Looking for a fun vacation the whole family can enjoy? Look no further than college visits!
I’m actually only being half facetious when I say that. College visits can be fun if you do them right, which few people actually do. Here are some tips for how to plan college visits this summer.
1. START LOCAL
Just about everywhere in the United States has a residential college within an hour drive. Lots of them are not colleges I would necessarily recommend, but before you plan a long college trip around the country, you should try to get one visit under your belt to see what they’re actually like. Chances are, your nearest local college has campus tours in the summer, and I highly suggest that parents, and children, take an afternoon off to go to it, whether or not the college is actually of interest to you. It is amazing how similar most college visits are, so that a prospective family will hear a lot of the same information everywhere. If you haven’t been to a college campus, this is your chance to learn about how blue light security phones work, even though I’ve literally never seen anyone use one. Take the opportunity not so much to check out the college, but more to check out what you’re looking for in a college tour.
2. VISIT AN URBAN SCHOOL
Pick a major metropolitan area, and draw circle around it with a radius of about 50 miles. Within that radius, you will find a lot of schools. Choose two or three, and only two or three. One could literally spend a week taking tours of campuses in Boston and its environs, but doing so is frankly a huge waste of time. Boston is actually a great example. Check out one top school, like MIT or Boston College, depending on how technologically driven you are, one large city school like Northeastern or Boston University, and somewhere a little bit outside the city, like Tufts or Brandeis. This will give you an opportunity to see different types of schools. Chances are, for example, that if you like the campus at Northeastern, you’ll be pretty comfortable with somewhere like NYU or Temple. Similarly, Boston College is going to have a lot in common with Fordham or Georgetown. Looking at colleges is less about looking at the colleges you are sure you want to apply to, and more about looking at types of schools, to see what you’re most comfortable with.
3. FIND A BIG STATE SCHOOL
Some of these are in cities, but most are not. UConn, UC Berkeley, University of Alabama, Penn State, University of Arizona, the list goes on and on, but each school has a similar feel to it, in as much as they are all large, all public, and all with a myriad of programs from which to choose. Lots of students love big schools and lots of students hate them, but without taking a look, you have no idea which group you’ll actually fit into. Again, once you’ve seen one, you’ll have a sense of others.
4. VISIT A RURAL SCHOOL
One of the questions I ask students is “Cows or no cows?” There are people who really want the vibrancy of a city, and there are some who want the peacefulness of a remote mountain or lake. Just as I suggest looking at a city, a rural campus in the middle of nowhere will give students and families a variety of options, even if they only actually visit one school. There is not that much difference, for example, between Williams and Amherst (other than a bitter rivalry) in terms of the feel of the campus. Both are small, liberal arts schools within a fairly small surrounding community. If you like one, chances are, you’re okay with the other.
5. DON'T LET tHE WEATHER STOP YOU
Do not get suckered in by weather. The University of Chicago is not a nice place to visit in mid-winter. That does not mean you wouldn’t want to live there or go there. It just means that the trip you take in July is not going to reflect what it is like to live there in March. Similarly, the heat and humidity you might find at Duke in July is not necessarily the status quo in December. You will not get a good sense of what it is like to live somewhere for the whole year until you actually live there for a whole year.
6. DO SOMETHING FUN
At some point, college visits start blending in with each other. Don’t do too much. Remember what I said about going to a city and picking only three schools? You could go to Los Angeles and try to fit in UCLA, USC, Loyola Marymount, Occidental, Pepperdine, UC Irvine, etc. but you would go absolutely crazy if you did. Get a feel not only for the colleges, but for the place you’re visiting. If I were in LA in the summer, I’d hit the Dodgers and Angels, check out Hollywood, head to the beach, or perhaps spend an afternoon at the Getty Museum. When I said that college visits can be fun, this is really what I meant. If you only focus on college, everyone on the trip is going to be miserable. Try to mix some pleasure into this trip, so that for every college you see, you do at least one fun thing too. And, never, and I mean NEVER, try to look at more than two colleges in one day.
I have a lot more thoughts on checking out colleges, including lots of recommendations for trips that I would suggest people take, depending on where in the country they live. These are just a few basic ideas for your planning stages. If you want some more in-depth advice, feel free to reach out to me for a free, half-hour session!
Mr. K
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