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[quote=Anonymous]I have a 17 year old son and a 12 year old daughter. Due to the age difference, my youngest child was exposed to college tours, college admissions strategizing, war movies, video games and various other things at a younger age than her brother. It did make her more aware of the world, so the sum total is positive so far, even though I wish she didn't like scary movies so much!

But you are HARMING YOUR CHILDREN if you raise them to dream of the Ivy League, or even the second tier below that. My son just went through college admissions. He has high stats. He got into his safeties and his targets. He was deferred or rejected from schools with a 10% acceptance rate or below (HYPSM is way below 10%). Kids we know with similar stats did not even get into their in-state flagship (UMD or UVA) and their parents are looking at paying way more for college as a result.  UMD is 30K/yr in state. Private colleges can be as high as 90K this year, and likely 100K/yr by the time these kids finish undergrad in 4 years.

You have NO IDEA, none at all, how crazy competitive the game has become. And how EXPENSIVE.

Now there is a demographic cliff coming in 5 years, where the number of American seniors graduating every year will be significantly lower than it is now. It will be to no avail for the Ivy League and other selective institutions, since everyone in the world and their cousin wants to get in. The small private colleges will probably close or struggle, the in-state schools will be very popular. So don't count on less domestic competition to get into Harvard.

Your kids won't even remember these tours anyway. We're an international family and travel abroad to see relatives in Europe and Asia frequently. My kids have very spotty memories of anything that happened during trips taken before they were 10. Which in our case doesn't matter, since we were going it to see family. But in your case, it's a complete waste of time, and will only pressure your kids to revere colleges they very likely will never attend.

So no. Go to museums, national parks, zoos. Have fun. Make sure they're very very good at foundational skills like math, reading and writing.

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