I recently completed the final leg of the doomed to disappointment college tour with my son, wherein ambitious parents and striving adolescents trudge, like weary pilgrims, through one historic campus after the other, feigning interest in spires, dining rooms that are supposed to evoke memories of Harry Potter, lecture theaters, libraries, dorm rooms and the same tedious anecdotes about college life.
At every information session, excerpts from the College’s web page are read aloud with varying degrees of enthusiasm and humor. On occasion a parent or child will break the monotony by asking a question to which the answer can be found on the web site. When the answer is not to be found in the College’s promotional material, the question will be deflected. For example, is it better to get a B in an AP class than an A in a regular class? Better to get an A in an AP class, is the response.
So, why burn money and time on this uniquely American ritual? Many a college coach, counselor, college prep guide book recommend it. They may differ on whether one should do it before applying or after one has been accepted. In either case, I know of no good explanation for why this is a sensible activity.
Some argue that it is a form of costly signaling that will help one’s child should they be on the cusp of admission. This explanation only makes sense for those who tour before applying and apply to colleges that keep track of those who visit. A number of highly selective institutions do not keep track of visits. Princeton, in fact specifically says that whether one visits or not is irrelevant for their admission decisions.
For those who tour after the admission decision, it makes even less sense. What can one possibly learn from one visit to a campus that would allow one to distinguish it from another? The responses to a campus are sensitive to the personality of the tour guide, the weather, the others on the tour and so on. When the impression one gets is subject to so much noise, why is this informative? It is not as if one gets to run the counter-factual to verify the correctness of the choice. The really important factors that determine college experience, large vs. small, liberal arts vs. university, urban vs. rural are all known before the visit.
5 comments
July 2, 2009 at 12:43 am
Eric
I think this isn’t entirely true. Details of the really important factors can’t be captured simply in dichotomies like you propose. Urban vs. rural isn’t that straight-forward; not all urban campuses will have much in the way of green space conducive to outdoor experiences, or will appear to be connected in quite the same way. I found the layout of Harvard a great deal more appealing than the layout of MIT; I would never have known this without visiting both.
Similarly, I think you also leave out the psychology of actually setting foot somewhere. From reading a few listings, one would think Haverford and Swarthmore must be exactly the same, yet when I visited them on days where the weather was basically the same, I found Swarthmore very appealing and Haverford not to be quite so appealing. Accepting a spot in a college is a commitment in theory to spend 4 years at a location. It’s probably impossible to distinguish between two fairly similarly ranked and styled schools in terms of which will provide a better education, especially for those myriad “undecided” incoming freshmen, so shouldn’t the personal vibe your kid gets for the campus be a huge factor? Isn’t the mere psychological boost your child would receive from deciding to attend a school they visited and “loved” (no matter how superficial the reasons that visit provided to “love”) the school useful?
July 2, 2009 at 8:43 am
rakesh vohra
Dear Eric
You are right about not all urban campuses are the same. Columbia and Penn come to mind……..one has a huge green space, the other not. You may also be right about the psychological boost one might get from attending a campus that one fell in love with on first sight. But, I think you discount people’s adaptability. I think, by and large, we (i.e. humans) are a flexible lot. I think, after a year, whether campus X generated a vibe, or not, will not make a difference.
July 2, 2009 at 8:18 am
Vincent
I’m shopping for a car at the moment. Everyone says I should go try those I am considering. I don’t see why. All the info is right there on the manufacturers’ websites.
July 2, 2009 at 8:51 am
rakesh vohra
Dear Vincent
The car analogy only goes so far. Suppose one had to pay $300 and give up a day of your time to try out each car. And, to top it off, the car has to say whether it will accept you as an owner. Now how keen would you be to test drive the cars?
I’m not arguing (and mea culpas if that was the impression I left) a campus visit generates information. The question is what is the quality of the information relative to the expense paid for obtaining it. I would argue, that the information one obtains noisy. It is subject to the vagaries of the climate on the day of the visit, the personality of the guide, ones mood (and of course, if one is canny enough to ask the right questions).
That test driving cars makes good sense may only be a sign that the information one gets is valuable relative to the cost paid to acquire it. Or perhaps it is just an elaborate ruse to convince oneself that one did not spend 40K on impulse!
July 2, 2009 at 9:28 am
Dan
Shockingly, I just had this exact discussion with my brother, who is about to start at Notre Dame in the fall. We focused primarily on the culture and “personality” of an institution, so we were talking about in-session visits. Your opinion about the quality of information is fine; there is surely a lot of noise. But you basically assume that we humans can not tune out the noise and look for more telling information — how much time do people linger in the cafeteria or in hallways to talk to each other? what is the level of interaction in a class? what does the cafeteria food taste like? can you find a good pick-up basketball game on a Thursday afternoon? what does the school look like in person (not in professional photography)? There seem to me to be clearly valuable pieces of information attainable from visits during the school year and probably to a slightly lesser degree in the summer that can be taken from a visit. In fact there is likely to be much more noise in the advertising documents that are available at a distance.