College visits are a critical part of a teen's college search. If this is the place where your child will live and work for four years, it's advisable to scope it out before making a decision. After all, you wouldn't buy a house without seeing it first, or marry someone ... OK, there are successful arranged marriages out there, but you get the point. Visit the school(s) your child is contemplating! Here's how to get the most out of your college visit.
- Plan Ahead: Plan your visit for a time when classes are in session and the school is bustling. Visiting colleges as part of your summer vacation may seem like a good, cost-conscious idea, but there are many reasons to avoid that. Instead, visit over Veterans Day or Martin Luther King weekends, your high school's spring break or the Monday or Tuesday of Thanksgiving break - dates when high schools are typically closed, but colleges are open.
- Reserve a Tour: Some schools have drop-in tours, but most require reservations ahead of time. And if you want anything special – a meeting with an admissions officer or a professor, for example, the chance to sit in on a lecture or even stay overnight in a dorm, you may need to book that anywhere from a week to six weeks ahead of time. Plan your day carefully - you'll want time to explore the campus, experience academic life and take care of any admissions interviews or financial aid discussions. (If your child is a prospective music major, it's particularly important that he schedule a lesson with a member of the faculty to make sure that relationship is a good fit. He'll probably also want to hear one of the performing ensembles rehearse or perform.) Those requests to the school should come directly from your child, and most arrangements can be made online. So this is also a good time for your child to change his or her e-mail address from Hotchick123@aol or Keggerlover@gmail to something a tad more serious, like his name.
- Arrive Early: Download a campus map and any additional paperwork the school has sent. Allow enough time to get lost, to look for parking, and to find the admissions office on an unfamiliar, possibly very large campus. Most campus tours leave from the admissions office, where your child may be asked to fill out extra forms assessing his interests or asking questions about his GPA or test scores, so jot those numbers down.
- Ask Questions: Campus tours are a great way to get oriented but bear in mind that your charming, backward-walking tour guide is paid to be perky. He or she has a script to follow and their stats reflect what’s in the campus brochure. So sit down with your child beforehand and think about the questions that aren’t answered in the printed materials or on the university web site. And when you ask questions – and you should, if your child is having a shyness attack and no other student on the tour is speaking up – draw from that list. (Click here for a sampling of 17 good college tour questions.)
- Escape the Tour: Your tour guide will show you the highlights, but it's important to do some exploring on our own. If the dorms are not included on the tour, ask if you can peek anyway. Sometimes an RA can show you around. If your child is interested in a specific department, make arrangements for him to meet with a professor or sit in on a class. (If it's a huge lecture hall, it's fine for a parent to sit in the back. If it's a small seminar, go get a latte while your child attends without you.) But whether or not you have an appointment, make a point of swinging by the department office to read the bulletin boards in the hallway, look at the types of events hosted, and ask questions. Prospective German or Italian majors, for example, may discover they've already completed all the language courses a small college offers in their discipline. Woodwind players may discover the music department only has programs for strings.
- Scope Out the Big Three: Laptop and bicycle burglaries top any university's crime statistics, but unfortunately, violence lurks there too. So colleges install call stations – a simple telephone kiosk topped with a blue light so students who are in trouble or frightened can summon campus security. The more blue phones, the higher the crime rate, so scope out the campus security situation - how big a problem is crime, what kinds occur, and what is the school doing to keep its students safe? Many schools offer a nighttime taxi (or Cushman cart) service to ferry students home from the library or student union after dark. Check out campus health facilities too - how extensive are the medical and mental health services? And, get a peek inside those dorms.
- Find Students: Talk to regular students too, not just your tour guide. If your child has friends (or siblings of friends) who go to this school, arrange to meet them for coffee or lunch. Have them show you around. Pepper them with questions. No connections? Strike up a conversation with students in the student union, quad or dining hall - ask them how they like the school, what they'd change if they could, the pros and the cons.
- Play tourist: Half the fun of a college campus is the college town, so take time to explore the surrounding neighborhoods. Find your tour guide’s favorite coffee house or famous pizzeria. If your child ends up attending this school, you’ll be spending a lot of time here, so scout out nice hotels and a good restaurant to celebrate your kid’s fantastic report card. And while you're strolling about, chat with your child about his impressions. What did he think of the school, the area, the people? Do these people look like his high school’s population or are they more or less diverse? Can he see himself here, strolling these halls and studying and playing with these people? Can you?
