I’m not a fan of turning college visits into homework assignments. Yes, I think you should take the tour if you can. But the rest of your time should be spent seeing what you want to see, whether that’s sitting in on a class or watching the baseball team practice. Just find a way to breathe in the atmosphere and get a feel for what it’s like on campus. No need to turn the whole visit into a note-taking research project.
But I do suggest that as soon as possible after the visit, you write down 1-3 things you’re sure you will remember about the college. It could be a fact that struck you. But more likely, it will be something you see students doing, or a conversation you overhear, or something the tour guide mentions being involved in that really sounds interesting to you.
Here’s why.
Many colleges are going to ask you to write essays about your interest in the school, why you’ve decided to apply, or how you’ll pursue your major, or how you see yourself contributing on campus. Those are some of the most challenging questions for a lot of students to answer. Instead of falling back on the same things most students say, (“I visited the campus and I loved it”), you’ll be able to give a specific example of something you remembered from your visit, not something you just looked up on the website. That’s a much stronger answer.
For example, I remember a Collegewise student writing her response to Pitzer College’s essay about the legacy she would like to leave behind in college. She remembered her tour guide describing that there were walls on Pitzer’s campus that were reserved for students to paint anything they wanted to. She was an artist and wrote a great essay about how she would take advantage of that opportunity. She closed that essay with the idea that when she left Pitzer four years later, she wanted people to say, “There goes Jessie. She painted a lot of walls here.”
If you don’t like the school at all, forget this exercise—you’re probably not going to apply. But if you like it, just jot down 1-3 things (no need to write a term paper) that struck you, things that piqued your interest and made you think the school might be a place where you could be happy.