Need help navigating college tours and other "college-prep" questions

[MrsPete]

DS's school has free bus service all over town and he thinks it is silly to pay $350+ to park your car on campus when you have free bus service . . . Tell her that laundry really isn't "free" you just pay for it in advance . . .

I don't think my daughter really understood -- until we started visiting -- that dorm students can so easily walk everywhere they need. I do think a car'll be worthwhile when she's a Junior/Senior and must travel to the hosptial every single day for student nursing, but during her first two years, when she's taking just classes on campus, she understands now that it isn't a necessity.

You're right about the laundry! I'm sure they don't open it up to non-students, so it really is paid for through housing. Still, since all the state universities cost essentially the same amount, for all intents and purposes, it's free.

I think lifestyle questions are pretty important if your child is living on campus-what is there to do on campus, do most kids stay on the weekends or go home, what is the set up in the dorms for RA's, staff residents, etc.

Yeah, it's easy to say that it's all about the academics, which can be found online . . . but that isn't true. The student has to be happy in his living arrangements, or he won't do well academically.

The visit is only one aspect of the decision. Part if it now will be curriculum, cost and any merit aid/scholarships.

My suggest is to get a course catalog from every place she goes and then look over the prereq's and majors. Huge difference with colleges. For example, it may list in the the score you need on the ACT/SAT in order to skip over that class and move onto the next tier. It will give you an upper hand with decision making about the school.

The visit I think is more about ruling out places that you would hate.

I think the opposite is true: You can go over the course catalog (they don't actually print these anymore), the curriculum, cost, etc. online ahead of time. You can use that information to "rule out places that you would hate" or places that simply aren't going to work for you. So that means you don't waste time visiting a place where you're not likely to be accepted, a place you can't afford, or a place that doesn't offer what you want to study.

Once you've gone over those things, THEN visit the ones that seem appropriate.

Can I ask a question here? Do you need to push your Junior HS kids to look at colleges, or do they ask you to take them?

My daughter is very, very excited about the college search. I helped her last August search online and create a list of six schools. I showed her how the websites tell you about Open Houses, and she signed us up for visits. SHE is very much the one driving the project. SHE is also the one searching for scholarships already. She asks me lots of questions because there's plenty she doesn't know, but the motivation is definitely there in her.

 

[TLuvsD]

I think it's a good idea to get a general feel for what your student likes: big school or small, large city or small town. How close/far from home, etc. When you visit, ask for the common data set/freshman profile for the most recently admitted class, so you can see where your student "fits" in gpa, sat/act scores etc. No point in falling in love with a college where you don't meet admission standards, and some of them are really crazy!

D's a Junior, has been to a few campuses. Not too interested in attending the campus meetings at her school, she's afraid she'll miss something critical in class.

 

[bballmom56]

Can I ask a question here? Do you need to push your Junior HS kids to look at colleges, or do they ask you to take them? DD 17 is a Junior and says she wants to go to college says she wants to be a nurse. Has taken the PSAT is signed up for the SAT's and that is it. I have told her to start looking into colleges, her school has colleges coming all the time and she has not shown any interest at all.
How much do I push her?
I have told her that either dh and I will take her to go look, but I do feel she needs to start this process. I do not want to sit at the computer looking up all the college open house info (which we have a website from school to make it easy)
I feel she should be doing it. DD is our oldest...are we doing something wrong?

Well, both of my kids had so much else going on with school, school ECs, outside ECs, sports practices and games, it did not leave a lot of time for them. I had the time and interest during the day to do some research to get them started. I took the place of the guidance counselors in a way - both of whom were useless for my kids. Neither counselor knew my kids well at all. Never asked them what they were interested in or what they thought they wanted in a school. One counselor recommended ONE school to my DD and it just happened to be the one HIS son attended .

I think the process is really quite overwhelming for some kids. There is SO much to consider, they may not know where to begin. If I could narrow down the process, it made it so much easier for them. They were the ones who decided which school to attend and they both ended up at the perfect college for them and have done very well.

So it doesn't necessarily mean your DD is not interested, it may mean she doesn't know where or how to start looking. Even with the colleges that come to her school, she may feel awkward if she doesn't know what to ask. Maybe you can help her with that.

 

[golfgal]

Can I ask a question here? Do you need to push your Junior HS kids to look at colleges, or do they ask you to take them? DD 17 is a Junior and says she wants to go to college says she wants to be a nurse. Has taken the PSAT is signed up for the SAT's and that is it. I have told her to start looking into colleges, her school has colleges coming all the time and she has not shown any interest at all.
How much do I push her?
I have told her that either dh and I will take her to go look, but I do feel she needs to start this process. I do not want to sit at the computer looking up all the college open house info (which we have a website from school to make it easy)
I feel she should be doing it. DD is our oldest...are we doing something wrong?

It sounds like she has started the process by taking tests and thinking about majors, etc. but keep in mind, kids don't necessarily KNOW what is involved in the process. How about picking a weekend and telling your DD, lets go look at a couple schools this weekend. Why don't you pick out one or two that might interest you and we will go. Otherwise, do a small amount of research yourself-maybe ask any nurses you know where they went to school-and ask your DD if she wants to go visit that school in 2 weeks or whatever. Once she goes to one campus it will probably spark her interest in seeing others. Some kids just go gangbusters about the college selection process and others don't.

 

[Abbie]

Can I ask a question here? Do you need to push your Junior HS kids to look at colleges, or do they ask you to take them? DD 17 is a Junior and says she wants to go to college says she wants to be a nurse. Has taken the PSAT is signed up for the SAT's and that is it. I have told her to start looking into colleges, her school has colleges coming all the time and she has not shown any interest at all.
How much do I push her?
I have told her that either dh and I will take her to go look, but I do feel she needs to start this process. I do not want to sit at the computer looking up all the college open house info (which we have a website from school to make it easy)
I feel she should be doing it. DD is our oldest...are we doing something wrong?

I think it just depends on the kid. Both of my DD's practically had to be tied to the dining room table and horse-whipped to get their applications and essays done. I think they would have rather peeled their fingernails off one by one. I even remember thinking after each of them that at least it would be four years before I had to go through that again! But DS didn't even need a nudge, he just looked up the schools he was interested in, signed up for visits, and did the applications online. I had to insist he at least let me review them before submitting just to check for typos, etc.!

Bottom line, if you know DD wants to go to school, someone's got to do the legwork. Chances are she is overwhelmed so you might want to step in and help sort things out. The collegeboard.com website has a step by step process that will help narrow down schools based on what she thinks she is looking for. Sit with her and go through it, sift through the schools they come up with and go from there.

It's a long process...and DS got an acceptance letter today so hopefully we are almost finished!!

 

[disykat]

Can I ask a question here? Do you need to push your Junior HS kids to look at colleges, or do they ask you to take them? DD 17 is a Junior and says she wants to go to college says she wants to be a nurse. Has taken the PSAT is signed up for the SAT's and that is it. I have told her to start looking into colleges, her school has colleges coming all the time and she has not shown any interest at all.
How much do I push her?
I have told her that either dh and I will take her to go look, but I do feel she needs to start this process. I do not want to sit at the computer looking up all the college open house info (which we have a website from school to make it easy)
I feel she should be doing it. DD is our oldest...are we doing something wrong?

I had to push my son. He was great about his classes, the tests, etc. but seemed to be a bit overwhelmed by the whole 'how to choose a college' thing.

I told him the two times we had set aside for college visits and asked him which ones he wanted to see. I really left him no choice - this is when we were going so he needed to set up appointments, period. There was one day in January and one day in February where he didn't have school, but colleges were in session. We fit two colleges in on each of those days. One visit involved traveling across the state and one was to a nearby city. Then when we were going to another area over the summer I asked which college in that area he would like to visit. I really didn't give him a choice.

He knew he had to do it, but it still seemed so far off to him I guess. He gets so busy with school and activities that he wasn't looking ahead.

He's done most of the work along the way, but I've stayed involved in keeping track of the timeline. I know he would have gotten it all done eventually, but I really prefer he kept to my timeline - so I made it a requirement that he did so. Now he tells me he's a bit ahead of his friends and is glad I pushed.

My timeline was - college visits junior year with applications done in early fall of Senior year so he could concentrate on scholarship stuff.

 

[MichelleVW]

DD19 visited two schools. University of Texas and Texas A&M. We had a tour planned at Texas State the day after she looked at UT, but UT blew her away so we blew off the Texas State visit.

She was top 10% of her class so we knew she would get accepted to UT so we never really looked anywhere else. We just visited A&M because DH wanted her to at least look at it. But she had wanted to go to UT since she was about 12 so we really didn't need to even visit.

 

[erincon23]

We took DS 18 on his first college visit during spring break his sophomore year (we were trying to get him to understand that to go where he wanted to go, he needed better grades than he was getting). He loved that campus, my alma mater, but the academic requirements were more than he was going to get (I know, don't limit your kids, but be realistic -- we knew he wasn't going to get there). That's still his favorite campus. We took him to a couple more in a "just get an idea" line of thought. When he had an idea of his major, we went to Purdue, which was one of the few with that major. The campus wasn't much, but he liked the program -- and that seemed to be the determining factor for a while -- program over campus. When he changed his major from engineering to music, we had to start over. While his favorite campuses seemed to have requirements or programs that were out of reach, his favorite programs seemed to be on not-very-interesting campuses. He's now a freshman, and again, the program is great, but the campus is ... not so interesting (although he loves his dorm-mates and teachers). We visited a couple of schools in downtown (or near) Chicago, and he loved the settings. Now, he's changed his major again, which will cause him to leave his current school at the end of the semester and not return next semester, and we've started the hunt again. This time, the setting and campus seem equally important to him -- one of the downtown schools that he dismissed the last time actually has a fantastic program in his new major, and that's currently his no. 1 choice.

I would say that this time around, the push and the drive to investigate seem to all be coming from him. He had been interested before, but not really pushing. This time, though, he's done everything toward his potential transfer school, and I haven't done anything except a minimal amount of support (running papers here and there, proofreading essays). I think once your kids get a taste of the college life (through visiting), they'll probably be more enthusiastic about the whole thing. And if they're not, maybe they're telling you they're not really ready for a 4-yr school away, and might do better for a year or so at a community college.

 

[Longsx3]

IF you ask my DD, a HS Freshman, she would tell you she knows where she wants to go, UNC-W. Last summer DD spent time there at a Marine Science camp and fell in love with the Campus.
DD also did an informal tour of Harvard during a trip to Boston but did not like the feel of the campus, we are going to encourage a repeat tour summer 2012 when maybe she will see the campus from a different perspective. We would like her to visit a few campuses the next two summers and then do a couple of overnights the spring of her Jr. Year.

 

[bballmom56]

We would like her to visit a few campuses the next two summers and then do a couple of overnights the spring of her Jr. Year.

Just check the availability of the overnight opportunities. Two of the colleges at which my DD did overnights, you had to be an accepted student and therefore, a senior. The third one, you just had to be a senior and she did it before her acceptance arrived. Of the 2 schools my DS truly considered, one you had to be an accepted senior and the other I believe he just had to be a senior. You would need to find out if they would let a junior do an overnight.

 

[Longsx3]

bballmom56:

Thanks for the tip, I would think fall of the senior yr would be too late in deciding where to apply to but it may help decide where to actually attend.

 

[bballmom56]

bballmom56:

Thanks for the tip, I would think fall of the senior yr would be too late in deciding where to apply to but it may help decide where to actually attend.

Oh, no. I would definitely try to have a good idea of where they want to apply by fall of senior year. Go ahead and apply as early as they can and then worry about the overnights. As I mentioned, for some you had to be an accepted student already anyway. And then yes, it will be a help in where they decide to attend.

One word of caution though. The overnights worked very well for my DD. It really was not as helpful for my DS. He did an overnight at college A. He was already very familiar with it because DD went there. He had actually stayed overnight with her before she graduated. For his official overnight, he was placed with a senior host in the upperclass apartments. There were 3 other prospies as well, 2 of whom knew each other. Son had nothing in common with the host, the 2 prospies who knew each other went off on their own, and son was bored and miserable.

So after that experience I couldn't get him to do an overnight at college B. That is the one he definitely should have done! He would have discovered that their internet speed in the dorms was far too slow (he was a comp. sci. major and could not upload his homework to the prof. You couldn't even watch a you tube video). He would have also found out that it was too small and isolated for his taste. He might have even seen that the coursework was too easy for him. We had visited both schools at least 5 different times, but without the knowledge he could have gained from an overnight, he chose college B for a number of reasons. After the opening weekend, he knew he wanted to transfer. He wanted to go back to college A. He completed the fall semester at college B and transferred for the spring semester to college A and has been very happy there.

So what I am saying is that the negative effect of the overnight may have pushed him away from the college that ultimately was the right one for him. So take them with a grain of salt!

 

[The Mystery Machine]

Funny you should say that bball. My dd transferred to a smaller school this yr and they are on "restriction" as to how much bandwith they can use in a month.

So needless to say she can't watch movies on Netflix on her computer because it eats up her numbers.

Crazy, huh?

 

[golfgal]

Just check the availability of the overnight opportunities. Two of the colleges at which my DD did overnights, you had to be an accepted student and therefore, a senior. The third one, you just had to be a senior and she did it before her acceptance arrived. Of the 2 schools my DS truly considered, one you had to be an accepted senior and the other I believe he just had to be a senior. You would need to find out if they would let a junior do an overnight.

That policy is kind of like shooting themselves in the foot-why would they make them be seniors or be accepted before they allowed an overnight. By that time most kids have already decided where they want to go. Kind of a silly policy if you ask me . I don't know of any school around here that doesn't let juniors do overnights-in fact the overnights are highly encouraged and advertised.

 

[bballmom56]

Funny you should say that bball. My dd transferred to a smaller school this yr and they are on "restriction" as to how much bandwith they can use in a month.

So needless to say she can't watch movies on Netflix on her computer because it eats up her numbers.

Crazy, huh?

In this day and age of technology? Yes, crazy. And this is something you wouldn't think to ask about on college tours or meeting with admissions reps.

 

[bballmom56]

That policy is kind of like shooting themselves in the foot-why would they make them be seniors or be accepted before they allowed an overnight. By that time most kids have already decided where they want to go. Kind of a silly policy if you ask me . I don't know of any school around here that doesn't let juniors do overnights-in fact the overnights are highly encouraged and advertised.

I'm just saying how it was for my kids and what they experienced. I would think that colleges would want to make sure they host serious students (meaning that they have at least already applied), rather than students who just say maybe I'll take a trip and visit x college that I really don't know if I am interested in or not. It is a liability to have these underage students staying on their campus and it involves cost to the college.

But that is why I said she should look into the policies at the schools her DD is interested in.

 

[golfgal]

I'm just saying how it was for my kids and what they experienced. I would think that colleges would want to make sure they host serious students (meaning that they have at least already applied), rather than students who just say maybe I'll take a trip and visit x college that I really don't know if I am interested in or not. It is a liability to have these underage students staying on their campus and it involves cost to the college.

But that is why I said she should look into the policies at the schools her DD is interested in.

But this is how they BECOME serious students most of the time . It's just strange I think.

 

[wilderness01]

Can I ask a question here? Do you need to push your Junior HS kids to look at colleges, or do they ask you to take them? DD 17 is a Junior and says she wants to go to college says she wants to be a nurse. Has taken the PSAT is signed up for the SAT's and that is it. I have told her to start looking into colleges, her school has colleges coming all the time and she has not shown any interest at all.
How much do I push her?
I have told her that either dh and I will take her to go look, but I do feel she needs to start this process. I do not want to sit at the computer looking up all the college open house info (which we have a website from school to make it easy)
I feel she should be doing it. DD is our oldest...are we doing something wrong?

We have a version of this as well. I think it is some immaturity or maybe just really enjoying high school and living in the moment? College is a must and they know that, they just don't want to look yet.

 

[disykat]

I wonder if overnights is just an eastern half of the country thing. The only time I've ever heard of it was someone who was going to college on the other side of the country.

 

[golfgal]

I wonder if overnights is just an eastern half of the country thing. The only time I've ever heard of it was someone who was going to college on the other side of the country.

I suppose being in Washington State EVERYTHING is east of you but here in MN they are very common. I don't know of a school around here that doesn't have the option to do an overnight.