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 who 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.

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 their child is an athlete so most of their college visits were planned by recruiters so Parent 1 could put much more faith into the college system
• 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:
  • 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) (used Barron's Guide)
  • Use word of mouth to often find other colleges
  • Plan a trip to 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
• 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).

Common Problems

• 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.)

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 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.

• 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