We have heard it argued that freshman year is too early to start visiting colleges. We disagree, and this post will, we hope, convince you to see it our way. Freshman year is actually the perfect time to start looking at schools. It’s low stakes, but high reward. Freshman students have a lot of time and room for exploration, so it’s a perfect time to get out of your comfort zone and visit schools that you may not have considered making time for if you were in a crunch.
This is also the best time to make the first visit to a school that you have a legacy connection to. Either you’ll get excited, or you’ll realize that, maybe, it’s not your best path. Either route is extremely valuable, and we love working with students through navigating these first few steps of the college process.
In this post, we’ll break down what you need to be doing when you visit schools, how to pick schools to visit, and what to do after a visit. This is also an amazing time to do things like lock down your social media by making everything private, and remember that colleges take note of what you do on campus. If you post from campus praising the landscaping, it will not help you get in when you apply in a few years. However, if you post something negative, they will take note. Remember that there are young people on staff in the admissions office, and they are clued into whatever app kids are using at any given moment. So, visit. Have fun. Follow the instructions below, but also be thoughtful. You may only be a freshman, but the college journey starts now, and that means holding yourself to the standards that exceptional universities have for their students.
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If you want to get into an exceptional college, you need to have a vision of where you want to go. Getting onto a campus and feeling the energy of a school is an amazing way to kickstart that passion and energy for your collegiate future. We encourage our students to add college excursions into any road trip or family trip. If you drive past a college, stop. And always, and especially as a freshman, stretch yourself.
STRETCH YOURSELF
As a freshman, you are in an amazing place right now. As we said, the stakes are low. So, you need to stretch yourself. You need to try things that may be outside of your comfort zone or that you are ‘certain’ you would never want. Think you want to go to a small college? Visit a big university. Think you want an urban environment? Visit some rural schools. Going outside of your comfort zone may confirm what you feel confident in, or it may open your eyes to options that you hadn’t thought of.
And remember, you can learn a lot from schools that you would never consider actually going to due to competitiveness or another factor. If you see a sign for a school, we challenge our students to stop. Visit. Even if you’d never apply, notice something. Find a few things you love, and a few you don’t.
HAVE CONVERSATIONS
Don’t just walk onto a campus, snoop around, take pictures, and then go home. You need to have conversations. If you can book an official tour, come with questions. Don’t expect your tour guide to know precise answers about your academic interests, though. Instead, ask them about what they love about the school. When you invite someone into sharing what they are enthusiastic about, they tend to light up. It sparks a conversation that can build to a much deeper understanding of the school than you can get from a website or info session.
But don’t be stuck to talking to a tour guide. Go to a game or match, and start a conversation with another spectator. Eat at a student café, or have a picnic on the quad. Understand that you are young, and you will stand out a bit (or a bunch) as being much younger than most students. Don’t be surprised if people are wary of talking to you, and we do advise keeping an adult or older sibling in the mix.
TAKE NOTES
As you are visiting, you need to take notes. We recommend carrying around a small notebook that fits in your pocket or bag to record what pops into your head in the moment. This is because colleges have a way of getting blurry. If you start visiting colleges as a freshman (which you should), you need to remember this visit for a long time. So, take notes. Don’t just record facts, either. You need to record the way places make you feel. “Big library,” means absolutely nothing. “Wow, I could study here for hours!” actually tells you something when you look back at these notes in a year.
SUSPEND JUDGEMENT…BUT TRUST YOURSELF
We also want to challenge you to challenge yourself. We know we’ve already said this, but freshman year is the ideal time to do something a little bit outside of your comfort zone. The reason isn’t because you don’t know yourself, though. Rather, it’s good to go through a process of confirming that your conceptual preferences resonate in real life. We’ve worked with so many students who swear off of a certain type of school for one particular reason (especially size, curriculum style, location, and Greek life) before they start doing visits, only to realize that their perfect fit actually is the opposite of what they had thought that they wanted.
One of the most valuable things a college counselor brings to the table when working with freshman is building a relationship that can help a student navigate through the uncertainties, confusion, and challenges of even finding what schools you should spend your time getting to know and aiming towards. It’s all about pushing boundaries, suspending judgement, trying new things, and laying the foundation for exceptional college admissions outcomes.
As you start visiting schools as a freshman, remember that some colleges do not prioritize underclassmen for tours or info sessions. It’s still worth visiting, but understand you may need to revisit a school that you love to truly get a full sense of it. Either way, tap into family connections. If you have family or friends at a school, ask to visit their dorm, to shadow them to a class (only if permitted), or even just to get coffee. And if you find a school (or a few schools) that ‘click,’ it’ll be amazing motivation to dig in and earn the best grades that you can and to pursue the most impressive extracurriculars possible to launch yourself on a powerful trajectory towards your application process.
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