<p>apr,</p>
<p>My son is a year ahead of yours and he visited three of the schools on your son’s list.
A couple things I can share; schedule a general campus tour and an admission’s office interview to get a general feel for the school, also contact the arch department and schedule an arch dept tour and an arch dept interview for the same day. If he is anything like my son, he’s looking for a school he will like AND an arch dept that he will like. Keep in mind you have to get accepted to the school first, THEN get accepted into the arch department.</p>
<p>Carnegie Mellon runs several “Sleeping Bag Weekends” in the fall. My son attended one last October. There were about 200 high school students total. My son got a good feel for the campus, had a student host, slept in a dorm, ate the food, attended a class and then, the second day, it was like an open house format with access to the entire school -parents were welcome but not required the second day. He focused on the arch dept and said there were only about a dozen other kids there as the other<br>
attendees were interested in other majors. Said the arch department really rolled out the red carpet and he got to speak one on one with several professors and arch dept admissions staff. He attended a session on what they were looking for in prospective students and how to get into their department. I think this has put CMU tops on his list.</p>
<p>At Penn State and RPI he visited on Open House days and was a bit overwhelmed by the masses of visitors wandering around and the less personal contacts. </p>
<p>Syracuse, WIT and RMU all gave him one on one tours by a current arch student and interviews with both admissions office staff and arch dept staff & professors. He enjoyed his time at these schools.</p>
<p>As to the portfolio, he took his first attempt at a portfoilo along to the arch dept interviews. All were willing to look at it and made helpful comments, however all said that portfolio review didn’t count and he would have to submit the “real deal” after opening an official application with the admissions department.</p>
<p>About the timing on the visits, my kid’s hs counselor said fall visits are good to find schools you want to apply to, while spring visits (for hs seniors) are mostly to help kids to choose from the schools they were accepted to and that the recruiters work harder then as most schools (yes, even Barch programs) accept many more students than will actually enroll. The counselors reccommendation was to skip the fall trips (unless it was a local visit) and put the money into applying to more schools of interest, then six months later a more informed and mature teen could then visit the schools that actually accepted him and wisely choose. My son argued to me (successfully) that the fall visits were necessary to really cement his commitment to a Barch program.</p>