S26 is starting to think about specific schools. He’s looking at smaller schools that don’t have a national reputation, but have some specific things he wants (e.g. a great reputation in a certain major, a specific kind of music).
Over spring break, my father has offered to take him, his younger brother, and a middle school aged cousin on a road trip, and they plan to stop at one school for a tour. My sister is pushing for them to tour a nearby top 20 school as a way to "motivate her kid.
The top 20 school is well beyond S26’s reach. I worry that seeing it back to back with the smaller, less fancy, school isn’t going to help the smaller school shine. I also feel like there is a message that the school he’s interested in isn’t “good enough”. I also think middle school is really early to be touring schools.
I am trying to decide whether it’s worth trying to talk my Dad out of this, and if they do go, whether telling my kid he should skip the tour would make things better or worse.
Please do not tour schools that are truly out of reach.
For motivation, which I agree can be helpful, focus on match schools. They can always expand slightly reachier later.
Also: is he in middle school? Then it is too early. If by S26 you mean 10th grade, then this is great timing.
I wouldn’t necessarily assume that the T20 is going to wow your student more than the smaller schools that are a better fit. For example, my student was much more impressed with Clarkson (one of her safety schools) over CMU which she hated so much she didn’t apply.
That said, it seems like since your S26 is the one closest to actually needing to apply to colleges, that he should get to pick the school to visit, not your sister.
I think it really depends on the personality of the kid. Some kids will be wowed by a fancy school to the point they won’t be happy with anything else, and others won’t. It’s like how some people couldn’t be satisfied with a Chevy after seeing a Rolls Royce, but others will just say “Remember that funny time we all went on a test drive in that bougie car?”
My kid is in 10th grade. The cousin whose mother wants him to tour the top school as “motivation” is in middle school. I think his mother is nuts but she is allowed to make crazy decisions for her own kid. Except that in this case her decision impacts my kid.
I do also have a middle schooler who will probably tag along on whatever tours they take. He is curious and I’m sure he’ll want to go.
I don’t think he’s going to want to go to the specific school. I just think that it’s setting up a weird dynamic. I feel as though my sister is saying that the school he’s interested in isn’t even good enough for her kid to tour, so she wants to counteract it with a “better” school. That feels like a lousy message for S26, and for my younger kid. It’s also a lousy message for her own kid, but I have no control there.
I think you’re thinking about it exactly correctly, and that you should make the request to your dad that the touring be limited to the school your son is interested in. Your sister has years yet where she can put undue pressure on her unmotivated kid; she shouldn’t get to tweak out your own family’s (healthy) process in the meantime.
I would find the “right” school to visit. Our first was Princeton - on a family trip. No chance.
Cool college town, midsize, lots of trees - it was the type of school.
Many schools are “similar” in type.
You are looking for size, geography, urban vs. suburban vs. rural, etc. type things - so you can figure out the kind of campus one wants.
When one first develops a list, they think they know what they want - but they (in this case) are looking at schools strong in majors - but not places I’d want to spend four years, day after day, environmentally.
So you want to get an array of campus types and environs - some may be rural, some may be urban. Some may be in warm or cold. Some may be brick or stone. Some may have palm trees and others evergreens. Some may have big stadiums or 20 dining halls while others have a field and maybe one dining hall, etc.
The name isn’t relevant when starting - you’re looking to find comfort in various themes to then be able to determine later.
So any visits at the beginning - are good visits - to help give exposure to campus types.
Dd21 went in college tours with my sister and her cousin, just so she could see different types of schools. The majority were schools she had decent shots at (higher stars than her cousin), but schools we couldn’t afford (Richmond, Wake). She knew going in that she wouldn’t be applying. Turns out, COVID hit a few months later (when we planned on touring less expensive options), got the last tour of our state flagship, and that was that. I don’t think any college visits are a waste, and we’ve seen some beautiful affordable campuses.
I think I would agree with you if the ages were reversed. Or if they were the same age. My younger kid is the same age, and I could absolutely imagine a trip where one kid wants to look at TCNJ or Duquesne and the other at Princeton or CMU.
Starting when my kids were in middle school, we would stop and visit – but not officially tour – a convenient college campus on family vacations. It was not really a “we want you to apply here” message but more along the lines of “hey, here’s a neat college campus; in a few years you will want to be thinking about where you want to go to college.”
The formal touring started when my kids were in the Spring Semester of their respective sophomore years in high school.
We really did not do many college tours/visits for any of our three kids before they were accepted. I do recall a couple with our oldest when the younger 2 (3 and 6 years younger, respectively) tagged along. Really funny what the younger ones appreciate at a campus. Cool vending machines, the pool was nice, thought the Bruin statue at UCLA was awesome.
Honestly can’t imagine taking a middle schooler to tour a college on purpose. Mine just got dragged along with their sibling…we made it fun for them. But honestly no value in my opinion.
Edited to Add: Agree with @gandalf78 that there were times we happened upon a campus when kids were younger…lots of their sports events and concerts. But not any formal tour or big discussion about options until much later.
When my kids were young, we visited Harvard, MIT, UCLA, UCB, Stanford and where ever there was a school nearby our family trip.
Besides the classrooms themselves, most of these schools have pretty buildings and rich history. It’s like touring a museum or the zoo. You have zero chance getting the stuff inside a museum or zoo, but visiting does have value.
I agree with you that toxicity is the problem but I am not sure what avoiding it looks like in this situation, other than my sister not communicating her disdain for a school my kid might apply to and it is too late for that.
I don’t think a T20 will necessarily wow someone over a smaller school. Kids resonate with all sorts of things, and it’s not like the school will have T20 plaques all over the place (or I really hope they don’t).
The point now is to think about fit… what kind of campus does your child like? Big, small, rural, urban, smaller classrooms, research facilities, etc? Visiting schools can be very helpful to figure out what your kid will like. Let’s say your son does really like the T20 school, but it’s not a realisitic choice. The question to be asked is what about it does our son like? Location? History? Architecture? and so on… you can find similar attributes at other less expensive or more attainable schools.
I don’t see the harm in your kid going to see more schools. Just make sure you don’t make a big deal about the “prestige” university. It’s another school with some cool attributes but that may or may not be a good fit for your kid.
My kids saw rural, snowy schools which confirmed they wanted urban, regardless of climate…and pristine suburban campuses which then reaffirmed they wanted urban.
If your kid hates Columbia because it’s noisy and crowded, that’s valuable. GW is easier to get in to…as is BU, but they are all urban. As long as you don’t make a big deal about rankings and admissions rates, your son will approach the visits as learning opportunities, not “tryouts”.
Unless the grandfather is an alum of the school and wants to show his grandchildren around his alma mater, I agree that the high school student should select the school for a formal tour. Now, if they are just driving through the campus or stopping to visit a museum or other venue on campus, then grandfather should decide.
If your father decides to humor your sister, visiting one out of reach school won’t hurt your son. Encourage your son to share with you things he liked and disliked about the school. Use that information to help you find better fits to visit over the summer.
Unfortunately, the disdain factor exists even outside of family. With social media, there is this heightened competition of who got in where.
I would reiterate to my kid, regardless of this trip, that the chase for prestige is meaningless. He should focus on the best fit school for him. Most of the people who are enamoured of those highly competitive schools are likely to face disappointment anyway.
If they have time to visit both, I’d encourage it. Not from the ‘this one is better, aspire to go there!’ perspective, but with an eye towards different types of college settings. My older has played ball at the facilities of some of the local tiny colleges, and we have cheered at sporting events at some of the big Power 5 schools. We have driven through colleges when visiting an area for other reasons. When it came time to apply to college, one of kid’s criteria was ‘no urban campuses - they are too noisy and chaotic’. When we visited a few campuses with kid’s desired major after junior year, kid looked to see if there was a good area to run in the evenings that would be reasonably quiet. Without visiting several schools, kid wouldn’t have known to look for that. And, many kids aren’t impressed by prestige. One of kid’s good friends has gotten in to a safety and then applied to a bunch of lottery schools. My own kid with similar stats is looking at solid state Us that offer the desired major and research or internship opportunities…and a reasonable place to run in the evenings. We know other, similar, kids who chose a small in-state public because they can get massive amounts of merit there. Hopefully your son can look at other colleges with an eye towards things that he likes and use them to help narrow the list of schools that otherwise meet his criteria. My kid’s ‘no urban campus’ rule saved us from having to visit several schools that otherwise might have looked like good fits.