s/o College Visits

[Percycat]

For those who have completed the college selection process, how many of you found summer college visits helpful? My DD is finishing 10th grade. For various reasons, I think her college search will be more challenging and will result in us looking at a lot more schools than my DS (who is graduating HS this year and chose his college after visiting two schools --- fortunately, since Covid cancelled all other visit opportunities!).

I think we are going to start visiting schools this fall and thorughout her Junior year with a goal of making a list by the beginning of next summer.

For people who visited schools during the summer -- did you find the visits helpful? Did you go back and visit the school during the school year?

Thanks!

[SnuggleBuggles]

They were super important. I wish we had done more but his extracurriculars and social stuff filled the spring of junior year and fall of senior year much more than I expected.
Summer visits weren't really helpful at all. But that is because ours were all self guided- they could have been better with a guide. One of ds1's finalists was one we toured over that school's spring break so a lot was closed and campus was dead. He still really liked it. The tour is the part that was most helpful at every school. Just setting foot on campus wasn't super helpful but better than nothing. It's important to see the campus, which can be done online, but seeing the surrounding areas makes a big difference. One was basically a crappy main street and corn fields as far as the eye could see. That one was ruled out before we even made it to the campus.

[AnnieW625]

We are just starting (I will have a sophomore in a few weeks) but I am planning on using summer visits to simply visit the campuses and see if it is something that DD1 might like. If it is then she can put it on her list and she can start researching majors, cost, potential financial aid, etc. . No one is doing in person tours right now but if it turns out to be an area DD1 likes then at some point she can do an online tour (especially if it across the country) to decide if she really wants to apply in 2.5 or so years.


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[KrisM]

We are hopeful to do 1-2 this summer. Well, I am. DS1 has no desire to tour a campus. But if some open up, I may drag him anyway. Touring in the fall and spring will be much harder with his schedule, but I am sure we will do 1-2 then to help him make his decision next spring.

[hbridge]

We have been talking to colleges and trying to schedule tours. Most say that in "normal" times they recommend visiting during the academic year, but now, with a lot of virtual classes, it does not matter. We have visited a handful of schools and the campuses are deserted. The one DC is most interested in had a few students on campus that we saw, but most had NONE. We could not get into any buildings and we did not see any students. It certainly makes it hard.

Hopefully, this summer, campuses will be open for tours to get DC's final list together. Then we will tour again in the Fall...

[ncat]

I have a rising senior. The pandemic derailed visit plans for last summer. I am really hoping DD will get to see some schools in person. She has done several virtual visits and those have been pretty variable as to how useful they are.

[khm]

For those who have completed the college selection process, how many of you found summer college visits helpful? My DD is finishing 10th grade. For various reasons, I think her college search will be more challenging and will result in us looking at a lot more schools than my DS (who is graduating HS this year and chose his college after visiting two schools --- fortunately, since Covid cancelled all other visit opportunities!).

I think we are going to start visiting schools this fall and thorughout her Junior year with a goal of making a list by the beginning of next summer.

For people who visited schools during the summer -- did you find the visits helpful? Did you go back and visit the school during the school year?

Thanks!

It honestly wasn't too important for my senior. She knew what she wanted and the visits were just a formality. She wanted - large and in-state. That didn't leave a ton of options.

At this point she's an open major, so she liked the one with more major choices in the direction where she is leaning. She also preferred that city and surrounding area over the others. I was hoping she'd warm up to the closest of them, but she was pretty set-against it for her own preconceived notions, and then we had a pretty dreadful tour there which did not help.

She preferred staying in-state for financial reasons. I do know lots of kids going out of state can make up the cost differences with scholarships, etc. But, since she's undecided, we found many scholarship options are major-dependent. Her grades and academics are very strong, but not so off-the-charts that out-of-state universities would clamor to give her $$$.

Should she come up with a major that requires transferring in-state or out, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Most families I know kind of approached it like this, I guess. A large number are going to the big state universities whose parents went there, whose siblings went there, etc. This year is swinging more in favor of the one my daughter chose, but most years the closest one is the more popular.

There are a lot of high school athletes going to the smaller schools to play, most in-state and a handful in neighboring states. I have some friends with kids who really fell for out of state schools, but ended up staying in-state for the $$ savings.

A handful of kids have a very specific major and it requires a very small subset of colleges, so their choices were pretty narrow.