Interviews & Observations

Parents
For our first deliverable we decided to focus on parental involvement because planning college trips is primarily driven by parent planning. We interviewed three parents, all of whom have at least one child currently in college and have either gone through or are going through the college application process with a second or third child.  As a first task we asked them about the college trip planning process and then depending on how the line of questioning went, we would observe them actually going through the steps of planning a trip, including seeing which websites they visited and asking what questions the would ask the prospective students.

Interview 1
Mother of two children, both children already in or completed college (UC-Berkeley and MIT)

• Parent 1 was very hands off throughout the process because her children are both athletes so most of their college visits were planned by recruiters.  This allowed Parent 1 to put much more faith into the college system and not need to plan college tours and trips.
• Based on this information, we would like to conduct interviews with students who are planning their own trips or are going through the college process without as much parent intervention.

Interview 2
Mother of two children, both children already in or completed college (MIT and Washington University in St. Louis)

• Long process, has planned college trips for her two children as well as nephews, and other family friends
• Steps through the process (based on observation, prompted by: "Pretend I am a high school junior and I need to plan college visits, what do you do?" and being handed a laptop):
  • Ask a lot of questions to determine the type of school the student wants (big/small, urban/rural, public private, etc.)
  • Find out a few schools that are a good fit with the criteria (and fits the student's GPA/SAT/academic expectations) (would have used Barron's Guide if available)
  • Wished to use word of mouth to often find other colleges
  • Plan the trip to actually visit colleges, which requires finding other good fit colleges in the area, finding hotels and restaurants close by and then planning the itinerary based on what times those colleges have tours and information sessions (visited multiple travel websites and each college website to find times).
• Difficulties
  • Finding those schools that fit the student academically and then having a recommendations such as "people who applied to this school applied here too" because that can widen the knowledge of schools you may have never heard of or considered
  • Needs to use a lot of resources to plan these trips, starts with collegeboard.com, then needs to do individual research on hotels in the area, rental cars, restaurants, and possible tourist things to do if it is a long trip. Required multiple websites, books and talking to a lot of people who had already experienced the process.

Interview 3
Mother of three children, two children already in or completed college (Providence and MIT), one child still in high school (junior).

• 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

• Trip 2 (DC / Virginia)
  • Planned for a long weekend (Friday to Monday), the sole focus of the trip was on visiting colleges.
  • The initial plan was to visit schools in the DC area (Georgetown / American / George Washington), but those plans changed as she started to plan the trip and think about the daughter's preference for more of a campus setting.
  • She had visited William & Mary about ten years ago and knew about UVA's strong reputation; for these reasons, she started to think about including these colleges in the trip.
  • In the case of Georgetown, W&M, and UVA, she believed that proximity to Washington DC would lead to more opportunities for internships in the field of International Relations.
  • As she began to plan a trip involving the first three schools, she realized that Richmond was between all of these schools; for this reason, she decided to include the University of Richmond in the trip. She knew people from our town who had attended this school and thought that this would be a possibility as a good, safe option for my sister, even if it was not the best fit.
  • Initially, she planned to fly into DC and out of Charlottesville, but the lack of flights out of Charlottesville forced her to reconsider.
  • After looking up tour times on college websites and accounting for the academic calendar (some of these schools will be on spring break at the time of the visit), she came up with the following itinerary.
    • Fly into DC on Thursday night, and drive to Williamsburg (W&M) the same night
    • Do a morning tour / info session at W&M and drive to Charlottesville (UVA) for an afternoon tour / info session
    • Drive to Richmond (University of Richmond) on Saturday morning, and take a tour there. This school was less of a priority, so the fact that info sessions were not offered on Saturdays was less of a concern
    • Drive to DC on Saturday night, and spend Sunday walking around George Washington / American
    • Take a tour and do an information session at Georgetown (very well known for its international relations program and thus a higher priority) on Monday before flying back to Maine on Monday night

• Comments and Insights:
  • She used college websites and college books to learn more about the schools and the particular programs that would be good fits for her daughter.
  • She also used existing knowledge / word-of-mouth information about the reputation of the school as a factor in determining which schools to visit.
  • She expressed a lack of trust in materials from the College Board and did not use their website.
  • She did not know many schools in the South (that could be tied to Trip 1) that might be good fits for her younger daughter, even after having visited the Carolinas in the process of searching for schools for her older daughter
  • She went to individual college websites to get times for tours and information sessions; she also used the college websites to learn more about the programs that might be of interest to her daughter
  • Some schools on the trips (especially on Trip 2) were considered higher priority than others, and so she wanted to invest more quality time on the trip into those schools
  • Multiple iterations were required to find the best itinerary that accounted for different constraints and preferences.

Common Problems (Parents)

• Finding schools of interest subject to criteria
  • When the geographic area is unfamiliar, it is more difficult to find schools of the right caliber and right fit
  • School websites and college books (e.g., Barron’s, Fiske’s are helpful for identifying the programs that are popular and/or renowned), but then for things like online sources some parents (e.g. Parent 3) lacked trust of existing online information sources (saying: “I wouldn’t trust the College Board”).

• Building an itinerary
  • Parents found it difficult to satisfy all time and geographic constraints in building the itinerary and had to iterate
  • Parents obtained tour and travel information from college websites and booked travel arrangements on various websites (bookings.com, etc.)

Interview 4

• 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.

User Classes

• Parents: parents of high school juniors and seniors who may be planning a trip to visit colleges.  In addition to looking for schools in a certain area that fit criteria based on the student's needs (e.g. certain GPAs/SAT scores, sports teams, location, extra curricular activities) they will also need to find lodging and plan itineraries that allow them to go to tours and info sessions of various colleges so that multiple colleges can be visited in one trip.
• High School College Counselors: often help students select their colleges and may plan group trips to visit various schools in a certain area.  Want a centralized place to be able to send students and parents to look at prospective colleges in a certain area.
• High School Students: want to find colleges within their academic range.  Often not as concerned with the area, and don't usually plan their own college trips (although some do).  Want to see comparisons between schools and see which ones have the programs and extra curricular activities that align with their interests.
• College Admissions Officers: want to ensure that visiting prospective students can go on tours and attend info sessions easily and get a positive impression of the school.
• Transfer Students: students who plan to transfer colleges often want to visit their perspective new schools.  They also need to plan these trips, as well as find out who to talk to about transfer admissions versus regular admissions.  Transfer students are also often interested in specific departments/labs on campus.

Needs & Goals

Based on the parent interviews we have determined that there are two main needs when planning college visits, and then many higher-level, more specific goals within those needs that would be achieved ideally by a single tool instead of requiring multiple websites and books to achieve these goals.

• Reduce friction between choosing potential schools and visiting them
  • Bring together different services and data to save time and energy
• Find schools of interest for the student (students, families, counselors)
  • Identify the student’s interests, strengths, and preferences
  • Find schools which meet the student’s criteria
  • Renowned and popular academic programs in fields of interest
  • Campus style and size that are suitable for the student
  • Within the desired geographic area
• Build an itinerary to visit schools of interest in a given area (students, families)
  • Find college tour / information session schedules for different times in the college academic calendar
  • Identify external time constraints
  • Determine and book suitable travel arrangements given distances between schools on the itinerary
  • Find nearby attractions, restaurants, and events