Admitted Students Day - Worth It?

intparent
Fri, 06 Apr 2018 03:34:53 +0000

Agree, UChicago had a lot of activities that parents could join. Harvey Mudd really had a lot of stuff for parents, too. It wasn’t all with the kids – some things like panels were joint, some were separate like while the kids attended a couple of classes. And the overnight was all kids at both places, of course. But I learned a lot at both, and we were able to pool our observations afterwards because we didn’t see the same things all the time. My D2 hadn’t traveled much on her own at that age, so it worked well for us to go together. D1 was an experienced world traveler at that age, and decided to attend only one accepted visit (the school she was quite sure of, but wanted one last look), so she went without me.

I picked up stuff at the accepted student weekend that paid off later, too. One of the profs at Mudd mentioned in a panel that there was usually a few day physics seminar for frosh right at the end of winter break that was especially good for physics majors or kids without strong physics backgrounds to attend. As my kid (1) was interested in a physics major, and (2) went to a HS with no science APs offered, I filed that nugget for future reference. Brought it up to my kid in November, and she realized she had just skipped over an email about it the week before. She went back and found it and got signed up, and said later that it had really helped her get a good start to her 2nd semester physics core class. So… parents can learn valuable stuff, too!

I will say, it was my kid’s accepted visit to UChicago that turned her off to it. It was her number 1 going in (and she had visited previously). But that is a whole different thread. As I said, 24 hours on campus can be very instructive.