<p>Since your dad seems to be coming from about the same place I am, just maybe a little more hard-core about it, let me tell you what would convince me:</p>
<p>– First off, acknowledge that you understand his fears (that, for example, something will rub you the wrong way and you’ll decide you don’t like Harvard), and assuring him that you’ll respect his experience and insight, and that you aren’t going to over-value superficial things or anecdotal evidence</p>
<p>– Tell him exactly what you are looking to find out, and how you’re going to go about gathering the information, and how you’re going to evaluate it. What difference will it make? Treat it like a proposal for research funding – which includes convincing the decisionmaker that your research is likely to produce valuable results that will advance science, etc.</p>
<p>– Remind him that you’re his child and he didn’t raise a dumb kid. The point is to be smart, not stupid. Flatter him. He’s disrespecting himself if he thinks you are going to act like an idiot.</p>
<p>– Use all your edges. If you don’t know how to manipulate your father by now to get him to agree with something rational you want, you need more education than any university is going to provide.</p>
<p>To my mind, not that odd. There are hundeds if not thousands of schools with decent English departments but only a few that have top-notch specialists on say, Christopher Marlowe; dozens of schools with good math departments, but only a few with great experts on some arcane math subfield (have not gotten that jargon down pat yet). It narrows the field very considerably.</p>
<p>I ended up at a school I’d never visited - just had an old prospectus, vague knowledge of the city, and some people thinking highly of my department. It all worked out fine in the end :)</p>
<p>I don’t know if this would work, but…the OP might try to come up with a list of things that (s)he wants to know about various colleges that can’t be found out over the internet. Put some thought into it. What is there you need to know that can ONLY be determined by visiting? Don’t come up with a generic list. It needs to be things that are important to you.</p>
<p>Marite, good point about suitability of departments. Personally, I’m also having to grapple with the notion that “fit” is more elusive and rankings and prestige are valid for grad school.</p>
<p>btw, as a side comment to another thread, I’m bemused that D loves proofs-based mathematics so much. I’m also bemused that one can get a Math degree without a course in differential equations…it just seems, so, well…a crime against Nature.</p>
<p>Re:diff eqs. I don’t know if they are a separate course or not. S did not have diff eqs when he took Linear Algebra. He struggled a bit in his introductory physics class and in his mathematical probability class (both of which he was auditing) but claims that he’d mastered diff eqs by the time the two classes were over. </p>
<p>yeah, some people just love proofs and others don’t. </p>
<p>I just talked to a young woman, who would be a great fit for a top graduate department in a midwestern university; but she swears she does not want to go there and did not apply. She’s applied and been admitted to two East Coast universities neither of which are a great fit academically. What can one say?</p>
<p>Computational diff eq and linear algebra are de-emphasized in theoretical curricula, and the noncomputational version is very terse. So people in physics and engineering see a very different story from the mathematicians. At the graduate level the theoretical side blossoms in various directions, each of which is a semester (or several years long) course of its own.</p>
<p>I think this whole discussion brings up a point about college selection in general.</p>
<p>Everyone likes to think that there is ONE perfect school out there for them, almost a magical match. However, I think the point that college visits bring up is that students are adaptable and can be happy at several different schools, so it is not that crazy to think that someone could show up at a school without having seen it and enjoy his or her experience there. </p>
<p>However, I disagree that college visits are overrated. As a student who was deciding to apply somewhere early, I found absolutely enormous value in my visits.</p>
<p>My best recommendation is to COME INFORMED. A college visit will be fairly useless if you know absolutely nothing about the school. You should only be suspect of the information you receive if you do not come prepared because then you are forced to believe what they tell you. </p>
<p>I personally liked collecting newspapers, event brochures, things like that, to see what was really going on on campus, what sort of people were there, just the way the college “ticked”. I found out many things about different schools actually staying there that I would have never gotten from a book, which is precisely why you have to read up on the school before coming there so that you are receptive to this sort of “insider info”. Of course you have to take everything on your stay with a grain of salt, but there is nothing like actually being there and experiencing a day in the school for yourself.</p>
This paragraph should be part of a permanent compilation of advice. One of the purposes of visits is to confirm, refute, and cross-check information and opinion acquired earlier in the process. Everything from classroom styles to drinking culture to “Is X a problem,” with a wide variety of X’s.</p>
<p>Two of D’s questions about her ultimate college choice were “Is the town so small that it will drive me nuts?” (No) and “Is the social culture such that I–both moderate and straight–will be made to feel out of place here?” (No). There were suggestions from several directions that one or both could be problematic…fortunately, investigation–and investigation that could only be done by personal experience–yielded the result “No problem.” Other students will have other X’s for different colleges.</p>
<p>I’ve just skimmed the thread, but I haven’t seen this angle posted.</p>
<p>An overnight visit in April can be VERY helpful in easing the concerns that may bubble beneath the surface about going off to college in September. It will give you a taste of the school and of college life, so that the following months won’t be all about the great unknown.</p>
<p>JHS!! I’m ROTFLOLMAO, etc., as you have advised the OP:</p>
<p>“-- Use all your edges. If you don’t know how to manipulate your father by now to get him to agree with something rational you want, you need more education than any university is going to provide.”</p>
<p>You can take the boys out of Newark, but…</p>
<p>Anyways, crouton, reread Post #41. Sometimes, your best advice comes from those iin most similar circumstances. </p>
<p>One of my kids (under age l8) is angling to go overseas alone, w/ saved money, just throw himself onto a plane and land there to see where life takes him… he claims he doesn’t read CC but his strategy is right out of JHS’ post here. </p>
<p>And I know my son will prevail, too, that’s the bite.</p>
<p>I agree post #41 is terrific … talk to your Dad about his concerns and discuss what topics are important and not important on the trip. </p>
<p>For example, I wouldn’t bring up the school colors, or the size of the dorm rooms, or one specific student who was nasty or unhappy, or even how old the computers are in the lab … </p>
<p>While I would bring up how many computers are in the lab, or if students in general were very helpful and open (or not), or if lots of students wore school colors and had a lot of school spirit (could be viewed as a pro or a con), or if it felt like you would feel comfortable/woudl like hanging out at the school for 4 years.</p>
<p>Hopefully, if your father sees you’re seeking information not available on the web and that could be useful he wil be more open to the trip. I also like the earlier suggestion to offer to pay for a portion of the trip (showing how important it is to you). Finally, I’d offer to discuss your impressions with him on the relevant topics after the trip … hopefully helping him feel you will focus on bigger issues.</p>
<p>I’m in the camp that thinks visits are/have been invaluable FOR US. There may be kids who don’t even notice or react to their surroundings much. For those kids, any school with good profs and the right set of courses would probably work out fine. My kid has managed to deal with a public HS where a large majority of the students (and some of the teachers) have no idea what he’s talking about. It’s been a learning experience in being adaptable, but my H and I have no intention of investing $45,000 a year for a college experience that he can learn to tolerate, nor would we want him to invest 4 years of his life just getting by. We want a place for him where he’ll feel intellectually challenged and socially at home. It’s the social piece that is harder to read without a visit, though attending classes was also valuable. Some schools have students bursting with intellectual curiousity and others have students who are happy to sit in rows writing down what they think will be on the test. My son is looking for the former.</p>
<p>It amazes me when people say the colleges they visited all seemed alike. We visited 20 and the only thing that seemed alike was the info sessions. The personalities of these colleges felt totally distinct to us and S was easily able to narrow down his list to 10 “dream” schools after visits. I do agree that doing some prep work before visiting maximizes the value of the experience. We read guidebooks, contacted current and former students, generated questions before each visits and took copious notes as we drove away.</p>
<p>We wouldn’t trade those visits and the knowledge our son gained from them for anything. We expect to re-visit some after all the acceptances are in.</p>
<p>Very true what bethievt says. We have visited many schools and each does have a distinct personality and vibe. Not everyone is sensitive to these things, but my girls definitely are. </p>
<p>Sitting in on classes has been the most valuable thing for my D. She places high importance on going to college where students are intellectually engaged. Interestingly enough, two of the schools she found the students least engaged in their class discussions were top ranked (one an Ivey). She was really surprised by that. </p>
<p>Of course she realizes maybe she was there on a bad day or with a group of students not representative of the others, but she did stay overnight and really found nothing to show her that those colleges were what she was looking for.</p>
<p>JHS: the point you make about your grandparents and father is compelling, but there were factors there that perhaps were unique: coming to a new country of opportunity that was bound to be better than the one your grandfather left (staying might have been fatal); being a first-generation member of a minority ethnic group and learning to function and then thrive in a somewhat alien dominant culture. Your own experiences, as you describe them, were somewhat different – seemingly more to do with what the schools looked like than whether you would fit in culturally. You also make a strong point about the way kids can be distracted by what is perhaps trivial: a bad tour guide, a jerky overnight-roommate. (My older kid dismissed some great schools out of hand – ugly buildings, etc.) But I am very glad that we looked at a couple of the schools that loomed large early on in the process – brochures and rumors regarding school cultures can be very misleading.</p>