Visiting College Campuses This Spring Break? Use these “Cool Tools” to Organize Your Visits

For families of college-bound high school juniors and sophomores visiting college campuses this spring break (next week, for most U.S. high schools), MyCollegeCalendar provides a nifty campus visit checklist, a “fill out as you walk through campus” list of questions, and a campus visit summary sheet.

The Campus Visit Checklist is a list of the most important tasks to complete and locations/buildings to see during campus visits. Families should print a separate Checklist for each campus; mark each task as it is completed and each campus location as it is visited.

The Campus Visit Questions worksheet is valuable reminder of important questions to ask during campus visits; ample space is provided on the worksheet for answers to be written directly below each question. No student or parent can ask all of the questions on the worksheet, but many of these questions will asked by other visiting families; when answers are provided, write them on the worksheet to remember the responses of college admission officers, college financial aid administrators, current college students, and professors. Questions on the worksheet are in the order of sights toured/questions asked during a typical campus visit.

The Campus Visit Summary Sheet is fun way for all family members to discuss the characteristics of each campus visited and for students to “grade” each campus according to their likes and dislikes. The Summary Sheet provides for “grading” each campus by students assigning a score to each of the 18 one-sentence statements and calculating a numeric total for each college campus. This can be valuable information because after visiting three-to-five campuses, college campus characteristics often blend together as memories fade and facts become blurred. Completing the Summary Sheet immediately after each campus visit allows for students and parents to review the numeric totals and to compare and contrast all campuses visited.

For those students following the MyCollegeCalendar advice of conducting interviews with college admission officers and professors as part of your campus visit, be sure to review the our guidance on how to prepare and conduct interviews.

Also, an Example College Campus Visit Itinerary is available for families to see what a well-planned campus visit schedule looks like.

For complete, practical guidance on how to maximize the benefits of a successful campus visit and to make the most of opportunities to impress college admission officers and other college representatives, go to the Campus Visits page onMyCollegeCalendar.org.

This Article was Written by Steve Sterling and Originally Posted on MyCollegeCalendar.org