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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The helicopter parents at William and Mary were a trip. We were at a [b]an info session[/b] in a large auditorium with a dean and this girl must have told her mom to "be quiet and stop embarrassing me". She got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the presentation and her mom stood up and enrolled a long list of questions and started asking them, then abruptly stopped and sat down when the girl came back in the room. And the admissions dean used that language about " one fun major for you like literature, and a second more practical major for your parents." [/quote]

You do get that the parents at an info session aren't W&M parents, right? They are parents touring all the schools.  There was  a parent like that in the info sessions at most of the schools I toured.  I think that's one of the reasons why tours aren't great for figuring out your opinion of a school--your most contact is with people who are also touring and have nothing to do with the place really.  We felt we got a better sense when we lightly attended the official sessions and instead did our own touring.[/quote]

DP. The above response is an excellent point.

You can get a tour with a student guide who is engaged, knowledgeable, and frank, or you might end up with a guide who, that particular day, is distracted, down, preoccupied. The impression you get is as much of that student as it is of the college, if you aren't careful to separate the tour guide from the tour itself. Do your own walking around; eat in at least one of the dining halls if it's allowed, or at least walk into a dining hall or two; have your HS student contact a department of interest, or admissions and see if he or she can sit in on a class (or two); stick around to attend an event, student play or student concert in the evening; see the campus not just during the day but by night to get a feel for where students are going and what they're doing. Of course this is too much effort to do for every college on a list! But if there is a clearly preferred one, I'd do all this. We did tours where we spent a night near each college and then had day buffer between schools, so we could have ample time to walk around campuses, walk around the surrounding town, attend a play on campus (DC is a drama student) etc.

Also, I've posted on here before about this but:

If there are colleges of strong interest, see if they hold a special full-day event in the fall that is more than just "turn up for a tour and info session."

These are days where they line up a boatload of things: Panels with current students, panels with professors, chances to attend classes, meal tickets so you can eat in dining halls, specialized tours (for instance, walking tour of just the science buildings so you get to see inside labs; tour of just the arts campus so you see actual practice rooms, performance spaces that usually are not open by day, art studios in action, etc.). And so on. You must register for these special days well in advance and they do fill up, so you have to hunt for them early. I am [u]not[/u] talking about "accepted student days" held in spring and designed for those who have already applied, by the way; I'm talking instead about days in the fall, for interested potential applicants. We did these days at four SLACS and they were invaluable at really seeing much, much more of the college than we would ever have seen on the basic daily walking tours they give.

I don't know if large universities have days like those but LACs definitely do. Of course these days are intended to sell the college to you but I also was glad to find that administators and professors and students were usually pretty frank about issues like how hard it could be to get into certain classes, or how the homework load really affected students, etc.[/quote]

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