In NYC and I go to LA every couple of months for work and also have a brother in SF. So took my kid with me to LA and toured UCLA, USC and Claremont. Then looked at Stanford, Santa Clara and Cal when in SF one vacation.

Ended up on east coast

DC isn’t interested in being that far from home, but if they had been, we would only have done an in-person visit after acceptances came out, if a CA school was in the top 2-3 and DC needed to make a choice. Or before applying for ED, if that was in consideration. Too expensive to visit otherwise, unless paired with a vacation or something that was happening out there anyway.

Santa Clara is definitely worth a visit.

We visited UCLA while vacationing. Kid applied. Also applied to Berkeley, which we did not visit.

Don’t think it’s too far at all but I grew up on the west coast and DC prefers it to DMV area. Visited several schools in CA over three different trips. This included several UCs (not just Cal and UCLA), as well as CMC, USC, LMU, Santa Clara, etc. Also visited other schools in the west, but this was just CA. Some of these visits were early on before DC had narrowed down preferences over school size or urban/suburban/rural.

OP: thanks. DD will likely be a chemistry, applied math or computer science major. Have the stats for the most competitive schools but is otherwise unhooked (beyond being from a feeder private). Would love ideas for reach and target schools. Already toured and decided on safety schools in the east coast.

Among CA schools college counsellor discussed with DD, her favorites are Pomona and Stanford. So would love schools similar to them in academics and campus culture.

No, because I'm not sending a kid to school in California. There is nothing they have there that he can't get closer to home.

Toured USC, UCSD, UCSB, and UCLA. Oldest kid applied to USC and went to a similarly ranked school on east coast. Younger kid applied to all thee UCs plus Berkeley and USC (and planned to apply to Stanford RD] but was accepted to SCEA school and will be going there.

Ours toured the Claremont Colleges. Dream school is there, so fingers crossed

No way. Too far and too $$$.

DD got into Cal Poly. We hadn't visited. After acceptance, she never had the time to visit. That's what she said. So, we knew the answer, just took her a little longer to decide to let the acceptance go.

My kid applied to LMU and Scripps but we haven’t toured either. Neither tracks DI if I recall correctly and we’re unsure about having our student go to school so far from home. Waiting to hear about admissions to see if it’s worth a visit (that was kind of what we agreed—you can apply but we’ll only visit those campuses if accepted).

Tossed DD’s name in a hat for the UCs. But only virtual tour.

What do they want to study?
USC for film business CS
LMU for film
Santa Clara for engineering
U San Diego if you don’t get into any of the others

If so, which ones?

Based just on reputation, it seems UCLA and Berkeley are too large and "sink or swim", the other UCs are too expensive for OOS students, Caltech is too hard and cutthroat, Stanford is too impossible, Claremont Colleges are too small or too niche. What are other schools that east coast families found have to be worth long the trip to visit in person? DC is a high stat junior at a top private; above are schools college counsellor and friends of older kids mentioned for campus tours.