Interesting to read the different dynamics with Dads and tours, etc…
My wife has expressed her preference of letting me organizing tours and helping our daughter with the research for each of the schools.
I’ve actually been on all of the tours thus far without creating any sorts of ‘collateral damage’. For the most part, wife and I asked most of our questions in the admissions talks before the on-foot tours began. At this point, we’re pretty much done with those kinds of questions as most of them have been answered repeatedly.
When we’ve done the walking tours our daughter has actually walked closely with the guides and has no issues asking questions herself. Again, now that she’s been on several tours, she has a feel for the climate of each tour.
A couple upcoming events for us…
Daughter has signed up for ‘High School Junior Day’ at one of her top picks over Spring Break. We bring her there early in the morning and they take her on various tours, talks and meet & greets for almost 8 hours. Parents (supposedly) have their own sessions. We meet up at the end. She’s really looking forward to it.
The high school counseling office is hosting an event this week for interested parents/guardians to come in to discuss college planning, resources and processes. Students don’t attend, it’s parents/guardians only. Though we’ve met and discussed plans with the counselor numerous times already, we’re still looking forward to attending.
She loved everything about Elon except the location and the fact that students do not really go to the football games. She really wants fun campus culture and currently where we live it is a small town where the only thing to do is go to parties and she wants other options for socializing. She is still applying and realizes she may have to make some adjustments to what she wants once she knows what her actual options are. Both my husband and I love Elon.
Class of 25 parent who occasionally floats in here, chiming in re: the other parent on the tour. Last year when S25 and I did most of our visiting colleges, just he and I went. It worked out better with my schedule than my spouse’s, and I’m the parent that S25 travels better with (we just tend to have the same vibe for when to get food, when to follow directions, when to head out on our own) plus I’m the parent doing most of the college info organizing and collating. And that went fine, great even. We had a fantastic parent-son trip.
I was careful to update my spouse and to try to make sure that he didn’t feel left out, but I suspect I didn’t do a great job. This last weekend we went (all three of us - S25, me and spouse) on an admitted student’s visit. And spouse had All The Questions for the admissions folks, the people leading different info sessions etc. And it really stressed out S25. Partly because the questions felt like a waste of time in some regards (like anyone who had done any research or heard any other info programming would know the answer) and partly because spouse was really turning the focus on him and his niche interests, which weren’t the same as what S25 was trying to achieve from the trip.
So moral of this story, maybe don’t wait until the admitted students trip to bring a spouse for the first time. It turned our “see the details and weeds of things and figure out if this is the right fit for you!” trip into something else.
And then, in an effort to mitigate what was happening and keep my son happy and focused on what he wanted to focus on, we just kept ditching spouse - which made spouse unhappy. Like, ok, you want to go wander around the CS building because that’s interesting to you? Fine. That’s not S25’s prospective major or school. You go ahead and wander, we’re going to the planned lunch. And you want to talk to the ROTC people at the activities fair? Fine. S25 isn’t interested in ROTC, so we’re going to go ahead to the bookstore now and shop for some swag. It wasn’t the best approach, but it was all I could think to do in the moment when my kid was looking really disappointed and frustrated at what should’ve been a fun and focused on him trip.
This won’t work at a smaller school / a school with only one tour group, but if you’re touring a school with multiple groups departing from the admissions office, one trick is to split up and have the parents and students go with different tour guides “so we can get a more comprehensive view of the school, and can then compare notes afterwards”. (Bonus trick: One of the notes that can be compared afterwards could be “Yeah there was this one dad who wouldn’t stop asking questions and embarrassing his kid. So glad that didn’t happen on MY tour!”)
Mine was completely indifferent up until about a week ago. And she’s a top student, very independent / happy / involved with activities. But when I asked for about the millionth time if she had any schools yet that she wanted to visit over April break she said “I don’t know. Why don’t YOU pick some out?” Uh…I’m not the one attending college come fall 26? But, I figure visiting any campus is better than visiting no campuses at this point, and we live near some truly excellent colleges and universities. So I signed her up for tours at 4 of them within a day’s drive. Hopefully that will get the process rolling. She has older siblings in college and loving it. Could just be a phase meant to make parents insane…
Sometimes kids are focused on what they’re doing and overwhelmed by the choices – so they need you to get the ball rolling. And that’s okay! Report back on what she thinks.
My D26 had much the same impression! What she liked most about it was she felt like she could pursue a lot of different interests, and no one thing was so intense to the exclusion of everything else. She loved the study-abroad focus. There are some fantastic dorm and LLC options.
BUT, yeah. It’s really kind of in the middle of nowhere. She’d prefer a small city – or at least a cute, walkable town with shops and restaurants – and Elon has neither.
And even though the marching band seemed a manageable size and fun, it’s not fun to be in marching band if no one actually goes to the games.
Then, too, there wasn’t a major that was the perfect fit. The closest was maybe communication design with a minor in game design, but that’s not exactly what she’s looking for. We’ve seen three other programs that are much closer. So, she’ll keep Elon on her list as a backup for now, but it probably won’t be her focus.
Of all the tours we took for D24 (Vanderbilt, Rice, Brown, Amherst, U Mich, UF, Boston College, BU, UT Austin, SMU), the best one was SMU.
It was fantastic. Super well organized, not the same canned, cliche boring talking points “There are so many clubs - including one for Taylor Swift!” yawn
D24 ultimately chose Rice but the SMU tour was by far the best.
We felt like that about the Furman tour! They really pulled out all the stops – including driving us around in golf carts and giving us fresh chocolate chip cookies at the end, plus teaching us the chant, “FU all the time!”
But my D22 ultimately chose Rice as well. And the student who led our tour ended up being her O-week advisor and one of her favorite people.
We’ve explored UT Dallas because it’s one of the full-ride national merit schools, which my D26 is very likely to get.
I can’t quite get a vibe without visiting, but it seems deeply nerdy (which would be okay for my kid) – but I don’t know if the pep band is really enough for her. I don’t think of “school spirit” when I think of UT Dallas.
They do have a speech language pathology masters program with characteristics that could be appealing for my D22, who is considering that path. So, not off our radar yet!
My husband works in computer science with a bunch of college professors. I honestly think he was looking for a friend of a friend. He wasn’t interested in the actual TOUR, but just walking around the building. Which was sufficiently weird to bug my kid. And with the ROTC people he seemed to be chatting about his time in the service. Which, ok, but NOT RELEVANT. It’s like, by not having the opportunity to participate in these events before, and not having done any for our older child (COVID time) or himself back in the day, he just didn’t know what to do or what’s normal. Either way, because he didn’t have a chance to ask the “stupid” questions, or assuage his curiosity before, he was doing it then, when it REALLY needed to not be about him. (Also, this was just last weekend, so uppermost in my mind.) I don’t know how I could’ve managed this better, but something could’ve and should’ve been different, even if it was just me talking with him about how our son likes to do visits, what S25s expectations/needs/goals were for the visit etc.
We did tours as part of our family vacations. We would do something fun the weekend before and the weekend after, and then tours M-F. We really enjoyed ourselves! So much so that if I’m visiting a place where there is a college near by, I’ll also try to do a walk around the campus even though we are on the other side ; )
We haven’t visited UTD either. I agree with you that at least through reading the Internet tea leaves, the school does seem super nerdy, which would work well for my kid. And all of their dorm rooms are singles, which is pretty nice.
It’s only an hour away from where D24 is going to college, so that’s a plus.
I think it’ll end up coming down to U of A, Tulsa, and UT-San Antonio. Hard to tell online whether UTSA is more of a commuter school or not. I think my kid is going to need a college that isn’t mostly commuter students.
S26 came back from his Chicago trip and showed us a few pics he even managed to remember to buy gifts. He enjoyed the nightlife they went to jazz clubs and famous restaurnts but was very critical of the city.
-It’s the ugliest city he’s ever been to (not sure how it beats out NJ suburbs imo)
-it’s all sky scrapers
-it’s old/dirty
-the subway needs to be updated
So Chicago is def out for going to school, he wants somewhere warm in so cal. He’s also starting to feel the stress, AP exams, SAT, school concerts and summer internships he has a lot on his plate. Can’t say he’s handling it well, he’s been snapping at his sister and everyone else this week. We have a vacation coming up so hopefully he can relax a bit.
We have also visited Elon (my mom lives relatively close). Beautiful campus, but too rural for my city gal. A friend of mine has a theatre kid there and has been happy.
Oh no! He must not have been in the right places….. Yes, the loop is skyscrapers, but Chicago is truly a city of neighborhoods. The lake and parks are beautiful, the food is top notch, and it is home to the best ballpark in the US. (We live in the city of Chicago lol)
