We’re halfway through senior year, and we have visited 16 college campuses in ten cities. College campus tours are free and well worth your time.
But any college tours that are more than a few hours from home involve paying for hotels, meals, gas and parking, plus taking time off from work. You want to make the most of your time at each school and see as many schools as you reasonably can in a single trip.
After both freezing and exhausting ourselves in Boston, getting soaked in Dublin rain and mixing sightseeing with college visits in Washington, DC. we have learned how to manage a college-tour trip so that it’s productive and not overwhelming or exhausting.
Here are my tips for planning a tour of college campuses during junior and senior years of high school.
You might also want to read my Post on
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12 Tips To Make College Campus Tours Manageable & Worthwhile:
Planning For Your College Campus Visits
1. The first tours are samplers
Teen Traveler was only a high school sophomore when we did our first tours. These trips to Boston and Philadelphia were mostly just to let her see different kinds of campuses — big, small, campus, no-campus, urban, suburban — to help her understand how college communities can differ and to think about where she wants to live for four years.
A suburban Philadelphia college was empty on a weekend afternoon while another school’s urban campus was bustling. A large university with an open downtown campus seemed overwhelming and anonymous to her.
Enclosed urban campuses offered strong college communities mixed with the resources of the surrounding city. These are the types of schools that appealed to her and where we focused our later tours in junior and senior years.
2. Don’t overschedule
In Boston, we saw the four schools over two days in harsh winter weather. It was a little exhausting.
You have to get yourself to campus, maybe find parking, and find the right building by a set time. You start by listening to an information session that’s 45 minutes or so. Then there is a student-led walking tour that can last an hour to 90 minutes and happens in rain, snow or sun. It’s tiring.
As distinct as the schools were, the presentations for prospective students all follow the same format and cover a lot of the same ground, to the point where they can be easy to mimic. And after a while, we did.
On other trips we mingled college tours with days off for sightseeing and that worked better.
3. Look at schedules, and a map
Look at the tour schedules of all the colleges you want to tour before you start booking them. Some schools give only one guided campus tour a day, others have two and some will have a half dozen in one day. It’s handy to know where you have flexibility and where you don’t.
Also, in Boston we traveled clear across the city multiple times. We could easily have avoided that if I had looked at a map and groups schools by location.
If you plan to hit more than one school in a day, allow a good two hours at each school, more if there are specific things you want to check out or people you want to talk to outside of the tour.
Leave enough time in between to get from one to the other and to take a break for something to eat. You need to keep your energy up. And possibly warm up, cool down or dry off, depending on the weather.
4. Use online tours to winnow down your list
Online information sessions and tours are not a replacement for a campus visit. But If you have a long list of potential campuses in one destination, they can help you decide which ones to prioritize. And they can help you to know what questions you might want to ask on the tours you choose to do.
5. Get insider information
Ask your school’s college counselor if they can put you in touch with alumni from your high school who are attending the schools that are high on your list, especially if you can’t book a tour, and even if you can.
They aren’t official ambassadors, so you can ask blunter questions and get unfiltered answers. This isn’t to dissuade you so much as to get an honest take on how hard it is to get the classes you want or if the campus empties out on weekends.
Things To Do While on campus
6. Take the tours
Take the guided tours. If you’ve taken the time to drive to college, invest in seeing it properly. The tours are usually led by students. Hearing about their residential experiences, why they chose the school, what they do for fun and what they liked and didn’t strongly influenced our impressions.
One university had more diverse offerings and was more laid back than we expected. At another school, the guides told us students barely left campus. When we asked if they viewed the surrounding city as a resource, the answer was, “not really.”
The college campus tours are often on weekdays, which is frustrating, but there you have it. Try to take advantage of school breaks you have when colleges are in session.
7. Look around
While on tour, look around: Are students walking between classes alone or in pairs? Are they sitting on the quad? Are they working in groups in the library? Do the dining halls look inviting?
One school had a food court full of brand-name fast food chains and felt like an airport food court. Many teens would view this as a plus, but it turned us off from both a dietary and school-culture POV.
We paid attention to whether the faces we saw on campus seemed diverse and whether diverse kids were hanging out together. Teen Traveler noticed that lots of students on one campus were wearing school sweatshirts and almost no one was on another, which she interpreted as a indicator of community and school spirit.
8. Ask about daily life
Ask the tour guides what students do and where they go on weekends. What are the best places to study? Do they live on or off campus? How’s the food?
Pay attention to how much information they volunteer about activities, roommates and campus traditions. Ask about internships, campus jobs and study-abroad opportunities if they don’t come up.
Dorms that provide a strong community appealed to Teen Traveler. Social life that focused on sports or Greek life was a turnoff. For some kids, of course, it would be the opposite.
I also liked to ask what they would change about the school if they could. It’s rarely a dealbreaker but is usually enlightening.
9. Consider the larger area
We also tried to make time to check out the area around a campus.
Is it lively and well-lit? Where is the nearest grocery store, coffee spot, cheap restaurants or drug store? Can students get around without a car? Would you feel comfortable with your child living off campus at some point?
10. Bond with your kid
We did some of these tours as a family. And Rich and I each took Teen Traveler on some tours by ourselves, which was awesome.
We’re increasingly aware that we will be empty-nesters very soon. Having one-to-one bonding time with here was enjoyable and memorable. I recommend it if you can swing it.
What To Do After the Campus Visits
11. Debrief and make notes
Right after each campus visit, I’d ask Teen Traveler what she liked and what she didn’t, what she’d still want to know and if she could see herself on that campus. It helped her to nail down her impressions and decide what she really thought of a place.
Make notes after the tours. Google Sheets is ideal for this. But a running Google Doc is good, too. This will remind your senior why they liked a place and to track of details they might want to refer to when they’re applying.
12. Reward yourselves!
I made sure to book a nice dinner every night after a day of tours. Our feet and brains were usually tired. Treating ourselves helped to re-energize us for the next day’s tours, especially when the weather was bad.
We were happier and more well-rested when we spent enough time in a city to combine college tours and some sightseeing. It helped Teen Traveler form an impression of the larger area as a place to live, too.
If you don’t have time for that and are squeezing in a lot of tours, book a hotel with a pool. Seriously,
A swim (and ideally, a soak in a hot tub) fills the gap between tours and dinnertime. It’s relaxing and reviving. Also, if you aren’t going out at night, book a hotel with a lounge where you can happily sit and read, play a card game, check your phones, etc., instead of just being cooped up in your room.
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Photos: Top four photos are from our University of Rochester tour (FamiliesGo!©); Harvard Co-op (CC).