We did a 5 day trip with 7 colleges in which our drives were anywhere from 1-2 hours. Depending on the tour schedule we were able to do two in a day.
We spaced ours out more. We did 5 schools in 7 days. We did have one drive close to 4 hours but the rest were much less.
UMD…good sports, close to northern VA and red brick instead of gray.
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Were you able to get official tours at each? We have struggled with being able to schedule official tours at multiple schools in one trip due to their offerings.
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D25 has her first college interview on Tuesday. Anyone have any college interview tips?
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Be sure to have a few questions prepared for when they invite you to ask them questions, and your questions should ideally reflect some familiarity with the college.
Some common questions that they might ask you include: What is something you’re proud of from high school? Why are you interested in our college? How would your friends describe you?
And it might not be great advice, but I always encouraged my kids to smile a lot and express enthusiasm…
thank you. She loves the college but sometimes has a hard time articulating reasons why. I’ll have her write some things down so she has it fresh in her mind.
If she has any leadership experience, she should discuss that. Also, I would have an anecdote or two handy that reflect who she is as a person.
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One only had an information session but no tour and one we had to do a self guided tour, but that was because the schools were on spring break.
I wanted to post results from my D24 with a link to our original Chance Me Post. I hope this is a helpful reference for those creating college lists and applying next cycle. CC has been a great tool and therapist.
Results
Denied-
Yale(REA deferred/denied), Princeton and Brown
Waitlist-
WIlliams and Lehigh, declining both
Applied to Union and Dickison but pulled application prior to decision
Accepted
Penn State
Mcgill
UMD College Park (Presidential scholarship and Banneker Key finalist but withdrew application)
Lafayette (Full scholarship finalist but withdrew application)
University of Richmond- Offered Richmond Scholars full cost of attendance
Dartmouth
Boston College(attending) Accepting the Gabelli Scholars Presidential Scholarship for full tuition.
The process was long and winding but we truly believe she is ending up in the place she belongs with an amazing opportunity.
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I am so glad BC came through early and she was able to get really excited about it.
I interview and am always shocked at how few applicants have a good answer for why the specific school. I just want to hear about something that makes the school stand out amongst other schools (a particular program, the housing system, a particular course…). I would also tell your child to approach as a conversation and try to not stress over it too much.
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Thanks. It was such a relief and took all the pressure off. It really made “Ivy Day” uneventful. Yale started out as the “Dream” school and it turned to BC even before the rejection from Yale. You have been very supportive on this journey and it has been appreciated.
Thanks. After she visited last year, she loved that the students and professor of the class she visited included her in the discussion the class was having. She just felt very welcomed and wanted. Hopefully that is a decent answer.
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It’s a perfect answer! Also have her be prepared to answer an inappropriate question diplomatically. I never ask those questions 
but both my kids got some. For example “Why didn’t you apply ED?” , “Is this your first choice?”, “What are other schools you’ve applied to?”
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Did your D already apply for this school? Seems really early for interviews. The last couple schools we visited my D met with admissions but I felt like it was more of a sales pitch and my D interviewing them about what their school offers before she decides if she wants to apply or not in the fall. I am sure your child will be great just being themself!
My D and I fly out west Mon morning early and tour UPS Tuesday before driving to my parents house Tuesday afternoon. My dad was hospitalized today due to complications of his end stage disease, my mom has a brain injury and isn’t always appropriate plus very forgetful and my sister is difficult to be around on the best of days but she’s not forgetful and can be helpful sometimes.
I asked sis if I should cancel the tour and hotel and just head to their place instead but she said no. They all want my D to enjoy the visit. Dad’s tentative discharge day is Monday so we might be too much for getting him settled at home. We stay at his house in one of the guest rooms. There’s so much to settle in my 10 days I’ll be there and part of me dreads it but part of me really wants to advocate for his comfort while mediating between everyone. Nobody wants my D to be exposed to too much while she’s there and she flys home alone a few days after arriving. She cried after the summer visit because of how he looks, again when I told her about the deterioration and I’m sure she will again when she sees him next. She’s never lost anyone close at an age to understand. Sorry for putting all this on here, just needed to vent somewhere.
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No, applications don’t open until June. They start interviewing juniors in the spring though. I believe this school tracks demonstrated interest, so she’s probably had some sort of file since we visited last year.
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I’m sorry. That is a lot to deal with. I hope things go better than expected and that your D enjoys her visit.
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Hi folks, wading in here for the first time and looking forward to mutual support as we navigate the next year.
I’ve posted elsewhere on CC about our search process but quick background:
S25 is an A- student in large public school in SF Bay Area. We would be a full-pay family. He is ADHD + gifted (pretty evenly, but his STEM class grades tend to be better because he tests well and sometimes struggles with more ambiguous/subjective assignments). Has a nice group of friends but is (I think) intimidated by the social dynamics of his large, diverse high school and tends to lay low outside of his circle of friends. He barely talks in class, so teachers neither worry about him nor know him. (hence getting substantive teacher recs will be like pulling teeth.) Also like pulling teeth? getting him to write or talk about himself in a substantive way. He’s very uncomfortable with vulnerability. I’m dreading the essay-writing process (and yes, we’re going to outsource the coaching of this process. There is no way he would want us reading anything he has written.)
Every year we think he’s going to figure it out and come out of his shell and finally get straight As – and every spring (not coincidentally around the time he is playing his varsity sport) the wheels fall off the bus and he discovers that some homework assignments weren’t, in fact, “optional” – or bombs a test that he forgot about – and his grades drop. But he can sit down without studying and pull a 1560 on a practice SAT (which will not help him at all in UC admissions but is a nice ego boost).
He has no idea what he wants to study in school – my sense is that something in the STEM space will be a more natural fit, although he also enjoys history and languages. He’s hoping to go to a summer robotics program at WPI and discern whether or not that sort of thing (and that sort of school) would be a good fit.
In short, he’s a typical boy with delayed social and exec function skills (no thanks to the year of online learning during the pandemic). I badly wish we had one more year for him to figure himself out before he needs to apply to schools but we’re gonna have to work with what we’ve got. (there are good reasons to think about a gap year but the advice we’ve been consistently getting is that he apply during senior year regardless of whether he intends to take a gap year.)
We did one big college tour during February break and ascertained that there are liberal arts colleges out there that he would be fine attending. His friends (who incidentally seem to have way more narrow/specific ideas of what they want to study in college, e.g. film production or wine-making) are looking at CA schools or else T20 fancy places like MIT and Harvey Mudd and Stanford. I think it is hard for him to feel different from them – less certain about what he wants to do, and obviously less equipped to apply to the elite schools that his gifted peers are visiting. I canceled our ambitious spring break tour because he was starting to seem burnt out on school and in desperate need of an actual break. I’m feeling validated in that choice by his recent interim report card.
So – that’s where we are. Any serious thinking about a list of schools is on the back burner until we know how his grades, SATs, and AP tests shake out (he’s got French, APUSH, Physics I, and AP Lang this year.) I’m also hoping that the WPI program provides clarity about whether or not he needs to apply to schools with engineering programs.
That said…
Schools currently on our radar (if engineering isn’t important): Whitman, Colorado College (he does better when he has fewer things to juggle at one time), Oberlin, Kenyon, St. Olaf, Wooster, Occidental. Depending on how far north or south his grades go, might also add Puget Sound, Kalamazoo, and a few others. People keep recommending Cornell College and Kalamazoo but gosh, they seem small. It’s probably good to keep an open mind though.
If he falls in love with engineering, we shift focus and look at places like WPI, Brandeis, Union, Santa Clara, Lafayette, Rochester, and maybe some state schools TBD. (The strong recommendation we got from his recent neuropsych evaluator was to find a smaller undergrad program where he doesn’t need to be super pushy to find opportunities and resources – hence the lack of larger state schools on our list.)
I am trying hard to be chill about this stuff because my anxiety w/r/t his grades and lack of sh*t-togetherness is demonstrably unhelpful and unappreciated by others in our family. So I may be dumping a bit of stress in here from time to time. Bear with me!
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