<p>We took a wonderful road trip through the northeast a couple of weeks ago. We flew into Rochester and visited UR on our own since we were there on a Saturday and no tours or information sessions were given. We then drove to visit Cornell, Middlebury, Bates, Bowdoin, and Tufts. Yes, quite a mix, I know. This is our first trip with S, who will be a junior in the fall, so we wanted to give him a feel for different sizes of schools in various sizes of cities. We want to visit schools all over the country, so I think we’ll be busy racking up frequent flier miles over the next year and a half. :)</p>
<p>Here is the link to the results of our earlier summer trip (actually an end of school year return trip home from goaliegirl’s boarding school).</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/suny-general/508201-where-stay-while-visiting-potsdam-2.html#post1060446108[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/suny-general/508201-where-stay-while-visiting-potsdam-2.html#post1060446108</a></p>
<p>Keep in mind, this was a drive-by tour about 45 minutes spent on each campus (they were closed for the Memorial Day weekend). This was primarily to get the feel of campuses and the surrounding environs. It was basically a tour through as many schools offering D1 or D3 women’s hockey that weren’t reaches (note Cornell wasn’t on the list although we drove right past it). We were focusing on matches, safeties, and uber-safeties.</p>
<p>Like BengalMom’s son, goaliegirl is a rising Junior. I think it was time very well spent. I learned that yes, architecture is important to goaliegirl and for some reason, schools in NY state have an affinity for outdoor sculpture…</p>
<p>We will do a few more schools in MA and RI while up at hockey tournaments/camp in early August - perhaps more formal tours as there may still be some summer sessions going on. Planning still going on…</p>
<p>We will take a trip heading south to look at a variety of colleges: Lafayette, Franklin & Marshall, Gettysburg, Davidson, Wake Forest, Elon, Duke, University of Richmond, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, Haverford and Villanova. By Jan. of this coming school year, my son has to describe what he is looking for in a college, and this tour should help him articulate what he wants. So far, he has decided that he does not want the large publics, and urban colleges without clearly defined campuses. Anyway, it’s probably overkill, but next summer can be devoted to a somewhat final list rather than preliminary selections.</p>
<p>Last summer we saw Dickinson, University of Chicago, Northwestern, Grinnell, and Bucknell. We also drove through Notre Dame and University of Michigan. Of those, he liked Northwestern (location, size, traditions) and Grinnell (facilities, students in charge of many things, and more – but location a negative).</p>
<p>We did an initial college visit last week. Took a little drive up the coast and visited Connecticut College for a tour and info session. It caught his interest, and now he has a reference point for LAC in small city. </p>
<p>I <em>really</em> liked the school – my mother was an alumna, but I haven’t been there in about 45 years. Meaning I don’t remember it at all!</p>
<p>ZS was invited to a day of seminars at Bryn Mawr and is very pleased to attend. I’m curious to see what she will think of it because it could be a baseline for her. My hope is to hit Drew, Seton Hall, Rutgers, Barnard, Fordham and Hunter this summer/fall. Daughter wants to hit DC as well.</p>
<p>Wow! I’m impressed at some of the places that you have already visited. I keep tring to plan a trip but my son keeps changing his mind about where he would like to visit. We can visit a lot of schools in NE without much effort. We may wait until Feb or april vacation to go to some schools in the mid-atlantic/southeast.</p>
<p>What type of reputation do the SUNY’s have, especially Oswego?</p>
<p>warriorboy – Isn’t your son starting at NMH? If they follow the typical boarding school vacation schedule, they will have a 3-week vacation in March that coincides with spring break at many colleges. I’m planning college trips now because we won’t be able to visit during the boarding year other than my son’s first week of March break when most colleges are in session. However, you may find that your son is eager to veg out at home during that first week. If your son doesn’t have to go to school early for sports pre-season, tours just when colleges open and before school starts is a great time.<br>
From the little I’ve gathered, the most sought-after SUNYs are Binghamton and Geneseo. Others specialize in areas like SUNY Purchase for the Arts and SUNY FIT for fashion. If you are in-state, I’ve heard that there is lower in-state tuition for some Cornell and Alfred University degrees.</p>
<p>Burb Parent would you consider reporting back on the colleges you’re planning to visit? My daughter’s list overlaps a bunch of them.</p>
<p>I can write a few impressions. If I’m feeling ambitious I might even fill out College Visits reports. Unfortunately, the colleges won’t be in session, so we will miss that dimension. It’s not anywhere close to a final list, but I hope that around this time next year his list will be close to final.</p>
<p>Warriorboy,</p>
<p>Burb Parent is correct about the most sought-after SUNY, although I’d also add Stonybrook to that list.</p>
<p>Oswego is more of a midpack SUNY. SAT middle 50% is 510-590 and 520-580 IIRC. We are treating it as a financial safety school as they do have quite generous numbers-based FA for OOS - probably the best we’ve seen in the SUNY system. I think you need a 93 average and 1200 or so SAT to get about $10K in merit money. It is on their site.</p>
<p>In the interest of full disclosure, my father was an Oswego alum. And he did very well for himself.</p>
<p>I’m feeling jealous that you all are getting in so many college visits this summer! I really wanted to get to at least a few schools this summer!</p>
<p>We live in the Midwest. D & I are flying to Philly on frequent flyer tickets next week, visiting Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore, Haverford, Penn, then renting a car & making a grand circle: Cornell, Middlebury, Bates, Bowdoin, Wesleyan. For the most part these are info session + guided tour visits, no interviews yet as D is a rising junior. We’ve been fortunate to have had the opportunity to visit a number of other schools over the past year including Brown, Wellesley, Smith, Williams, Amherst, Mt. Holyoke, Columbia, and Barnard, as well as Macalester and Carleton closer to home. The visits are informative and helpful mostly in narrowing wish lists, as D finds things to disfavor with some schools, points of special interest with others.</p>
<p>My second oldest son is going to NMH next year. My oldest will be a junior. Wheras S#2 is very motivated and can already give me a list of schools to visit (based on D1 and D3 lacrosse). S#1 is just pleasantly meandering through the high school experience. Unfortunately, we visited Roger Williams as part of some mini visits. He thought it was great. It should be a safety and so I believe he thinks that the work is all done now.</p>
<p>I asked about Oswego because it is suppose to have a good bio/zoology department. We do not live in NY and didn’t originally plan on putting any SUNY’s on the list.</p>
<p>The only other school that has been recommended on the East Coast is Methodist University. Has anyone ever heard of it or visited?</p>
<p>warriorboy - sorry, never heard of Methodist University. And though I live in NY, I’m not very familiar with SUNY at Oswego. </p>
<p>bclintonk - how in the world do you have time to visit all those schools? D is just way too busy - year round, and we’ve only been able to squeeze in a handful of visits. It’s not my schedule that’s the problem - it’s hers. Anyway, have a great trip and please report back on what you thought of the various schools.</p>
<p>^ LIMOMOF2,
We’re lucky. I’m an academic & get to travel a lot for work, usually to academic locations, my summer work schedule is totally flexible, and the summer work itself–research & writing—is portable. We also home school so D’s schedule while extremely busy is much more under her/our control than most. And this is our highest priority right now, so these college visits are in lieu of family vacations.</p>
<p>bclintonk - my work schedule is not the problem. The problem is that during the school year, D plays in 3 seasons of sports and doesn’t get any vacation time because of meets/games/practices during the vacations. During the summer, D is working until mid-August. She has one week off in August, which is when we were planning to go look at colleges (in place of our family vacation), but that is the week that her BF will be leaving for college - they’ve been together since the middle of D’s freshman year - and she doesn’t want to be out of town for the last few days before he leaves. I understand that, and I also know that if I insist that we go, she will be miserable and not get anything out of the trip anyway. So, while it is my highest priority at the moment, it is not D’s. There will be a few days after her BF leaves and before she has to be back at school for practices, that we might be able to squeeze in some visits, but nothing like what I had intended.</p>
<p>I’m hoping to schedule these visits carefully, but as you can see most are local. Hubby works most weekends and is scheduled for about 4 weekends off per year, during which we also have to do family/house things. I feel very overwhelmed with the things ZS has to do, so I can only imagine how she feels. This is going to be a tough year. Glad we’ve got company ^^^^ for the journey.</p>
<p>I just don’t think my 10th grader is ready to think about schools at all yet. He went on a few schools visits with his big brother - not ones he’ll apply to - too techie and his grades aren’t good enough, but enough for him to have some notions about size and location if he wants to. I’ll probably take him to a few places next spring break.</p>
<p>DH has offered to take S2 to some schools in early August, but S has not yet gotten online or looked at books to see what he actually WANTS to do. Personally, I think it would be a good kick in the pants for him to talk to coaches and hear from admissions folks. On the other hand, he’s making this choice, not me, and if he can’t get motivated to do some research, I’m going to have a hard time about getting motivated to pay for this! ;)</p>
<p>He seems to like smaller LACs, but he also likes cities – some of the schools he liks have football, others don’t. I don’t expect a final list by December of junior year, but he does need to start thinking about large vs. small, how rural or urban, and how much he wants to play football (and oh, yeah – how likely is he to be accepted!).</p>
<p>Sigh. I fear much of the learning curve I acquired with S1 is going to be useless here. Oh, well – that’s pretty much the way it has always been with these two!</p>
<p>Zoosermom- do your kids go to a private school? I have never heard of a public schooll being so concerned about college search for its students…unless it is in a upper class town…just curious…</p>