<p>If your kid is in much-loved time-consuming extra curricular activities, fall of junior year is NOT too early to start working on a list and visiting colleges.</p>
<p>Agreed. We started late, and it was a real problem getting in the visits, some of which were pretty much mandatory. It’s really hard for these kids, taking tough courses, keeping up the grades, studying and taking all of these needed tests and having to juggle college visits as well in an already overbooked schedule. Yet, all necessary to get into some the selective schools, it seems.</p>
<p>D visited most of the schools she considered after she was accepted last spring break. It was crazy but it worked. I think the only big reason to visit a lot of schools is if the applicant is considering ED.</p>
<p>We started early so that neither kid would have to worry about it much during the school year (except Spring Break). S2 is going to have to do major work on apps next summer, as his fall sport and courseload are totally life-consuming.</p>
<p>Visiting is certainly important if one is apply ED or considering ED. We also thought it was important for D to visit colleges (even though she wasn’t committed to applying ED) b/c :</p>
<p>(1) many LACs track a student’s interest and visiting is a serious expression of interest; we thought this was particularly important with the safety schools - - we didn’t want schools concerned about yield to think “if we admit her, she’ll never come.”</p>
<p>(2) the school in which D was interested encouraged applicants to interview, the interviews were evaluative and D interviews/presents VERY well; also, I figured that if she interviewed on campus (instead of an alum interview) then when her file came up, there would be someone in the room with first-hand knowl of D, and (I hoped) pulling for her.</p>
<p>
luckily the schools we visited last spring covered most of the schools my daughter was considering when thinking about applying ED … she has since visited a few other schools to see if she really has a ED school (she still is not sure)</p>
<p>How can you wait until senior year to visit schools? I thought that most of the college applications needed to be in by November…</p>
<p>warriorboy - Nov is the date for EA/ED. For regular, I think most schools are Jan 1, I have also seen Jan 15 and Feb 1.</p>
<p>Even if you are planning primarily Saturday visits, it will be difficult to fit in more than a few college trips before Jan/Feb. You’ll have to spend some time actually completing the applications and you may want to re-take the SAT/ACT during the fall or early winter. You might also want to sleep once in a while.</p>
<p>Also, the Feb. deadline is for the application, the interview deadline often falls a couple of weeks before the application deadline.</p>
<p>We did not visit all of the schools until after the apps were in.</p>
<p>I provided a list of about 30+ schools that met D’s criteria (>10,000 students, public university, within certain states and with a net cost <$25K after merit aid). Last Spring we went on some college visits, to see if she could start weeding them down. After 9 visits, she eliminated only 1 school.</p>
<p>She took the PSATs as a sophomore (our school used to encourage sophomores to take it, and this year they’ve made it mandatory for all freshmen and sophomores). She’s using those PSATs to guestimate where her SATS might fall, and started looking at her safeties first to get them out of the way. </p>
<p>D is having waaaaay too much fun doing college visits. She wants to see them all (college visits are excused absences at her high school – but I’ve told her that we’ll be doing most of the visits on SATURDAYS!!). In addition to her college visits, over 45 colleges have already signed up to visit her high school, including many of the schools on her list. Juniors and Seniors are invited to make appointments to meet with the college admissions representatives who come to the school. She’s in shopper’s heaven. </p>
<p>With my boys the process seemed so much easier. Give them a list, visit some of the schools, they were done.</p>
<p>How many schools did you visit, cpt? </p>
<p>All but one of our visits were during the summer b/c jr and sr year. We flew in and hit several of the mid-western schools on a 3 day, mid-week trip; another 3-4 schools were a much shorter drive from our vacation venue than from home - - but each still required a least day-tirp. </p>
<p>As you said, between ECs, test prep, school work and completing college apps, sr year is already really, really busy.</p>
<p>We are going on our first college visit over Columbus Day weekend. S2 wants an urban school so we are heading first to Boston. Over winter break we will visit another city area, and over Spring break a third area. That is about all we have time for. College visits are not excused absences for 11th graders at his school and by next Fall as I discovered with S1, life will be too crammed to be able to count on going to see anything that is far away.</p>
<p>We’re thinking of Boston over Columbus Day weekend too! We’ve seen BU because a cousin attends, but are now planning for BC and Northeastern over the holiday weekend.</p>
<p>Son did 10 apps, but was able to to SUNYs on one app. Did not visit any of the SUNYs since he knew the local one where he had taken classes and had sports camps. DOesn’t matter or count to visit SUNYs. Two of the catholic schools were local so it was no big deal to visit. Again he was very familiar with one of those schools because there were events he had gone to while in high school. He did have to visit each of the 3 Catholic schools since interviews were recommended. But he did that after he did the apps. Two of them were EA schools. By the time he visited his two LACs that were distance schools, he had already been accepted to those EA schools, and to a rolling SUNY and an EA Suny. The one EA accepted him right after his visit–he already had his app in when we visited that school in December. So he had 5 acceptances and one turn down by the end of the year. He had to interview for the program at one school which he did in January, which was late. He visited two Sunys at the time he went for that interview as they were in the same area. He visited one other school on invitation for an interview in February; was rejected. The rest he visited when he was accepted. He never visited Georgia Tech where he was accepted because he decided that it was not for him. That app went out way early because he wanted consideration for their presidential scholarship. Otherwise he would not have applied there at all. So 10 apps, 14 schools, 2 rejections. He also visited a couple of other catholic schools with later deadlines and one nearby LAC that he was considering but decided he did not want to apply to those schools. He got all of his apps done by early November since he had 7 schools that could possibly give him an early answer. One was a No, one was a deferral and the rest were good.</p>
<p>Sorry, meant he did not visit the SuNys where he applied until AFTER he applied.</p>
<p>You can skip the pre-acceptance college visits if and only if you can readily identify appropriate schools either because of a lack of options (limited finances, unusual major, desire to go to school near parents, etc), or a sufficient familiarity with a sufficient variety of schools. We live in a small community in an isolated region, and have not seen many schools. We have a good income, and my daughter told me she wanted to study a moderately common major, did not want to go to school instate, and wanted a small school with lots of options. A small school with lots of options sounded like a contradiction in terms to me, so I thought she needed to see a variety of schools. So far she has seen twenty, eight over spring break, twelve over summer vacation. While she still prefers small schools in general, she has decided that smaller than her high school is too small, and has a better appreciation of the advantages of a quality larger school. She also has decided that she doesn’t want too strong a pre-professional “style” in the student body, or too much “bragging” by the admissions people. She has a tentative list of eight schools, four under 4,000, one each with about 7,000, 12,000, 20,000, and 30,000 with the three larger schools ones that are particularly strong in her planned major. Three of the schools I consider safety schools. Three I consider reaches.</p>
<p>nmparent, funny, my son also did not like “too strong a pre-professional style in the student body”. Never heard that qualification before. He too liked the smaller schools but with different options rather than lots of options. Wanted something different. No idea about major. Wanted high quality involved profs, high quality courses, interesting courses. </p>
<p>I will say that once you are in a school, you don’t really deal with admissions so even if you don’t like their style it is not indicative of the school necessarily. In fact some awful tours and admissions presentations may have a great school that is a good fit behind them. That is a problem with tours in that kids often let things that do not really matter interfere with their formation of opinion about a school.</p>
<p>We are completely in the dark, since we have no idea what “level” (for lack of a better word) S2 will be at by application time. May take a trip upstate to visit a few SUNY’s and LACs to see if anything feels right.</p>
<p>D’s final list stands at 8 schools. Of those 8 schools, we visited 4 in Florida (during a summer week trip when I got $75 round-trip airfare); 1 in NJ (we are visiting this Saturday); and 2 in Pennsylvania (1 we are visiting in November). The other one in PA doesn’t have any weekend openings left this Fall so she’ll apply and if accepted and still serious about it, we’ll attend. Same with 1 school in NC, she loves it on paper, it’s her #2 school, but she definately has to visit, again, that won’t be until after she is accepted.</p>
<p>Originally D had about 13 on her list, we either had a formal campus tour or did a drive-by and immediately she wrote 6 off her list. If we waited until after she applied to tour, I would have been throwing away money on apps and test scores.</p>