Anonymous wrote:We have a sophomore. Did you start doing college visits sophomore year or wait til junior and senior year? We have such busy schedules, I can't imagine finding the time to visit all these colleges without starting now.

Start sophomore spring break based on 10th grade PSAT percentile converted to SAT estimate —start with match schools. See a bigger state school, an LAC, a smaller state (W&M), a mid size private—get a feel of what they like. Make a list based on that. Make it a goal to see all if possible.

My kid was very excited about college, and wanted to start as a sophomore. I thought it was early but went along to support her interest. So, as a single mother with only her, we worked out visits to 21 schools by senior year. She applied to 10 and got into 7. We also went to almost all of their admitted student days (often arranging for an overnight visit to those—which gives a more authentic sense of the campus than the scripted campus tour).

I am very glad now that we did not try to cram our visits into a year or 18 months. Our travels were fun and relaxed, often intermingled with family vacations. We usually took a formal tour (so the school was aware of the visit), had lunch in the cafeteria and tried to check out the town. These visits were very useful to my DD, who was choosing her next home (and professional launchpad).

One pro-tip is for your child to start a notebook with her impressions of each school. She should jot them down before you state yours. That lets them take the lead. Also, it keeps her from mixing up the schools, and can provide handy details when she is writing individual admissions essays a year or more later.

Good luck.

I have a senior, but have older kids too. OP, it really depends on when your child shows interest. My son was not interested in discussing or visiting colleges in 9th or 10th grade, which is fine. He did visit siblings’ colleges for family weekend and that was a good starter for discussing what he liked, didn’t like, size, location, Greek like, clubs, majors, etc. Even if your child isn’t interested, you need to start visiting one or two on long weekends in fall of 11th grade. Then visit more on all the long weekends in 11th grade and take a day off here or there. To answer your question, my son visited 10 and applied to 7 of those. He also applied to 5 more schools he hasn’t visited that are similar to schools he visited and loved. If the school considers DI, we visited. Enjoy the process. The college visits one-on-one with my kids have been some of my favorite memories with them as teens. They engage with you a lot and you have 100% of their attention for 2 days.

Don’t forget GMU, Shenandoah, UMW, Towson

Slightly farther would be JMU, UVA, VCU, Mount St Mary’s, Washington College, Randolph Macon, Stevenson

With sophomore, we would visit a school if passing by anyway. During a sports tournament, kids took tours at Duke and UNC in our downtime.

If you live in the DMV, you can visit quite a variety:

Public UMD, UMBC
Private GW, AU
HBCU Howard
Religious CUA, Georgetown, Loyola
SLAC Goucher, St. Mary’s

Even if you don’t like these schools, student can get a feel for city campus versus not, religious versus not, larger versus smaller, and so on.

You can also do this same thing in Philly or Boston and visit a wide range of types of schools to start narrowing down the list.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am gonna say again - our visit to the ODU open house was the most fun visit we had. While most of our visits were quite personalized (smaller schools generally), which was good in its own way, we found the presentations and just good vibes contagious.

I highly recommend a larger open house or accepted students day if you can. They are just fun.

Ok

Someone noted before about bigger planned events, like open houses, vs just everyday campus tours. I was just agreeing with that. If you can make an Open House (frequently on weekends, which I just saw someone mention), do it.

Quick vent: I wish more schools offered tours and info sessions during the weekends!

Between work and the school calendar, it’s really hard to visit during the week, especially if you hope to see the schools sometime Sept-April, when the kids are actually on campus!

Short story: Junior Year (6): one during fall semester and three during spring semester, and two over the summer. Senior Year (3): all three fall semester over long weekends.

Longer story: No tours sophomore year or the summer after. DC had absolutely no interest in talking about college then, let alone visiting. It stressed me out a little, TBH, but we gave DC some space.

Then in the fall of junior year, the kids had a long weekend off from school in October, so we took a family roadtrip to a big, fun OOS flagship school. It was a beautiful weekend, we did the tour, watched a football game, explored the town, and enjoyed the whole experience. (A year later, DC applied to the school.)

That one trip got the ball rolling! DC was much more engaged after that - willing to talk about what they thought they wanted and didn’t want in a school, but to their credit, they were pretty open minded.

So we fit in another three tours over a long weekend in March (missing two days of school.) Again, it was a fun trip, this time including some basketball games.

We toured a few other schools over the summer - not ideal because there weren’t many students there, but good enough for DC to confirm they wanted to apply.

And did the last three fall semester of senior year. Again, we timed them during long weekends when they were off from school, but they did miss a few days here and there.

ALL of these schools say they consider DI to at least some degree 🙄 so we felt pressure to visit. DC applied to 2 other schools that they didn’t visit. Neither considered DI, and it just seemed like way to much to do any more.

Advice: Make the trips FUN. Don’t rush through the experience - stay over a night, if you can swing it in terms of time and money. DC was SO busy in high school with academics, sports, ECs, and friends. It was so nice to have the one-on-one time together!!

(After the first trip, which we enjoyed as a family, DH and I took turns doing the college trips/tours. This made DC2 happy - one tour was enough for them for now - and DC1 liked it, too. Apparently, when it comes to “college stuff,” together we “can be a lot”. So divide-and-conquer worked much better for our family. YMMV.

We haven’t seen about half; at this stage, not seeing anymore schools until admitted students day depending on how it all shakes out.

Attended a program at their ED school so (fingers crossed they get in) DC is all good there. Will be thrilled with that result and then will be done and can enjoy senior year.

We started winter of junior year. DC wasn’t interested before then. Visited a few more early in senior year. We probably got to 3/4 of those he applied to. It was really helpful to cross some off the list

I actually worried that the opposite might be true— that a place we visited summer before junior year might not count that as full credit for interest since it was so long before the application. But I have no idea how schools look at this.

Pardon my ignorance as I am fairly new to this process but aren't there some schools that keep track of interest? If so, I assume that visiting early in the process can be helpful as it is a display of interest?

I have a current senior. We started April of sophomore year by hitting a few. April of junior year we went back to two we liked and added on a few new ones. He ended up EDing to one of the OGs from the sophomore year trip, and going back in junior year only confirmed how much he liked it.

Anonymous wrote:I have 3 kids. For the older 2, we visited just those schools within an easy drive. They represented big, small, rural and urban. It gave them a sense of what they might like. The plan was to visit schools far away once they had an acceptance. For our youngest the process was different as he considered playing his sport in college. We did lots of traveling as it’s necessary to visit campuses prior to offers/admissions. After all that, he decided he didn’t want to play in college and would like to attend a school 8 hours away. We plan to visit now that he has an acceptance in hand.

OP, I realize I didn’t answer the timeline question. For all, we began the summer between sophomore and junior year with a few but saw the majority the summer between junior and senior.

I have 3 kids. For the older 2, we visited just those schools within an easy drive. They represented big, small, rural and urban. It gave them a sense of what they might like. The plan was to visit schools far away once they had an acceptance. For our youngest the process was different as he considered playing his sport in college. We did lots of traveling as it’s necessary to visit campuses prior to offers/admissions. After all that, he decided he didn’t want to play in college and would like to attend a school 8 hours away. We plan to visit now that he has an acceptance in hand.