How to Plan College Visits — Tips for Choosing the “Right School”!
At College Insights, our philosophy is to make the college visit process as efficient and rewarding as possible. The key is to try and identify what the “right” school is for your student. That will ensure that the student is happy and will graduate on time versus transferring or being unhappy and graduating in five, six, or seven years.
Initially narrow the fit using “Big, Small, Country, City” as an initial guideline. The most efficient way to start is to think local – there is no need to create a preliminary college list and travel around the country to visit schools! Instead, let’s find schools within the local area and visit a big city school, a small city school, a big country school, and a small country school. Then we have effectively allowed the student to see and get a feel for these types of schools. So, for example, imagine you are located in central New Jersey. You could start by visiting Rutgers University (a big public university in a city), The College of New Jersey (a smaller community-based public school in the suburbs), and Monmouth University (a smaller private school in the suburbs). This allows you to get a sense of a large public school, a smaller public school, and a smaller private school as well as a feel for a more urban school versus a more suburban school.
You could also expand your horizon a bit further and visit schools in and around New York City (NYU, Columbia, or Fordham) or Philadelphia (Drexel, University of Pennsylvania, Temple, or St. Joseph’s) to get an idea of different “feels”. This gives you a better idea of what a big city school may feel like. Another type of school we recommend is a smaller private school “in a college town”. For this we recommend Eastern Pennsylvania (Lehigh, Bucknell, or Lafayette for example). You can do any of these trips in a day and see a variety of schools.
When you make official visits to schools there are two basic parts of the visit: an information session and a college tour. The information session is basically a formal presentation telling you about all the things that make the school great. This is worthwhile, because you can get a lot of information. Then you will go on the college tour that is usually led by actual students. It is on these tours where you should ask any candid questions you want answers to. So if you are concerned about drugs, crime, dorm conditions, etc. you can gain some real insight. The key is that the school does not want to mislead you and have you come to campus and be unhappy – so they coach the guides to answer these questions directly and honestly. The school wants you to be happy because it affects their statistics. These sessions are usually done pretty regularly; just check the college’s websites and be sure that appointments are not necessary.
When should these visits be done?
Well, we are big fans of letting kids be kids and allowing them to enjoy everything high school has to offer. So typically, we would suggest visiting actual campuses by the fall of junior year, but it is fine to wait until spring of junior year as well. Some of you may not be able to wait and you may enjoy visiting colleges earlier as part of a family vacation. This is fine—if you enjoy doing these visits please do so. Again the key is efficiency. Get a feel for the big, small, country, and city dynamic. And have fun with it! Another important point is that, if possible, visit the colleges when classes are in session. You will get a much better feel of the campus that way versus when the campus is empty.
IF your student leaves their first formal college visit (for example, Fall of high school Junior year) saying , “wow, this will be me in two years — I better start thinking about which school will be “right” for me?”, then, mission accomplished!
College Fairs
To get students into the right mindset and to help ingrain the importance of what is upcoming we recommend that students should attend a college fair by Fall of junior year.
A college fair is something most high schools have. Multiple colleges will come and set up a table with information and a representative. The students can walk around, gather information, and ask questions to a variety of schools. The college fair will force the students to realize all the choices available to them and allow them to get their minds working towards understanding that a lot of work and research is going to needed in order to pick the right school. We believe that if your child leaves the college fair saying, “wow, there are so many great choices, how am I going to pick one?”, then, once again, mission accomplished!
Common Mistakes
At this point please step aside and imagine all the mistakes people make in this process. Imagine all the marketing materials you are going to receive at your home and all the ones you will be picking up here and there. The colleges are all trying to connect with you, but out of 3,000 or so colleges and universities across this country, what are the odds of you opening a brochure of the “right school” for your student? What we would encourage you to do is try and ignore those mailings. If something catches your eye that is fine. But otherwise, try and ignore it, because all schools look perfect on glossy paper.
Also, have you observed and/or experienced other families driving and/or flying around the country visiting many, many schools as a way to try to find the “right school”? Out of 3000 schools, how many can you actually visit with this approach? We believe this is very inefficient and largely unproductive, especially early on in the process.
As we described previously, there is a much better and more efficient process to follow that will succeed in providing superior results!
