Advice for Spring Break college tour
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Anonymous
| My junior daughter and I are planning on visiting schools during FCPS spring break in April. Most of the colleges she wants to tour have admission info sessions and tours during the work week only (and one w/Sat sessions). Question is whether 8 colleges in a week driving about 1100 miles round-trip from Northern VA to NJ, CT, MA and NH is too much to take on and keep our sanity (plan to see 2 schools in New Haven and Providence on the same day and 2 in Boston which we plan to tour on another). I want to make the most of this time since we may not have time during the summer but also make it a somewhat pleasant week for the two of us. Any advice from those who've already done the Northern college tour thing? |
Anonymous
| We did this tour a couple of years ago. We alternated 2 a day and 1 a days or a day off (one was Sunday so no choice). It is really too exhausting to do 2 a day every day. We did - Philadelphia (1), day off, Boston (2), New Hampshire/Vermont (2), day off, New York state (2), New York state (1). So we did 8 in 7 days and generally felt like we had enough time with a night in a lot of these places. The only day that was too rushed was New Hampshire/VT because we had to drive about 1.5 hours in between tours. |
Anonymous
Where did your DC end up going? |
Anonymous
|
We found it really did depend on timing of the tours. A 10am tour vs. an 11am tour makes a huge difference in getting to the next school. We were able to easily do two in Boston in one day but doing a Boston to RI swing in one day was rushed. We did 2 in one day in CT and planned two the next day but only had the stamina for one of them. We honestly got sick of doing school after school day after day. (We did 7 in MA,CT, NY in a week)
Also, check that you don't overlap Easter. We had to replan our trip because some schools were closed during our spring break or were hosting accepted student days and didn't offer tours. |
Anonymous
None of those. Applied to 4 of those and accepted at 2. |
Anonymous
Agree. Schools like BC don't do tours on Good Friday, and maybe didn't even do Thursday. We ended up flipping the order of our trip. |
Anonymous
| Appreciate the heads up re: Good Friday! Just checked and Dartmouth doesn't have tours on Thurs and Fri that week so will have to change plans and see Dartmouth on Wed. |
Anonymous
| In case it's too much driving, you could take the Acela (Amtrak) 4 hrs to New Haven and rent a car at the NH train station. |
Anonymous
|
I think your two easiest days will be the Yale/Dartmouth day and the Boston day so I would make those my 2-schools days. Unfortunately, though, that kinda implies that those days will be back-to-back. And a PP indicated that this was too much for them when they did it. I don't know. You may have to push through.
We found that it helped to take a photo of the child in front of something that really stood out for us and, this sounds anal, jot down a couple of notes about each school. After a while what we did was have the kid send a text to him/herself with 3-4 positives and negatives just to get something quick on 'paper' to serve as a refresh since the schools all start to blend together after a while. Sounds like your child has some great prospects. Good luck! |
Anonymous
OP here. Thanks for all the sage advice espe re: photos and notes to distinguish the schools after the week is over. It sounds like 8 schools in 7 days is doable w/a good chance that both of us keep our sanity and hopefully enjoy the experience. It was important to her to see schools while they are in session to get a good feel rather than in the summer when most of the campuses would be empty. She also wants to get a good chunk of the college visits out of the way while she has time before the circus of finals, essays/applications, testing and senior year and fall sports get in the way. Right now, it looks like we'll visit Yale and Brown that Tues and then Dartmouth on Wed (since no tours on Thurs/Fri) and then the Boston schools on Thurs and then last stop in the Pioneer Valley on Fri. After this trip, we'll have to plan her visits to her in-state VA options... |
Anonymous
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Since you are talking about spring break of junior year, and you have little time during summer, plus a kid with a fall sport, it might be good to be really strategic about your visits. DS had a similar schedule and we ran short on time. Since his private school wanted every student to apply to four safety schools, he ended up applying to a few schools that he'd never seen, which isn't the best.
Does your DD want to do science and math? Then MIT, a northeast SLAC strong in science, and possibly University of Rochester. Is she artsy, then Brown, Vassar and Bard. Is money a factor? If so, then maybe one Ivy but spend most of your time focusing on schools with good merit aid. Is she a legacy somewhere? Start there (I wish we had spent more time closely looking at the schools were DS was a legacy.) The list that you have (which looks like Princeton (NJ), Boston schools?, Amherst in Pioneer Valley, Dartmouth, Brown, and Yale) looks like a tourist trip, not really a trip for a student short on time. Even the most extraordinary, or well-connected, kids in DS's class do not visit or apply to all of the ivy's. |
Anonymous
| 8 schools is possible, but be prepared for overload. Create a data sheet for each school and complete after each tour. Focus on what is important to your child. For example: size of school, majors, activities, Greek life, dorms, athletics, weather, rural, big city,etc. Your daughter could also come up with a rating scale. The more info you have, the easier it is to create an application list. My DH would ask the following question for each visit for each of my kids: Can you imagine yourself here on this campus? |
Anonymous
Agree with this although my kids had very different approaches. Kid 1 had a notebook where she took notes, made observations, stored relevant campus info stuff. Also took lots of photos on each tour. She was very into making her application list and her ultimate choice by herself. Kid 2 had no interest in that kind of process so after each visit we made a list in the car of the top 3-4 likes/concerns about the college. He was much more interested in discussing the pros and cons with us and hearing our views. So definitely adapt the approach to what works for your kid. |
Anonymous
| I would recommend that you just take the tour, and not do the info session AND tour. The script was very redundant between the two, and you really don't learn much by sitting in an auditorium and hearing an admissions officer talk about the school. Once we realized that the tour, followed by some non-supervised wandering about (especially in the Student Center), gave us more than enough information, it was a pleasure to ditch the info session. |
Anonymous
| Wow. My oldest is in middle school and I had no idea it was this intense. |