My family and I spent a week doing a Tour of Midwestern Liberal Arts Colleges this summer. Why? My soon-to-be-a-senior daughter had been researching colleges and felt that she needed to know more than the slick brochures told her. We figured that our son, a student at OU, would be able to give some helpful advice, and our youngest daughter would also benefit from looking at potential college choices.
So, we mapped out an ambitious course through the Midwest from Iowa to Minnesota to Ohio (a little out of the way) to Illinois, loaded our family of five into a rented van (my son christened it the Daycare Van) and started the trek.
My daughter had narrowed her search, contacted admissions offices at each college, and lined up tours and interviews at five institutions. Parents, a word of advice, let your teen do the work. Offer guidance when necessary, but ultimately, it is the student who is looking for the college, not mom or dad. My husband and I gave input on where we could realistically drive in a week’s time, and the approximate time we would arrive at each school. Other than that, our daughter did the work.
Armed with a road atlas, file folders of information from the colleges and an itinerary of tour and interview dates and times, we were off.
Be warned. During the summer, small colleges do not have summer school, so you won’t get a feel for the school as you would during the academic year. You will, however, probably learn more than you think. After you’ve looked at the pictures on the college brochures – bucolic stretches of fall foliage, students sitting on the green grass, studying, maybe having class outside with a friendly professor sitting on a rock – the schools start to blend together. Visiting in the heat of July gives you a different picture.
First, all tour guides give the same view of liberal arts colleges: small classes, friendly, accessible PhD’s teaching the classes (no, gasp!, dreaded graduate students teaching anything!), challenging academics and high student involvement in activities. Oh, and it seems to be a commonality these days that students play Ultimate Frisbee. Beyond those basics, visiting the school will give you small insights into the differences among the colleges. This is where you and your student can start to see if the school might be a good “fit.”
We found that some schools value an honors system. Some schools are more “green” than others, including using wind power and buying local foods for the cafeteria. Some schools put their money where their mouth is when it comes to community service, helping socially active students find projects locally, or around the world, and paying students to serve. All said they value diversity, but only a couple of the colleges actually seemed to have diverse populations. One college offered students the opportunity to work with a professor/mentor for a year and publish a paper. Another provided an individual lab area for a semester or a year for students doing scientific research. Some had nicer buildings and better endowments than others.
All of these small differences would probably not be as discernable without a personal visit. Also, visiting enables students and parents to ask questions that particularly interest them. While the student is being interviewed, he or she is also interviewing the prospective school. And, don’t worry, parents, you can ask questions on the tour, and you are invited to join your student at the end of every interview to ask more questions.
My daughter liked all of the schools she visited and, although she had three favorites, she felt she would be comfortable at any of them, indicating, to me, that she had done her homework. She thought that the online descriptions and book descriptions from such resources as “The Princeton Review,” “Colleges That Change Lives” and student blogs and profiles were surprisingly accurate.
Final tips. Talk to any students you see walking around campus or working in local businesses. Visit the town as well as the college. We had all of our tours in the morning, then found a local spot for lunch to talk about our impressions of the school. Waitresses and waiters were often students at the college. They were wonderful sources of information.
All in all, if you can, take a road trip. You’ll learn a lot about colleges, get a feel for their philosophies, and, while you’re stuck in that car on those long drives, you’ll have the fun of listening to your son or daughter talk about his or her hopes, plans and desires for the future. |
GOLD_02.jpg){kind=small}
-3.jpg){kind=small}