College visit tips

Contact: Toni Searle, 216-368-4443, amf2@po.cwru.edu

Posted 7/31/98

CWRU admission dean offers tips to ease stress of college visits

With the predictability of swallows returning to Capistrano, high school juniors and their parents will flock to college campuses to get a first-hand look into their educational futures. Some will be following in the trusty flight patterns of older siblings, but many more will be the first in their families to test the college visit jet stream.

Bill Conley, dean of undergraduate admission at Case Western Reserve University, a private research university of 10,000 students in Cleveland, offers five tips to help ensure safe and productive landings during the college travel season:

Start near home. If you can't travel far or don't have a list of prospective colleges, visit nearby schools of the types that interest you (i.e., small, large, urban, rural, public, private, liberal arts, technical, etc.). Without spending a lot of money or time, these visits can help you sort out preferences that can translate into a list of colleges to visit later in more distant locations.
Get real. Select a realistic number of colleges to visit. Even if Rand McNally shows lots of colleges near one another, do your homework and only visit those that match your interests. Visiting too many schools can easily leave you remembering too few of them.
Make appointments. Use a route that follows a logical geographic sequence. Arrange for personal interviews, take campus tours, sit in on classes, and allow for a little time to poke around on your own. It is also a very good idea to ask whether students will be on break or in exams during the time of your visit. If students will not be on campus or will be preoccupied with exams, the campus will look a little different than when classes are in regular session -- but this need not prevent you from having a worthwhile visit. Ask how long it will take you to get to your next college, and add extra time for traffic problems and wrong turns. That will tell you when to arrange your next visit.
Do your homework. Read up on the colleges that you're visiting, especially the ones at which you will have interviews. Read the college's own publications and its profile in a select number of general guidebooks. Know the basic facts -- size, cost, student-faculty ratio, majors, selection profile, etc. -- and develop questions that require the admission counselor or tour guide to provide more in-depth information about the college. It is also not a bad idea to bring your transcript along with you.
Plan your travel. Using a camera and/or a notebook to record particular sights or reactions will help you distinguish one ivy-covered campus from another. Pack a good set of maps and have your college-to-college directions neatly written out in advance. (You may find How to Get to the College of Your Choice especially helpful.) As students and parents sometimes find the visits themselves stressful, there is a lot to be said for making the travel as stress-free as possible.

Advance research and good planning will make for successful visits. "The overriding myth in college admission is that there is one right college for each student, and students who unknowingly or unwittingly subscribe to that are the ones that tend to feel the most stress," said CWRU's Conley.

"The reality is that there are many right colleges for each student, and if you approach the process with that in mind, you're a little bit less anxious."

-CWRU-