College Selection / Touring Timeline?

StPaulDad
Mon, 29 Jan 2018 21:52:36 +0000

Tips:

Do a couple practice visits to learn how to tour and to avoid getting all excited about the dumb stuff that’s everywhere. Listen to what other kids and parents are asking, listen for answers that sound false, get a feel for a couple types of campuses (big small urban rural state religious etc) and then start hitting the ones you care about. You’ll be a more discerning consumer and have a better baseline to evaluate against.

A campus is a completely different place when there are no kids around, so be sure to get a tour in during school if at all possible. You can see the buildings in summer, but seeing students lets you feel the school’s heartbeat. For some people there’s an immediate sense as soon as they get out of the car, a school can be a total buzzkill or feel like old jeans. You may not ever get that feeling, but before you start getting into the serious final decision making stretch of senior year be sure to get on campus at your top choices while class is in session.

In order to have the money talk, you the parents with the money, need to go spend an evening with your taxes and a series of NPCs at a range of schools. See what they’ll expect from you, see how far your $18k/yr or $170k stash is going to go, try to imagine how realistic it’ll be to “just tighten the old belt” for four years, and how to layer on a second or third kid’s costs. Be very realistic now to avoid some really, really bad discussions later when your kid is holding a big fat envelope from Notre Dame and you can’t afford it, or the younger sibling has been given a set of steak knives and a list of community colleges because who can say no to Touchdown Jesus?

We started during junior year, hitting one over Christmas break, and did a a few more in visits March/April. Then, because DD was looking to play a fall sport, we took a 4-5 day weekend in Sept of senior year to do a couple overnights with the teams at her top two schools. In total she probably saw nine schools and chose one of the overnight hosts.