Similarly, my C19 ended up at Mississippi State despite not just never having visited the university, but having never even stepped foot in the entire state before orientation!
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I will say that my spring visits (to the two schools where I’d been admitted) ended up reversing my preferences. And yet…in hindsight…I don’t believe that the school I ended up choosing would have actually obviously been better for me than the alternative. Both were awesome! and as an adult I have dear friends from the school I didn’t attend who would have been classmates. I like to think I’d have found my people in either location and (truth be told) it didn’t happen immediately anyway. So I think kids might want visits to feel secure in their choices, but as parents we should remember that if we’re allowing our kid to apply somewhere, that should imply that we’re willing to pay to send them there, even sight unseen.
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For visits - I agree with others that it probably makes sense to prioritize the ones your son is most excited about. I think how many you can visit depends on a lot of factors - how busy your student is, budget, distance between schools. I was very impressed that my husband and S25 managed to visit 3 schools in 3 states in 3 days over fall break. I would not have found it do-able, but they did! If you have a few close together, you might be able to make a road trip of it (or a fly-drive-fly trip) over a long weekend.
I am encouraging my S25 to take advantage of the numerous “virtual visit” type opportunities for the schools he hasn’t visited yet (which, for him, is really only about 3 or so on his list). He may want to go back and re-visit some places, but we are going to cross that bridge when we get to it. I have mentally blocked off spring break as a time for second visits as he makes his final decision.
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that feels like a bigger risk than Davidson somehow (and I say this as someone whose family farmhouse in Mississippi was a beloved childhood destination). But kudos! I think our kids are more robust than we give them credit for being, and I am a big believer in mixing it up and getting out of our bubbles, especially at a time when we are young and impressionable.
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We did a handful of visits prior to applying (maybe 4?) but we will probably still go back once more before he makes a final decision - assuming he has choices!
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Agreed. We focused our tours on possible EDs and an earlier broader “type of schools” (Boston area was great for this).
After that it was easy to build a list of schools that generally fit the bill just based on research and virtual info sessions and tours.
In the end it was also easy for us do shed the bulk and there were 3 schools to visit. I will admit to strategically scheduling the one I thought would be the winner first. After that accepted student visit she was ready to decide and we cancelled the others. I was happy to pay a little extra for those plans for the option of canceling flights and hotels.
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Speaking of visits, we are doing one tomorrow! Discover Redlands Day at the University of Redlands. D25 has been on campus a few times since her dad and I are both alumni. However, this will be a chance for her to see the campus through the lens of a prospective student.
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@goldbug Are you list people? We are list people. Because he played a spring sport, there was no possibility of visiting anywhere after he got in. I had S22 make a list of all the things he could possibly care about for each college. From the really important to the silly random things. Then he color coded them. Really important were red, medium were orange, less important green. Then he made a pro/con list for every college and wrote the things down, in their color, in the pro/con columns. Any college that had more red in the con than the pro was out. Then any college that didn’t have at least some minimum number of red items in the pro was out.
For anything that was a red or orange criterion, if he didn’t know the answer, we did some googling and searching social media (access to green space was important, access to a city or public transit was important).
Maybe work on something like that? The colors may seem like overkill, but we are visual people. He had this all written out on a giant poster size sticky note (like they use for presentations) and stuck it to his bedroom door. Just looking at the colors and columns helped him think about what he cared about.
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Yeah, chances are he is not going to love all 20 of his schools and this way he will have options no matter what bucket he ends up in at the end of the year. He will probably end up happy with 1 - 5 and it will feel great to have choices.
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Similar for D25, except hers has already expanded a bit for potential dance opportunities.
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This was true for our experience. S21’s visits were a bit different due to Covid, but he still pretty easily whittled his list of 10 choices to 4 he was most interested in (though he hadn’t wanted to express preferences much before knowing his options).
D23 had, I believe, 14 options. It felt a bit overwhelming at first since I planned, for example, a trip to Grinnell when she was admitted and wanted to consider it only to have her take it out of consideration when additional options became available the next week (trip was cancelled, plans were changed, it was fine).
One nice thing was that her options were mostly becoming clear gradually throughout the month of March, and none of the admitted student visits were until April, so she was sort of naturally shuffling favorites in her head as options became truly available to her. I supported her with some data, and she shortened her list of favorites to 5 pretty easily by the day of her last results - March 31st. (Not to say she didn’t also love others…a trip was also planned and cancelled to revisit Bowdoin; she had more than 5 that she loved and could see herself at, but she prioritized 5 of them based on initial visits to some of them, discussions with me, descriptions in books, info session webinars - especially ones with student panels…she didn’t score them with any kind of spreadsheet, though we definitely had a spreadsheet. She just gradually came to know which ones she wanted to really consider - and this was sort of clear by how much she seemed to care when the notifications of admission came in).
Having those choices also seemed to free her from the waitlist agony - she didn’t opt to be on them because she already had plenty of choices (that said, she probably would have stayed on one for her ED school, but they deferred and then denied…tough but made it easier not to be pining away for it on a waitlist).
We squeezed 4 school visits into April (2 were in MA so we combined those on a single trip). She decided she didn’t need to revisit the 5th of her favorites and could use her previous visit there to make a decision (though I think the school maybe suffered for that on her list once she started seeing others). 2 of the 4 April school visits were revisits and 2 were new visits.
In total we took 3 separate trips in April - all involved flights as she didn’t apply anywhere close to home - and managed to do 3 of the 4 on official admitted student days. We did have to revisit one on a day that was not an official admitted student day, but they still let her attend a class and go to lunch with a student. April was crazy…we had some travel issues. But it was also a good kind of overwhelming and something that she, my husband and I are glad we did. Great memories.
You certainly don’t have to do those visits, but we didn’t let the thought of them force us/her to cull the list earlier. She wanted to have some options, and we wanted to see the financial aid comparisons, so we kept the list as long as it naturally became (except when she wanted to ditch any due to truly losing interest in the school at a much earlier stage).
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Unless finances are a major consideration, there should be no “we” in this decision. It’s his decision not yours. And there’s an easy way to get you out of even the financial part: you tell your kids this is the amount of money for college, and they can keep the change or take loans for anything extra.
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IMO finances should be part of the equation (unless parents can pay full price without loans) and 18 years old isn’t mature enough to comprehend the implication of loans.
Besides, kids can only take the federal Stafford loan (total $27k spread over 4 years) in their own name. Any loan amount above the Stafford limit will be on the parent’s credit and legally the parent’s debt to repay if their child can’t/won’t. Kids literally cannot take out more than $5,500 freshmen year. The parent can.
Now I’m not saying parents should choose which college their adult child will attend. But I do think parents can/should set firm limits on what is financially responsible.
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Of course. But that’s what I mean about telling them how much money is available. That doesn’t mean you are obliged to co-sign a loan. That was never on the table.
Yeah, no. Sorry. Every family is different. “We” does not exclude our son (as I might have somehow implied) and his strong preferences will likely be dispositive – in fact, I fully expect him to lead on this – but it doesn’t exclude us either. Financial independence is what signifies complete decision-making independence in our household. YMMV.
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For what it’s worth, I do think that the better place to establish limits is in selecting the initial application list/setting the budget, which we have done, and which our parents did before us. I think letting kids do the work of applying somewhere, getting in, and getting excited about it – only to pull the rug out from under them – should only happen for surprise financial reasons. But of course many would bristle at such direct and condescending “advice” about how one is parenting. Even if it is generously offered. 
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I had posted how easy college apps can be in respons to a specific post which said that the poster didn’t think there was an ability to have an easy college app process. Note that there are many students who do in fact have an easy college app process. Many college students do not apply to highly selective schools. If one is applying to a school with basically an 80% or higher acceptance rate and one knows they are guaranteed if they meet specific criteria, there really is not the stress that students who are applying to selective schools or students who are looking for some form of funding face. I would think, for instance, many kids in states like Iowa apply to U Iowa and/or Iowa State and they are done. As I said, I knew of students who applied to their state schools and in a few weeks they knew where they were headed so their college application process was filling in a form and submitting transcripts or grades and the whole process took them no more than an hour to finish. Some can quibble that it’s not easy as perhaps there is bad wording here or there but the vast majority do find it relatively easy and google is one’s friend here plus counselors in schools will often understand these trickier parts since the form may remain the same for several years. Most of the students however didn’t even need the counselor because, yes, the form was that easy to fill in. Perhaps some of them had a friend who might have already gotten any needed help from the school counselor.
I also pointed out the application process in other countries which again often does make the process easy enough for the student to handle the work themselves without parent involvement and often no counselor involvement. Again some tricky bit might appear but usually students can work it out. The point is that there many students out there who attend these kinds of schools or community college where the app process is easy though it seems many on this board are completely unaware of these students since they are looking at selective schools which is a completely different ball game. So yes, college apps can be rather easy and indeed is for many students and again the word easy is subjective but getting one’s driver’s license or getting a passport would be more work so in my book I would call the task rather easy. The point being that there are such college apps out there - they are not the kind of application process for selective schools but these kids don’t apply to those schools.
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That’s great! The city itself is also very progressive, artsy, & fun. That area overall is lovely and there’s so much to do.
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I’m not sure anyone specifically disagrees with your fundamental point. However, as the one who posted one of the initial comments on complexity, I was specifically referring to the mind boggling requirements when applying to a variety of schools (this does not mean tippy top). Again, my D25 is applying to 7 state flagships, one “top 20” and one Ivy. In that handful of schools there are 5 different submission dates. Several are test required, one test preferred, several test optional, and at least one that is test blind. Many, but not all, require supplemental essays. There are various LoR requirements.
My point is that navigating ALL of that (without even getting to finances, etc) on your own as a 17 year old would be a challenge.
Does it have to be like that? No, and you have done. A great job of outlining that.
At our Title 1 school, those that want to apply to the state flagship are filed into a room where they sit and fill out their application in the presence of the guidance counselor and an admissions rep from the college. We send about 10 or so a year there. That process is easy peasy and the kids get a response back in about a week.
A similar process happens for the handful of regional colleges.
Or, as you point out, you can easily apply to a number of CSUs or UCs.
It need not be mind boggling, but for some, it’s easier to navigate the purchase of a cell phone plan.
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There was one poster who did disagree when I pointed out that I knew many students who found the process easy but there were two differences to posters here - they were not applying to selective schools and they did not need funding. The poster found that rather questionable so I mentioned perhaps CSU would be an example of what might be considered easy enough but I am not familiar with the CSU application so I could be wrong about its level of difficulty however one poster did say that his son’s friend applied and it took him about 45 minutes so maybe it would fit the definition of easy but regardless, there are other state applications which would fit that definition at least in my book. I don’t consider the UC app easy given the PIQ questions though the one thing going for it is that you get to apply to up to 9 schools just by adding additional app fees which is much easier than applying to 9 selective schools. Also I am not suggesting applying to all state schools would be easy. For some state schools, the application process is itself quite a bit of work such as the UC system or the Texas application system.
Right and I would not disagree with you here on the process your student is undertaking as being difficult for kids and frankly difficult for adults as well. There is ED/ED2, EA/EA2, REA/SCEA, priority dates, rolling admissions just for different admission types. It’s beyond daunting. Then you can have several essays for each college and then sometimes essays for honors colleges and/or essays for scholarships. It’s both a lot of work and one needs to be organized to manage all of the different due dates and requirements ie. what testing is needed at which school.
I would think the American system for applying to selective schools is likely one of the hardest college application systems probably in the world to navigate. There are easier systems to navigate not just in other countries but even within America such as the example of students applying to only their regional state schools so I don’t think it needs to be this difficult in order to select students for these selective colleges. There are selective colleges in other countries and they have nowhere near the Byzantine maze students applying to selective colleges in America need to navigate. Frankly, I am a strong proponent of reforming the current system as the complexity just seems to be yet another factor that favors those with the socioeconomic means to navigate the current system either by attending a school with counselors that are familiar with the system or hiring help etc. It is extremely hard for a student who doesn’t have access to these resources and who does not have parents that are familiar with the current system or have the time/energy to learn it so they can help their children out with the process.
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