<p>OK - this may be a bit of a dumb question. My D isjust about finished all her applications. She was discussing the notification dates and some schools don’t notify until mid April. SO my question is - since she is really unsure of where she wants to go - when do you make the second visits? I assume some of the schools will have sessions for accepted students, but what about those that don’t? What did other students do?</p>
<p>Revisits usually occur after an acceptance has been received. Some students are invited back for scholarship interviews/competitions. Always try to visit or revisit when school is in session. URMs, athletes, scholarship eligible and some others often are invited back for special events catering to that specific group.</p>
<p>DD went back to visit three schools in April after acceptances were in hand. In all three cases, she spent the night. Her top school remained her top choice, but a school she really came close to going to went straight to the bottom of the list after the overnight. She said the campus was just dead, and the students were not friendly. In all three cases, there were accepted student events that she was invited to attend. One school had a scholarship weekend. I agree…spend time when the students are in session. AND interact with students other than those who run the accepted student events.</p>
<p>All the colleges my son was accepted at had accepted students events. All but one included the opportunity to sit in on classes. Half included the opportunity to spend at least one night with someone on campus. My son really felt all the schools were fine in junior year visits. These visits were much more focusses as in OMG I have to make a decision in a couple of weeks! ACK!</p>
<p>Sometimes the accepted students open houses are fun, sometimes they aren’t. Due to an indecisive child we did a little of each. Probably our best visits were those where we really planned an itinerary – sat in on classes on a “normal” day, ate lunch with students, toured labs with grad students, went to a school play…</p>
<p>You’ll find that the open houses are likely to conflict, so in one weekend you might do a Friday plan your own trip and a Sat open house.</p>
<p>Many of the accepted students’ days are held around April vacations for high school, and several are on the weekends. One of my d’s was Thursday; she slept over into Friday. The next was Monday to Tuesday of vacation week. The third she arranged for Thursday into Friday also of vacation week. Yes, it was a busy two week period, but the overnights really solidified her decision - in fact, she chose a school she hadn’t visited before applying. And she’s very happy.</p>
<p>That is literally how son chose.</p>
<p>We’d visited 10, but by early April it was down to 2. He kind of sleep-walked through the initial 10 visits…it was his choice to revisit those 2. Since he’d been to each before, he paid attention this time to details, asked questions, stayed overnight at each within the same week.</p>
<p>Before the end of the second sleepover he called me to pick him up…he had chosen the first school. Felt he could see himself better on the first campus, which I think is a good way to pick.</p>
<p>One of the last things he said on the approach to move-in freshman year,“I hope I don’t come home Thanksgiving thinking I should have gone to the other school.” He didn’t.</p>
<p>Thanks for the above posts. Fortunately a few of the schools my D is applying to have rolling admissions or early action so maybe she can revisit those before April. We were so concentrating on initial visits and then applications but now that’s done. Now I just wonder what I was thinking with having a sibling two years younger - as soon as we finish with one we will start all over the other!</p>
<p>My d went to a February admitted students’ day to the one school that she heard early. It coincided with February vacation week, so that worked well for her. That school ended up being her second choice. Revisit as soon as you know she’s in, either on your own or on accepted students. Waiting until April to visit all could be a mistake, depending on how many there are.</p>
<p>DS has found that visiting while students are in class (and not on an officially sponsored event) gave him a much better sense of real life on campus. He also knows folks at every school where he’s applied, so he could get stay with them, get the “inside scoop” and meet others (not PR folks for the school) who are friends of his friends – and see how he fits. </p>
<p>We have not found the dog-and-pony shows to be a good way to assess fit. The lone exception to this has been the state flagship, which shows tons of love to top applicants. However, we have a lot of external info already from DS and his friends, so we can balance what the school says vs. the experiences of people he knows well. In our experience, the dog-and-pony shows work for flagships as a means of personalizing and making the school seem smaller to applicants it really wants to attract.</p>
<p>Our spring break this year will be in late March – before acceptance letters are out at a couple of places where he will probably want to re-visit. AGH! He may do one visit in Feb. if he gets in to one of his reaches EA, and not attend Accepted Students Day in April.</p>
<p>DS has taken a highly specialized approach to his college search. More than one family friend has commented that his methodology “feels like he’s applying to grad schools.” I know that whatever we’ve learned with DS1 will be out the window with DS2. Totally different approach to life and what he wants out of the experience.</p>
<p>We revisited two after acceptances came in, Rensselaer and Case. He had an urge to revisit Oberlin, his original first choice, but decided not to because the financial differential repositioned it as a third choice and he was afraid that a visit might result in an “irrational” choice insofar as he was going to be enrolling as a compsci major.</p>
<p>Even after the second visits the choice was not as clear cut as he would have liked. But once he did make it, he did not look back.</p>
<p>My son had 8 “first choices”. He did an overnight at the geographically nearest (8 hours away) during February break–before he knew he was admitted. By Aprill first, we knew he was admitted to that one and the other 7. He dropped 2 and we visited the other 5 during his April break (with an additional week added on). The schools were in IA, MN, OR and CA, so it was a lot of travelling. He could only go to one accepted students weekend and that was the school he chose. He really felt he needed these visits to decide. No regrets.</p>
<p>Some posters will tell you that the visits aren’t necessary or might be misleading. Everyone is different, but for my son the visits were very important.</p>
<p>How you visit depends on the kid. My d wanted to go to accepted students’ day because she didn’t know anyone at the school and didn’t want to “stand out” as a prospective student. And she’s not the type just to sit down and talk to kids she doesn’t know on a visit. So the accepted students’ day worked for her, while they might not work for CountingDown’s kid.</p>
<p>As with bethievt’s son, the visits were essential for my d. After the visits, she felt quite strongly about the one she’s attending, and felt confident in declining the others. She’d still be second-guessing herself if she hadn’t visited and done overnights.</p>
<p>Wherever we went S wanted to return to one school. Summer vacation? Let’s go to this school. Day off? Let’s drive up. Let’s see a play there. Let’s see a concert.</p>
<p>We kind of figured out he wanted to go to that school. Thank goodness he was accepted.</p>
<p>No return visits were necessary.</p>
<p>We did not see students, classes, or do overnights (though we probably should have.) </p>
<p>Had the exact same experience with D.</p>
<p>Both love their schools.</p>
<p>Great diversity above. All I want to add is the long-distance factor, if it relates to you.</p>
<p>S applied to 6 East Coast schools and 2 in California (we live in upstate NY). It seemed halfway silly to buy two roundtrip tickets to California (same city) when chances were questionable if he’d even get accepted there. When his acceptances came in, his best two offers were from one California and one NY school. At THAT point, on such short notice, cross-continent plane tickets were very expensive for 2 and he said he felt unprepared to negotiate a longdistance trip solo around L.A., plus he was too young to rent a car. Yet he preferred that school’s programmatic offering very much. </p>
<p>I told him we couldn’t afford $1K (2 plane tix + motel + ground transpo) in APril, just to confirm all he knew from his website research, and he’d have to just say “yes” and see the place for the first time at freshman orientation. That’s exactly what happened, and he’s extremely happy there now as a freshman. His specialty major was far more important to him than the usual nuances of campus living, so his choice was focussed on that programmatic offering. I think most kids care more about the nuances; my oldest 2 certainly did choosing among LAC’s with overlapping good qualities. ALso this boy is very confident socially, talked over perceptions with 2 older college sibs, which helped. So mileage varies per child. He believed if anything wasn’t so great re: dorm life, he’d just deal with it somehow. Youngest of 3, so he has that bounce and flexibility.</p>
<p>In retrospect, if you need to budget your funds that closely as we did, I’d say try to visit long-distance places during this winter, or buy refundable tickets now for the April period, or accept that you might have to make a decision “visit blind” as we did. </p>
<p>Note: S skipped 11th grade so there had been no time for exploratory visits in 11th grade. We don’t “do” summer visits at all (for the older ones closer by, either), just feeling they give insufficient data. For cross-country situations, during Jr. year I admire those on CC who come by plane to evaluate growing interest in several long-distance schools. It WAS scary to pack up in August for an unseen school! We told him he was packing “to meet his mail-order bride.”</p>
<p>For Jewish families: remember to check the Passover calendar in April if that’s a factor in your trip planning.</p>
<p>paying3–that’s how we used to do it, back in the Dark Ages. If you were lucky enough to get into your “dream” school, esp. if it required an audition or portfolio, you just went. We didn’t have money to go around visiting schools.</p>
<p>My oldest D was accepted to her dream school and had visited once. She was all set to go, but my H did not have the same conviction. D reluctantly agreed to go to a “sleeping bag weekend” at dream school and to another at the top of the list. Both schools were in the “top ten” in the country according to the magazines etc. for her intended major. After attending the “sleeping bag weekends”, she decided NOT to go to dream school. She had originally visited during the summer, but when she went back for the weekend, she stayed with a girl that was in the computer science program, (like my D.) The girl was up most of the night and was very stressed because she was struggling to complete some kind of assignment. My D asked her if there was anyone in the dorm that was in her class and the girl laughed…“People don’t HELP each other here. The competition is cut throat and on a curve. No one will help me but the TA and it’s too late to get in touch with him.” This girl had been the VD in her class and had been admitted to UC Berk. and MIT. The atmosphere permiated the entire weekend. D observed that virtually everyone was totally stressed out, and unfriendly because of it. She was glad that she made the visit and has said many times that she is SO glad that she did not attend.</p>
<p>Sarahsmom–I’m curious what the “dream” school was that your D had the bad experience at. For instance, at the MIT info session we attended the guy said it’s a tough school, but the kids help each other and bond over the impossible problem sets. I don’t know if he was being honest or just trying to counteract the common perception. I have heard of music schools where kids actually try to injure the competition. :eek:</p>
<p>It’s important to learn the prevailing culture of a school before you decide to attend (if possible), as two schools that look the same on paper may have very different atmospheres. Of course, as I said in my last post, that’s not how we <em>used</em> to do it!</p>
<p>mommusic, I’ll PM you.</p>