My coworker’s daughter several years ago chose her college based on an admitted student day program. She then dropped out/transferred a year later and one complaint was the college sold itself on that day but in reality everyday life there was much much different.
So with D17 and S19 we picked totally random days to visit. For colleges with notoriously bad weather we picked a random winter day. I will never forget Pittsburgh in January. My southern kids didnt know how dirty snow gets when it sits out all winter. Had we gone to Pittsburgh in late spring at admitted day, our glimpse would have been a rare beautiful day but not representative of the norm.
We also tried to make sporting events when at the same visit. For winter visits that meant basketball. It was a very telling way to discern school spirit. VERY telling. One division 1 school the students were booing their team, cheerleaders, etc. You dont want to spend 4 years in that environment.
Hmm, thanks for the link. Those are pretty new – looks like the Fritch was first available for students entering fall of 2012 (my last kid was admitted to Carleton that year, and they certainly didn’t publicize the new scholarship to incoming frosh that year - we weren’t aware that it even existed, and I was tracking pretty carefully on all of her schools). Can’t tell when the Strong scholarship started. Interesting that their FA FAQs haven’t caught up, here is what they say:
Q: Does Carleton offer merit based scholarships? A: Financial aid at Carleton is primarily need-based. However, Carleton does participate in three merit scholarship programs: the National Merit Scholarship Program, the National Achievement Scholarship Program, and the National Hispanic Recognition Program. Students who are finalists in these programs are eligible for Carleton scholarships of $2,000 per year.
And that is all it says. No link to the page you linked to.
Ah, yup. So it does look like, at least for incoming frosh, it is still just NMF that are purely merit based. I did see when poking around on the Carleton website just now that there seem to be a lot of (probably small, amount unknown) small scholarships that are department or major related that might go to students after freshman year, and possible those are merit based (they didn’t all say they were financial need dependent).
@intparent is correct – Carleton, according to their latest CDS, gave 28 of the 522 incoming freshman class an average of $3,873 in NON need-based (i.e., merit) aid. This would include those who are awarded the $2,000 NMF scholarships.
On the website, Carleton states that they sponsor 30 National Merit Scholarships in the entering class. Those selected will receive a renewable total stipend of $2,000 per year, and that they are "… eligible for consideration for a Carleton-sponsored Merit or Achievement Scholarship. These scholarships represent the only “non-need” or “merit” awards available at Carleton. Other college funds are awarded on the basis of financial need. As others have stated, the Fitch and Stong scholarships have a need component.
So, it looks like some token non-need based (i.e., merit) scholarships are being doled out, but with a COA of $70K, it’s a drop in the bucket. I’d hardly describe Carleton as a school that “offers merit.”
@homerdog --to your point – DS enjoyed meeting the kids who were visiting and found that helpful too. Lots of kids who have already committed (ED or otherwise ) attend these events as well as those who are still deciding. There were several kids he saw at more than one event! But comparing notes and meeting prospective classmates was informative.
At one school that he had felt was extremely “alt” in a pre-application visit, he found that there were a lot more mainstream types there than his first visit had suggested. At another that he had not thought was much of a contender, he found all the kids he met to be incredibly friendly - to the point that it was vying for #1. (At that one, when we had visited, the kid who was in admissions was from the area where his BS was and made repeated snarky comments about prep school kids. DS brushed it off but it didn’t leave him “feeling it”.) I mention these 2 simply because he saw something different than he’d seen on his first visit. Any single visit will have some serendipity - for better or for worse.
@gardenstategal thanks. S19 has gone on individual visits and they are kind of lonely. You don’t have anyone to compare notes with and you’re always left wondering if your singular experience is really telling of the whole school. Having other prospecive students there and talking with them would help get a broader view of the school and the vibe kids are picking up. I agree!
I agree with @Happy4u . I tried to get my D to visit after acceptance at a couple of colleges that threw money at her, but she had choices she liked much better and she saw no point in visiting. She was right.
In the end, D revisited or visited three colleges that accepted her. Only one of those was in April. Only one visit was an accepted students event, and it was an overnight, as she was a plane ride away. The college paid her airfare for that particular event. She would say that she didn’t find the overnight accepted student event any more useful than regular days. As so many others have experienced elsewhere, her hostess ended up not being with her at all, because she had a big test to study for.
This is all to say that I personally would put very little significance on accepted student days, and I certainly would make zero effort to especially attend such an event. Visiting can definitely be important, of course, but sometimes it isn’t practical. My D has several good friends at her college who never visited before move in day. A couple of these students are international, and one is from Hawaii, but another one lives five hours away and applied ED without visiting. He said he knew he would like it and that was good enough for him.
One’s experience at admitted students events could certainly be affected by particular colleges. Some colleges are better at hosting such events than others. I didn’t go to any of the events for admitted students (my S went by himself) but I did a lot of college visits with him prior to his applications. By far the worst college visit we had was at Harvard. It was like a circus and the tour guide was incoherent.
My S did get quite a bit out of these events/visits because we did fair amount of preparation prior to these trips (both college visits and admitted student events). We collected as much information about the colleges as possible on a spreadsheet prior to these trips, and tried to focus on and to fill the missing entries or confirm some existing entries we still had questions about. We even tried to score them in each category we cared about as best as we could.
There is no way I’d support my S attending a school he never visited - way to much of an investment in my opinion to do such a thing.
Also, I’m encouraging my S to attend accepted student events at schools where he did get offered a lot of merit aid. There is this mindset that such schools are inferior, which is not necessarily the case. I want him to be open minded during this process and not just want to go to a specific school because it ranks higher or has better name recognition or is more “impressive”. It drives me crazy when these kids measure their worth with comparisons to where others are going to college.
I only visited Stanford Admission date as a family event because doing things together is fun for us. Besides, it’s “only” 7 hours of driving for us. But if we had to fly there, I am not sure I would have gone. But we did find info during Admitted Day which helped our kid get a good job on campus, so it might have been worth the 7 hours drive. Was turned off though when Stanford students decided to demonstrate on stage while the Dean was speaking, which I thought was in poor taste. What if I demonstrated during their future their college graduation ceremony? Ha! Maybe my kid should organize some demonstration to sit on the stage while they are about to receive their diplomas? Good thing my kid thought it was dumb it no big deal.
For my daughter we went to some admitted student events, but not all of them were at the colleges themselves. Some were at local hotel ballroooms…
Loyola Marymount: at the college (drove up early to beat the traffic)
Whittier: at the college (was on a Saturday afternoon)
All the rest of the ones we went to were at hotels…
When we went to the admitted student days/events…most of the ones we went to weren’t at the colleges…they were at a local hotel…then again, the ones we went to at hotels. were colleges that weren’t local to the area, maybe they know people can’t always afford to fly up. The ones for Whittier and Loyola Marymount were the only ones we were invited to at the actual colleges, but then again we live about an hour away from both schools…and they have our address so they know we live in the greater LA area…maybe it depends on the schools?
Looking at this closer, I am now wishing my DS wasn’t taking his HS foreign language trip over spring break! Of course, it will be an amazing experience, but it is highly limiting time for admitted student visits. Hindsight, I guess. Something to think about when DS19 rolls around…if he’s going to do something like that, we may need to do more visits ahead of time.
MIT’s Campus Preview Weekend is an amazing experience for students. It probably represents MIT’s January term ((IAP: Independent Activities Period) more than it represents the usual academic week but it is well worth attending if you can. https://admitted.mit.edu/experience And https://web.mit.edu/iap/about/index.html
@TS0104 official Admitted Students Day seem to always be in April so, depending on when your spring break is, they might not overlap. Our spring break is the last week of March and I’ve been going back and forth about whether to book a family trip. We don’t know yet if we would use that break for S19 to re-visit a school on a regular college visit day since we don’t know when he will hear back from the colleges. Many say they have decisions by 4/1 but, looking at last year, some of his schools sent out decisions as early as the first week of March.
At this point, I think we won’t plan a family vacation for that week. It might be a stressful time and it might be just weird to be laying on a beach somewhere with this hanging over our heads.
I’m a little late to this thread, but @homerdog we’re in the same boat. DS applied to 13 schools, deferred from his early school, and he’ll only get one decision before March. He has ranked his top 3, but lumps the rest together. I’m sure he won’t get into them all, but hopefully will have some good choices, and we’ll try to go to as many Admitted Student days as we can.
