There are actually schools who keep track of not only your visits but phone calls and e-mail contact as well! If it comes down to deciding between equally qualified candidates, the one with the green check marks (you get those for any sort of self-initiated contact) will be selected.
My D will be a Vocal Performance major at Cleveland Instituted of Music (CIM), and one would think that school visits would be necessary for performance majors, but that's why this topic interests me. Believe it or not, I know of kids who were visiting schools just days before the May 1st deadline- touring performance and practice facilites, dorms, trying to arrange sample lessons with faculty members... Insanity! I certainly don't want to argue, but rather, I'm curious; wouldn't it be better to begin the investigation process earlier, narrow the list of schools actually applied to and be able to visit the places where one is intending to spend the next four years? I know I wouldn't have been comfortable mailing a check to a school that we had no real first-hand knowledge of- never have been one to place a lot of faith in
PR offices! Of course, once again, things may have been a bit different for us since my D is a performance major but this is how it went: D began to go to college music fairs as a 9th grader and the contacts made at those proved valuable when it came time to apply (schools send asst. admissions directors on the road!), we kept a file of materials picked up on those occasions, communications began to come in via e-mail from the schools (also filed), and then used Peterson's Guides and the internet. We made a couple of visits in the fall of her junior year and also were able to work in sample lessons. Those visits were the most valuable tool in the whole process since schools were in session and had time to actually pay attention to prospective students! D ruled out one well-known school (with a great
PR dept, by the way!) on the basis of that visit, which saved a lot of hassle. By the way, she did end up auditioning at one school that we had not visited before that weekend, and, from my point of view, attempting to access a college's good and bad points on the basis of a weekend geared entirely towards impressing prospective students was not a good thing! It is an artificial reality and there is so much on the table that nothing gets done and important things get missed. Despite a couple of years of on-going communication with that school, and an ED acceptance (another weird thing with peformance majors- some school ends up as an ED choice simply because of logistics!), D chose another school! All of the advance research/legwork for 3 years made it possible for D to pare her list down to only 3 schools, although some of her clasmates applied to as many as 15 schools!
For those of you who applied to schools, were accepted and then made the visit, why did you choose to do it that way? In what way did the economy impact your decision regarding the visitation process? Would you do it this way again? It might be nice to compile this info for students entering into this process next year.
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