My daughter tells me that nearly all colleges (she has applied to 14) send out acceptance letters first week in April, and they all those where she was accepted want a decision from her (will she attend or not attend) by May 1. Our plan is to visit the colleges she was accepted to (she expects 5 or 6 acceptances) and then make a decision on where to attend. The problem is we will not be able to visit six colleges (some in northeast, some in south, some in midwest) in the month of April. Because of work schedules and child care for our other kids, it will likely take us until mid-June to visit all the colleges.
Why do the colleges only give you 30-days to decide, and if you don’t decide you get put on the wait list? Any suggestions would be appreciated.
The May 1 deadline is standard, certainly at selective colleges. If you do not commit by then it is assumed you will not be attending. You are NOT placed on a waitlist. No selective college will give you until June to decide. If you make deposits at multiple schools it could result in acceptances being rescinded.
After May 1 they may offer that spot to a waitlisted student. A month is plenty of time to decide. 14 schools seems like an excessive number of schools to consider and that is what is putting you in this spot.
Your kiddo will need to make ONE matriculation decision by the May 1 deadline.
I would strongly suggest that either you visit some sooner…or only visit her top three choices once she gets accepted.
As noted…if you don’t commit by May 1, the schools assume you are not attending there…and open that spot up for someone on the waitlist. And it’s not just “selective schools”.
They are not going to give you an extension until June sometime just to give you time to visit.
@TomSrOfBoston is correct. No selective college will hold a place past 5/1 - there are too many other students who will want to attend. By the time decisions come out, I would hope that your daughter has her top choices narrowed down to about 3, which should be doable for visits.
It’s precisely because of those wait lists that colleges expect a quick decision. There are kids waiting who would love to attend that school, and the school needs to know exactly how many will attend for their planning purposes (housing, courses, etc.)
It does seem quick (and I remember my daughter leaving it to the last minute!), but colleges expect you to know you want to attend when you apply. Otherwise, why apply? Your daughter will just have to make the best decision she can without having visited all the schools.
It will work out. Years and years ago, I put down a deposit for a school I’d never visited and it was fine. The key is to commit with your head and heart once you’ve committed with your dollars and cents.
OP- I know it seems like if your D gets admitted to 14 schools you are going to need to visit all 14 but it doesn’t work that way.
Once you’ve factored in the finances, your D’s interest in the actual college/program, and location (she may decide the far away schools are too far, travel costs too much- or decide she wants to be closer to home) you will end up with the same 2 or 3 choices (fingers crossed) that most kids have. One will end up being too expensive or too far once you all have a family sitdown- leaving two schools to visit and seriously consider.
She can do this. And no college (except for a for-profit college) will hold her seat without a deposit or put her on a waitlist if she can’t commit. Those spots go to someone else.
Have you run the Net Price Calculators on all 14 schools and can you afford all of them even with the most conservative estimates? Start there.
Schools are trying to solidify their incoming class and waitlisted kids are trying to make plans as well. Leaving the school and waitlisted kids hanging while you and D take to maybe mid June is very unlikely to happen.
From what I’ve been reading, most US colleges and universities have a May 1 decision deadline. Check to see if any of your DD’s colleges have a different date.
We weren’t able to visit my DS’s current school until April. He had three other schools under consideration that we were not going to be able to visit, but decide it would be OK since he liked the states and we had family nearby.
I suggest you make a spreadsheet listing the known expenses for each of her schools and add the financial awards as the packages come in. List the pros and cons, such as available programs and majors. Use Google street view to do a virtual tour of the area and begin to discuss what are decision breaks for your family. Does she have friends or family at any of the schools? Try to force rank the schools and reduce the must visit list.
Be sure to meet the decision date, since some schools require a housing or admissions deposit immediately to hold your spot.
But some colleges may give decisions sooner than they say - D had all of hers before the end of March even though they said April 1. A couple came REALLY early, like Jan-Feb, despite her not applying EA or being officially rolling admissions.
The dates when you will hear back from colleges and when you need to make a final decision are known in advance and are the same for everyone. You must send in one deposit to one college by May 1. If need be you will have to limit your post acceptance visits to the top 2 - 3 affordable choices.
As others have said, May 1 is strict and schools do not want you to deposit at more than one school. Unless ALL of her schools are top 15 or so, she will get some answers before April 1. Also, you all don’t need to visit the schools, as she can go to some herself. However, most HSs limit the number of days to be missed for college visits.
As the acceptances (hopefully) roll in, she will have to decide which ones are maybes and which are no longer of interest and then make travel plans.
The colleges need to get their classes set and for kids that are having a hard time deciding, a hard deadline is necessary to force a decision.
Lots of accepted students never visit ahead of time, and it works out fine for them.
Congrats to your D for being in a position to realistically expect 5-6 acceptances out of 14 very selective schools. Congrats to you and your family for being in a financial position to be able to send her to one of these, and to afford multiple visits ahead of time.
What date would be better than May 1? July 1? For a mid-Aug start date, that just wouldn’t work. If the schools didn’t have a strict deadline, everyone would be putting it off.
May 1 it is. Overwhelming agreement with this. Your D’s job is to rank her possibilities. She can only attend one school so she needs to choose. Plan some visits to likely admit schools at the top of the list. Visit different geographic areas in the winter when places are at their worst to see if they will work.
Second @3puppies . Visiting is vastly overrated as a way of choosing a college. You get a ton of information that’s largely random, since things like weather, what day of the week it is, and how close you are to Easter significantly change the experience of visiting a college for a day. And visiting tells you nothing about how you would adapt to living someplace if you had to. However, once a kid starts visiting, it will be very hard to pick a college that hasn’t been visited, so visiting effectively becomes crucial for all serious possibilities. If you figure out how not to get your kid caught in that game, you will be better off.
Another faulty premise in the OP’s complaint is that anyone other than the prospective student needs to visit a prospective college. As noted above, I don’t think anyone needs to visit, but there’s little or no argument for parents needing to visit. A high school senior capable of going to college is capable of handling transportation without hand-holding. She’s also capable of collecting relevant information for decisions in which her parents should participate, to the extent that information can’t be collected by means other than in-person, on-site investigation.
I feel for the OP because it sounds like his D has been handling the process thus far. I agree that 14 is alota colleges to apply to and it’s late, late in the game to try and visit 14 colleges. I also agree that the OP should probably wait now since acceptances are all coming out of will be coming out into March and then I agree that a young person heading off to college should be able to get there on their own and perhaps the OP’s D can visit her top 2 favorites in April ahead of the May 1 decision day. There’s no reason the OP’s D could go visit her safeties right now, presuming she has her acceptance in hand and since it’s a safety means assured acceptance and assured finances, she could go visit her first choice safety just to get that decision firm in her head.
@jhs I would disagree with the idea that all applicants are able and ready to handle visiting colleges by themselves and arranging transportation and so forth. Someone coming from a rural area might find it difficult to navigate a large city. It is quite dependent on the individual and there background (they may have never travelled at all before).
One more suggestion to the OP - your D will probably hear good news from one school much earlier than the others. While it may be tempting to immediately put that school ahead on the list, hearing earlier doesn’t necessarily mean it is the best school for her, or that they want her any more than any of the others.
You can leave the visit to “reach” schools last as the chance of admission is low anyway. Between now and April, you can pick the top few match schools to visit.