We just started college visits for S25. First two, a couple of semi-local to us schools in New Jersey.
Drew University UP. I had to convince S25 to go check it out because he didn’t love the virtual tour on the website, and he took the whole “university in the forest” thing too literally and said he wanted to be in a town rather than somewhere super rural. I had to assure him that there is in fact a town a 5 minute walk away. But by the end of the visit he was ready to enroll, lol.
We had a great tour guide who really conveyed all the different opportunities available to students by sharing his own concrete experience and the experience of his friends with classes, research, study abroad, etc, so everything he said felt real and organic, rather than quoted from admissions materials. My son who is very into music, but does not plan to pursue it academically/professionally liked that there was a clear way to get involved with music on campus without majoring in it. The campus was lovely and had the quintessential small liberal arts college feel to it.
The town of Madison, which is indeed something like a 5-10 minute walk from the campus was very cute in a “small town out of central casting” way, with a town square clock, little coffee shops and sandwich places, etc. The school clearly has proximity to NYC as one of its selling points, but we live in Brooklyn, and my son goes to high school in Manhattan, so that’s not really something new and exciting for him, but he liked that he would be able to get back to the city easily (there is a train station 2 blocks away from campus).
Seton Hall University DOWN. We went to Seton Hall later the same day, and it was the opposite experience – son had liked it a lot based on the virtual tour, and was excited to visit, so we signed up for the information session and a campus tour. The vibe was off in every way. The town of South Orange totally lacked the charm of Madison, the couple of buildings we saw looked very institutional, the interactions with the students facilitating the information session seemed impersonal and perfunctory. There were crucifixes everywhere. I know it’s a Catholic school, but their self-representation is, they welcome everyone, and from my brief time on campus I got the sense that they are more than nominally Catholic (which is the impression I had before). We are not religious, so that was off-putting. Everything about the information session had a “corporate retreat” feel to it, the student speakers seemed either really anxious or not enthusiastic about the school. After the information session and before the tour my son said “this place is not for me, can we skip the tour” so we did.
Overall, the experience persuaded him that virtual tours / videos on the website can give a very different sense of a place than one would get from being there in person.