Well, I certainly agree, and didn’t mean to give the impression that visiting is unimportant. I was just giving our impression of the local info sessions.
Interestingly, we do know students who employed a somewhat different strategy, and saved most of their visits for the places to which they were accepted, after the entire application season is done. It gets difficult to seriously visit more than a few places if any are a significant distance away, both expense and time-wise, even when one starts early and includes the summer. (Especially if kids are super busy with gazillion AP classes, regeneron research projects and playing on competitive sports teams....) Most places we are familiar with have specific admitted student visit programs, some of which were quite involved, (overnights, planned programs with admin, faculty, current students, meals, overnights, sitting in on classes, open rehearsals, etc). So we certainly know and met kids who applied and then visited. Not the strategy we followed, or that I would recommend, but for a certain type of kid it seemed typical. Also, we heard stories about kids making multiple visits to places that track interest, but I think that’s just craziness. (Though frankly, the whole system is pretty crazy).
Not to say our way worked any better. For the schools DD was seriously interested in, and than accepted to, we ended up visiting twice- once before applying and then for the admitted days to help with the final decision. And only some of these second visits fall during spring break. It’s exhausting.
Last edited by cricket3; 05/09/18 08:33 AM. Reason: Typos
