Every year at spring break, thousands of students pile into mini-vans with their parents, descend on the nation’s college campuses and take major steps toward life after high school.
But with the nation’s most selective colleges turning away qualified students in record numbers, conventional wisdom says you can’t be too careful. So, as an insurance policy, many families are hitting the road for the traditional college tour with a schedule that would tax the stamina of minor-league baseball players.
This is the if-it’s-Tuesday-this-must-be-Amherst season. Visiting as many as three campuses in one day, students inspect dorms, sit in on classes and cringe when their parents ask questions.
Part consumer shopping, part whirlwind courtship, the tour will help determine–in the parlance of high school guidance circles–whether this is “a good match.”
With private school tuition reaching $30,000 a year and up, parents want to be sure they’re getting an optimum return on their investment. But with no tires to kick, no hood to look under, decisions often turn on the kind of intangibles that can be gleaned only from a visit, such as the quality of the food, the friendliness of the faculty, even the aroma of a campus.
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“It’s really a lot like dating,” said Frank DuBois, a counselor at Homewood-Flossmoor High School. “You’ve got to kiss a lot of frogs before you meet a prince.”
Admissions directors attribute the escalated travel to the fact that an ever-larger contingent of students is trying to squeeze into the same top tier of schools, yet colleges aren’t increasing the size of their freshman classes. So getting accepted becomes more of a numbers game.
Consider that 16,800 students applied for the 1,650 vacancies in Harvard’s class of 2002. Then, consider that of those applicants, some 2,700 were valedictorians of their class and nearly 1,900 scored a perfect 800 on the math portion of their SATs. You’ll understand why students are casting a wider net–which means more touring for Mom and Dad.
“It’s an odd profession where your success is measured by the percent of customers you make unhappy,” said Christoph Guttentag, admissions director at Duke University, who must sift through 13,000 applications for a class of 1,600 before acceptance letters go out on April 1.
But beyond stops at the most selective schools, campus visits overall have increased. High school students arrive with more requirements, and admissions offices are working harder to get new recruits on campus before they make a final decision.
“These days, there are a lot of things students expect other than academics,” said Jean Burke, associate director of admissions at Loyola University Chicago, where 650 more students attended recent open houses than a year ago. “They want to see the gym equipment . . . Internet hookups and strong libraries.”
While no organization tracks the number of visits nationally, admissions officers said a firsthand look is the most potent marketing tool in their arsenal.
“Students are more savvy,” said Stacy Rungaitis of Drake University in Des Moines, where visits are up by 8 percent. “They’re applying to more colleges, they’re seeing more, they know what they want. If you can get them on campus, you have a better chance of getting your message across.”
Some students do it extravagantly, with four-star hotels and sightseeing detours; others stick to a no-frills budget, bunking with relatives along the way. Still others opt for a junket with their classmates, all hooked up to Walkmans and diet soda.
No matter how you travel, though, one thing is certain: This is a heady time for perusing Gothic architecture, paneled libraries and hallowed sports shrines; a pocket of promise before the realities of class rank, SATs and family finances intrude.
“When you look at the catalog, they’re going to show you the prettiest girl and the handsomest guy eating from the finest tableware in the cleanest cafeteria on the sunniest day,” said Tom Cieplak, a dean-counselor at Oak Park-River Forest High School. “You need to walk around the campus . . . and just decide if this is the place you want to spend four years out of your life.”
DuBois leads Homewood-Flossmoor students on an annual East Coast swing, which starts in Washington, D.C., (Georgetown, Howard) and ends in Boston (Harvard, MIT and Boston University). In between, stops are scheduled at Johns Hopkins, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, Princeton, Columbia, New York University, Brown and Yale.
“With our kids being from the Midwest, they don’t really know what’s out there.” he said.
DuBois arms his charges with a checklist of 50 factors–from recreational facilities to internship opportunities–and, whenever possible, he arranges for them to meet with Homewood-Flossmoor graduates who attend the college. “That way, we really get the straight scoop . . . instead of just the dog-and-pony show.”
At small private colleges, campus visits provide an opportunity to show off the personal touch, which gives them an edge over the bigger–and often better-endowed–institutions.
At Beloit College in Wisconsin, each family gets a customized tour based on the student’s interests. College officials say they spend on average about $3,000 to recruit each freshman. The school, at a total cost of $25,000 per year, will get about 1,500 applications to fill 325 freshman seats next fall. Only about 20 percent of Beloit’s students are from Wisconsin.
“We’d like more applications,” said Alan McIvor, acting college president and vice president of enrollment services at Beloit. “To increase our applicant pool, it is an ongoing, never-ending process of communicating with high school juniors and sophomores.”
Colleges are keenly aware that parents are comparison shopping, noting such selling points as dorm security and job placement rates. Duke, which hosts about 20,000 visitors annually, recommends that students bring a camera and a journal.
What are the deal-killers for students? Bad food, bad weather and even bad smells, say high school counselors.
Some kids confess to having difficulty separating the tour guide from the school. (“It was hard for me to relate to a guy who wanted to be a biochemical engineer,” said one North Shore senior.)
Sometimes, especially if students are just at the beginning of the process, their worries are less specific.
Emily Brodie, a Stevenson High School junior, will be traveling to California next week to scout six schools, ranging from Scripps (enrollment: 700) to UCLA (35,000).
“I’m not exactly sure what I want,” she confessed. “But I’m afraid that I’ll visit somewhere and get really excited about it and everyone on campus will say, `It really sucks here.’ “
Yet for all the rampant consumerism, it’s still a seller’s market. There’s no accounting for why one school heats up while another cools off. The annual U.S. News and World Report rankings play a part, but so do quirkier factors.
Northwestern University saw a huge surge in applications and visitors in 1997, the year following the Wildcats’ Rose Bowl appearance. Stanford was flooded after Chelsea Clinton passed up Yale, her parents’ alma mater, in favor of Palo Alto.
After a few days, families on the same Ivy League itinerary even begin to recognize each other–first, warily, as potential competition, then, gratefully, as weary comrades.
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“In the beginning, everyone is a rival,” said one mother whose daughter was accepted to Stanford, Dartmouth and Amherst. “Then you think, `It’s OK; they’re not from Illinois. They won’t be in the same applicant pool as we are. . . . We can talk to them.’ “
When they do break the ice, parents swap insider information about “hooks” (admissions jargon for what enhances a student’s desirability, from tennis to tuba playing). But admissions folks caution against putting too much stock in the rumor mill.
For years, the buzz was that Stanford does not take kids from the same high school, but last year, it accepted two Homewood-Flossmoor students, co-editors of the school newspaper. This year? None so far. At Emory, New Trier has always been well-represented. This year? Numerous students have been wait-listed.
Robb Stokar, a senior at Homewood-Flossmoor, recognizes that the process is unpredictable, which is why it’s important to see as many schools as possible. Although he was in the top 5 percent of his class and had plenty of extracurriculars, he took no chances, making four separate trips to the East Coast to see 13 schools.
The hard work paid off with a fat envelope from his first choice, Cornell University.
His advice? During campus visits, peel off on your own (“It’s hard to ask about partying and women with your parents around.”) and keep your spirits up.
If you do get rejected, he said, “you just can’t take it personally.”