Good evening,
My husband raised this question tonight and so I turned to those who have all the answers! If we are so fortunate to have options in the spring, does anyone know if schools will allow your child to spend the night with a current student to get a better sense of the school? It seems as though most revisit days are just for a portion of the day. Thanks.
That’s a good question. I don’t know the answer. But I’m sure this would be a good question to ask at one of the revisit days.
Some do. Look on their sites under visit or search for “overnight”.
I believe that an overnight stay is part of the revisit experience at Thacher (or at least it was 2 years ago). I have heard of accepted students staying overnight with (good) friends at other schools. Although not an “official” visit, these were done with the blessing of the admissions department.
Spending the night seems overkill to me. Spending the day and staying for dinner I can see. My child was invited to spend the day at two of the schools we are applying to which was very helpful. Being in the classes, eating lunch and walking around with students was valuable. I don’t think an overnight has much value in the decision making unless the child is worried about Boarding in general.
When we were going through this with my older daughter I was curious about this, too.
But what you have to consider are the logistics for the school. Say a school has 400 students, all of them boarders. So the admitted class arrives on campus in Spring…assuming the frosh class is about 75 students (to allow for growth between frosh/soph and then soph/junior years), and the school has a 50% yield. So that’s about 150 admitted kids who can visit. Assuming only 120 make the trip and there are 2 revisit days…that’s still an influx of 60 kids on each revisit day.
So that’s 15% more students than the campus is designed for (in terms of beds, seats, meals, etc.) Where do you put them? And how do you do it so as not to totally disrupt the flow of the school for the already matriculated students?
My point here is that while it would be nice for schools to do this, for the most part, it is unrealistic to expect that they would.
^ this
St. Andrews (DE) used to invite siblings or legacies to stay overnight as recently as three years ago, during the fall. The school has discontinued that practice now. There are no overnights in the spring for the accepted students. Years ago I asked for one of those at a MAPL school and was turned down with the explanation that an exception would be a slippery slope that they were unprepared, logistically, to accept. You could always ask, though . . .
@Center, thanks for your comment. I have to disagree with “overkill.” The idea behind spending the night is not “nervousness over boarding”, which for the record, DS has none of…It’s more about experiencing the environment in an unscripted fashion, seeing how the kids interact, meeting other kids, etc…I am not saying that the “revisit days” are insignificant – not at all – but they are clearly designed to “sell and swoon”…
@SevenDad, thanks for your comment. I totally agree that logistically, it would be very difficult for schools to pull off overnights and you make great points. For what it’s worth, I was told by a current parent at one of the schools, we are applying to, that her DS spent the night with a friend (with the admissions office’s blessing) – sort of a hybrid approach, I guess.
My daughter spent the night in a dorm, hosted by the daughter of a colleague of mine. She did not have a positive experience and was disappointed by the behavior of some of the girls in the dorm who didn’t get along. Totally turned her off, and she decided then and there that she was not going to attend that school even if it was the only acceptance she received. It is a great, well-known school… sometimes the brief “snapshot” that kids get from spending just one class day (or night) leaves an unfortunate impression. I think that can be the case at any school, any time.