DD to reach out to anyone from his/her high school that is a student at any school of interest and see if your kid can have coffee with him/her or if your kid is particularly shy, ask the student if you can take them out for coffee or lunch (free food and the ability to talk about themselves and their school usually results in a positive response!)

Thanks all! She's a junior. The bolded ones above are on her list. We did a couple formal visits locally last year.

And Drexel..

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is your DD a junior or sophomore? IF sophomore a quick drive around to look at schools in a general sense even if no formal tours could make plenty of sense-Phillly is great because every possible type of school is within a few miles of each other: competitive inner city Ivy (Penn), coop school (Drexel), mid-sized Catholic (Villanova), and then the single sex vs hippie vs preppy SLACS (Bryn Maryr, Swarthmore, Haverford). After a while the tours all sound alike anyway, and much better in our experience is for your DD to reach out to anyone from his/her high school that is a student at any school of interest and see if your kid can have coffee with him/her or if your kid is particularly shy, ask the student if you can take them out for coffee or lunch (free food and the ability to talk about themselves and their school usually results in a positive response!)

Thanks all! She's a junior. The bolded ones above are on her list. We did a couple formal visits locally last year.

I am not sure this weekend is the time to visit either of those. It's the one weekend in March and April where Swat doesn't have a Saturday tour, which probably means a lot of kids are home for Passover/Easter and that's probably even more the case at Villanova. So you can check out the campuses, but I bet they will be mighty quiet. Can you go next weekend instead?

[Anonymous]

You're so right. This weekend is not the weekend to go, I'll plan for next weekend.

These three years have gone by so fast. It really is just TWO years that you have...sigh...

[Anonymous]

But next weekend is the worst weekend of the year to visit. We've set up our trip to Princeton a long time ago so can't change dates for travel next weekend, but all of Princeton's online info says in a nutshell "This is a packed week. If you are serious about Princeton, push yourself to the front of the tour to listen". "Please try to come another time". Oh well, at least we got the last hotel nearby, but I sure wouldn't go on spring break week if you can avoid it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But next weekend is the worst weekend of the year to visit. We've set up our trip to Princeton a long time ago so can't change dates for travel next weekend, but all of Princeton's online info says in a nutshell "This is a packed week. If you are serious about Princeton, push yourself to the front of the tour to listen". "Please try to come another time". Oh well, at least we got the last hotel nearby, but I sure wouldn't go on spring break week if you can avoid it.

It's not spring break for every school - in fact this year schools seem to be more varied than usual. Private school breaks were in March, and public schools seem to be split between this week and next week.

If you can get tour spots next weekend OP I'd go ahead and do it.