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    ETA- I actually see the logic in the visit-after-you’re-accepted strategy, mainly because at a certain point, there is just so much randomness involved. It’s pretty hard to know what is a target school and what is a reach. All the “reaches” seemed to have elements of a lottery.

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    Val Offline
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    I took my 10th grader to a local college information session a few evenings ago. We picked up a few tips and hints that might help others, so here they are:


    • The lines for popular colleges like UC [anything], Carnegie Mellon, etc. were very long. We didn't bother with UCB, as the wait time looked like an hour.
    • One of the recruiters told us that because my son wants to study an area that's not super-common (paleontology), he'll have an advantage among recruiters and admissions committees.
    • We discovered a couple of colleges that he hadn't found while digging through one of those big guides to US colleges. This happened when he asked college A about their paleontology program. Answer: "we don't have one, but the college two booths over does." It turns out we're taking a vacation near that college this summer so that my son can attend a paleontology dig, and we'll be able to visit.
    • If your child is looking a college that isn't getting a ton of visitors, you can spend a lot of time chatting with the representative.
    • College fairs are a quick and easy way of gathering a lot of bumph that your child can read at leisure. Going through a pile of brochures aimed at prospective students can be more efficient than wading through websites.


    Overall, the fair was a lot of fun for both of us. There was a rep from my overseas alma mater there, and we had a great chat. My son got a lot of information and is now looking seriously at a university he didn't know about --- it has a giant paleontology museum and serious program.

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    Originally Posted by Val
    I took my 10th grader to a local college information session a few evenings ago. We picked up a few tips and hints that might help others, so here they are:


    • The lines for popular colleges like UC [anything], Carnegie Mellon, etc. were very long. We didn't bother with UCB, as the wait time looked like an hour.
    • One of the recruiters told us that because my son wants to study an area that's not super-common (paleontology), he'll have an advantage among recruiters and admissions committees.
    • We discovered a couple of colleges that he hadn't found while digging through one of those big guides to US colleges. This happened when he asked college A about their paleontology program. Answer: "we don't have one, but the college two booths over does." It turns out we're taking a vacation near that college this summer so that my son can attend a paleontology dig, and we'll be able to visit.
    • If your child is looking a college that isn't getting a ton of visitors, you can spend a lot of time chatting with the representative.
    • College fairs are a quick and easy way of gathering a lot of bumph that your child can read at leisure. Going through a pile of brochures aimed at prospective students can be more efficient than wading through websites.


    Overall, the fair was a lot of fun for both of us. There was a rep from my overseas alma mater there, and we had a great chat. My son got a lot of information and is now looking seriously at a university he didn't know about --- it has a giant paleontology museum and serious program.

    The BigFuture college search lets you filter by major. It listed only three schools that offer paleontology majors:

    Bowling Green State University
    Mesalands Community College
    University of Toronto

    I wonder how comprehensive the BigFuture site is.

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    Val Offline
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    This is close to what we found (our book, which has an index of majors, didn't list Toronto, but did list a university in South Dakota).

    The problem is that our book and your site don't list geology programs that offer a focus on paleontology.

    For example: Montana State. It's not the only one.

    Last edited by Val; 05/09/18 04:19 PM.
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    PM to you, Val, regarding paleontology.


    What is to give light must endure burning.
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    Originally Posted by cricket3
    ETA- I actually see the logic in the visit-after-you’re-accepted strategy, mainly because at a certain point, there is just so much randomness involved. It’s pretty hard to know what is a target school and what is a reach. All the “reaches” seemed to have elements of a lottery.

    I agree in principle, but if you are thinking of following this approach, I would, based on our recent experience, advise taking a light course load for the spring semester of senior year. With only a month between the final college acceptance notifications and the decision deadline, it was hard to fit in more than a couple out of state visits.

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    Originally Posted by cricket3
    ETA- I actually see the logic in the visit-after-you’re-accepted strategy, mainly because at a certain point, there is just so much randomness involved. It’s pretty hard to know what is a target school and what is a reach. All the “reaches” seemed to have elements of a lottery.
    I wholeheartedly agree that it can be very hard to determine whether a school is a "target" or a "reach" and that you can't visit everything ahead of time. I think that it is particularly hard if you have a kid with excellent grades and scores who expects to major in something common. Very few schools get eliminated when you run your stats through the search engines. FWIW, DD got into all but one of the schools that we visited (4 of 5) and only one that we didn't visit but DD went to local info sessions (1 of 3). Who knows whether visiting would have made a difference. Like you said, it felt like a great big, extremely stressful lottery.

    Originally Posted by amylou
    I agree in principle, but if you are thinking of following this approach, I would, based on our recent experience, advise taking a light course load for the spring semester of senior year. With only a month between the final college acceptance notifications and the decision deadline, it was hard to fit in more than a couple out of state visits.

    It's a great idea if you can make it work. This wasn't an option for us since DD is an IB student. Most of her non-IB friends who are "honors" students had a bunch of AP classes senior year. Her only friends who had easy last semesters were all early decision and /or recruited athletes.

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