BAD Visit, Need to Vent

emptynest2
Wed, 06 Apr 2011 14:31:12 +0000

Part of my point in posting about my daughter’s experience was that students should be prepared with a list of things to do and to check out on their own at a college campus if they visit. If they are not too outgoing, perhaps you should print out a campus map and make sure they are comfortable finding their way around and have scheduled campus tours and classroom visits ahead of time. This was my daughter’s first admitted students’ day and I just assumed the school would roll out the red carpet with many activities and opportunities to interact with students and professors, to try to convince them to attend that school. This is a very well-regarded school and these were students who had already been accepted and were deciding whether to attend. Having a list of things to do and see on their own would be even more important if the student was visiting at a time other than an admitted students’ day.

My son attended several admitted students’ days at small, not very well-funded art schools and all of them had ample opportunities to meet and mingle with current students and professors, to take tours of the campus and dorms, to speak to people in financial aid, student services, etc., as well as food, entertainment, displays of student art, etc. It just never occurred to me that the only activity available would be to visit classes, and that the school would not be prepared to accommodate that many students in the classes they had designated as those admitted students could sit in on. I was upset that my daughter took time off from school and flew up there and ending up going shopping all day, but after her initial experiences at this school, she had decided by that point that there was no way she would attend.

I am also very sympathetic to parents of kids who don’t always handle things well on their own and don’t take the initiative. This describes my son perfectly, and I probably would not have put him on a plane by himself at that age because I know he would not have handled things well if there were complications. In fact, when he went off to college thousands of miles away, I was waiting for the phone call saying that he wanted to come home for the first year. But somehow, things worked out and he is now in his third year. OP, I think it is a very positive thing that your son is still interested in this school after his experience. There must have been something about it he liked. It’s always hard to see your kid’s feeling get hurt or to know they had a bad experience, but often kids are not as upset about it as we are and they are learning how to deal with the things they will have to deal with as adults.