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Can you wait on college visits until after acceptance?


mirabillis
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Back in the day, my DH & I never visited schools we applied to... we got in where we got in, then visited and bam - we went to college. And had a great time, loved it! (Even though for me, it wasn't my first choice, last choice safety really). I'm of the mind, that you'll find your tribe, find your home wherever you land. So with that in mind....

College visits seem to be all the rage now. Like everyone visits all the possible colleges they want to apply to before applying...

Can't you just wait to visit until after acceptance? Then if you're not accepted, you haven't wasted a visit (esp for OOS schools). And after acceptance, then the visits become all the more meaningful as you're really making a decision. Your thoughts?

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Well, back in the day, neither DH nor I technically visited colleges. I had been on several college campuses through summer programs (STEM camps, Girls State, etc) and DH visited his brother at a different college than he ended up attending. DH stepped on his college campus for the first time for New Student Enrollment. 

Of DD's top three picks, she will have only visited one prior to acceptance/ application.

One thing to keep in mind is if you are applying to schools which take into account demonstrated interest when deciding to admit or not. If they are top picks and want to see interest, visiting is one (but not the only) way to demonstrate interest. Some schools don't care.

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You can. However, if students apply to schools that notify late March of their acceptance decisions and only have until May 1 to accept, it may be difficult to schedule the visit.

My DD only visited 3 colleges of her list of 12, all before applying. She decided between her top choices among the acceptances based on factors that had nothing to do with visits.

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Yes absolutely you can! And many schools do let you know at some point in March so in many cases you can have 6 weeks to do the visits.

However, since many of the schools my daughter is applying to ask a "Why college X?" question as part of their application, we have found visits to be very useful. And in the visiting process she has realized that she really likes LACs more than larger schools, her application list has evolved because of visits - so it can be really helpful to include at least some visits in the pre-application 

Finally, this is only anecdotal, but it seems that many schools with a lot of applications can include "demonstrated interest" in their admission calculations. So a visit, going to a presentation or interviewing may be helpful for admission.

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We have done it both ways. My second ds changed his mind over Christmas break and had to scramble to get applications in before the deadlines and they were 500 and 700 miles away. He waited for financial info (which came in Feb ?) and visited over his spring break for de for one and missed Friday classes for de for the other which he needed to attend a scholarship weekend for.

We did want him to visit because it was so far away and schools and location he was totally unfamiliar with. The school he ended up at is huge and we wanted him to see that. But honestly we just had the tour, talked to the honors college people, looked around and headed back home. It was kind of a situation that he had decided  already he was going there unless he hated it. 

First ds did quite a few visits. The worst visit we ever had was where he ended up. The initial visit was a dud- didn’t give us any info and we left not feeling like we knew much of anything positive or negative except they had an awful tour guide that day. Ds didn’t cross it off the list and attended a scholarship weekend a few months later and got a better feel for it.

In our situation we are very largely driven by finances. My kids really only have a handful of choices so they aren’t picking a dream school or an absolutely perfect fit. They are choosing from a handful of financially viable schools and just looking for “good enough” or the best value. 

I will say that first ds had a school high on his list that a visit did eliminate. It was a school known for extreme partying. He was aware of that by doing his research but didn’t get a feel for how pervasive it was until he was on campus. In that case the visit probably saved us some heartache. Would have been a terrible fit and he was pretty excited about the school. However the research had shown that he just didn’t fully comprehend it until he was there. 

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We visited a bunch of college but honestly it was probably more for me than him.  I did graduate from college but my parents basically said you can go to state school A or B.  I had no idea what the differences between schools would look like in person and what 60K+ a year buys you over 20K.  My spouse had to live at home to attend the closest university and did a professional MS program for working adults.  Plus my kid is applying to music programs so that's another level of complexity.  It did give all of us some clarity to the process.  He is still applying to at least 1 school he has never visited.  Finances are a big deal to us too.  Our EFC given our circumstances is not at all reasonable.  There's no super reach need only schools on the list despite having stats to apply anywhere.   We rolled some visits into road trips, etc.  If it doesn't work for you and you feel like you have good dirction, I think it's fine.

We started just with local schools of varying types, some we knew wouldn't be in contention at all and I think that can be a nice compromise so a kid can feel what a big state school vs. urban vs small LAC, etc feels like.  

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2nd son didn't even visit the campus until the day he moved in!  True story.

He applied.  We signed up for the tour and then he got sick and couldn't go.  He was in a B&M high school and DH and I both work full time, so we just opted to not tour at all.

He is loving it anyway!  HAHA.

However, he has a full tuition scholarship and it was the least expensive of his options AND his friends from high school were going to go there, so he wouldn't have changed his mind anyway.  He was mentally set.

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On 10/29/2018 at 6:41 AM, kirag714 said:

 her application list has evolved because of visits  

Finally, this is only anecdotal, but it seems that many schools with a lot of applications can include "demonstrated interest" in their admission calculations. So a visit, going to a presentation or interviewing may be helpful for admission.

 

On 10/29/2018 at 6:49 AM, Another Lynn said:

Another reason to visit before applying is to help inspire a student.  College can still seem really distant to juniors, but getting them on campus at a few schools can kind of nudge them towards seeing what's coming, getting more interested in it, and owning the process more.  

 

Bolding by me. The first was very true for oldest - I think a lot of kids only have the vaguest of ideas of how big the differences between a truly large school and even a mid-size school can be, among other factors. There are practical differences along with the 'feel' of campus. If it's not walkable, how is the bus system? If housing is tight, are there off-campus choices that are actually convenient? And campuses can have very different cultures and personalities, so to speak, even if they are similar in size and academics. 

Some students don't care about this at all, they will find their friend group and be fine regardless. For my kids, it was an important factor. They wanted to stroll across the quad for most classes, not take a bus. They wanted a campus with casual friendliness - for example, greeting and chatting with people you don't know, which is something that drives other people crazy (as we know from other discussions on these boards, lol). They are likely to be on campus all four years, so dorms that weren't dirty and falling apart were high on their list - there are some nasty dorms out there, particularly the bathrooms, and website pictures do NOT tell that story! 

The second was true for my youngest and for quite a few other students that I know.  

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You definitely can wait until after being accepted. We have done a combination of both. For us the advantage of visiting prior to applying are as follows:

  • Early visits allowed my students to get an idea of the type of school (size, location, layout) that they were interested in attending. This allowed them to refine their college list.
  • My students have food allergies. Visits and particularly eating in the cafeterias helped reduce their anxieties with regards to eating a college. Some schools were eliminated off the bat because of food service and we would not have been able to figure that out without visiting.
  • Visits prior to acceptance cut down on the number of visits we needed to make post acceptance because those that she had as a safety but wasn't swept away by fell of the list once preferred school acceptances were received. There was no reason to visit the safeties to verify that they weren't matches.
  • A number of my students' schools use demonstrated intent as a selection criteria. Where possible we visited those schools.

Even so, DD19 selected an OOS college that she had not visited prior to applying. She and we were comfortable with her decision to attend this school because of all of the other visits she had made.

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