Visit Colleges Before or After Acceptance?

HarvestMoon1
Sun, 12 Apr 2015 03:05:26 +0000

My H and I visited 10 schools between the 2 of us with our D. I have to say that I really enjoyed those trips and we did try to add in some leisure when there was the time and opportunity. Looking back now, for us 9 of those trips were unnecessary. D was accepted early to her first choice school and then withdrew all pending apps and did not submit the ones that were due January 1. Many people find themselves in this exact situation. So if I had it to do over again with this particular child, I might consider only visiting her first and second choice schools and then those schools where demonstrated interest is taken into consideration by the adcoms. But then hindsight is always 20/20 and how is one to know how things will go in the early round?

I think with some schools it might make sense to wait until acceptances are out. We may do things a bit differently with our second child whose school visits beginning this summer.