How college visits can help you figure out what you actually want

Spring break’s a perfect time for juniors to visit colleges—you won’t have to miss classes or make up work. Most juniors don’t have a definitive college list yet, so think of the spring break visit as list-development research. It’s already spring, and in summer, you’ll start applying to colleges. Of course, where you visit will depend on what kind of information you need to gather.

Check the academic calendar first

Before you plan the itinerary, you must check colleges’ academic calendars to be sure classes are in session. Visiting an empty campus won’t give you a sense of who goes there or what kind of vibe it has. Don’t waste money on hotels and even flights if you aren’t going to see the campus in action.

Plan your route

Start with a geographical region. (I recommend purchasing a map of colleges and universities to help you visualize where colleges are located.) I just developed one visit list for Pennsylvania and Ohio, another for Virginia and North Carolina. Plan on visiting on weekdays and don’t try to do more than two colleges in a day. One a day is really plenty; if you have a full week off, you can potentially see five schools. Ten would just addle your brain.

How do you decide where to visit?

Don’t devote your break to visiting all the Ivies or highly rejective schools, especially if you know that you’d go to one if you got in. You’re visiting to gather information.

What do you need to know? Not sure what size school you want to attend? Then visit a large state university, a midsize university, and a small liberal arts college. You can find these close together. For example, in North Carolina, you could see NC State, Wake Forest, and Davidson. Not sure whether you want to be in a city, a suburb, or a college town? In Ohio, you could see Ohio State, Denison University, and the College of Wooster.

You don’t even have to go out of town to do campus visits. Stick close to home. If you live in the Baltimore-D.C. metropolitan area, you could visit a midsized urban school (George Washington University), a large state flagship (University of Maryland), and a small liberal arts college (Washington College in Chestertown).

Once you pick the colleges to visit, ask AI to plan your itinerary. It will tell you drive times and suggest places to stay if you bake that into your prompt: Please plan a trip over five days leaving from and returning to PLACE and visiting X, Y, and Z. We want to visit one school a day. Lay out drive times and suggest 3-star hotels.

Know before you go

Do a little bit of research before you go by looking up majors and campus life on the website or reading the school’s entry in The Fiske Guide to Colleges (this is built into my college planning program, but it’s also available in book form or online for a fee). Have at least one reason that it might be a good fit for you. (“I heard it’s a good school” is not a reason.) You can also check out their social media, but be prepared to see only happy people having fun in glorious sunshine.

On campus: what actually matters

Go to the information session. Go on the official tour. But don’t stop there.

At some point, peel away from the group and just be on campus for a few minutes on your own terms. Walk through a building that isn’t on the tour route. Sit down in the library. Eat a meal in the dining hall if you can. Notice the students. Do they look engaged? Are many walking alone, wearing massive headphones and staring at their phones? Are they showing school pride by wearing clothes branded with the school’s name?

Look lost and see if anyone offers to help you. Ask a student who isn’t a tour guide something the admissions office won’t tell you. What do they wish they’d known before they enrolled? What pleasantly surprised them? What would they change?

Take pictures. Make the first picture and last picture of your time on campus of a sign with the school’s name or mascot so that you know all the photos between those two are of that school. Believe me, this is essential, because once you get home, you won’t be able to tell one dorm or academic building from another.

Debrief while it’s fresh

Don’t wait until you’re home and unpacked to process what you saw. By then, the campuses blur together and the impressions that mattered most start to fade. I have a quick note sheet for a data download to be done in the parking lot before leaving the campus. You record weather (because it’s been proven to affect perception of a campus), some things you liked and didn’t like, and a rating of how good a fit it seems to be for you.

What a good visit should actually do

A week of campus visits won’t hand you a college list–but it will tell you things no ranking, no brochure, and no algorithm ever could. Your gut is a data point. Trust it.