Based on my experience squiring around my kids on college visits, I would strongly recommend touring only one school per day; information overload, and a rushed feeling, otherwise.
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Thanks all! I’ve shuffled some things around so we’ll just drive one way. Based on some suggestions above, I’ve added NC State, dropped Wake Forest and I think we’ll do UGA to break the trip rather than Clemson so that we get the massive campus experience.
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I’m looking forward to reading about your (and your son’s) thoughts after this trip! 
We live in Atlanta, and between my D22 and my D26, we’ve toured all of the schools on your original list, plus Clemson, NC State and UGA. Feeling nostalgic because my first college visit trip with D22 was during her freshman spring break, and we saw Duke, UNC and Davidson. It was tremendously helpful for her to see what she liked and didn’t like. (I was deeply impressed by Duke while she was meh; UNC was way too big; Davidson was a potential fit but felt a tiny bit small.)
People thought we were nutty to start so early, but thank goodness we did – because then the pandemic happened, and we didn’t get to see anything for a year and a half.
My D26 loved Elon. It was very much a fit in terms of environment, although they don’t offer exactly what she wants to study. But she liked it enough that she’ll look into crafting an individualized major to see if she can get close enough. The only thing she didn’t like about the school was the location – it’s kind of in the middle of nowhere.
She loved Clemson, too – so much good energy on campus – but she’s a marching band kid, and the commitment to march at Clemson is intense, which she doesn’t want.
Anyhow. I have lots of thoughts about all of these schools, lol, and I’d be happy to chat about them after your trip! Have the best time! My older daughter and I once drove from Atlanta to New Orleans (Tulane), then to St. Louis (WashU), then back home. We listened to fluffy books and just had the BEST mom/daughter bonding time!
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Given the list of colleges, would engineering be a less likely choice of major?
Also, have local / regional college visits been made?
Something we did that helped a lot when we were touring colleges with D24:
Don’t say anything about what you think of the college until your kid says what they think. And when you ask your kid what they think, if they say, “Um, I don’t know,” ask them to name off 2-3 things they did like and 2-3 things they didn’t like as much.
And then ask them why.
And then write down what those reasons are for that school. Months later, your kid is going to forget. And you might too.
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I’m excited for you, did a similar spring break trip and it is such a fond memory.
NC State was a good add for interests. They are phenomenal in CS and engineering and they have companies housed on campus plus part of research triangle, so much opportunity and networking to be had. It’s a great area to land for the night with restaurants too.
Also a huge fan of Elon, most are quite surprised when they set foot on campus. If it was slightly less remote it would be even more popular than it is, but they do a great job of making up for it with a lot of campus programming.
Have so much fun, wish I could relive all those special moments!
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Thanks, I will definitely update the thread with a report when we’re done. I’m hoping that slow and steady works and I’m trying to keep this very fairly low stress. I think it’ll also be fun because we travel overseas a lot for various reasons but not so much internally, so it’s a chance to see the country. Hopefully he sees it the same way!
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Very long, buckle in. As promised, I’m reporting back from our Spring Break trip. To recap, this was a more exploratory trip with the goal of figuring out what matters and what doesn’t.
Landed in Atlanta with a free day. We headed to Ponce Market, had lunch at Botiwalla and then scooted around the Beltline. Highly recommend all of this — such a great way to see the city. Everyone is so friendly! We stayed at the GT hotel, which was nice and perfect for our needs.
Georgia Tech. Up
Big, bustling campus, self-enclosed and in a safe neighborhood with plenty of restaurants, pharmacies, grocery stores, etc.. Lots of bland brick architecture. STEM-focused obviously, but they made a point of mentioning their non-STEM offerings and arts programming. Students seem well-rounded. It comes across as collaborative, not competitive. It’s easy to do study-abroad even for engg. majors, which is nice. During the info session, there was a lot of time spent on the career center, internships and coops, less mention of research. They have huge career fairs, apparently the CS one was so big they rented out the Mercedes Benz Stadium! Huge maker spaces, specific to each individual engineering major. We got to peek into the MechE ones. It seems like it does what it does very well. Not much mention of traditions, students only live on campus for one year.
Duke - Up but probably off
Beautiful campus, both the grounds and the buildings. Not a piece of grass was out of place. All very faux Gothic. It’s the type of school I think my son is realizing he wants — a mid-sized R1, liberal arts as well as engineering with an interdisciplinary bent and lots of flexibility around changing majors and double majoring, so that was all great. The engg. school is only about 30% of the school as a whole and so feels fairly cozy. It sounds like you’d see the same faces in your classes as you move up. The guide didn’t seem to find it too hard and kids in general seemed social and happy. She mentioned strong advising. She was also basketball mad and had done the camping out for many weeks thing to get tickets to the game.
The dining hall was amazing. We had lunch there and marveled at the food and architecture. Very fancy. Given the size of the campus (big and we only saw one half), I was surprised that there were almost no bikes or scooters anywhere. Not sure what the story is there. Overall it felt like a very curated, luxury experience with great academics.
Raleigh was not great. It just didn’t feel alive and the restaurants and stores we saw were pretty forgettable. My son couldn’t imagine living somewhere with no town in walking distance, which knocks it out of consideration.
UNC Chapel Hill - Down
We realized we bit off more than we could chew and canceled our NC State tour since we were staying in Chapel Hill. On reflection, we should have stuck with NC State and canceled UNC CH as it doesn’t seem to have much of a reputation for STEM. Anyway.
The campus extends off the main drag of Chapel Hill the town and is big but not huge. Lots of big, beautiful trees and old architecture. Felt a little scraggly compared to Duke, but still pretty. The info session was fine but not great and the tour was just OK. We weren’t taken inside any buildings, so I don’t feel like we got as much of a sense of the place. It reminded me a little of UC Davis in some ways. Again, lots of double majoring and unstressed seeming students. Lots of talk of research opportunities and the great network you’ll have. It didn’t seem nearly as career- focused as either GT or Duke. Very humanities, social science oriented.
Students overall seemed all ‘one type’ and very conformist dresswise, with a lot of CH merch. We both found that off-putting.
Chapel Hill itself did not appeal. I had thought it would be a charming college town but it’s about 4 blocks of merch shops, vape/weed shops, a surprising amount of homelessness for the size of the town and a few very mediocre restaurants. My son called the town ‘a net negative’.
Elon - Down and off
Elon is in a small town (Elon) with more suburban sprawl around it. I’d already started to realize this was a dealbreaker but we stuck with the tour anyway.
There’s something about modern brick that I just don’t like and there’s a lot of that at Elon so I found it hard to love visually. Lots of construction and it sounds like they keep expanding. In the info session and during the tour they emphasized their low faculty to student ratio and their attention to the student experience. In fact, when they called out the guides, they had so many that there were no more than I think 3 families per guide and we were assigned by name.
The faculty seemed very approachable and our guide seemed to be on first name terms with many of them. We chatted with the head of the CS department, which seemed pretty small. They’re in the process of creating an engineering college and moving CS there on what sounds like a 1-2 year timeline. Very modest maker spaces.
We ate at the dining hall which was not great. Limited options, not that tasty. The campus felt too big for the student body in that we barely saw anyone walking around which didn’t appeal to my son. Students seemed to be a bit of a mix, a fair amount of ‘quirky’ students, supposedly a decent number of frats/sororities though we didn’t see any.
Davidson College, Down and off
We stayed at Carnegie Lodge, Davidson’s on-campus guest house, which was quite charming and a nice break from the chain hotels.
The women leading the info session (current student plus one young AO) were quite woke and there were lots of pronouns, none of which we’d encountered anywhere else on the trip. There was lots of talk of the honor code, a culture of caring and empathy, and how well you can get to know your professors. Ample research opportunities available and it seems like students frequently stay on campus over the summer for it. There’s also a cool ‘matching’ type program they have to get Davidson students working on research with professors elsewhere.
It’s a beautiful campus, again with old trees and old brick buildings. Less grand than Duke, more stately than Chapel Hill. It wasn’t huge though for the size of the student body, pretty big, and I think that translated into a lack of energy. The town itself was charming though small (3-4 blocks). Shops and restaurants seemed fairly upscale rather than student-oriented. If you were looking for a small, intimate community, this would be a good place. It felt like a cocoon. Not much mention of rigor though presumably it’s there. Seemed humanities-focused though maybe that was just who we talked to. Something about the college felt very female overall, though that may have just been that every representative was a woman. Not a good fit for my son who wants more energy and maybe something less soft.
UGA, Neutral (Not intending to apply)
He was never going to apply here, I just wanted him to visit a huge campus, so we ended up canceling our tour and just self-touring. When they say it’s a big campus, they’re not kidding. The maps on campus show walking times and I think end-to-end it was 45 minutes! The old parts are beautiful — more old trees and grand brick buildings. But the vast majority of it feels much newer, a little hulking and is much more bland. There’s a stadium on campus, which I guess translates into fun game days. Students seemed happy, friendly and social. Again a fair amount of conformism with most students dressed very similarly and not what I would call fashion-focused.
Overall, this was starting to feel too big though my son didn’t seem to hate the size. It was also too sports-centric.
Athens was great though! When I think college town, this is what I had mind. A few streets, not just a few blocks and it had great restaurants, stores and music venues. It felt like a place people lived. We hung out in a board game cafe for a few hours and had a great time.
Emory, Up
Good presentation and tour. Overall, I’d say the college feels very well run. No brick! The campus is mostly very modern and stylish. They’ve hired great architects and the buildings are well thought through, not big, bland slabs. It creates a very different feel from the other schools. The older parts are also not brick, and instead are marble, again creating a different feel. Since they have their other more SLAC-like campus, the Atlanta campus is much more compact than you’d expect just looking at the school’s population. We liked that, because it translated to more energy. It did lack the big green spaces and huge old trees we’d seen elsewhere though.
The Coca-Cola affiliation is a little weird, but it seems to have translated into lots of money for the school. The CDC is right next door, there are 3 Emory-affiliated hospitals and they seem to have very strong Bio and Chem departments. Our guide was pre-med though and said only about 10% of students are. It felt like more. They have a strong creative writing department and a focus on writing across all majors was mentioned a couple times.
Very strong advising (you even meet your advisor virtually before you show up) and it sounds like there’s a lot of advising available that’s specific to post-graduation plans. Less career talk than GT and it felt like a lot of the kids went onto law school, med school, etc.. Lots of school traditions and they seem to do a lot to help first years integrate into the community. It seems like they do a good job with school spirit without it being all about sports.
The neighborhood was suburban with a little block of restaurants, so that wasn’t great. Supposedly a 15 minute drive into Atlanta but it felt like it was pretty far away spiritually.
Surprises: I had thought ‘big state school, you’ll get all sorts’ but I actually found UNC CH and UGA to feel the least diverse and most conformist of all the schools. The city schools (GT and Emory) felt the most. Some schools felt kind of empty despite all schools being in session when we toured. It’s hard to get a sense of the academics without scheduling a department-specific meeting, which I guess is obvious in retrospect.
Findings: My son is a true city kid and has a horror of the suburbs. Towns like Athens are totally fine, but sprawling car-centric suburbs are just not his cup of tea. Same goes for very tiny towns like Davidson. Also, he doesn’t want to be cocooned and I think the SLAC thing feels a little suffocating though he does like the small class sizes, getting to know your professors well aspect of them. He is less bothered by the bigness of big state schools than I was expecting though is turned off by big class sizes and competitive clubs, something that’s a little invisible when you’re touring. He wants academic rigor and a place that isn’t afraid to own that. He wants STEM but not to the exclusion of everything else, and so prefers a place that offers a range of degrees, is friendly to double majors and doesn’t silo. He wants energy and school spirit but not an overwhelming focus on sports.
So, all in all, I feel like I learned a ton and can now start to focus my research. I’d been worried I’d stress him by doing this so early (sophomore year), but it’s actually been quite motivating to him and we had a fun time. I’m giving myself a pat on the back!
Tips: I had him fill out a form after every visit, to record his impressions. I also took notes during each visit and added these to the form. Highly recommend as even now, a week or so later, some things are starting to jumble together. People cautioned against doing two visits in one day and they were mostly right though if you are traveling a good distance, I think it makes sense to do two here and there. I also made notes on where to park, distance from parking, relevant apps downloaded and all of that ahead of time so that on the day we knew exactly what we were doing. I also think that paying attention to what’s emphasized gives you a sense of what the school cares about.
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Thank you for taking the time to do such a great write-up. For wider visibility / more general discoverability over time, it’d be awesome if you posted your same message (literally just copy/paste) into this thread: Colleges your child crossed off the list after visiting, schools that moved up on the list. Why? (NO REPLIES)
So glad you had such a fun and successful trip, and I’ll look forward to seeing how this all plays out for your son over the next few years.
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Nice review. Too bad you didn’t visit NC State. I would still apply. You can always visit if makes the final list. GT is a tough admit for OOS and it’s not just stats they look at for admission. Good luck.
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Thanks so much for circling back and sharing your family’s experience!
In looking at your findings, I was thinking that Lehigh might be a really good school for him to investigate. It has about 5800 undergrads, an array of majors, and my sense is that the town is more walkable than suburban sprawl. Some of the Jesuit colleges like Marquette (about 7700 undergrads in Milwaukee, WI), U. of Portland (about 3100 undergrads in OR), Seattle U. (about 4100 undergrads in WA), Gonzaga (about 5200 undergrads in Spokane, WA), or Saint Louis U. (about 11k undergrads in MO) would be worth checking out. Speaking of St. Louis, Washington U. could be a good fit (about 8300 undergrads) and is a low probability admit. Going bigger, U. of Pittsburgh would be another good one to consider (about 25k undergrads).
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I would also have him check out Case Western Reserve, which has a good combo of city amenities, culture, and top engineering and STEM programming.
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Yes, I’ve been reading your threads with interest, as I think our kids have some similarities! It’s on a longlist I’m creating but I’ll do a separate post about that down the line.
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