<p>To all moms with rising seniors, does your child have a list of colleges yet?
and is the summer a good opportunity to visit them? (We visited a few during spring+february break.) Thanks in Advance!</p>
<p>Hi nacnlmom! Yep, we have a rising senior! S2 is the last of our 3, so he has been to many, many schools already (tagging along on some college tours with his older brother and sister!). He does have a list, and we have seen all but 2. We are planning to see both of those this summer, but may hold off on one of them and visit in the fall. </p>
<p>Summer is a good time to visit because you usually can take a few days/week to go to several schools. Also, application time will be upon them in just a few months, so getting in as many visits as possible this summer may help your S/D eliminate part of his/her list. (Always good to whittle down the list and save on the application fees.) On the down side, there are fewer students, and the activities are very limited, so your S/D won’t get the same kind of feel for the school that he/she might during the regular school year. We have done a mix of summer/school year visits with all 3 of ours–and the older two felt very comfortable with their choices when it came time to send in applications.</p>
<p>thanks! S1, the first of 5, is so far down to 8 schools. I was just wondering especially about the visiting colleges in the summer because during the school year we made time to visit his top 4 schools, however we were unable to visit one because D2 broke her arm tripping at a baseball game. </p>
<p>So far we have schedruled to visit 2 in July, and two in August, but we haven’t figured out when to go visit the school visit we missed. S, wants to see what its like with most of the students there and I do too. We might end up doing September.</p>
<p>BTW~you don’t have to visit them all. Both D and S1 applied to schools they had not visited. They were schools that were further down their list and we knew we could go visit if they did not get into one of the schools that were on the top of their lists. Luckily we never had to–but you never know!</p>
<p>Um, why direct the question just to moms?</p>
<p>Well, I guess I’m DQ’s since I’m not a mom, but by senior year D’s list of colleges was down to about eight and she wound up applying to seven, this down from the mega-list of something like 71 possibilities on the list generated by the answers to about half a dozen questions in 9th grade. The initial list was very broad, designed to be just a “universe of the possible,” which was a good thing, as interest in womens colleges increased dramatically and places like Georgetown & GWU cooled a bit. Every school that caught her attention even momentarily was back on the list of 71 when I checked.</p>
<p>x-posted with WashDad.</p>
<p>WD: I dunno…maybe because all we do is write the checks or something?</p>
<p>Who says Dads write the checks? ;)</p>
<p>Let’s just all agree that without Dads and Moms these little darlings wouldn’t be here, right?</p>
<p>Yes, Alumother!</p>
<p>And I apologise to all dads who were offended, without my DH I would not be able to raise 5 kids! So sorry again.</p>
<p>I was zoned off when I was typing the thread name, I had written something different as the name (which included dads) then went to delete something but must have accidentally deleted ‘dads’ with it. </p>
<p>I know we don’t have to visit every college but after talking to DH and S we all agreed we want to see these colleges and see their academic and social atmosphere. Dh and I are both hoping the list won’t change!</p>
<p>nacnlmom, a lot of colleges already start classes in August, perhaps before your son has to be back in school. You might be able to squeeze in a visit or two that way. Just check the individual college web site for their academic calendar.</p>
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<p>Our friend Jeff Adamson has had his name legally changed to “ATM Adamson.”</p>
<p>My daughter is an almost rising senior who started the year with about 20 schools on her list. We visited schools in the NE in February and in MD, PA and VA in April. She will be visiting Kenyon, Ohio Wesleyan and Denison with her Mom in June after school closes. She probably won’t have a chance to visit those schools when they are in session, but at least she’ll get to talk to the admissions staff. She says she has narrowed her choice down to 7 schools some days, 9 on others.</p>
<p>I just checked with the college website and 3 of them do start in August so we will be visiting school #4, in August instead of #8, since it’s a safety!</p>
<p>If your student is interested in LACs or small (under 4000) universities, I think it’s especially important to visit those schools while they’re in session to get a feel for the prevailing social culture. At larger schools, there is less of a chance that there will be a dominant culture that winds up being a poor fit.</p>
<p>I will never have a rising senior again, but here’s what we did:</p>
<p>Each of my kids visited 4-5 schools in the spring of their junior years, 1 or 2 during the summer, and then 2-3 more in the fall. Each of them applied to at least one school he or she hadn’t visited at all, and each didn’t apply to several schools he or she had visited and not particularly liked.</p>
<p>where do you people have time?
We looked at 2 schools this spring
One that she liked- neither I liked.
Try to look at schools this summer- however she is working and is also participating in at least one EC
I suppose we will try and cram 3 visits in the fall- but since several are in Hawaii- my wallet isn’t quite ready for that.</p>
<p>I just went thru this whole thing with my D, who is headed for Philly this fall. Since I love to torture myself, I also have a DS who is a rising senior and is going to start all this stuff…</p>
<p>I have learned a LOT from CC and just from stuff in general…and I’m hoping our EFC will stay constant with two kids back-to-back in college.</p>
<p>That being said, it’s going to be very difficult to find the time to do college visits for S…I feel bad, because by this time last year, his sister and I had already visited a couple of colleges, but I only have so many frequent flyer miles and it’s going to be a bit trickier with S to visit the spread-out schools he’s looking at. Sigh. I learned so much with D that I can apply to S, but I feel like I’m shortchanging him by not doing a couple of college tours with him. He doesn’t seem to care, but I do…</p>
<p>Nac, I didn’t take anything seriously, I was just needling. But if you can do it at all, visiting schools in session can be a night-and-day difference from out of session. I have experience with Smith, UCLA, and Georgetown…the feel of the campus with students present really makes a big difference. If you can’t visit when school is in session, karma. But it’s worth jumping through hoops for if you can, imo.</p>
<p>EK, we visited on high school Spring break for four years in a row. For the last three, that was the designated purpose of the break.</p>
<p>Time: Parents only saw half the schools, and even if a parent went usually it was only one of us. There were only three schools we both saw with a kid, and those were all day-trip detours from something we were doing as a family anyway.</p>
<p>TheDad, glad to know you were only joking!</p>
<p>About the time, we went to visit 3 schools already. 1 during february vacation, and 2 during spring. the 2 in spring were close to each other. During the summer i think were going to either 2 a month or possibly only 1, but if we do 2 we’ll do ones that are close. Also we get more breaks, vacations, in the summer so its easier for us to travel!</p>
<p>Has anyone overcome a student’s indifference to the college search process? </p>
<p>How did you handle it?</p>