Visiting colleges, tips?

[Relambrien]

Hey guys,

I'm starting my senior year of high school in a couple weeks, and I've started to visit some colleges I'm interested in. I've already gone to Rochester Institute of Technology, and tomorrow, I'll be heading up to Massachusetts to visit Harvard and MIT.

I was wondering if you guys had any tips on what I should ask, particularly if there's a tour? I have my own questions, but I know there's probably some things I didn't think of that would be good to know. Also, considering it's mid-August, do you think I should ask for an application?

Also, any other tips on what to do when visiting a college or university would be appreciated. I'm trying to do everything I can to make sure I handle the college application process smoothly, so I have a place to go once I graduate from my high school.

Actually, on that note, I think I'm going to start sending in my applications to schools toward the beginning of September, finishing by the end of the month. Think that's a good time frame? I can contact my teachers at any time (small school, they all know me), so getting letters of recommendation aren't an issue, nor are getting my transcripts (got ten copies just the other day).

This may sound like I'm rambling a lot, but college is what I've most been looking forward to since elementary school, and I want to make sure I don't screw it up.

[MrRubix]

Re: Visiting colleges, tips?

As someone who has spent/wasted a lot of time on the college admissions process, I can prob. answer any question you have about those schools. What kind of questions do you have? I can try to, I guess, fill in the gaps with stuff you should probably ask (as there are many aspects to college that kind of catch you by surprise because they are simply unexpected).

College is different for everyone and so I can't really give you a "this is what you should ask" spiel without really knowing why you want to go to those schools/what your priorities are/goals are/etc.

Also keep in mind that for those schools, you're going to need a decently strong application in the first place.

Also, considering it's mid-August, do you think I should ask for an application?

Don't really know what you mean by this but you can basically get an application from any school's main website.

[MrRubix]

Re: Visiting colleges, tips?

Anyways gotta go to a party but I'll help with **** when I get back if you have any questions.

I probably can't help much with RIT as I didn't apply there, but I can help you the most with: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Penn, Brown, MIT, Georgetown, Tufts, UVA, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Lehigh, and Stanford, as those were the schools I applied to.

Like you I've always been interested in college since an early age so I always get excited whenever someone has questions haha. It's a pretty exciting time... feels like the cumulation of years of hard work :P

[Relambrien]

Re: Visiting colleges, tips?

@ Rubix
Don't really know what you mean by this but you can basically get an application from any school's main website.

Yes, I have found the applications for all the schools I want to go to on their websites. However, a lot of the instruction I've received on college admissions has been about surprising the admissions office with dedication to the school, so I was wondering if asking for an application in person, while at the school, would have a bigger impact that way.

Keep in mind, I've also been told to give my resume to admissions representatives from schools that I haven't even applied to yet. I don't know if that actually does anything.

As for questions I did have, here's a few:

1) What does the typical schedule look like? How many classes each day, and how long can I expect to be in class? Since I'd like to major in a science (Computer Science, specifically), what other kinds of classes would I be required to take?

2) My family is in a high-middle socioeconomic class, but I have two brothers just a couple years younger than me. How much financial aid can I expect from the school, since my family does not have much extra income due to my brothers?

3) What are the living conditions like? What kinds of dorms are there, are there different dorms for different majors, for freshmen only, etc., what kind of campus facilities are available (e.g., kitchen, stores, etc.)?

College is different for everyone and so I can't really give you a "this is what you should ask" spiel without really knowing why you want to go to those schools/what your priorities are/goals are/etc.

Well, I plan to major in Computer Science. I've always been fascinated with computers/video games, and I've built two computers on my own already. I'm well-versed in XHTML, JavaScript, and CSS, and am currently learning PHP. After college, I hope to work as a computer programmer, potentially in video game design.

My reasoning for wanting to go to these schools? Well, pretty much the quality of education. I've always been a "go for the best" type of person (straight A's all through school, several academic clubs, etc.), so what better school for technology than MIT? In addition, Harvard is universally respected in all disciplines. My #1 priority for college is getting an education that fits my career goal: being able to work all-around with computers, with a specialty in programming that will help if I decide to go into the video game industry. My #1 priority for a career is one in which I can exercise my natural talents and interests (i.e., computers and logic), have fun while doing it, and have a stable financial situation.

Because of all that, I decided that schools like MIT and Harvard would provide me with some of the best education I could possibly get in the field I'm interested in, and that both the education and the name value of those schools would help me secure a financially-stable and rewarding job in that field.

[MrRubix]

Re: Visiting colleges, tips?

Quick answers:
Asking for an application in person at top schools doesn't do a whole lot. The best way to show demonstrated interest is to apply under things like Early Action/Decision (for instance, if you apply ED, you're basically saying "If you accept me, I will come to your school."). Also, coming across as well-informed about a given school in your essays/etc will also show a huge amount of demonstrated interest, especially if you make it clear that you're giving them material that can't simply be shipped off to other schools with a simple name change. Simply visiting a college/asking for an application in person won't do much for you. I visited schools and I came from the west coast -- they still aren't going to really care about it.

Don't give a resume. It's usually not necessary -- schools structure their apps in a certain way for a reason. Giving a bunch of extra stuff can harm more than it can help. Most of the material from your resume can be fit into the application itself.

1) Depends on the school. A lot of students generally take anywhere from 4-6 classes depending on schedule/school, and 7+ is considered extremely heavy. Engineers tend to put in quite a few hours. I'd say expect anywhere from 15-20 hours on average if you're going to be doing CS.

2) If you're high-middle, you have to define some things here. Financial aid at these schools is usually need-based (as opposed to merit-based), meaning they analyze your parents/your tax forms and delve into things like assets, mortgage, net worth and cash on hand, etc. Having children going to college helps your aid because they take into account the additional loads. Things are usually calculated on the margin, however, meaning don't expect any additional aid help until your siblings are actually in college. People who have a lot of assets/parents with decent income can usually expect to fend a large portion of the cost because they are able to afford it. People who are poor usually get tons of aid, meaning the middle class is left to basically fend for costs that have a proportionally higher impact on overall savings. It really depends on what your family's financial situation is and how much they are willing to contribute. "High middle class" doesn't say a whole lot to me other than "Well, I assume you live in a really nice house and are generally well taken care of. Expect to pay a large chunk of the costs."

3) Living conditions are generally good, but perhaps not as good as you might expect. Unless you're going to Princeton, I'd say it's likely a "downgrade" compared to what you're used to, but the freedom is pretty great. Harvard has some pretty decent access to external facilities, as does MIT (I'd say they're about even). Depends on the school -- Harvard dorms are generally pretty nice. MIT's can be pretty barren IMO but they're still decent rooms. On average, they're quite clean, and many schools have some form of residency programs where people organize themselves by some common trait or activity. You usually won't have problems finding such things at any of those schools. Some dorms come with their own kitchens/bathrooms, while others have communal bathrooms. You should definitely look into the different dorms and which one suits you best. If you have any specific questions about certain dorms I can help you with that if you want.

But yeah those schools are definitely good for CS and will give you a strong education regardless of what you do. I'd also advise looking at schools like Carnegie Melon as well (they have an excellent CS program too) as an appropriate match school.

[tsugomaru]

Re: Visiting colleges, tips?

Keep in mind, I've also been told to give my resume to admissions representatives from schools that I haven't even applied to yet. I don't know if that actually does anything.

The answer is no. More than likely, when the admission office is reading your application, they won't remember. Hell, the person who gave you the application might not even read your application. If you're applying to a large school, your application won't all be read by the same person.

If you're interested in Video Game Design, USC offers a Video Game Design major and soon to be PhD for it. Other good schools for VGD are Carnegie Mellon and Georgia Tech.

Electronic Arts go to these schools to offer internships: Stanford; UC Berkeley; UC Davis; Harvey Mudd, MIT; University of VA; University of Texas, Austin; University of Central Florida, Brown, UNC, University of Utah, and BYU. From what I heard, Electronic Arts gives a really realistic internship because you are hired as a "real" employee for three months. The work you do isn't made up and won't be treated as "hey, the intern coded that, we have to completely redo it", but this will also mean you have to actually be able to do the work.

No matter what school you apply to or course you take, if you want to get in the video game industry, the best thing you can do is make a game of your own because companies do realize that when they see you making a game of your own, you put in your own effort and time into it.

EDIT: The dorms I lived in was pretty much one huge room. Everyone shared everything. Food you bought really wasn't yours and you pretty much ate or drank whatever you find. Everyone was cool with it too.

~Tsugomaru

[Relambrien]

Re: Visiting colleges, tips?

Thanks for all the help so far, I'm definitely going to keep this in mind. Also, about my financial situation, you're pretty much spot-on, Rubix. Nice house, some luxuries, so I guess I'd better start looking into some third-party scholarships, or even ROTC. Since I'm in JROTC right now, I'd think I could handle it, and I wouldn't mind going into the armed forces as an officer for four years if I have to.

But yeah those schools are definitely good for CS and will give you a strong education regardless of what you do. I'd also advise looking at schools like Carnegie Melon as well (they have an excellent CS program too) as an appropriate match school.

Yeah, Carnegie Mellon is another school I'm really looking into. I remember the guy who did all the Wiimote wizardry was from Carnegie Mellon, and that really impressed me. I'd certainly be excited to go there, as well.

FYI: The schools I'm considering applying to:

MIT, Harvard, Caltech, Rochester Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon, Stevens Institute of Technology (financial fall-back, a school in New Jersey that supposedly gives full-ride for high SAT scores), and University of Delaware (general fall-back).

[JKPolk]

Re: Visiting colleges, tips?

I don't know what major you're interested in, but if you're visiting MIT and RIT you should also visit WPI while you're in Mass. It's a really small school (about 3k) but it has a HUGE reputation with employers. Every time I have an interview I get excited remarks about "Oh you're at WPI? Awesome!"

Check it out. www.wpi.edu

[MrRubix]

Re: Visiting colleges, tips?

If I may ask, what is your SAT breakdown/your GPA? What kind of extracurriculars/etc?

As for ROTC, it's always an option but I would say the premium's insufficient. There are better ways to pay for college. Just shoot for as many scholarships as you can. Sometimes you'll be awarded scholarships depending on your profile from trustees, but if you have to rely on outside scholarships, shotgun-effect is great. If you can win a bunch of small scholarships, it adds up. I think the expected payout can be much higher than trying to shoot for a few big ones (although those certainly do help). You can earn thousands just by putting a nickel in every gumdrop machine, basically.

Harvard, though, generally gives pretty good aid. I came to Penn because of the prospects of Wharton, but Harvard technically gave a better finaid package. MIT's was actually a bit worse than Penn's for me. It's a real slippery slope, though -- I've seen poor families get shafted, and richer families get through relatively unscathed. You can only ballpark it, really, but if you live in a nice home with a few luxuries, and if your parents are clocking in, say, over 100k-150k, you're considered to be relatively able to pay for college. If your parents are making even more than that, you're probably not going to get much aid at all. How much is your family willing to put towards your college tuition fees?

Also: Keep in mind that there is a need-blind policy. Asking for aid does not hurt your chances in admission unless you're an international student. The guys who evaluate your main app don't even see your aid application.

Keep in mind that for schools like Harvard and MIT, you're going to need an extremely good breakdown.

[Mentch]

Re: Visiting colleges, tips?

College Visits and Teens
Tips for Preparing for Your University Tour

http://youthdevelopment.suite101.com/article.cfm/college_visits_and_teens

[FRO]

Re: Visiting colleges, tips?

MrRubix is doing a great job answering your questions, but I would think you would get more useful answers from a site like collegeconfidential.com than from ffr

[Relambrien]

Re: Visiting colleges, tips?

If I may ask, what is your SAT breakdown/your GPA? What kind of extracurriculars/etc?

Sorry I wasn't able to answer when you IMed me last night, I had already gone to bed. And for some reason, Trillian won't set my AIM to auto-away after a period of time. Anyway...

SAT:

780 Math
770 CR
740 Writing
760 Math Level 1
730 Math Level 2
Still have to take physics or chemistry

GPA is 4.07 cumulative right now, will be higher by the end of next year.

Extracurriculars:

Math League
Business Professionals of America (3-time state winner for Fundamentals of XHTML)
Model United Nations
School's website manager
Drill Team
National Ocean Sciences Bowl team

Anyway, I'm leaving now, but hopefully my hotel has Internet, so I can check in. Thanks a bunch guys!

EDIT: I do have Internet access in my hotel room. I'm typing from it now.

[Relambrien]

Re: Visiting colleges, tips?

Well, I just got back to my hotel after an MIT campus tour.

The information session and tour were fantastic. MIT definitely seems like a place I want to go, and they seem to be really accommodating in the financial aid department, so that's good. They also said a 650 SAT score is "competitive," but from what I saw on the College Board's website, that's total bull because ~700 is only the 25th percentile.

Also, the person running the information session said that a resume isn't necessary, but if you truly feel that the application doesn't accurately represent you, then to feel free to send something in. It's just that they view people with a whole lot of extra materials as having something to prove. Which makes sense. So I'll do the application and get everything in order, then decide if there's anything else I have to do.

Speaking of stuff to do, the last SAT testing date for early action students is November, and I still need my one science SAT. However, there's no way I can learn the entire physics curriculum in two months, and my school's chemistry class sucked balls. I looked at the practice questions online and couldn't answer a single one of them. That seems to be a trend in my school...anything beyond our state standardized test, and the school doesn't prepare us at all.

Though, something interesting that was said about early action. At MIT, it's non-binding and doesn't give admissions preference. It's just a way to see early on whether or not you're accepted. Though, that could be typical propaganda.

Also, the reason I'm not asking on a more college-visit-oriented site is that I don't think they'll give me accurate information. For instance, everywhere I've been has stressed the incredible importance of a resume, which I learned is utterly useless in practicality. Sites specializing in these things focus more on the "theory," whereas if I can talk to people who've actually been through it, normal, real-world people, then I can get a much more accurate description of how things -actually- go.

Anyway, Harvard's up tomorrow. Something I found interesting is that MIT and Harvard offer cross-registration--you can go to one school, and then take some classes in the other for credit.

[MrRubix]

Re: Visiting colleges, tips?

FRO: I used to be a mod on CC, and I fielded tons of questions -- so I guess you can say I am bringing some CC here

A 650 Math score is *NOT* competitive for MIT, wtfh. Who the hell was smoking the peace pipe when they told you that one?

Your SAT's are great, but your Math II is very very lacking -- Math IIC 800's are so common at MIT (even across the nation I think 800 IIC is something like 90th percentile). Especially if you're going into CS... you really need to just go 800 the sucker if you can. It's an easy test and it should just be something you have. Math Level 1 is a bit silly because the curve is retarded and IIC is harder in terms of material anyway. But applying to MIT without an 800 IIC will probably raise a few eyebrows, especially if it's as low as 730. That means you probably missed like, what, 10 questions (random guess)? Fairly large chunk or so -- try to tighten it up if you can. You can always use a score-rush option, and there's plenty of time to do this.

Physics has a VERY nice curve, but that's because it's considered a hard test, but imo it's easy to 800 if you're decent at physics and have been exposed to a very wide range of subjects (mechanics, thermodynamics, light, energy, atomic physics, relativity, and even history). That means you should know important moments in history as well as famous experiments such as Young's Double-Slit model, Bohr's model, how Einstein's photoelectric effect worked, Rutherford's s***... the list goes on.

If you know jack s*** about physics right now, get a Princeton Review book on it. It's the best you'll get and it's closest to the test material (f*** Barron's, f*** Kaplan's). It'll prepare you with anything you'll likely need to know to at least get a decent score (750+) on physics. Chemistry is, imo, harder than Physics and the curve's really gross, and the test format's appalling (especially the T/F/CE crap). I barely 800'd the sucker (almost didn't make it), but I found it 10x harder than the Physics test. Don't do Chemistry unless you're really good at it. Physics is far easier to prepare for.


"Though, something interesting that was said about early action. At MIT, it's non-binding and doesn't give admissions preference. It's just a way to see early on whether or not you're accepted. Though, that could be typical propaganda."

This has been the subject of tons of debate... but statistics pretty much show that applying early somewhere gives you a better chance "SORT OF," but in general it isn't really a significant correlation. Schools generally try to deny the statistics because they don't want people applying early for the sake of trying to backdoor. Also, to clarify, EA is nonbinding while ED is binding. A good aspect to applying early is that a deferral means you get re-evaluated for Regular Decision. Applying EA doesn't mean much other than you apply early and receive your decision early. In general though, applying early is a signal that you plan on attending if accepted. Some schools like Yale and Stanford have SCEA (Single Choice Early Action) which means you can't apply to other schools, but you aren't obligated to attend if accepted. But you can apply to as many EA schools as you like under MIT's system. ED schools pretty much say "You apply to us and only us, and if we defer/reject you in the first round, you're free to apply wherever else you'd like."

But I mean if you love MIT, then by all means apply early. It certainly wouldn't hurt. Keep in mind though that the early pools tend to be pretty strong and self-selective.


EDIT: Also, that GPA appears to be your weighted -- what's your unweighted? Do you know your rank at all? Do you generally take the hardest classes available at your school?

[bluguerrilla]

Re: Visiting colleges, tips?

It's always good to find out about opportunities for undergraduate research, too.

And you came to Rochester and didn't let me know.