Well, we’ve got our spring break driving tour of colleges planned out. Somewhat entertainingly, my son has announced that my husband (his dad) isn’t coming with us. Specifically he said “mom, i love dad, but I can’t do every tour and hear about how when HE went to college, blah blah blah.” I had to laugh because he’s so right. My DH is great at many things, but staying quiet and listening, or letting our son lead the conversation without interjecting his (DHs) thoughts/life experiences, is not one of those.
I don’t mind that he’s not coming - it will be a nice mother son trip together I’m guess, my DS and I travel together well. I did the college visits with my older boy, but that was because at the time (early days after initial openings post COVID shutdowns) they were limiting the tours to a student and one additional. The only thing I’m moderately worried about is the drive. With my first guy, it was a straight shot up 95, one night at each school, none of which were more than 2.5 or 3 hours of easy interstate driving apart. This trip is… not that. My DS25 doesn’t drive yet. I had hoped he could log a few hours on the easier interstate parts of this trip, but he hasn’t been behind the wheel enough for us to be comfortable with that yet and I don’t seem him getting there in the month before we head out. So. Lots of driving for me.
Our trip will be (we’re starting in Northern VA, right outside of DC)
Virginia Tech
Appalachian State
Clemson
NC State
UNC Chapel Hill
UVA
home for a night
Pitt
His current list (changing every week or so) also has UCONN and UVM, but those are way too far out of the way for this trip. Since my older boy is in school in Massachusetts, we’ll see if we can add those on when we take him up for the start of next school year in the fall. He also just added JMU to his list - which we COULD have caught on this trip easily (since we’ll be passing it to get to VA Tech) except we’re already missing one day of school to do this, and I’d have to pull him out another day, and he really doesn’t want to do that. We are only a few hours from JMU, so we’ll try to add that in on some future teacher workday or something.
Depending on when your break is, we will be driving by each other on the highway
Ours looks like this, we’re coming from the west coast so it’s a lot. Also, some schools weren’t available on some days so there’s backtracking. Our driving is also crazy, but not as crazy as with D23 who had to see the entire midwest just to decide she had to go to school in Texas.
Davidson
Wake Forest
Furman/Clemson
Elon
W&L
William & Mary
U of Richmond
Hah! Spring break for at least the two counties I’m familiar with in Northern VA is the week of March 25-29. So if you are touring that week, expect to see LOTS of VA students with you. (In case your child is all "I can’t go to this school, it’s only kids from VA, see the tour group as an example - I mean, they might be VA heavy anyway, and certainly will be for a VA public school like W&M, but the tour group will likely be disproportionately VA loaded that week.)
We went to 5 of the 8 on your list, but did it on three trips as we had vacations/family in the area. Still may hit Elon as we will be down there for a wedding!
UCONN and UVM came off our D’s list after visits. At UVM a student came up to our tour group and literally told them, “Don’t come here it sucks”. Despite telling my D that it was just one student, it came off the list (it had been #1 prior to visit). We went to UCONN on an open house weekend and it was just not put together well (like the breakout session for her major was held outside as no one from Admissions showed up to unlock the building) and it just came across as very big and very impersonable. But she loved VT which I think is roughly the same size so it was the vibe of the campus.
We’re stretching it over 10 days, so hopefully won’t be too bad, with only one day that has two (and they are practically adjacent). VT Friday, App State Saturday, Driving/exploring Sunday, Clemson Monday, NC State and Chapel Hill Tuesday, UVA Wednesday then home that night, Thursday afternoon will drive to Pittsburgh, Pitt Friday morning then home that night.
If he didn’t have Clemson on his list, it would be so much better - we wouldn’t bother touring App State (it’s his super safety, and we’re touring because we have nothing else to do on Saturday and Sunday and we’re literally driving right by). We’d drive to Blacksburg on Sunday, see VT on Monday morning then drive over to the Raleigh Durham area that afternoon/evening and pick up from there. The down and back to SC is really the killer in all of this. Fingers crossed gas prices stay down!
(For my older boy we did the northern tour - drove to URI, then WPI, RPI, Cornell, CWRU, then Pitt. All in a week that I mostly drove. So this whole Drive A Lot, See A Lot isn’t totally new ground for us…)
Right now UCONN and UVM are mostly on the list because he needs more in that realm of likely admit schools. I’m hoping he loves VT and then gets in to VT. We’re in state, it would be hard to beat. He’s really not interested in JMU because “too many kids from my school go there”. I’ve told him that he needs to give it a chance - it’s really strong in the thing he wants to major in, checks his other boxes in terms of the things he says he wants in a college, and it’s affordable. If he decides he likes JMU, then I think he would probably drop either or both of UCONN and UVM. He’s just missing enough of the schools that feel realistic to get into, and given what admissions is looking like this year, I want him to have enough there to have choices.
But when we’ve done lower 48 college tours it’s been like 13 over three and a half weeks, or 8 over two and a half weeks. 7 or 8 in a week to week and a half exhausts me just imagining it!
Clark will track demonstrated interest (they send custom acceptance letters! they are into “personal”) and Brown doesn’t (last I heard)…sounds like from that list you have a very high stats kid, but Brown is a far reach for everyone so may want to play the game of demonstrated interest… Not to say you don’t apply to Brown, but finding higher acceptance schools is sometimes hard for people..
Just my 2 cents…if you are looking for ED schools that changes things too..
Oh, I’m confident that I’m going to be very tired when this is over. But this kid, more than my other, really wants to see schools while the students are there (as opposed to in the summer) because the feel of the fully populated school is really important to him. Since his HS doesn’t get out until June 16thish, colleges are done by then. He starts the senior year the last week of August. The only breaks that are more than two days are Winter/Christmas break and Spring Break. So we can (and will) try to see a few schools the week before he starts back the HS in the late summer, if those colleges have already returned to school. But other than that, the only full week when college students will be there is spring break. We could have tried to go spring break of his sophomore year to do some visits, but he really wasn’t ready to think about it then. So this is pretty much what we’ve got. It’s going to be exhausting and I’m going to be thankful that Easter is at my sister’s house and not mine, because that’s two days after we get back and I know I’ll still be tired. But it’s the only choice that will work for us, unfortunately.
I just canceled the Ursinus visit since they don’t have music ed which seemed to be a bigger deal for my D after the recent visits. I’m thinking of trekking up to Ithaca instead. It’s a 5.5 hr drive and it’d be after school on a Thursday and stay overnight in town and visit the next day. We’d drive back Fri afternoon but not get home until late. I work Saturday and Sunday 12 hrs shifts getting up around 5am both days and home after 8pm. Then Mon I think is a 6am flight to Seattle so leave around 3am. It’s a 6hr flight. I’m already tired just thinking about it but do really want D to visit before putting forth the effort to apply and audition. There’s no other school day off until after the college lets out for summer. It would be much easier to do a visit in July or Aug but seems not ideal.
Did your son do the virtual audition? How did that go? I’ve read that most schools seem to really prefer in person and I know my D does better in person but logistics might not allow for it. Same thing with Puget Sound if she decides to apply there.
S25 was supposed to have his return to the track this week. He is coming into the season late because of overlap with swimming. He had Covid three weeks ago and now… he has the flu. Thankfully we caught it early and he’s on Tamiflu and having a very light case. But he’s now missed three track meets and this was supposed to be the season that would determine his college eligibility. Ugh
