Summer is an exciting and perfect time to visit prospective college campuses. Application season is fast approaching for seniors. It’s helpful to plan for informal college visits to the schools on your list. Stepping on campus and seeing where you’ll call home can help you decide whether or not the school is a strong fit. If you don’t can’t travel to schools, there’s still lots of ways to check out campuses. Some students may decide to only take official campus visits. These tours and visits put their best foot forward. We want to stress why it’s important to take unofficial visits, which will help you get a more realistic view of the place you may call home.

By JT Thompson

Summer is an exciting and perfect time to visit prospective college campuses. Application season is fast approaching for seniors. It’s helpful to plan for informal college visits to the schools on your list. Stepping on campus and seeing where you’ll call home can help you decide whether or not the school is a strong fit. If you don’t or can’t travel to schools, there’s still lots of ways to check out campuses. Some students may decide to only take official campus visits. These tours and visits put their best foot forward. We want to stress why it’s important to take unofficial visits, which will help you get a more realistic view of the place you may call home.

If possible, try to go both on an unofficial and official tour. Both can offer different and important campus information. On your own visit you’ll get the unfiltered version of what each school is like. You can see what you want to see and take your time. On the official visit, youll get the best of the best. It’s fair to say that your time at this school will fall somewhere in between your outsider’s point of view and the point of view of the tour guides. Official tours are also important because it prov ides the school arecord of your visit. This shows admissions committees that you have demonstrated interest. This is important. Every time you interact with a prospective school, whether an email to request information or a call to admissions, it indicates interest and investment.

Going Beyond the Official Visit

On a guided student tour, you’ll be led around campus by current students and counselors. You’ll be with a group of 10-20 people, usually other prospective students and families. On these tours, everyone will be able to ask questions about campus life, academics, and whatever else they might wonder about the school. This information may be good to know, but if you’ve already looked into the school, you may know a lot of the answers. College tours also show you a very standard view of campus. You’ll see the most important buildings, but not always things that impact your four years on campus. There’s an agenda here too. College tours want to make sure that they put their best foot forward. Student tour guides are engaged and passionate about their University. While this is great, what they like about campus may not be what you like about campus. It’s important to understand that those who run official visits have an agenda-just like you do. Each wants students to enroll, but that does not mean the campus is the place for you.

So, while official tours are cool, it’s important to measure expectations

See What You Want to See

The purpose of a college visit is to see what you want to see on campus. If something is important to you, make sure you do it. If you want to see the science buildings or soccer fields, make sure to do that! You’ll leave the visit feeling way better about what you were able to do and you’ll also have a more solid idea of the kind of time you’ll have as a student. If you’re unsure where something is at or how to find a building, ask someone on the official tour if they’ll give directions for what you’d like to see after the tour is finished. Making a list of what you’d like to see on campus and following through will require a bit of advanced planning.

Planning Ahead

At the point of taking official and unofficial visits, you should at least have a decent idea of what you’re looking for in a school. Maybe you even know what you’d like to major in. This interests and what you’re looking for can help you build a list of important ways to utilize your campus visit. This will require that you spend some time on the campus website and consider what the school has to offer before you arrive for the visit. Explore college websites to find maps of campus and learn what activities are offered. In tandem with your interests, you can create a list of things to do in addition to what’s offered on the campus tour.

Pay Attention to Academics

If you have an idea of what you want to major in or know what kind of courses interest you, you’ll want to make sure that you investigate where those interests will be present on campus. If you’re someone who wants to major in business, for example, figure out where those courses are held and make sure you take time to see that specific school. If you’re wanting to go into the Liberal Arts, there’ll be a building, or multiple, that house those interests. Take the time to go and see where you’ll spend your time. If you can, go into the building, find the front office, and let them know you’re on a campus visit. They may be able to introduce you to professors or give you some more information about the school that you won’t get on an official tour

If you can’t make an official visit, but can go to campus, we’ll discuss what places you should make sure you see on your campus tour and why. Visiting campus helps students figure out what living on campus may be like. To get the fullest picture of campus, we recommend that you take the time to do an unofficial visit of your own separate from an official campus tour. Helpful tip: if you end the tour and are back at home trying to remember what you liked about the campus, it probably didn’t leave much of an impression on you. This may be a sign to move on! Want to learn more about college visits? Check back for Part II.

JT Thompson

View all posts by JT Thompson

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