College visit road trip: start or end with the one you think might be the best fit?

@treschicos but UT is not good for merit, especially out of state, right? We need to keep costs down. S has seen a big public university (UBC) and loved everything about it, so we know the big schools that make sense financially will be on his list.

S may do another TX trip at some point, probably with H, to see SMU, TCU, and maybe Austin College, if S is okay with LACs.

Yeah, our house is pretty unpredictable. Five teens, three of whom were adopted internationally fairly recently. All sorts of issues at play here. :slight_smile:

Don’t know which one to put first, but I can definitely say that if there’s a school you want to eliminate, put it last on a multi-college trip. College trip burnout happens and when it does, the hate flows like water.

Here’s a follow-up, to close the loop.

S20, D18 and I took a full week to drive through TX. My plan was to tour Southwestern and Trinity with a drive-by of Austin College, but the kids requested to see more. (“We’re driving right by it!”) We ended up doing a full tour of Rice (for D18) and walk-throughs at UT Austin and Baylor. We had two full days at Schlitterbahn and a play day in downtown San Antonio to break it up. It worked beautifully and the three of us had a great time together. The three schools we formally toured had vastly different personalities, and the others we walked through gave S a good sense of the huge variety that’s out there.

As I’d suspected, Trinity came away the big winner; not just with S20, but with D18 (“NO Texas, NO LACs”) as well! She has eagerly added it to her apply list. I think the play day in San Antonio helped sell it. They both loved the city. So now S is happily listing all of the schools he wants to eventually visit, asking about specific majors, and having D help him with test prep. He’s fired up! Thanks for all of the help. :x