four years of high school, the idea of colleges rakes a student’s brain. They have fears of how to pick an academically good school and how to know where it is good for them. I think as a junior, the best way to know where one fits in best is by visiting the college in person.
Colleges all over the U.S. offer tours on their campuses. These can give students a better understanding of what their life would look like if they were to go to that school. Oftentimes, the tour is given by a student who attends said school. They have an insight into the pros and cons of what their day looks like living on the campus.
When students narrow down their top colleges, it can be hard to understand the living situation of each campus and community. Most students will follow this frustration with going onto the daunting websites that the college supplies. Upon entering these websites, students are met with an overwhelming amount of information. With information being spread over texts, it is easy to be misread or misleading. These websites offer nothing but inconvenience for the student, leaving them with nothing but information about what SAT scores you need to get in. Although this may be helpful to some, it gives nothing but unrealistic expectations for the students.
On the other hand, these websites most likely will offer an option of signing up for an in-person tour. In order to get the full perspective of each college, people should go on to tour in person. I understand that touring every school on one’s list may be unrealistic, but students should at least try to visit their top three. The schools provide student guides, giving high schoolers the opportunity to ask questions about their daily life. Many of these guides are involved in non-academic-related activities. Unlike their websites, these tours are able to provide information that isn’t solely related to the school itself.
A big part of college is the community that one is surrounded by. By going to the school, high schoolers are able to experience the environment around the campus. Things like the weather, landscape and town around the campus are not normally considered on the website. Trellis Strategies did an article on the importance of visiting a college campus, stating, “Campus visits enable students to get a sense of life on campus, with factors such as campus aesthetics and a general feeling of comfort on the campus being noteworthy to students. Other factors relevant to the visit, such as weather and construction projects, have been found to matter as well.” Many students need to learn what is important to them while in college in order to find the perfect place for them. In order to find one’s best fit, the right way to go is signing on to the college website to sign up for an in-person tour.
