<p>We’re going to visit some over spring break. It’s earlier than I started with my older two boys, but I love a road trip with just one kid, so we’re looking forward to it!</p>
<p>I enjoy it too- and we are doing a few more schools during spring break. We will do the third group of schools junior year. Once we narrow it down we will visit them a second time. We really enjoy these visits!</p>
<p>We plan to make some informal visits later this spring and over the summer, but they will be sort of incidental to the trip(s), not really the destination.</p>
<p>when you visit the schools with your sophomore or junior, do you make an appointment with the admissions office before you go?</p>
<p>Maxwell,</p>
<p>My oldest son visited several schools during sophomore year. He contacted specific departments, professors, and chairs, and didn’t interact with admissions. He did the same thing during his junior year, as well, contacting specific professors and departments and taking tours with friends rather than doing anything formal. I think it gave him a more “real” look at dorms, students, classes, etc.</p>
<p>I won’t visit schools with my 2015er yet since I have no idea what schools might be a good fit and even where we’ll be living (and we plan to have him live at home with us, at least for a few years).</p>
<p>We went to the college web site and scheduled formal tours. There is usually an information session followed by a tour.</p>
<p>With my D1, we started visiting in her freshman year, with informal tours of local colleges just to get a feel for the different parameters (big/small, public/private, urban/suburb/rural, selective/not , residential/commuter, etc.) We followed with “real” college visits during the summers and school vacations of sophomore and junior year. Basically, whenever we went on a family vacation we’d stop-in at colleges along the way, sometimes planning our route to take in certain schools-of-interest. We visited some 3 dozen schools in all. Some were just drive-through or informal stop-in-and-walk-arounds, but we did many “official” visits: signing up with Admissions, info session, tour, lunch with students, sit-in on a class, etc.</p>
<p>My D2 (3 years younger than D1) tagged along on almost all of these visits. I think some of the early ones didn’t make a strong impression on her, and we plan to take her to re-visit a couple of those schools. However, her list will be very different from D1’s (different major, very different personality!), so there’s a whole new set of schools to visit. We’ve already started with some nearby campuses, and family vacations for the next couple of years will be planned to include as many of her schools-of-interest as possible. </p>
<p>If a school cares about “demonstrated interest” (check item C7 in their Common Data Set), then you definitely want to officially sign-in with the Admissions Office.</p>
<p>My goodness we are so far behind of all our friends here. We haven’t visited any schools yet. Her friends (older ones) told her she should start doing it. But I thought we should wait for her SATs to see where she fits in. Am I wrong? apparently. We should at least start thinking about it.</p>
<p>I don’t know what we’d do without CC. :p</p>
<p>Maxwell- I have an older daughter who is currently a college freshman. We started our visits when she was a junior and it worked out just fine. We started in January of junior year. My younger daughter, a HS sophomore, is very different and has a much longer list of schools. I am afraid if we save it all for junior year we will not have enough time. When we started the process with my older daughter we did not have any test scores yet. We don’t have any this time either, other than her PLAN ACT.</p>
<p>DS was dragged along on several tours while visiting colleges for DD13 while on vacation last year. However, we are planning to visit a couple schools near our vacation destination this summer that will very likely be on his final list. We will sign up in advance if we can but will try to skip the info sessions. Hopefully my nephew will be around to show us the school he is currently attending. If either school does end up on DS’s final list, we will visit again during the school year. It really is hard to get a feel for a school in the summer beyond just deciding whether to apply or not.</p>
<p>We will probably also do some other visits during spring break of junior year. Our school board has put spring break much later next year which means it will miss most colleges’ spring breaks.</p>
<p>DS will also sign up for junior classes this week. He’s planning to take AP Calc BC, APUSH, AP Lang, AP Physics C, AP Comp Sci, band, and a “little-homework” class. It isn’t unusual for Juniors to take 5 AP’s here because there are no honors classes and I’m sure the workload isn’t what it is at some schools. And AP Calc BC is a full year following a full year of AP Calc AB so it isn’t the same pace as schools that do BC without having had AB. His plans may change though if the REALLY GOOD AP Physics and Comp Science teacher leaves. 
(Fingers crossed that he stays at least one more year).</p>
<p>I also have an freshman (college) D, and for her, we started looking at colleges the summer before Junior year because family travel worked that way. We plan the same with D2. We have a family event in Boston in early June, so D2 and I will take some time and look at some campuses. The most useful thing at this point is to think about large vs. small, LAC vs. university, and location. The scholarly parts can be worked out better at home with on-line course catalogs and looking at specific faculty.</p>
<p>I thought about sending D2 off to her sister for spring break, but she’s working SO hard. She needs the sleep and babying.</p>
<p>Our family took advantage of DD having to play one of her club sports out of state for several weekends in the fall to visit a bunch of different type campuses and schools during down time. Her school Field Hockey team did pre-season training out-of-state and the team visited 4-5 campuses as a team.</p>
<p>I’d say D has seen 10-15 schools so far (out-of her list of 40-50). She is an athlete so the recruiting net needs to be cast wide at this point and narrowed down as she proceeds through the recruiting process.</p>
<p>She will attend 2-3 summer camps for her sports at various colleges she’s interested in attending. Most schools provide a tour and interaction with Admissions when campers are on-site…captured audience of interested potential applicants.</p>
<p>place holder :)</p>
<p>We are looking at 7 schools sophomore year and 6 or 7 junior year. Then I am hoping to narrow this list down a bit and revisit a few, set up some interviews, etc. The hardest part for me will be trying to ignore the comments made by others. Smile and nod!</p>
<p>I should make a correction - I shouldn’t say we haven’t done any college “visit”. We went to several colleges and just walked in their campuses. She also did summer camp with CTY in two CTY campuses, and several times she did concerts and skate competitions in college campuses. Those things probably gave D. some ideas, but really not much. We need to really get into some details at least. I counted 8 colleges that she has “visited”.</p>
<p>Same here. Never done any real school visit except for several accidental ones. Need to start planning.</p>
<p>^^^ Accidental visits? … “whoops! we’re on a college campus!” 
:D</p>
<p>Enjoy your visit mihcal! :)</p>
<p>Good life lesson: Take every advantage of where you find yourself, even if it is an accident!</p>
<p>touche, STEMfamily! :)</p>