Our experiences were similar to Cricket's.
FWIW, my DD did not know what type of college she wanted to attend. At the the end of her sophomore year we started visiting different types of local schools in different settings, i.e. small private liberal arts college, medium size private college, a tech heavy school, a big college town state school with an honors college, and a smaller rural state school. It helped her figure out that she wanted a private school with 5000 to 7000 undergrads, that she liked the liberal arts model more than the tech school and that she would have the state school with an honors college as her safety.
We did go to a big regional college fair at her high school. We did a Naviance search to see if any of the schools fit her criteria and to whittle down our list to about ten schools. We found that many of the representatives seemed a little burned out. She had a couple good conversations but mostly found the setting too chaotic and difficult to get much time with the rep if it was a popular school.
We only went to one big hotel presentation with multiple schools. She didn't find it very helpful and readily admitted that she was judging the personalities of the presenters more than the schools. Most of the presenters just did superficial slideshows of the campus. Some did mention whether they tracked demonstrated interest (Rice) while others said they did not bother (U of Chicago). We did go to a single school presentation. It was a much more detailed marketing presentation and helped DD decide that she had no desire to apply so I guess that was a good thing.
Once your kid has an idea where he wants to go, we found visiting the schools to be valuable for getting a feel for the school. DD had one school in her top five until she went to campus and thought the place felt "stressed out" even though it was summer session. When we visited the college that she will attend in the fall, I could see that she felt comfortable just walking around the campus. She could see herself studying in that library. I also made her write down notes right after we visited a school like Cricket did with her daughter.
Finally, if your kid is NM eligible, some of the schools give you numbers on their website but many don't. We would not have known if we had not asked the admissions staff. For us, NM made DD's school within our reach financially.
Last edited by knute974; 04/29/18 07:53 PM. Reason: typo
