...
- She has experience planning multiple college trips, both to single schools and to multiple schools in a given region.
- As she had just planned two college trips for her youngest daughter (Interview 4), we had her step through the process of planning the trip aloud for each of her two most recently planned trips, asking her to describe the tools and frustrations she used along the way. (We tried to also have her share her screen as she recreated the process, but the screen-sharing software was not functioning properly).
- Trip 1 (Nashville / South):
- Planned for an upcoming school vacation, the trip was designed to combine sightseeing around different parts of the South with college visits in the area
- The trip planning process began with one college and destination in mind (Vanderbilt and Nashville), but she wanted to expand the trip to include more colleges and destinations
- Due to lack of familiarity with the area, she did not know of any schools around Vanderbilt to visit, but she had heard of Davidson and read about it in college books
- She thought that Davidson would be a good fit based on its renowned International Relations program and my sister's interest in international development and involvement with related extracurricular groups; she found information about Davidson's International Relations program through its website
- She used MapQuest / Google Maps to see how far apart Vanderbilt and Davidson were in order to determine whether a trip to see both of them would be feasible.
- While she had originally planned to return to Nashville after visiting a second school, once she selected Davidson and used the map to see the distance between the two schools, she realized that this was infeasible
- Unsure of where to stay around Davidson, she used recommendations from Davidson's websites to decide upon a hotel for the evening.
- She used the college websites of Vanderbilt and Davidson to determine college tour times
...
- Daughter of Parent 3, she is a high school junior who has visited one college (Boston College) and is planning to go on the trips described previously (Trip 1 and Trip 2)
- We asked her to describe her college search process from the beginning, and then probed further into the process with our questions.
- Starting the college search process
- She began to think about colleges after finishing her PSAT's
- She created a College Board account online; this gave her access to a tool which would help her find colleges that met her preferences; the criteria accounted for in the tool included size, location, and intended college major
- However, the College Board tool did not account for how "serious you are about school"; it did not account for grades, and the result was that she got many irrelevant, or "really obscure" results (cited University of Idaho as an example)
- Mechanisms for discovering colleges
- Word-of-mouth played a major role in helping her learn which schools might be interesting to her
- She attended several sessions in which admissions officers from different schools came to her high school
- Some sessions took the form of Q&A (Claremont McKenna); while others were more like information sessions (Boston College)
- They all sent "really nice people", and all described a similar type of generic, ideal candidate (seems like they did not distinguish themselves or help her figure out a better fit)
- College websites were useful in figuring out whether the school would be a good fit for her academic interests
- She often visits the "student profile" page to learn about statistics related to typical SAT scores, the diversity of the school, and other basic characteristics of the school
- She also looks at the lists of clubs and activities and the lists of different majors offered
- Sometimes, it's possible to click on the major to find out more about it
- However, she does not frequently visit academic department websites within the college website
- She indicated that while she has not encountered "virtual tours" on college websites, she has found extensive photo galleries on different college websites
- College books give an outsider's view on the school (different from the college website or other official college literature) and provide helpful lists like "people who applied to this school also applied to schools X, Y, Z"
- College visit experiences to date
- She went to a Boston College tour and information session because she "had to start somewhere"
- She thought it was a good school but it was not in the region that she was looking to go
- The tour gave some specific valuable insights (e.g., which specific school to apply to). However, it seemed like the primary value of the tour was that it oriented her as to the campus layout and gave her a sense of what the campus was like.
- The information session seemed very "scripted" and also featured what she considered to be "obnoxious questions"
- Planned college trips
- She picked out the schools that she wanted to visit for Trips 1 and 2, but Parent 3 did all the booking
- She will mostly be attending tours and information sessions at the schools; while she did not plan to talk to faculty or other specific people on campus, she will also do a campus interview at one of the schools.
...