Ania wrote:
�Boston and New England will be very challenging since there is so much to see there.�
You remind me of our first grand college tour a couple years ago when my older daughter was a rising junior. We flew from California to NYC where we rented a car to drive south to DC. The first college that we hit was Georgetown, then, we drove back north. JHU, U Penn, Princeton, Yale, Brown, MIT and ended with Harvard. We missed more than a few colleges obviously. That tour took us a week to complete. The next year we covered a few more college such Columbia and Dartmouth. Cornell is too out of way so it stays on to-do list.
We usually saw one college a day, taking organized campus tour and listening to the information session which all sounded great. The tours did provide some value. You know the surrounding of the college much better. For example, we crossed the JHU off the list because I just don�t feel comfortable sending my daughter there (no offense to anyone).
Colleges of east coast generally do not require pre-registration. You just need to show up in front of Admission Office (usually 9:00 am), they will put you on tours. West coast colleges such as Stanford and CalTech do require registration (through their website). I don�t know if they allow you just walk into a classroom. My D did listen to a class at Berkeley (Organic Chemistry) after she was admitted. That class scared her away (around 400 people).
Out of all the campus tours, she liked MIT�s the best. Although MIT did not look that great in terms of architecture, the student who led the tour gave the best performance with wit, humor and enthusiasm. My daughter said that �I can really picture myself here� afterwards. As for Harvard, both information session and tour were average. One thing to note: when you visit Harvard yard, make sure that you touch the foot of statute of John Harvard. Rumor said that it enhances the chance of getting into Harvard. Whether this works or not requires a large scale study. However, small samples do show that it had some effects.
