Guide to College Visits

While you can get a good sense of a college from their website, or talking with recruiters, nothing compares to actually visiting a college’s campus to get a sense of what the school is like. In spite of this, it can be difficult to know what to do or ask when on a visit. A well structured visit tells you a lot about a college and its culture, while one which is less well planned is an expensive and time-consuming diversion.

The purpose of this guide is to help you maximize the benefits of visiting a college, so that you’ll be able to determine if a college is a good fit for you. Whether you’re visiting to determine where to apply, or choosing between schools during admitted student weekends, this guide will help you know what to look for to determine if a school is going to be a good fit for you. Let’s get started!

Preparing for a College Visit

The first thing you should figure out, before even planning a visit, is what you want from your college experience. How do you envision your time on campus, and what are you most excited about? Once you have ascertained what you want from a college, you’ll be better equipped to see how any particular college can fulfill those needs.

Next comes the time to plan the visits themselves, and here they fall into two categories: window shopping, and test driving.

Window Shopping visits are brief, done before applying, and give a concise and general sense of the college. Often they might be done in an unofficial capacity, such as seeing a campus when visiting an older sibling, or as a stop on a longer unrelated road trip.

Test Drives come either during application season, or after acceptance, and serve to get students better acquainted with schools they are now envisioning themselves at. Just like with shopping for a car, you want to take it for a spin and see how you feel in it before making a major commitment.

When finalizing plans to visit colleges, keep these steps in mind:

• Don’t try to do too much. Keep visits limited to one or two a day; trying to do more risks burnout, or having all of the colleges blend together in a smear of hushed libraries and over-caffeinated 20-somethings.
• Visit a variety of schools, especially if this is before you are accepted. If you only visit top ten schools, and then don’t manage admittance to any of them, that can be a disheartening experience.
• Enjoy yourself. Don’t think about colleges every hour of the day, especially if you are taking your whole Spring Break to visit schools. Take some time to do fun things outside of the official visits, especially near campus, as this gives a sense of the neighborhood the school is in.
• Commutative principle: If you want to get a sense of an urban campus, but live far from New York or LA, visit schools closer to you which have a similar locale. Chicago and Boston are not the same, but the feeling of an urban environment is, and that is something to take into consideration when evaluating a school.

Getting the Most Out of Your College Visit

There are both traditional and more varied approaches to college visits, and both have value. Which you should take depends on your answers to the question above: what do you want from your college experience? Having determined what you want, the purpose of the visit is to see if the college can provide for those wants.

The classic information session and tour combo is helpful if you want a sense of the campus as a whole. It also gives you a tour guide to answer your questions. The more research you have done on the school, the better equipped you will be to ask questions. Tour guides don’t have any influence on admissions decisions, but are a font on knowledge on the student experience. Good questions to ask include:

• What’s campus culture like?
• How much class participation is there?
• What’s the workload like?
• What are the most popular clubs or events?
• What’s an average weekend look like? What about week night?
• How popular are sports on campus?

While this is not an exhaustive list of questions, these are the kinds of topics that tour guides are able to speak to; subjects relating to the current student experience, and life on campus. Many schools now offer more informal or self structured opportunities on visits as well, run through the admissions office. It is good to call the admissions office and enquire about such opportunities before arriving. No matter what you do at a school however, make sure to check in at the admissions office first, as they track which students visit for the purposes of demonstrated interest.

Here are some suggestions for less conventional activities when visiting a campus:

• Sit in on a class. While not all colleges will allow this, and you should always check in with admissions before barging in on a class, sitting in on an actual class gives unique insight into academics on campus.
• Attend an event on campus. There are many free events open to the public on college campuses, many even have food. Do some research before your visit to see what’s going on at the time.
• Go to a sporting event. This is especially good if sports and school spirit are important to you.
• Read the school newspaper. This will show you what current students are concerned about.
• Eat lunch on campus, either in a dining hall or on the quad (many schools are now welcoming food trucks on campus) and (discreetly) people watch.
• Have conversations with students or staff. Don’t ambush people on their way to class, but many people are quite willing to discuss their experiences with the school.

The more and deeper a feeling you get for a campus during a visit, the better you will be able to tell if it is a good fit for you. Determine your wants and needs for your time at college, and use the visit to see how each particular institution will fulfill them.

As a final note, you should take notes on your visit. These don’t have to be super detailed, but note the things you like, the ones you don’t and anything you might want to know more about. These can be a valuable resource when writing the “Why Us” essays later.

What to Wear on a College Visit

This can be a source of stress for many students, so we thought we would address it specifically. Note that what you wear is not something recorded by colleges, but the interests of decorum do dictate some things. Here are our quick tips to looking good on a college visit: 

• Avoid being too formal or informal. Business casual is fine, a full formal suit is a bit much. On the same token, it’s advisable not to show up in pajamas, that has to wait until you’re actually a student at the school.
• Avoid wearing gear from other colleges. Showing off swag from the school you are visiting isn’t necessary, but showing up to Yale in a Harvard shirt is in poor taste. 
• Dress for the weather. Touring Dartmouth in November requires a very different wardrobe from touring Rice in July. If you are touring a school in the North in the winter, wear layers. You will want a solid coat while outside, and want to be able to shed when you go into buildings.
• Bring a water bottle. We realize this isn’t quite an outfit tip, but you will be walking a bit, and stopping to look for a water fountain can be awkward.
• Don’t wear inappropriate clothing. Generally, if something would violate your high school’s dress code, don’t wear it on a college visit. 

After the Visit

If you visited before applying to colleges, review what you saw and what you learned, and use that to inform your decision making process. Maybe urban schools are anathema to you, maybe you fell in love with the charms of a small school or the energy of a large one. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, but hopefully through your visits, you learned what you want out of a school.

If you visited after being accepted to multiple schools, you can treat the visits as more of a test drive, seeing how you fit into the school and its culture.

Of course, this guide can’t answer all possible questions, but we hope you will find it helpful. If you are in need of further guidance on your college application journey, reach out to Ivy Scholars for counseling opportunities, as we’re always happy to help students find the school that’s right for them.

Virtual College Visits

With the intrusion of the Coronavirus pandemic, many schools canceled all visits and in-person events for prospective students. Even as the world lurches towards a semblance of normalcy, some are still uncertain as to the future of college visits going forward. That said, the pandemic also caused the rise of a new and powerful tool for students to explore and learn about college campuses: virtual visits.

While most schools have had an online presence for a while, the pandemic caused a massive growth in the number and kind of virtual offerings for prospective students. These resources have pros and cons, which we’ll enumerate below, along with detailing how you can make the most of virtual opportunities.

Pros:

• Cost. Traveling across the country to visit a college can be both expensive and time consuming.
• Convenience. Related to the above, with the added benefit that self guided tours can be accessed whenever works best for the student.
• Options. Almost every school now has virtual offerings, which means you can visit every school on your list without ever leaving your desk.

Cons:

• Impersonal. While some live events are held, there is often less of a chance to ask questions in self-guided virtual tours.
• Curation. Since schools decide what to put on their sites, they can create a more carefully managed image, without the things students may see or hear in person while on a tour.
• Standardization. Every person will have almost the same tour experience, and while this does promote equality, not every student wants the same things from a tour, or will want to explore the same details.

Thus while virtual visits can provide a helpful resource, we don’t think in-person visits will ever go away. We do recommend using virtual visits if you have a lot of schools you want to check out, or if your extracurriculars make traveling to schools unnecessarily complicated. We suggest the following tips for getting the most out of virtual visits:

• Look for live events. Many schools will offer live Q&A sessions with admissions officials, and some will offer live remote tours. These will give you a chance to ask the questions you most want answered about a school. See above for a guide on asking good questions on a tour.
• Make use of these new resources. Even if you do visit a school in person, checking out the campus virtually beforehand can give you a better sense of what to expect, and can prompt new and deeper questions to ask when you have a real tour guide.
• Personalize your experience. If a self-guided virtual tour is available, make sure you focus on the aspects of the school which appeal most to you.

Virtual visits will never fully supplant visiting colleges or college fairs at high schools, but they are an exciting new way to experience and interact with universities you may want to attend. As always, you should make the best possible use of all the resources at your disposal, so you can make the most informed decision about where to go to college.

Final Thoughts

While you do not have to visit a college as part of your application experience, many students are well served by doing so, and are better informed when building their college lists if they have a sense of what colleges can offer them. College visits are often an integral part of the application process. 

We hope this guide has shown you your options for visiting colleges, and given you insight into the benefits you can gain while doing so. If you want advice on other aspects of your application, or to hear how we can help you, schedule a free consultation today. We have a depth of experience in all aspects of the college applications process, and are always happy to hear from you.