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College Success
(Admitted to Univ. of Maryland) |
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Campus
Visits
Campus visits are an essential - and often deciding - part of any school search. To make the most of your visit, be sure to adequately prepare for and evaluate what you see.
The Importance of Visits
It is impossible to tell whether a school is going to feel like a right fit until you visit it. Although the factual data is important, most parents want to see how that one faculty member relates to every ten students (as advertised in the catalog: ''1:10 faculty-student ratio'') rather than just know he is there, has a master's degree, and coaches one sport. You want to walk down the halls and hear how those students ("60 percent of whom have 600 or higher SAT verbal scores'") talk to each other and to their teachers. You will want to hear whether those kids ("8 percent of whom take AP exams or go to the University of Wherever") laugh, enjoy their work, and are proud of their school. You will want to see whether the kids all look alike, whether the classrooms seem inviting, whether everyone looks horribly stressed or bored. Do people speak to each other in the halls? Do the bulletin boards advertise interesting projects and activities? These answers can be obtained, but they may require a little effort.
Choosing When (and Where) to Visit
Choosing which schools to visit and when to go is a financial as well as practical decision. If you are looking at local private day schools and are fortunate to have enough good choices from which to select, you should visit three or four. Most day schools offer a number of visiting dates, but as they book them on a first-come, first-served basis, call each admissions office in late August or early September.
Many boarding schools that receive large numbers of campus visitors suggest that you visit the school in the spring or summer of the year before you apply. If you cannot visit until early fall, be sure to call early in the summer to schedule your appointment. Almost all schools have a standard visit, which includes a tour, an interview, perhaps time to prepare a writing sample, and time to talk with a few students or teachers. If your child is particularly interested in one or two classes or programs, be sure to mention it in your initial call so the admissions office can include them in your tour. Some schools will ask you to fill out a preliminary pre-visit form that includes questions about your child's specific interests.
Letting Your Child Lead
When you actually get to the campus, it is essential to let your child take the lead in the visit as much as possible. Each child's role will vary tremendously depending on his own social skills and how involved he is in the search for a private school. It will be helpful if you can make it clear to everyone else that you are looking for a school that will be a good fit for him - not for you. If the school really fits him, it should meet your wishes for him, too.
Visits are arranged differently at each school. Some design individually-tailored schedules so your child will get a chance to visit classes in which he indicated an interest (e.g., English, photography, astronomy, orchestra). He may meet with the head of the upper school or class dean for fifteen to twenty minutes or with an athletic director or music director.
In this scenario, he will have a number of guides, perhaps of different ages. He will have a host for lunch who will try to include him in a discussion with other students. Other schools have the visiting student follow a current student's schedule for the day. The admissions office chooses an outgoing student who has volunteered to serve as a host and who has interests similar to your child's.
Sometimes these visits lead to friendships; other times they can wear thin by third period. In either case, let the admissions office know candidly how the visit went. They want all visiting students and parents to have a good impression of their school and need to know if the host was gracious, knowledgeable, and positive. The guide may be a good kid but not right for this responsibility or it may be that a quiet student becomes a surprisingly amiable host.
Making the Most of Your Visit
To ensure that your visit is productive, it is helpful to design a written checklist to guide your visit and to focus your observations. You and your child should work on this list together, ensuring that it covers all the important criteria. After each visit, you should check off and rate each item and then compare the rankings. When you are visiting several schools, a written list makes it easier to keep each school straight in your mind and later to compare them all more accurately.
You should keep some important considerations in mind while writing your list. What do you hope to learn by visiting? How will you be able to compare one school with another? How will you know whether to apply to a school or not? Having a list of things to evaluate and consider may force both parents and children to stop focusing on one aspect of the visit to look at other facets of the school.
Here is a sample checklist to guide you in brainstorming:
1. Rank from 1 (terrible) to 5 (great):
The campus _____/Athletic Fields _____/Dorms _____/Dining Room _____/Classrooms _____/Computer Labs _____
The best facility: ______________________________
The worst facility: _____________________________
2. The kids seemed . . . (Answer yes or no).
To work hard _____
Smart _____
Friendly _____
Weird _____
Like me _____
Happy _____
Bored _____
3. The teachers seemed . . . (Answer yes or no).
Friendly _____
Interested in their students _____
Interested in me _____
Hard _____
Smart _____
Easy to talk to _____
4. The work seemed . . . (Answer yes or no).
Like my work _____
Harder _____
Easier _____
More interesting _____
5. The classes or activities I would want to take are: __________________.
6. Things I didn't like are: ___________________.
7. Things I forgot to find out are: _________________.
Forming an Opinion
After completing a visit, it may take a while to elicit your child's opinion. Some kids are not eager to talk about their visit in detail. For some, it is important to process it for themselves before they describe it to you. For others, it is all too threatening, too unnerving. Try not to grill your child. Wait and listen carefully. It may be that he will share more with a sibling or close friend. Two or three days later, you may learn more. Urge him to fill in his reaction list. He does not have to share this with anyone now, but it will help him keep the various schools straight when he wants to compare them.
In addition, no matter how strong your reactions to each school, curb your tongue until you have given your child a chance to share his opinions and observations. Too many adolescents get caught up in reacting to their parents' views, either positively or negatively, and never share or fully develop their own thoughts. Some kids may be in a negative stage, so that no matter what view their parents take, they take the opposite. Other children, especially when they are nervous about the whole search process, will quickly agree with their parents' views despite their own misgivings or initial reactions. Remember, it is your child who will be going to one of these schools, so it is important that he be encouraged to express and share his reactions to each school. You will probably find that he will notice lots of things that you overlooked.
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