The Right Approach to College Visits Can Help Your Clients Make the Right Financial Choice Hot

This financially efficient approach helps students and parents in three ways:

1. The most expensive, elite college does not always have the most elite, job-connected academic department in the student's area of interest.  Deep research pre-college visit forces students to focus their efforts on getting to know and compare colleges in the ways that matter, which is all available on line: courses, department descriptions, faculty areas of research, costs, outcomes, etc.  This is the most important part of making the right college choice in terms of finances.
    
2. It reduces the cost of visiting colleges of interest multiple times.
    
3. Perhaps most important, it minimizes despair if the student is not ultimately admitted to their dream school.  Too often students are excited about an elite college they have visited. They wear the college sweatshirt to high school and tell everyone they are applying there.  Then in the spring of senior year they find their hopes dashed, accompanied by acute embarrassment.  This happened with a political science/environmental law student we worked with this year, who had his hopes set on Vanderbilt.  Once he was denied and got over the emotional trauma, we were able to get serious with him about other incredible options. Here’s what happened:  He leaves in September for University of Aberdeen, Scotland, where he will receive a great education in one of the energy capitals of the world, where he will be in a genuinely multicultural environment and be able to intern at both Scottish Parliament and English Parliament – and he'll graduate in a kilt!

That said, college visits are a great place to begin developing the critical thinking and observation skills that will serve your client's children well in every aspect of living. Your clients should be smart consumers of higher education.  Help their child do their homework before they go, and encourage them to be astute observers and critical thinkers when they visit. 

Your clients' families should listen critically to everything that is said on college visits. Admissions offices today are being driven by pressure from the administration to bring in students, which equals tuition and room and board money.  Admissions counselors are selling their college, because their jobs depend upon the numbers of students they recruit and applications they receive. 

So, unfortunately, families can no longer believe them any more than they would believe a used car salesman, despite everyone's good intentions.  (BTW, the term "used car salesman" is one I hear often now, used by admissions counselors weary of the pressure to recruit students who are not a good fit.)

We have attended and participated in many, many info sessions over the years.  In the past several years, it is astonishing how similar these sessions have become.  They are almost interchangeable. The truth is that admissions departments everywhere have deeply researched this college-bound generation and know exactly what to say to attract them -- from diversity, to community service, to safety, to small classes, to anything and everything.

Honestly, visiting a college is much more about considering the details that will affect your client's child's day to day life and sussing out the truth behind the marketing and reputation.

So when your clients are intending to visit colleges, here are some ways to advise them: 

1.  Observe the way that professors and administrators behave around students.  Are the employees respectful of the students?  Do they seem to enjoy interacting with them?  Do they seem helpful and not dismissive of students with questions?

2.  Your client's should understand their own ethics.  They should consider the situations at Penn State and Rutgers (Tyler Clemente), and the many, many colleges today that are reeling from accusations of the mishandling of sexual assault cases. Advise your clients to consider their own ethics and then think about what questions they need to ask to learn about the ethics of the institution. For example, what is their student judicial system like?  How have they handled bullying in the past? Do they have campus-wide programs in effect to increase inter-human sensitivity?  How do they handle substance abuse issues?  How do they deal with student conflict?  What is their approach to handling student mental and emotional health issues?  If a student is in crisis, and that crisis may reflect poorly on the institution, will the institution act on behalf of the student or will it cover up the crisis in order to protect the institution?  Does the institution seem punitive or does it seem to approach jurisprudence as a learning opportunity?  Don't just ask them open ended questions, ask for specific examples. 

3.  Advise your clients to ask about the first-year student intake program.  How are they going to ensure that your client's child is socially integrated and academically supported?  Many colleges – including colleges like Cornell and Vanderbilt – are overwhelmed with emotional and mental health cases and don’t have the staff to handle them. This can affect not only your client's child's personal life, but it can affect his or her roommate and friends. What are the mechanisms for students to confidentially express their fears and anxieties?  Do they have an Early Alert system?  If they don't, what is their process for ensuring that no student falls through the cracks?  If they do, is it one that is designed to truly help students who are struggling, or is it intended to seek out struggling students and punish them for buckling to the high pressures of college life?

4. 60% of colleges and universities in the U.S. are fiscally unsustainable (Bain Report).  So they should look at the "bricks and mortar."  Does the campus look well-cared for?  Does it look safe?  Lights in alleyways and hallways, etc.  That stuff matters.  But college is a place to learn.  It's not supposed to be the Golden Door Spa. They should be aware that fancy, expensive residence hall facilities should make them question where tuition and room and board money will be going -- especially if it is an institution that is charging higher tuition and it has little or no endowment. It should be going to ensure that the academic facilities and equipment will prepare you to enter students to enter their profession.  That's what your client's child is going to college for.

5.  Before they go, tell them to read the local newspapers online and see what's mentioned about the college or university. Does the institution have a good reputation within the community?  What is the relationship of the college to the surrounding community -- "town and gown"?  Is the college genuinely invested in the people and community that surround it, or are they simply taking up space, creating a universe of their own with no interest in bettering the world around them?  Some institutions, such as Indiana University -- Bloomington, are fully integrated into the community in every way, ethnically, socially, and economically. This integration creates a rich personal and professional experience with lots of real world possibilities for building a resume aimed at gaining employment upon graduating.

6.  Advise them to listen closely and think critically.  They need to make sure that the institution they are visiting is marketing itself HONESTLY through its tours and info sessions. For example, Tulane University is in New Orleans, which in its admissions tours touts its diversity. However, look around you on campus and you see virtually no evidence of varied ethnicities. Then drive to the other side of town and see a completely different, devastated community.  Then remember the admissions officer telling you that their football team plays in the Superdome, which had housed all the people from the Ninth Ward. They have an almost billion dollar endowment, yet they accepted $135 million from FEMA post-Katrina to upgrade their data systems, yet the city is still devastated. Again, institutional ethics and truth in marketing -- they should pay attention to what they are being told, and they should pay even closer attention to anything that supports or denies what's been said to them.

7.  Before they go on their tour, they should research safety statistics and everything that's been in the general news about the college.  And when they are there, they should pick up a copy of the student newspaper -- that's where they will see what's really going on.  And learn about what's being discussed at the Student Government Association meetings.  They should pay attention to what they find out about efforts students and student groups make to express their concerns to the college's administration.  What are the concerns being expressed and how are those concerns being responded to. 

8.  Advise them to ask where their tuition money and room and board goes.  Better yet, they should ask to be directed to published information that details where their money will go.  

9.  Advise your families not to ask about the average SAT score, or graduation rate, or student/faculty ratio. They can find all that info online, even though it's not very important.  The fact is, they will learn more from astute observation and research than they will from asking questions.

10.  Four-to-five years is a long time to be someplace. Before they leave for their visits, they should read online the college's Strategic Plan.  When they visit the campus, advise them to check to see if there is evidence that the institution is moving actively in the direction its Strategic Plan indicates it wants to go. 

11.  Also research online where funding cuts are being made. If it's a public institution you are looking at, research what kinds of funding cuts are being made to make up for reduced state funding.  Many, many institutions around the country are being faced with having to pull back on programs or eliminate them completely. When they visit, urge them to talk to a professor or students and find out what the continued funding outlook is for their department.  Your client doesn't want to end up in a program that cannot keep up with its needs for educating their students, or worse, in a program that is in danger of being eliminated.  And make sure they research what has been told to them -- the faculty may be trying to save their department by recruiting anyone and everyone. That doesn't mean the department isn't good, it just means they are struggling and your client wants to make certain that they understand the truth and possible outcomes of the department, because that will affect how much they are paying for college in the long run.

Contact us to receive a free copy of our in-depth college visit checklist for your clients and/or to request an informative, college admissions insider webinar event for your clients.