S/O how soon to start touring colleges?

[AnnieW625]

Seeing the campus dead on a weekend because everyone leaves would certainly impact impressions. So, it is good to see. If you don't want a commuter school, you will rule it out.
Even small schools tend to have things going on activity and sports wise.
I would want to see kids in the student union. Walking around getting coffee. Sitting outside studying...
Ys, lots will sleep in but this wasn't only about mornings on a weekend.

Totally get that as well. Anytime on a weekend will be different than mid week. My experience is with large schools with 20k-35k+ enrollment. I think it is crucial to get that experience with weekends and weekdays but weekends may just be very quiet. You don’t want your kid to show up on day 1 of classes and be shocked there are actual people on campus or the first weekend when everyone decides to go home and it is very quiet and nothing but the library and campus mini mart is open.


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[gatorsmom]

One of the things someone recommended to me was to do tours early in HS of local schools of different sizes (e.g. a small liberal arts college, a mid-sized university and a large state school) - we did this and it help my DD (and DS) narrow in on what size school was most appealing.

We did this too and my kids found it helpful. We started touring for ds1 his junior year and brought ds2 with us. DS2 was a freshman then. Restrictions on campuses were still up in many places due to COVID, but we took outdoor campus tours and saw some dorms. DS2 started to talk about what he liked and didn’t like about some of the campuses along with ds1. He’s a senior now and we’ve discussed his favorites and how his viewpoint has changed since then. Narrowing down his list was much easier for him than ds1 because he had had time to think about what he saw as a freshman.

We dragged our freshman twins along when ds2 took his junior tours last year. Ds3 said he felt he knew already where he wanted to go. We’ve continued to discuss whether that still is the best place for him and what he’d like to find. It’s going to be hard helping twins prep for college both at the same time. If we can get some stuff down earlier, so much the better.