17yr Old Doing College Visits Alone?

calmom
Sat, 26 May 2012 16:43:24 +0000

Maybe it’s a regional thing, but of all the tours I’ve been on in the last few years (>25) in the Northeast, Midwest, and CA, I haven’t seen a single unaccompanied kid.



When my daughter went on her first trip to visit colleges in the DC/NY area in late September, she didn’t see any other students without parents either. She had scheduled interviews at various colleges as well as an overnight at one, and her interviewers were quite surprised – and impressed! that she had traveled from the west coast on her own. Most of those colleges were subsequently dropped from her list, but I think that her interview was a strong factor in her admission to the one college she ended up attending.

Obviously we will never know – but I do know that in a competitive college atmosphere, anything that makes a student stand out from the rest in a positive way is a good thing.

I would note that I have no idea whether or not my daughter opted to go on the organized walking tours around various campuses or not. I personally wouldn’t find that too helpful – I’d rather just wander around on my own, campus map in hand. So it may just be that the kids on their own are skipping the tours – this would be especially true of kids who have opted to stay overnight with other students on campus.