College Visits - shopping or buying trips

Parents often ask, "When's the best time to take my child on college visits?" My quick answer is, "Whenever you can". Fall or summer or spring or winter, whatever works into your busy family schedule, that's the best time.

College Visits fall in to two categories, shopping or buying visits.

Shopping visits take place during the sophomore and junior year and are best designed to help students clarify the criteria they want in a college. Here are three helpful questions students can be asking themselves at this stage in their search:

1. What do I like about this college?
2. What do I dislike about this college?
3. What questions do I have about this college?
   

Students limit the value of visits when they ask themselves the single question: Do I want to apply here?

Criteria can be clarified by visiting colleges that may or may not make it to a student's final college list. That's why I recommend that in 10th and 11th grade, students and their families take advantage of local college visits. Even if a student has committed herself to the "2 state away rule"*, visiting colleges in her back yard can help identify college characteristics that will make a campus a good match or not.

The importance of the idea of shopping visits is exemplified by the recommendation we make for all of our Minnesota students. We recommend that they participate in the Minnesota Private College Week. This year, June 21-25 is the week. During this week, all of the private colleges in Minnesota open their doors to prospective students. There's a variety of schools in this group: rural, urban, suburban/religiously affiliated or not/selective to vary selective/liberal arts to programs with career options...... Throw in a visit the the University of MN and a mid-size public university and students will have visited a very wide variety of campuses. With this knowledge and experience, they can move towards clarifying the criteria that are important to them, based on experience, rather than just based on assumptions. This investigation period is crucial to a successful college search.

Buying visits take place once a student is admitted to college. That's during the senior year. By this time, students should have in mind clear criteria of what they want in a college. During their shopping visits, they compare the colleges on the criteria important to them.

*2 state away rule - I'm going to a college at least two states away from where I live.

Happy Trails!