Well, @4MyKidz , this would have been our 26th college visit. I was actually kind of happy that he wanted to skip Tufts because the NPC put it at the very top of our budget range. Of course we’ll never know what sort of financial package the college would give us or even if the kiddo would get accepted.
@4MyKidz agreed. We’ve learned a lot from the visits to schools that were dropped from the list (Chicago, Beloit, Oberlin, Colby). In the last two cases, S19 either wanted to leave right after seeing campus or was so sick he just wanted to go back to the hotel to go to bed, but we pushed on and both of us were glad we did. Helped S19 zero in on things that are important to him when it comes to school.
That’s good @homerdog ! One thing I will say, we kind of turned into snobs with all these visits. Two of the eleven schools did not give our son a free tshirt. And we were like, “Well this school is a no!” That was toward the end of the summer and obviously the heat made us silly! What a dumb reason not to like a school!
@4MyKidz we never got a T-shirt! Visited thirteen schools and the best we got was a water bottle!
@homerdog What?! A water bottle? Evidently, we’ve been spoiled! Son has developed a nice collection. No one really knows which school he truly wants to go to since he reps a new school t daily! He also has a collection of those drawstring bags which he uses for his med supplies.
I agree that you can learn something from every college tour. Unfortunately sometimes what you learn is just how cranky a tired kid can get when touring a school to which they have no intention of applying.
Both of my older two asked to skip a school. The first was a school to which we arrived at 9pm after a long drive. Kid immediately decided it was too isolated but there was no way in hell I was going to drive home overnight and I convinced kiddo to tour and do the scheduled interview the next day. Still didn’t apply but didn’t complain.
Second kid arrived at #7 on a whirlwind tour of 10 schools. Immediately felt it wasn’t the right school. and had already identified two great likely (safety) schools so we cancelled the interview and moved on.
3 kid toured a school I would have cut out on as soon as we arrived on campus. Kiddo liked it enough to apply as a likely. I’m hoping there will be better options.
@Sue22 My kids are not two years old. They are 1-2 years shy of becoming adults. As adults, my husband and I still have to meet our obligations whether we are tired and cranky. If my kid acted “tired and cranky” on a college tour after we took the time to schedule the tour, make hotel reservations, provide food, and drive to the school…it would not have been pretty for our kid. This is just my family’s mindset and I understand that families are all different. I was just sharing my son’s college visit experiences and what we learned. No judgement intended.
@4MyKidz , No judgement of your family’s MO intended on my end either. I just found that for our family it was at times not worth it to waste everyone’s time touring a college that didn’t have any chance of making the list.
For me it’s like reading. It’s okay to occasionally read 20 pages, decide you can’t stand it, and go on to the next book.
@Sue22 Love the reading reference! I’m a librarian and it took me years to allow myeelf to give up on a book! Still struggle with the guilt, LOL! Regarding the college visits, if it is scheduled, imo, there’s no canceling for son. If it’s just a “let’s check this one out since it’s nearby”, then yes, I completely concede that the visit has become optional!
There was one college I drove hours to for D14 where I was the one who didn’t get out of the car :)) . I didn’t like the look of the school, placement of the buildings or the area. Good thing kid agreed. We laughed and drove home singing broadway musicals as was our habit.
Oh and one other thing I meant to mention regarding college visits. Starting with our D14’s college visits and continuing with our S19’s, my husband always located a student on campus and asked, “Why (insert college name)?” Boy have we learned some eye opening stuff tour guides failed to mention! We even had a stressed out student (in my D14’s prospective major) begin crying and my husband and I spent an hour counseling her. D14 did not end up going to that school.
We’ve toured six schools officially, and our free gift tally is two string bags, one tote bag, and assorted pens and keychain flashlights. No T-shirts, sadly - can always use extra sleep shirts even for schools he doesn’t end up applying to!
We’ve toured 4 schools officially so far, swag talley is 2 string bags, 2 t-shirts and one cup.
Purchase total is 2 hats, I think the schools are coming it ahead so far!
We have only had one, out of 4 kids, that we wanted to skip. And it was one that involved flights and hotel, rental car etc. we stuck it out but both of us wanted to bail after a disastrous class sit in, lead by the head of the department. It didn’t get better but we were able to say we gave it a fair shot.
We’ve toured six colleges and received no gifts. The only gift I got was when I won something for answering a question first at the University of Houston. And threw it out because I have no idea how it worked, it was some sort of cable adapter thing. And one of our schools was USC, they have plenty of money to give a tee shirt at least!
We haven’t received any gifts from any colleges except for some free bottled water from Temple on a very hot day. We haven’t bought any college swag until this last trip, where the kiddo absolutely had to have a Yale hoodie from the discount rack. It’s a very nice hoodie, thick and warm and water resistant. I still don’t think kiddo is getting in there, but he sure likes the gear.
Arcadia seems to be confused about which year they admitted the kiddo for. The official acceptance letter came with ‘welcome class of 2022!’ swag, but the text in the letter says ‘welcome class of 2023’. Email from the college seems split between the two. Doesn’t fill me with much confidence in their administration. Yeah, it’s the safety, but you want the safety to appear at least slightly competent?
Y’all are making me feel very guilty for skipping that Tufts tour. In some alternate universe we toured the college, kiddo will end up going there, kiddo will graduate with an economics degree and become the next Wolf of Wall Street while curing cancer and starring in hit Broadway musicals. I just know it.
We’ve toured 4. One string bag, a sticker and a handful of pens is the sum of swag. We haven’t bought anything. Although my DH did ooh and ahhh to an embarrassing degree in the bookstore of the one he toured with us as he reminisced over his days of working in a college bookstore.
On the topic of tours, we’ve done 4 and haven’t skipped any. Probably a good thing because while 3 of them had awful touring weather, those are the 3 d19 preferred anyway. And of those 3, the one she said had “creepy” looking buildings as we were walking from the parking lot to the start of the tour is probably the one she ended up liking the best by the end. So first impressions didn’t really hold for her. However @ninakatarina, I have no doubt that your s19 will make the most of any college he ends up at, so skipping one isn’t going to negatively alter his life.
Son19 lives by the “no swag until I decide to go there” motto. We have not received any swag or any freebies of any sort from any school we have visited.
I don’t think we’ve ever skipped looking at a college once we’ve gotten there. We haven’t always taken the official tours because I think those are sometimes a total waste. Instead, we walk around and explore and then try to find a cool spot off campus to grab some food. We usually try to grab some info from admissions, stop by bookstore, check out the library if we can get in, look at sports complex.
@ninakatarina too bad you guys didn’t get to do a tour of Tufts, I think your son is a good candidate for that school and he would find his peeps there. However, I will note that the Tufts campus is quite hilly and I have seen people literally moan and groan with each step on the trek to the top. I don’t mind hills and neither does son19, but my wife was not as enthusiastic with the steep climb. It is a pretty climb though, on all sides, with nice pathways showing off plantings, trees, stonework.
As I see it, the point behind a college visit is to determine whether it’s a place to live and learn and be for the next 4 years.
Once that decision has been made, the point behind the tour has been reached.
Each of my kids had one school where that decision came immediately upon arriving on campus. Each had a different reason, but in each case the campus just did not have the vibe they were looking for. No need to waste anyone’s time on a tour, we had found the answer we wanted. We called in and cancelled the tour.
For the first, with my son, we went to the hotel–and toured the school he ended up attending the next morning. For my daughter, we went out to lunch and then headed home. It took her a few more months to find the right school, but she knew it when she found it.
Quick fact check (and a little context): The Wesleyan arts complex is not built of concrete, but made out of blocks of Indiana limestone. It was originally slated to be one big building and since this was 1974, the chances are pretty slim that it would have been anything other than the brutalist style no matter what. The brilliance behind the design was the decision to break it up into eleven different pieces. They’ve been compared to giant Lego pieces. Admittedly, not to everyone’s taste, I find it fascinating that all that stone work is completely load bearing (i.e., not hung on steel beams) and serve as both the interior and exterior finish. So, in that sense, it has less in common with the better known exemplars of the style like the Washington D.C. FBI building or the Boston City Hall and a lot more like classical Greek or Roman temples.