Because of S24’s school-year schedule we really had no choice but to do a lot of summer visits, and a few weekend visits and break visits. I understand why some people are skeptical about putting too much weight on visits in general, not least these sorts of visits. But on the other hand he had a really long list of possibles he needed to cut down to a reasonable application list, and to me it really didn’t matter why he was cutting schools or getting excited about schools, as long as he ended up with choices he was excited about.
Visits were also the times when he was most willing to kind of get away from the whole peer/high school scene and really reflect on what mattered most to him. And we chatted a lot during visits and while that means he was not totally alone with his thoughts, I think it at least was an opportunity to give him a different perspective that somewhat offset the peer perspective.
And he did end up applying to some colleges he didn’t visit that were plausible based things he liked when visiting and/or things we discussed while visiting. But the plan all along was to visit any of those, and possibly revisit others, when he knew where he was admitted and could form a short list of top contenders.
And none of this was cheap–even holding aside one of the post-offer visits was St Andrews in Scotland, which we are doing right now but really as a family vacation too.
OK, so here we are with some admittances where he was really excited because he really liked the school when visiting (or visiting for the first time here in St Andrews), and we are waiting for more decisions which will dictate where we might visit/re-visit in April. And I personally think it was all worth it, that even if visiting in the summer or on weekends or on breaks was less than ideal, it was still a critical part of getting him to the point where he was seriously imagining himself as a student at real places, thinking about what his life as a student would be like, and not just thinking about colleges as names on some list, names that would impress friends, or so on.