Parental Guidance Suggested: Helping Your Student with College Visits
I was lucky to have support from my father during my college search process, including college visits. Since my mom was from France, she didn’t have as much knowledge about American higher education. While he did the driving from place to place, he made sure that I was the one in the proverbial driver’s seat. There is so much value in letting your student take the lead. After all, once they’re off to college, they’ll be on their own.
During our east coast trip (since I went to high school in California), he took care of booking flights and hotels, since I didn’t have a credit card at the time. However, it was my responsibility to book campus visits, which meant figuring out how to schedule the visits in a way that made sense for the drive. I was also responsible for printing Mapquest directions from location to location (since we didn’t have GPS at the time). In addition, he had me make a binder with an evaluation for each school, which I filled out at the end of the day.
Looking back, I realize that this was such a healthy approach to helping me with college visits and the college search process in general. I recommend working with your student to figure out which colleges to visit. Hopefully, they’ve been able to work with their college counselor to narrow down the list, so you’re visiting a mix of reach, 50/50, and safety schools.
While you can decide who will do the driving from place to place, I do recommend putting them in charge of making reservations at each college. It’s important to teach them early how to put together a schedule. Let them also reach out to individual departments to visit a class, say hi to their admission counselor, or set up a meeting with a professor, if those are offered at the school.
Having an evaluation for each visit was also super helpful. Again, let your student put together a rough draft before you jump in and add any missing elements. These can be great talking points when you get home or back to your hotel at the end of the night. The evaluations can include things like ratings for different criteria, as well as qualitative pieces such as their favorite part of the school, any remaining questions they have, etc.
Speaking of questions, they should do their research ahead of time, so they can ask questions at the end of the admission presentation. It’s understandable that parents will have questions for admission counselors or tour guides, but we’re really impressed when students are the ones doing the talking. It shows that they’re eager and engaged.
Ultimately, engagement is the key—as is setting up your student for success once they leave the nest. So let them be an active part of setting up college visits. They’ll learn valuable lessons along the way.
Written by: Anne Aubert-Santelli, Associate Director – USC Office of Admission