Is visiting in cold weather a problem?

[CountingDown]

Pizzagirl, there's the rub -- so many places to see, so few days to actually visit. This was why we started visiting early with both kids. Of course, we have not seen friends in three years because one of us has been on the road with one or the other kid for Spring Break, MLK weekend, teacher in-service days, etc. Our school allows students three days total between junior and senior years for excused visits.

DH has done some insane 2000+ mile road trips on spring breaks so S1 and S2 could both go check out whatever colleges on their list had classes in session and coincided with our break. Try doing doing Pesach while visiting colleges!! OTOH, both kids found it a good time to check out how dining services accommodated kids who were keeping the holiday.

[Pizzagirl]

Is it so awful if we just wander around campus for a few hours and not do a scheduled tour?

[kantianethicist]

Pizzagirl: "So if tours aren't offered on Sat / Sun, how the heck am I supposed to get my kids to these places while school is in session? Take them out of school? So how are they supposed to participate in all the award-winning EC's they need to and get the outstanding grades to get there if they're pulled out of school?"

D's high school provided juniors/seniors with 6 excused absences for college visits--and a verification form to be signed by admissions. Check with your HS guidance office about its policy. It's generally expected that kids will visit colleges during school week.

[momofthreeboys]

I looked at the school calendar and scheduled my S1 and S2 college trips over long weekends. I chose the weekends that they had half days on Thursday/Friday for midterms and the half day marking day/teacher inservice, etc. We didn't do any summer trips so it worked out. I used Chicago as a departure point and used cheap Southwest seats to get me as close as I could get, then used a rental car. It worked quite well. I just got back last night from the "last" college visit with S2. He had a half day last Friday so he took the half day off and we flew out Thursday night.

[Pizzagirl]

If your spring break is the first week in April (as ours is), we often drive to Colorado. Typically the snow is "no more" on the way out, sometimes snow in the mountains, but by then Colorado Springs should be just fine to drive to.

Agree, but I'm not going to waste a whole spring break on our one college in Colorado when I've got a bazillion to knock off in Boston / New England or Philly / DC!

[mattmom]

Lots of schools DO have Saturday tours and/or info sessions--check the specific admission Web sites. But if you are using your children's spring break days you will be visiting o n weekdays to some extent anyway.

There is nothing wrong with walking around on your own but you get a variety of insights, official and unofficial, from tours and info sessions, and it really does help to get a sense of the school. How the tour guides talk, how the admissions staff treat people and represent themselves and their school, and so on--plus there's nothing like getting facts from the horse's mouth rather than second hand or by inference. Having been through the process twice I strongly recommend organized visits with face-to-face contact.

[CountingDown]

We found a lot of schools had more tours (including weekends) during the spring.

Generally, our MO was that each S would do the campus tour, then go off to sit in on classes (they contacted profs in advance -- they wanted to see upper div stuff and it was NEVER a problem) and wander the halls of the departments they were interested in and see who they could chat with. S2 also contacted coaches in advance. Both had some interesting impromptu chats with advisors, profs and students stemming from sitting in on classes or wandering the halls. Reading what's on the walls in departments also proved fruitful. DH or I (whoever was accompanying said S) did the info session -- we found those all sounded the same after a while, so we would go and take notes of anything particularly relevant.

S1 did a couple of "stealth" visits -- but always signed in with admissions first so they knew he was on campus.

[LongPrime]

Go now and tell HS that they got the flu.

[dbwes]

The info sessions do all start to sound alike and wandering on your own starts to sound really good. But we never got a really good feel for any school if that's all we did. The tour guide and the staff put a real human face on the place, and you do learn things you wouldn't learn otherwise -- both things the school wants you to know and things you pick up from listening!

[thumper1]

Well..here's my theory...If your student is applying to schools with long cold winters, they SHOULD visit in the winter. If they like the school in the winter, they will LOVE it in the spring (unless there are black flies). If your student is applying to schools in hot climates...go visit in HOT weather. Again...if they like that extreme, they will love it there when the weather is more moderate.

In other words...take your kid to visit when the weather is the worst...you don't want them calling you during their freshman year to say "It's too cold an snowy." or "It's too hot and humid."

[mathmom]

You just hang out at the student center instead of the lawn. We saw Bard and Vassar on the same gray day in Februrary. One had walks covered with ice, the other had shoveled all the snow into big piles in the quads. I think Bard deserved the negative opinion we got. It rained the entire weekend we were at CMU (in April when every other campus we visited was gorgeous), but he chose it anyway.

[cathymee]

bad weather can wreck havoc on your travel logistics as well as the opinion/atmosphere of the school. D and husband got caught in a tremendous snowstorm on the way from NYC to Ithaca for an audition. It delayed them and made for a frazzled arrival/audition. Her opinion of Northwestern was colored by the breathtakingly cold wind coming off the lake and the fact that a music major had to scurry between venues to accomodate their schedule ( this goes back a few years, Northwesterns facilities may be updated by now).
We auditioned and toured Indiana U in frigid weather but the niceness of the people helped . But the kicker was flying to Phoenix to audition/visit ASU the week after being in freezing/snowy Indiana.. no coats, oranges hanging on trees, palm trees ,able to dine outside, a totally different terrain in the desert...D fell in love and fell hard..she never looked back..( a combo of excellent performance opportunity,facilities,Honors College and scholarship helped too!)

[Pizzagirl]

I fear I am not explaining myself well. So I will try again.

They are not going to be put off by cold weather. It's not as though we are from California or Florida and they've never lived through cold weather. They are FINE with schools in Minnesota, New England, etc. They don't have a need to escape winter or the four seasons.

The issue is whether it puts a campus at a disadvantage by touring it during a time when you can't spend a lot of time outside.

[menloparkmom]

^^^If cold weather is NOT a factor, then I would think that the next most important factor would be the "fit and feel " of the college and the "type" of students there, and that is hard to determine if classes are not in session and the campus is deserted. Wouldn't "time inside" be a more critical factor than "time outside" based on your above post?

[qialah]

We found that a lot of schools offered weekend tours in the fall but not in the early spring. Also schools tend to get very pre-occuppied with accepted students in late March. We wound up touring Barnard with such a group last April.

I agree with flipping the tour and doing DC in April with the potential for cherry blossoms and Boston in Feb. before the snow turns to slush.