College Visits
In love, absence may make the heart grow fonder, but, in deciding where to attend college, seeing and experiencing the
academic and extracurricular life at your potential choices is absolutely crucial to making an informed college decision. Your parents
may have toured you around the colleges they intended you to visit as early as your stroller days or perhaps on family vacations. If you haven't
noticed already, each college or university is blessed with its own culture and atmosphere, which is often reflected in the area surrounding it.
The first college visit
We strongly recommend taking the official tours that nearly every college offers during your first college visit; in fact, you should schedule your arrival and departure from the
school around the tour schedule. The great challenge in this first college visit is to identify the distinguishing factors that would make this college a better choice than others
you are considering. How does this school fit well with your academic, social, athletic, and career interests? To answer these questions, it will be imperative
to go above and beyond the tour guide's narrative. We suggest, therefore, that you engage the tour guide or one of school's students in a conversation. The more responses that you can
receive to your "basic" questions, the fuller the picture of the school that you will have upon leaving.
One tragic feature of the human mind as it pertains to college visits is the frequency with which we lump together our various visiting experiences. Unless you have a steel-trap
memory, you may find yourself scratching your head when asked to recall even basic differences between schools you have visited, especially those that you saw in a consecutive streak. We
have heard of many West Coast residents, for example, who have planned specific trips to the East Coast to visit five or more schools in one fell swoop. We urge you to
write down your observations regarding the colleges you visit immediately after completing your visit; jot down five or eight positive points and as many not-so-positive points
about the college or university, based on the information you've just received.
Questions to ask during the first visit
- Are professors approachable for students interested in forging relationships with them?
- What are the opportunities like for independent study and research?
- What programs and facilities set this school apart?
- What is the social scene like? Which groups dominate?
- What is the housing situation like? What percentage of students live on campus? Is there difficulty in finding housing?
- What are the university daily-living facilities like – dining halls, laundry facilities, dormitories, and computer labs?
- How do prospective students feel about the college or university?
- What does the campus newspaper have to say about the current administration?
- Are students excited about their futures during and after their time at the university?
- What courses of study would appeal to you? Are they well-known and well-developed?
- What is the college or university's plan for allowing students to study abroad? To pursue internships?
- Is the academic calendar made up of semesters? Trimesters? Quarters?
- Where do current students come from? What types of qualities do they exhibit?
- What make the campus and surrounding area an agreeable place to live?
Visiting again
An important ingredient for finding the right fit for you is visiting your potential choices more than one time.
While we can clearly understand how this might pose a financial burden to you and your family, we still urge you to
scout out your top three choices while school is in session. It is common for students, we have found, to visit a great number
of colleges during the summer; these visits are crucial. Yet, it is also vital to see the day-to-day lives of the students
attending the university. College is much more than a nine-to-five life, and it is important to track the daily routines of
the students that would become your schoolmates before officially matriculating.
We recommend that you look at the questions that we have listed on the Pick your school page in order
to answer the difficult questions about the various schools. The second visit is a chance to be exacting and realistic; it is important
to separate the aesthetic and dreamy impressions that you might have had from reality.
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