You’re looking for your dream school, so you take a one week trip and bounce around the Northeast (or wherever) visiting colleges. You probably check out some of the guided campus tours and move on and while these may be informative, they are normally pretty standard and won’t teach what really matters about the school. These short visits are fine for when you’re narrowing down which are your top schools. Once you narrow it down to about three, however, I strongly encourage visiting each of them overnight or at least talking to a student you know who goes there. I did both of these while I was trying to decide whether to apply early to Penn or Duke. At Penn, I met up with a friend from my high school who showed me around and really talked up the school. At Duke, I stayed overnight with another friend, went to classes with him, and just hanged out. One of the most important things you have to notice though is not how happy your friends are, but how happy his/her friends are too. It’ll give you a much better sense of the school’s culture and what the people are like.
All in all, make sure you do proper research into your schools and if you have the chance, definitely stay overnight. After all, you’ll be spending the next four years there.
P.S Register for AdmitSee using the invite code “SEBI” to get an extra $10 credit!
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