When Should I Start Touring Colleges TKG

When Should I Start Touring Colleges We get this question a lot, and it’s an important one to ask because oftentimes students come to us the summer before their senior year not having visited one school. To be frank, that is kind of an *almost* worst-case scenario. By that time you should have your school list nearly together and have begun working on your Common App personal statement. For that reason, we encourage our students to begin touring colleges the spring of their sophomore year. But the best time would be to plan a trip during the summer between your sophomore and junior year.This is because you have an ample amount of time and no school. It’s truly not necessary to begin visiting before sophomore spring. Trust us. It will just conjure up stress and overthinking too early in the process. We try to condense this entire process as much as possible. If you follow our timeline from the beginning, we can essentially make it so that you are done with the toughest aspects (and bulk) of the application process by the time you go back to school for your senior year. Yep, you read that correctly. We’ve put together a sample schedule for looking at schools below, so that you can start to visualize these next few years. Sophomore YearMarch/April: Start researching colleges online to get a feel for schools you might be interested in. Want to go to school in a city? In the mountains of New Hampshire? On the beach? Want to study engineering? Politics? Live in a suite? A townhouse? There are endless options, so start clicking around and see what appeals to you.July/August: Plan a trip to just one college to begin, and go from there. By seeing one college, you’ll get a good idea of things that you liked and did not like about the school. We recommend looking at an “extreme” school to start, whatever your gut is telling you. Perhaps you’re drawn to a smaller, more isolated college like Williams, Colgate, or Dartmouth, or a larger, more urban one like UCLA, Georgetown, or Tulane. Regardless of what you choose, this first experience will help you understand the various components to look for going forward. You’ll be surprised at how instinctively you react to the school.Junior Year  All of that said, we understand that a great deal of you might be reading this during your junior year. Do us a favor and take a breath. It’s totally fine. Most people (and high schools) operate according to the perspective that the college process begins during your junior year of high school. If you’re a junior, then we suggest that you immediately tour a college nearby (read: accessible by train or bus) to get a sense of a college campus and start to think about what you like or don’t like. Like we said above, it’s best to start with just one, and you’ll immediately realize that you like some aspects and dislike others. This will significantly impact the trajectory of your school visit list. From there, you can use your upcoming spring break and summer, as well as long weekend s, to plan trips to see colleges that are in line with what you want in terms of location, size, departments, housing options, etc. We can help you figure out your list relatively quickly if you’d like, just drop us a line.After your visits: Be sure to write your thoughts down. That is, after you complete your tour and information session, walk around a bit, grab a bite to eat, and pop into a library or two. It’s important to write down your thoughts so that you can come back to them later. After a few college visits, it’s inevitable that you’ll forget some things that struck you.Write a personalized thank you note to your host/tour guide/anyone you met along the way. And now, repeat 6-10 times over the next few breaks. We know that this process can seem overwhelming, but we promise that it can be fun. Choosing where you’re going to spend your 4 years of college is an exciting opportunity. We’d be happy to help you start planning your college visits, and even if you ’re a bit behind, we can help you get on track. Call or email us and let’s get a plan together. When Should I Start Touring Colleges Let’s start by saying that if you’re reading this right now and you’re a junior, you should have started yesterday. But to be fair, this is a question we often get from everyone from parents of students in 8th grade to high school seniors, so we’re going to expand on this. As it goes for college tours, you should start before you think you should start. The ideal time to start the process is first semester of sophomore year of high school. But before you ask…Isn’t junior year “the college year”? Can’t I just wait until then? It wouldn’t be a good idea. You’ll have more than enough on your plate. I want my kid to get ahead. Can’t we start freshman year? It’s probably too soon. A freshman is still adjusting to high school, so the touring process can be very overwhelming. Plus, they’ll have a hard time relating to students on campus because of the age gap. Here’s why sophomore year is best:  The college process has been slightly demystified. A high school sophomore has friends, or at least acquaintances that are applying and/or going to college within a year. They’ve heard about it and have probably started thinking about what the college process will be like for themselves. The first tour is still going to be overwhelming, but time will be on your side if you start sophomore year. You’re going to realize just how much you don’t know about the process, but you still have time to figure it out. Because you still have ample time left, you can go to the college around the block. Or a few exits down the highway. Pick any college to get the process started. We’ve written about how the first college you tour should be the one closest to your home. This is because the goal of the first college tour is not to find the end all be all, it’s to create a basis for comparison for all tours to come. All this adds up to the fact that starting college tours as a sophomore makes for a much less stressful experience. During your first tour, tune into what you like and don’t like about the school. Better yet, bring along our college visit notepad. We suggest writing things down as your tour and immediately after: if you take detailed notes you’ll be better suited to pick out subsequent schools to look at.    Want help figuring out where you should tour? Reach out here.