D18 has been on waaaay too many visits! In her defense, we live in the northeast, and there are just so many great options. Many were drive throughs on our way to friends/relatives/vacation, etc. She’s applying to 12 and has visited all but one of those.
DS18 - American University (tour & Preview Day) George Washington (tour), University of Kansas (3 camps), Illinois State (1 camp), & University of Missouri (multiple trips as it is DH’s alma mater - nothing formal). He is apply to AU - ED, GW, Drake & Truman State.
DD16 - Trinity U in San Antonio (Tour), planning tours for Christopher Newport, High Point, Furman and Rollins, and we will be stopping by Elon, but they are on break when we will be touring the South East
Visited 10. First was Northeastern just because her best friend had visited and loved it and we happened to be in Boston for a family event. She hated it; it just was not the right kind of school for her. Second was Wesleyan because her aunt graduated from there and she also had an older friend who attended and loved it. It wasn’t her cup of tea.
The rest of the visits were more “serious” visits to schools that really interested her. We saw Kenyon, College of Wooster, Connecticut college, Vassar, Grinnell, Mmacalester, Dickinson, and Muhlenberg. We made a point of visiting all three f them when classes were in session because many of them required considerable travel, so we really wanted her to be able to get a good feel for the schools. It made mom and dad happy when one of the schools we flew to was where she wound up - at least it felt like we didn’t waste our money or time!
We did invest a lot of time, money, and effort into visiting schools and I know that’s not feasible for everyone, nor does everyone feel it is necessary. But for our daughter and our family, the visits were really helpful.
I hadn’t counted yet, I suppose I should. HS class of 2019.
We’ve driven through Towson, Bryn Mawr, UM College Park, U of Delaware, UM Frostburg, Goucher
We’ve visited Franklin & Marshall, St. John’s Maryland, Swarthmore, St. Mary’s, Stanford, UC Santa Cruz, Temple
Plans to visit UVA and William and Mary in the next few months. Next summer we’re doing a road trip to New England, which colleges we visit depend on how well DS19 does on the ACT and SAT. If he knocks them out of the park we’ll visit Yale & Vassar, if he doesn’t do so well, we’ll drop down a tier.
@taverngirl That’s going to be us. We are in PA and S19 wants to stay within two hours of home. There are a lot of schools that meet this requirement and offer what he’s interested in. Some visits will be drive-throughs. Some will involve tours. But it will be a lot. Because why not visit if the schools are so close to home?!?!?! LOL!
No official visits, applied to one school. On, Wisconsin!
So far, S19 has visited University of Chicago, Beloit, Kenyon, Denison, Oberlin, Grinnell, Macalester, and Carleton. We will see William and Mary, Davidson, Wake Forest, and Richmond in the springtime. S19 also wants to see Dickinson but, since it’s a flight from home and it would be the only school in PA, I think we may hold off until after acceptances. We have two or three additional schools that are reaches (and far away) so we will wait on those as well.
All of our visits have been planned visits with info sessions and tours and, in some cases, he has sat in on classes and we’ve eaten in the cafeterias. I highly recommend trying to go when students are there and hitting a class. He definitely feels like he knows those schools better than the others. So far, I’m glad we’ve been seeing schools. It’s going to help S19 narrow things down and he will have an easier time writing supplements since he’s seen the schools in person.
D19 has visited 4 colleges so far. We plan on three more during the Thanksgiving break and possibly one or two more during winter break (though may not be useful because few students will be around).
She immediately crossed one off the list. Has no real interest in the second, though it isn’t an immediate no. Mainly because it’s too far from home (we were visiting while on a family vacation). Third one is of slight interest and she might apply. Fourth college (Rice) is probably her first choice, though it’s been her first choice all along.
D16 (excellent student, athlete) saw a couple local state schools just to learn how to take a tour and then we went through about 5-6 within 4 hour range and two out in PA that were largely selected for her sport. Chose one of the PA schools.
S18 (indifferent student) looked at a couple local state schools and is headed for trade school instead. Part of me is worried how life will look when he’s 37 and not seeing a ton of room for change, but mostly it’s a good fit and it’s a relief that the first twenty years seem covered.
D21 (excellent student, athlete) has had her eye on a specific service academy since seventh grade. Not sure how we’re going to handle this one yet.
S18: visited nine. At the end of junior year he planned to apply to five including two Texas auto-admits. Then he stayed on campus while attending several weeks of coding camps at his top choice (one of the auto-admits) and on the car ride home from campus asked if we would make him apply anywhere else. Since he was guaranteed admission and likely to get a large scholarship, H and I agreed that it was fine with us if S applied to just the one school if that’s what he wanted. S stuck with his plan and has already accepted his offer of admission from his school.
We did, UNC - Chapel Hill, UVA, Princeton, U Penn, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, Georgia, Emory, Columbia, U South Carolina - Honors College, Georgetown, and NYU. We did a couple of those twice…lol
@StPaulDad - Totally off topic but, skilled tradespeople are hard to find and at the company I work for incoming college graduates make less than most of our trades people. A few apprentices make less, but they will quickly move up and they don’t have college debt. Right now I am paying a fee of 20% of the yearly salary to a recruiting firm to help me find specific experienced trades people. I don’t even put money towards advertising when I post “white” collar jobs because we get a flood of applicants. I think you will be surprised at the job opportunities that are available to skilled tradespeople.
My buddy from my neighborhood has a son going to trade school to be an electrician… the kid is …well, let’s just say, not very smart. He failed many courses in HS, and graduated a year late. This past summer he was making $55 an hour!
I worked for 18 years in a white collar job, and the most I ever made was $81K… This kid made more per hour than I ever did… and the dad says he will start at $180K after trade school, and will always be in demand. ( The dad is a contractor who knows a lot about different trades )… Point is, IMO, for enough money, “I” can do just about any job… maybe your son could too.
BTW, I was a machinist after going to vo-tech in the late 70’s. I made $8 an hour. My other buddy has a kid graduating from machine shop this year and he has a $40 per hour “promise of a job” lined up for next summer.
AbsDad and sahmkc
Thanks for the thoughts. He was actually pretty convincing when he came to us with the idea, and as I said, it’s a good fit. I’m not really joking much when I said the next 20 years should be fine. He wasn’t a bad student, math notwithstanding, so it kind of came out of left field. Ah well, they’re all different. Let’s keep watching and see how they grow.
We visited Stanford, UC Santa Cruz, UC Santa Barbara, planned UCSD but skipped it; visited Bowdoin, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Georgetown, William & Mary, planned Duke but skipped it (too hot at the time); QMP had friends at large public universities in our region, so we didn’t really “visit” them, although they had been visited previously. This was about the realistic limit on the number of places to see (for us).
Incidentally, when I was picking a graduate school, I visited multiple places and picked a place I had not seen.
I’m the worst of all. When in Boston, we drove by Harvard and MIT. Son spent summer at Duke, but didn’t apply there. Same at another college. On a teen tour, he saw Stanford and UCLA, etc.
So, 2 days before winter break, as a junior, he gets forced into applying for colleges. Fortunately, he had gone to a Caltech meeting in Miami, so could answer the question Why Caltech? So, applications were done quickly, based on programs. I took off a week to fly around the country and visit those where he was accepted. It sounds naive, but when he applied to such great colleges like Yale, etc., I told him the schools were so terrific, the environment must not be so bad. We never thought about dorms or food, tho did consider direct flights.
He at least visited most campuses for grad school. He was critical of the environment and the profs. Quite a difference.
S17 visited 6 colleges each one in a different state. On he visited twice before applying. The one he chose he visited one more time after he was accepted but before he decided. He applied to all but one he visited. We wanted to go to three more but he decided he didn’t want to.
Kid 1: Tufts, Hopkins, Brandeis, BU, Northeastern, U Mich, Carnegie Mellon, Rutgers, Lehigh
Twin1: Tufts, Hopkins, Penn, Princeton, Cornell, Lehigh, Rutgers
Twin 2: Same plus Carnegie Mellon, Swarthmore. Both going on more soon: probably Northeastern, Lafayette…
Kid 4: Went on everything with Kid 1 when she was 13, but will have to start the whole process over again soon.
One and only kid:
Skidmore
URochester
Hobart William Smith
Syracuse
Ithaca
SUNY Binghamton
Clark
U New Hampshire
Bates
Bowdoin
Fordham
NYU
Hartwick
Hamilton
St. Lawrence
Son visited 8 different colleges; each visit was a separate trip, all were within a half-day’s drive from our home. In one case, his first visit was unofficial, and we later went back for the official info session and tour in January after he had applied. In another case, he was tagging along with his girlfriend but had no interest in the school himself, so that might not have been registered as an “official visit” for him even though he was in the info session and on the tour. (The “official-ness” of the visit being important because of “demonstrated interest” potentially being a factor in admissions decisions.) He applied to 5 of the 8, was admitted to three of the 5, returned for “admitted student days” at 2 of the three, and chose 1 of the 2.