Highly recommend this. Have a discussion and take notes after each tour (at the time it will seem like you will remember, but you will forget and mix up a lot after a few tours). Try to ask questions like “what did you like/dislike about this school” and “is there anything that seems different about this place” and avoid ranking schools. The point of these early visits should be to help your child figure out what they are looking for.
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YES! Take notes. They will all blend together after several visits. Also, when visiting, talk to random students, pick up the school newspaper (or read it online) and taste the food.
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@jym626 made the two points I was going to when I started to read this thread. I am going to add that your child needs to own the process, not you. They should be the ones signing up for the information sessions and tours.
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The student does need to have a clear understanding of the financial parameters up front. Doing all of the work applying to colleges and getting admitted can result in a big let-down if only then the parents say that they are too expensive.
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Collegeboard has a good list of suggestions for campus visits:
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Our kids had to consult with us about the timing of these…because we had to travel to get there. And if we were going to more than one college in a region, they weren’t making the hotel reservations. Before any sessions were signed up…this family had to be on board.
But yes…once we sort of had the plans agreed on…the students did make these appointments, not the parents.
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The child should lead, but you may need to sit down next to your child and guide him/her through the process. You may need to require that your child tour potential safety and target schools. It is easy to fall in love with reach schools. You need to be the voice of reason. “Yes, MIT* is a great school, but it has a very low acceptance rate. Let’s find some other schools you like, just in case, MIT doesn’t work out.” (*substitute any school at which your child has a slim chance of acceptance and/or you would need to sell body parts to afford.)
With my children, I am very involved in the initial phases of the college search. We have a strict budget with little wiggle room. Our children do not qualify for need-based aid. I help my children find a few schools that we are reasonably sure will work financially. They decide which of these schools will be their safety school(s) before selecting additional schools.
Once they start applying, I am more hands-off. Their school is dreadful at assisting in the search process but very good at assisting with application essays. I never even saw my oldest’s essays. For that child, my role during the application cycle was to provide parental demographic information (when requested) and a credit card number. I also monitored deadlines, providing reminders as they approached.
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Certainly, I didn’t say that parents shouldn’t be involved, just that the kids have to be driving the bus at a certain point. Planning the trips to visit schools were family discussions. (planning any trips are family discussions) My spouse and I made sure that our son knew the financial parameters to start the planning, too. This discussion was easier for us because there were a couple of in-state options that we knew would work in terms of fit and finances.
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Want to emphasize the point of taking notes during college visits. My daughter found them very helpful for looking over when needing to write the “why us” supplemental essays.
And I don’t know if anyone else mentioned this but have your child set up a dedicated email to use for all the college mail so their “real” email isn’t inundated.
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You are getting a lot of good advice here, but in going through the process with S19, I learned to be wary of any “one size fits all” advice. Every kid is different, and the allocation of responsibilities between parent and child, for example, will vary accordingly. My son was not that proactive at the start, he was more focused on getting through his IB program, playing his sport and living his life, so I did a lot of the legwork in developing a list of schools for him to consider and planning visits. We started with a set of general questions about what sort of school he thought he wanted - big or small, urban or rural, etc., and that provided a starting point. The Fiske guide was mentioned above, and he used the school profiles there to whittle things down. And then when we visited schools, he didn’t want to do a lot of things that are often recommended here. He didn’t want to sit in on classes, he didn’t want to eat in the dining hall, etc. We just did the info sessions and tours and never took notes. It all worked out, he knew his school when he saw it, had a great four years and is now doing graduate work. So not to worry if you find you have a kid who’s not super into the process and could use some additional support. That being said, two things I am really glad we did was (1) insist that the Common App essay be completed over the summer before senior year, and use that essay to (2) apply to a couple of Early Action schools - having an acceptance in hand before Thanksgiving really takes a lot of the pressure off, and there are some terrific EA schools.
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Not always practical for the child to do this when travel is involved. The one to decide where to do them, yes.
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Something I didn’t do until late in the game, but recommend: If your kid is visual, consider making a spreadsheet (or draw on a whiteboard, etc.) that copies the College Kickstart categories laid out here and filling it in with your kids’ schools.
I have a few quibbles with how they set theirs up (on ours I changed “Reaches” (their light blue) to “Unlikely” (and made the background pink) and I changed “Unlikelies” to “Very Unlikely” (and made the background red), and then I made “Target” and “Likely” different shades of green), but generally think it’s useful for “bucketing” the schools, and for visually highlighting where you’re under/overindexed.
What I especially appreciate about their grid is that it adds some nuance to the idea of schools’ admit rates, and acknowledges that the odds change (somewhat) based on each student’s academic performance.
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Yes, parents will be involved with the planning for the travel. I don’t expect a HS senior to book plane tickets or hotel rooms. But signing up for the tours, once the trip has been planned, should be done by the prospective student. Once all the logistics of travel are worked out, the student uses their email to register for the tour, and should be the one to hit “submit.”
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Yes, I see a lot of kids online who seem unaware that their type of applicant (could be a matter of residency, special majors or schools or programs, sometimes pay status, etc.) and their relative qualifications for their type of applicant could be significant factors in determining whether a college is actually a true Likely or Target for them. They just go off acceptance rates, not understanding you can in fact end up in the 5-10% or whatever a college does not accept if you miscalculate.
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Two of the example colleges in their chart, CSUCI and ASU, have published automatic admission criteria, so most good students should have no uncertainty about whether they will be admitted.
For some reason, people have the idea that there are no safeties, even though there are colleges with assured admission for specified stats. If those are affordable, then they are safeties.
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That’s right. I still prefer the term “Likely” for what I see as the better connotations. But an auto-admit is in fact as likely as it gets.
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Step 1: Come join us parents of high school juniors at Parents of the HS Class of 2026 - #2533 by co2mom
Here’s my opinion about your questions. Your mileage may vary! 
Have 1 kid who went through the process last year and is finishing up freshman yr at college right now + I have a HS junior.
Most important things to prioritize junior & senior year:
- work hard, get good grades.
- be an engaged student. Participate in class. Don’t just be a house plant.
- encourage your student to explore things that interest them.
- figure out your family’s budget for college. What is the max per year that you can afford to pay?
- take your kid on some college tours, but go tour some local colleges first.
- When you go on a college tour, don’t chime in right away with your opinion on the school. Ask your kid to name 3 things they liked and 3 things they didn’t like as much. And THEN you provide some of your own feedback.
Tips for managing the emotional side of kid leaving home:
- senior yr will be emotionally hard for your kid. Expect there to be ups and downs. Every last “thing” will be emotional for them and for you.
- Be ready to be supportive, give your kid a hug, etc.
- Be ready to switch from a directive role (i.e., I’m going to do X to take your emotional distress away) to one of suggestive & supportive instead (i.e., “Have you considered doing X?”).
How involved should you be in the process w/o overstepping:
- Your kid is in the driver’s seat. You’re in the front passenger seat. Sort of like when you’re teaching them how to drive.
- With D24, I did a single 15-20 min “college session” each week. Usually on a Sunday evening. That was the one time each week when she & I would talk about college app stuff. And outside of that session, we weren’t allowed to talk about it. Because otherwise, I would drive her bananas. I set a timer and once the timer went off, whatever we talked about went on the back burner to the next week.
- this is the 1st big adult decision that your kid is going to make. So it’s an opportunity for you to guide them through what is a complex decision making process.
- If you sit back and aren’t involved at all, there are some risks to that. For example, your student could end up deciding to apply to all reach schools and get rejected everywhere. Or they could end up with no financial safety on the list, get accepted to a school that’s really unaffordable for your family, and then your kid ends up at end of senior year with no options.
- start listening to the Your College Bound Kid podcast. Episodes come out every Mon & Thurs.
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I have to agree with others who say one of the best things you can do is tune out others in terms of “how involved you should be in the process w/o overstepping.” Every child is so different and some will be able to handle the logistics of the process all on their own and others will need a lot more hand holding. You know your child best and once you let your child take the lead, you can see what they are able to handle themselves. Also every school is different, some private schools give lots of one on one support in the process and many large public schools give zero. Also if finances are an issue, parent needs to be involved to find the best deals since it’s their money. I’ve had two children go through the process so far - D22 did almost everything on her own, S24 I had to help much more in terms of organization and finding those financial safeties. The amount of involvement from parent totally depends on the child, school support, and financial concerns.
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I think this is backwards. Our student needed to know when the tours etc were available. Once we knew that, we arranged the travel and lodging. We did give dates that our family could make these college visit trips.
Our kids also needed some help understanding the distances between colleges when scheduling more than one tour in one day. Or even for the next morning. They needed to know how long it would take us to get from point A to point B.
This was a team effort. Yes, the kids did the final scheduling of the tours, but there were a lot of logistics that we did as a family first.
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All I am trying to say is your kid should be the one to hit “send” when signing up for a tour. I am not giving instructions as to how a family should schedule and book a trip.