<p>welcome my2sonsfromca :)</p>
<p>Re: visits, I plan to sneak 'em in on weekends if not far away - most schools offer Saturday tours - and tag onto misc long weekends we have here, “teacher in-service day” and similar not-holidays. As a senior it will be OK for her to take a few days off from school for visits, but not as a junior.</p>
<p>welcome my2sonsfromca! It’s nice to see the lurkers posting. :)</p>
<p>I have no idea how/when/where we are going to visit. Probably nothing until the spring and, like OHMomof2, I’ll try to steal some time on long weekends. Spring break will have to include some school visits too I think.</p>
<p>OHMom—Re: weekend visits. I can only speak for schools in the Northeast, but the Sat visits days all seemed to end on or before the first weekend in November. I think the business of reading ED/EA apps starts and then runs through early March with the RD apps. I recall squeezing in a Fri/Sat visit when our school was closed due to Storm Sandy, and realized that early Nov was the end of it. We have not looked at any state schools or schools outside the NE, so this may not apply everywhere. </p>
<p>Another scheduling thing I found frustrating…some schools limit their visit days during mid to late April in order to accommodate the accepted seniors. Those who have March spring breaks may find it easier to visit colleges, as long as the colleges are not on March spring break. The scheduling required some advance planning!</p>
<p>Another thought on visits: I just checked naviance and noticed that the college counseling office is posting when college reps will be visiting the campus. At D’s school, juniors are invited to attend if they have a free period during the presentation. I also checked two east coast schools’ sites and they offer regional open houses. They won’t be substitutes for actual campus visits but they’re a good first look and sometimes they may be all that’s needed. I’m going to encourage D to start attending these so she can plan visits for February break.</p>
<p>Welcome my2sonsfromca! You are actually going to go through this two years in a row and you sound calm–I’m impressed.</p>
<p>Any 2015ers thinking about early decision? </p>
<p>My BW would love our kid to try ED at her alma mater, Williams. She’s trying to be blas</p>
<p>Slate’s very official, fully authoritative, top-15 college rankings systems for 2014*:</p>
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<p>3girls our Naviance also shows about 25 college visits through the beginning of October. In our school they rearrange classes to make room for juniors and seniors to attend.
Lat- be careful with ED because it is binding and you could only apply to one school ( through this method).The rest of the schools would be early action or regular decision, which are both non- binding. I read that if the financial aid package does not work out then that would be a legitimate reason to break the contract. </p>
<p>ED is perfect for a student who is 100% certain that he wants to attend a certain school and the family is certain that they can afford the full price just in case they do not get aid, whether it be merit or financial.</p>
<p>latichever -</p>
<p>Wow. Early Decision. I know I’m definitely not thinking that far in advance; D is still working through her list of potential colleges. My siblings’ kids all applied ED/EA but 1) the kids all had a single Plan A college in mind and no Plan B colleges; and, 2) they were all full-pay - no financial / merit aid. I remember when one nephew was applying EA to a lottery school, I asked my sister what if he was rejected and she said “I don’t know. He hasn’t looked anywhere else.”. Luckily he got in. (Actually they all got into their Plan A schools.)</p>
<p>Our school doesn’t really permit the juniors to get out of class to go to the in-school visits. I suppose if I made a fuss they would, but I’m not sure it’s worth it at this point.</p>
<p>Haven’t thought too much about ED/EA. Doubt we would do ED because we will need to compare offers.</p>
<p>Suzy, this school doesn’t allow juniors to miss class either—and, huge surprise, her schedule doesn’t match up with the presentations. I don’t know how she is going to manage to miss class next year either though. She has two very tough unmissable classes already lined up. Maybe they try to align the meetings with more common senior schedules? I have no idea.</p>
<p>Latichever, D’s school strongly encourages students aiming for reach schools to go the ED route. The college counselor said they had “jaw dropping results” in the ED round last year, not as much in the regular round. We are definitely not at that point! D1 did apply ED to a reach school and was deferred, as was every kid applying from her school. The lesson I took from this was that if at all possible, there should be a rolling admission or EA school in the mix. It is very painful for a kid to hear “no” or even “maybe” as a first and only response, no matter how many times he’s been told to expect it. April was much nicer 
but the months between December and March when decisions started to roll in were very bleak. I’d also tell the kid to have the regular applications ready to go before the early decision date because it is much harder to pour your soul into those apps when your ego is bruised.</p>
<p>mihcal, love that link! Thanks for sharing.</p>
<p>Having gone through this fairly recently, I’d counsel against the thought of ED or EA as “one and done”. It’s very hard to motivate a kid to do a good job on an application after <em>either</em> getting a deferral or getting an acceptance EA. Kids who said they were prepared for rejection really had the wind taken out of their sails by a straightforward (and seemingly merciful) rejection. I’d make sure that all applications (or at least all important applications) are done by Dec. 1 if there’s any EA/ED applications in. It makes for a MUCH better December, no matter what happens. You don’t have to hit the submit button (if, say, test scores or grades might cause some changes in December) but it should all be done and ready to go.</p>
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<p>This! Exactly!</p>
<p>Our school does not allow kids to miss classes. They have special activity days where all classes are made shorter and there is an extra period in the day where kids are encouraged to visit college tables. There is no way I would ever get my kid to miss a class- she would get too stressed! There are things planned for freshmen and sophomores during these days, but I have no idea what that is. I also have no idea how hectic it becomes LOL.</p>
<p>None of the schools D2 or S are considering are ED, so that doesn’t figure into our college process. We’re pretty much focused on schools that have rolling admissions, and many have priority dates for admissions and scholarship decisions. Since scholarship money plays a HUGE role for our family, it may “limit” our list in some ways…but it has it’s advantages as well.</p>
<p>Our D1 (Class of '11) had her decision made with scholarship offers in-hand by early January of her senior year. Since NMF $$ was involved, we had to wait until mid February for her Finalist notification to officially arrive before she could commit. We’re hoping for similar timelines for D2 and S. We personally really like the idea of having things settled as early as possible and just letting the kids enjoy whatever is left of their senior year.</p>
<p>I realize that’s probably not the norm and that many of the more selective schools don’t send out FA/scholarship letters until late March or possibly April. God did not bless me with the gift of patience, so it would drive me crazy having to wait that long to see how everything plays out. I’m amazed by (and somewhat jealous of) those families that are able to handle the stress of waiting. :)</p>
<p>After reading here and other places, I don’t think I’d suggest to my D. to try ED, unless, maybe, if it is Princeton? 
</p>
<p>@mihcal, thanks for the link!!</p>
<p>“ED is perfect for a student who is 100% certain that he wants to attend a certain school and the family is certain that they can afford the full price just in case they do not get aid, whether it be merit or financial.”</p>
<p>ED can also work when you don’t care about comparing financial aid packages, when your only question is: Can we afford it? If the aid is insufficient, you decline the offer and apply RD elsewhere.</p>
<p>Our DD2 watched DD1 struggle with multiple applications, and came up with a plan: She applied EA to her second choice, was admitted, so she then had only one more app to prepare.</p>
<p>Our school has about 50 colleges visiting in September and October but they only allow Seniors to miss a class to see the presentations, not Juniors. So my bearcub will only be able to make it to 3, and unfortunately only one is a school we won’t be able to visit. I don’t think that it’s much easier for the seniors though since they really can’t miss class much anyway. I guess it’s just luck if a kid has a free period that lines up with a college visit.</p>
<p>D’s school has colleges visiting through mid-November but the school only allows 6 visits per student in each semester. Her school has a schoolwide extended lunch period - it’s a good time for clubs to meet, meet with a teacher or make up a quiz or more likely, just hang out with your friends. The college visits are scheduled for this period in the media center. So far, none of the schools are on D’s list; she’s not willing to “waste” a visit.</p>