<p>jym626,
good advice from a GC. Count yourself blessed.</p>
<p>Jamimom, your post brings to mind the recent threads of freshmen unhappy with their roommates - the random occurrence at a college visit can spoil the whole college for a kid, and something as random and uncontrollable as the roommate from h<strong><em>, can spoil the first year. I guess the difference is you can give them strategies to overcome the roommate from h</em></strong>, and with the college visit gone wrong, you may as well cut your losses and move on to another school.</p>
<p>AFter DD, we will drastically reduce the number of visits with the son, she realized half way through that she hated making visits, and the visits were not of much value to her, I think he will be even worse. We’ll just have to come up with other ways to demonstrate interest.</p>
<p>Momrath, I chuckles, and nodded reading your post - DD felt the same way about Haverford, it was not a guy thing, it just didn’t click, 2 of her “do we have to go visit” schools moved up on the list, while a school we thought would be great (aahh, actually Williams) she just didn’t like. We were 5 minutes late at Williams, and had to trot across the street to catch the tour (which was fairly large), I think that made us “STAND OUT” which, of course, for a teenager on a college tour is a BIG no-no, it was downhill from there.</p>
<p>All in all it was a great family trip, despite a few harsh words. We worked in some scenery, some good meals, a trip to an amusement park and a couple of museums - a reasonable success.</p>
<p>I like the idea of a “practice” visit. We were in the Chicago area for vacation during D’s Spring of freshman year and we visited Northwestern just to get her feet into the water, establishing a baseline in her mind for some things, something to react against, etc. Yes, she felt a little bit “dragged” into it but was much more in tune with the process come sophomore and junior years when it was more real to her.</p>
<p>In retrospect, what’s hysterically funny is that she was covering her ears with her hands because of the “cold” 40 degrees and we got the last purple knit hat on sale in the Northwestern campus store…and now she’s at school in Massachusetts, LOL!</p>
<p>Jym, I agree with your GC. I know when we lived in Pittsburgh, my kids got a look and feel for Pitt, CMU, Duquesne and Chatham and they were all very close to us and we often had events on campus. For sports we ended up at Penn State a few times which gave them a perspective on the flagship state u. That gave my older ones a nice base on what college campuses can be like.</p>
<p>I also agree with Jym’s guidance counselor. We had to be on the east coast last summer and I randomly picked three schools to visit because they were in easy driving distance. At that point - summer before junior year - college was still not a real concern of my daughter’s. Visiting schools that she didn’t have to commit to or love gave her a chance to think more about what she DID want. Luckily, one of the schools - added at the last minute - really sparked her interest. We have since concentrated on finding schools similar to that one in feel and size and it has helped her really focus on what she is looking for. </p>
<p>On our spring break trip, it is tempting to throw in some extra schools beyond the ones she is really interested in visiting, but I am going to try very hard not to do that — sometimes too many choices can be worse than too few.</p>
<p>Yes- we are lucky to have a great college counselor. And I should probably clarify- we have been on many of the local campuses (my older s. has ushered at the Ga Tech games, we have been to activities and museums at Emory, etc) and older s. spent 2 summers at Duke and one at Ga Tech, so he was familiar with some aspects of college campuses. What we didn’t do was set up a tour/info session/sit in on classes/meet faculty/see labs thing that we did with other schools. (We did at Ga Tech–but later in the year) I do believe, though, that the order in which you see schools may influence your opinion a bit. He loved the first 2 schools we saw, but by the time we saw the umpteenth supercooled atoms project at a physics research lab, it had lost its luster. If we had seen MIT’s first, I suspect he might have reacted differently to how cool it was (no pun intended)compared to the smaller schools or LACs (Williams, Amherst, Dartmouth, etc). To my surprise, when we visited MIT, a school he’d dreamed about for years, he left saying it wasn’t geared towards undergrads - that it was for grad school. I know I’ve talked about that on other threads, but I wonder if we’d done our trip in the reverse order if he’d have had the same opinions (assuming all other variables were the same.) Any thoughts?? Does the order in which you see colleges influence your opinion of them on the college tour?</p>
<p>The first school we visited last summer was a school my daughter thought she would love - she hated it. She was neutral about the second school. In between visits, we talked a lot about what she had liked (even at the school she didn’t like) and not liked (even at the neutral school). By the time we got to the third school - thrown in at the last minute - I think she was already starting to form an idea of what she wanted and that school just happened to fit many of those things. I think she would have liked the last school best regardless because it really was the best fit for her. So, I don’t think it is necessarily true that order makes a difference with one possible caveat: as someone said above, visiting reach schools FIRST tends to make matches and safeties pale by comparison. There is much sense in doing the safety and match school visits first, perhaps even on a separate trip, and only then visiting the possible reach schools.</p>
<p>Interesting that our kids experiences were so varied. I’ve moved this to its own thread.</p>
<p>I have really liked this yin yang idea. It has helped me to understand why some colleges appeal and others don’t, and also some of the funny overlaps in where kids end up applying. I am wondering where you would place Bates, Hamilton, Wheaton (MA), and Connecticut College (sorry if you have already mentioned any of these schools, I didn’t go back and read the whole thread.) Thanks</p>
<p>What about humanities and inhumanities?</p>