The Parent’s Recruiting Guide, Part IV: Campus Visits

Getting On Campuses Should Be a High Priority

Look at your kid’s search for a college scholarship this way — it’s a hands-on, face-to-face discovery process.  Nothing replaces your kid visiting college campuses and meeting the people who work and reside there.  No Web site, friend or advisor’s opinion, or sweet talk from an admission counselor handing out candy can adequately do a campus and coach the justice they deserve.

Web sites are marketing tools for colleges meant to attract students, nothing more.  Other people’s experiences are theirs, not your kid’s.  And, family advisors are often biased toward particular colleges, good or bad.   

For those reasons, don’t make the first time you see your kid’s campus be when she moves in.   

Your child will, hopefully, be spending four years at a college.  She’ll be waking up in a dorm, walking to classes, sitting in classrooms, visiting professors in their offices, eating two or three times a day in the cafeteria, communicating with administrators, and spending a lot of time in the coach’s office and working out in the facilities.  She’ll only be coming home four or five times all year.  Her college essentially will become her home.

A cursory, one-time examination of a campus and interaction with its people should not be enough to confidently make a decision about where your kid goes to school.  Put more effort into it and demand that your kid do the same. 

Our best advice is that you and your kid should spend a full weekend on or around the campus and do the following:

• Go to a morning class in her intended major.  Afterward, talk to a student and instructor.  Prepare two or three questions for each intended to give your kid more info to consider.
• Go to three meals in one day at the cafeteria.  The quality of the food and cleanliness are important, yes, but watch carefully how and where the students congregate, socialize and treat one another as well as the professors which may be eating there as well.
• Sit in a high traffic area around lunch time.  Again, observe how the students seem to be responding to their surroundings.  Pick out a student ask a couple of prepared questions and discuss any concerns or observations which you may have noticed. 
• Visit the counselor’s office.  Find out how the school supports students academically and socially.  Discuss how the administration views the athletic department, athletes and in particular her coach and the team.
• Walk around the campus after sundown.  Does it feel safe?  Are there emergency outlets for students around campus?  Are there a number of students walking around in the evening?  Do you see campus security? 
• Visit the local town during the daytime.  Go into the stores, the bank and restaurants.  Talk to owners and managers about the campus, the students and the relationship the town has with the college.  Get a sense of its proximity to the campus and if it offers the types of add-ons which are important to your child. 
• Talk to a current freshman on the team and then to a current upperclassman.  Ask specific questions which require thoughtful answers.  Try to get to the essence of who the coach is and if his or her teaching methods and coaching style will motivate your kid to perform at her best. 
• Meet with the coaches individually.  Talk about their histories and their own futures.  Try to get a good feel for who they are as people.  And, be very clear about their coaching philosophy and plans for your kid as an incoming freshman. 

These suggestions should initiate your thoughts to run toward a thorough discovery adventure at the colleges your kid is seriously considering.  With this approach, it is highly unlikely that your child will make a bad decision about which college is the best choice for her.