Episode 10 - Campus Visits, Cilantro and Rodney Dangerfield: How my 3 big takeaways from 31 colleges in 11 days can help your family find the right colleges

Just back from 31 campus visits in 9 states over 11 days and covering 3300 miles, here are 3 big takeaways to help your family when it's time to visit campuses (HINT: Visit early and visit often!), and to find the right colleges. 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

On hello and welcome to the on campus college planning podcast, where we provide insights and guidance on everything from choosing the right courses for your student, to finding those niche programs and majors, to understanding the complexities of financial aid. This is real college planning advice for real families because it, university of you, not the university of them. This is episode 10, campus visits, cilantro and Rodney Dangerfield. How my three big takeaways from 31 colleges in 11 days can help your family find the right colleges. I wanna do a quick recap of episode nine and then jump into these big tech takeaways. So on March 5th, I, I published, um, uh, a released episode 9 33 colleges plus nine states. Plus 11 days equals the great college road trip. And I did that, uh, in 48 hours in advance of, of when I took off on March, right before the state mandated a C T done prepping all the students, et cetera. And by the way, we've been getting fantastic scores back from those March students really excited about that. And I did it for three reasons. I, I did this big college road trip to expand my knowledge base so I can help more families find their university of U colleges. And I also wanted to think more deeply about the process of visiting campuses, uh, within the larger process of finding, applying to, and ultimately selecting the right college for your kid. And then I also wanted to just take a step back and, and evaluate the ways that we help families in, in the greater college Sur process. So it wasn't just about visiting these colleges. It was about the process of visiting colleges and how that fits into just the college search process in general. Um, I had a great time, a lot of you been asking, you know, what did you see? What did you do? Or you've been saying, you know, I saw your video from Villanova or wherever at my I B. And hopefully you not only enjoyed that. And it was entertaining to some extent, but you learned something from that as well. So I wanna condense, uh, you know, three big takeaways from those 3,300 miles 31 campus visits. And, and I'm gonna talk about kind of big picture stuff today, then next week, um, I'm gonna do another podcast and send that out via the newsletter and you can access that via YouTube and, uh, Stitcher and, uh, Spotify as well. And I wanna talk about more kind of day to day, sort of practical planning steps, give you some updated tools and, and ways to actually do this. Okay. So that's where I'm headed. So let me talk about the three big takeaways, right? Number one, you have lots of options. Number two, visit early and visit often. And number three colleges are like cilantro, but not everyone loves cilantro. Again. Number one, you have lots of options. Number two, visit early and visit often. And number three colleges are like cilantro, but not everyone loves cilantro. All right. So those are interesting, interesting titles, but what do they really mean? Well, here's the first one as, as I'm driving around. It's, it's very obvious to me that there are, first of all, there are a lot of colleges that I, that just don't know much about. And, you know, I would be driving on my way from college a to college B, and happen to see that, oh, college C is just 10 miles off the road over here. And I had to really resist the temptation to just do a detour as I, I tried to keep myself on schedule, but there are so many colleges now I was out east where things are pretty dense. Okay. And, and compact. And yeah, there are more colleges in a, in a short, uh, range or short distance, but even here in the Midwest where we have to drive ways to get to things, there are still an incredible number of options. And as I was writing these notes, I, you know, first I thought you have options. That sounds good. But I really wanted to focus on kind of the variety. And I'm, I'm using a very nonspecific term lots, right. But I wanna hit that hard. You do have lots of options and that's regardless of, of your grades or your potential, a C T scores or your family's wealth or your location, or where you want to go to college are the major that you're gonna choose. You can give me any of those as limiting factors, and I'm gonna find great options for you or help you find great options. If, if you're open to new information and to do the work, to fully explore those options. In fact, the, the biggest limiting factor, you know, in choosing a college, isn't the academic piece. It's not monies, it's not major, it's not location. It's frankly, your ideas about what college should be and what you think you already know about colleges, right? The, this is maybe where we stop being friends. But I, but I feel like I have to be very honest. The, the volume of things that people don't know about colleges is far greater than what they do know. And, and a wise person goes into this saying, we don't know what we don't know, and, and we need help, or, or we wanna be open to new experiences. And then they do look for new experiences, new perspectives, new information, searching for the right colleges is not about just finding that. It's not about checking boxes. Okay. It's not just about looking at, at sticker prices as well. You're thinking about the entire experience, the college experience that's academics, but it's everything else that goes with that. So, so stop shopping for it. Like you are a 57 year old man running into target to buy socks and then get the hell out as fast is possible. That's, that's not shopping, that's buying and buying is great when you know exactly what you need. And you know, what has worked through trial and error and you know, what the value proposition is, right? And it's a fairly low risk, but it's a terrible w way to acquire something that you haven't bought in 30 years, dad, that might have changed. It has. And that has a lot of moving parts. And it's at a much higher price than a three pack of socks. I, I know that messes up your goal of, well, let's just sit down tonight over dinner and let's sort of figure out this college thing and it, and it doesn't mesh well with the idea of, well, that college was good enough for me, so it it's good enough for my kids either. And so if I'm, if I'm creating some stress or anxiety, uh, I'm not apologizing for that. I want you to think more deeply about this shopping doesn't necessarily mean you have to pay more when you're looking for colleges. This idea of shopping could just mean that you're, that you're finding a, a hell of a deal in, in a cool location. How about one of my favorites, Delta state in Cleveland, Mississippi. Yeah. Cleveland, Mississippi. It's about two hours south of Memphis. Right? I love the south. I love Memphis. I love that whole area down there. And I toured that, uh, this all on part of a big colleges and barbecue trip with a friend and, and, oh, by the way, if you've been paying attention to things besides one person punching another person, uh, at the Oscars, you probably heard about Delta state because, because Shaq and Steph Curry were executive producers from a, a documentary. Um, that sounds is great. Uh, the queen of basketball about a former Delta state female athlete, it won the academy award for, for short subject documentary. Um, uh, this past week and, and, and Delta state is, you know, imagine, imagine a UW lacrosse or a UW plant fill, put it the Delta that changes some things and imagine great division two sports teams with scholarships, imagine a wide range of, of academic options and majors and, and some very specialized programs. Imagine warm weather year round, imagine amazing food. And it's in a really cool hip little town with a thrive music scene. So that's just one and I don't wanna get off track, but there are a lot of options out there, but you gotta, you gotta look for them and you have to be open to some new ideas. Look, it's, it's pretty simple, Matt, the greater set of viable options that you create, the more likely your final choice is going to be a winner. When you put all of your eggs in one basket at, you know, age seven or 10 or something like that, you create a situation in which there's only one possible good outcome, and everything else means settling for less. And I'm not gonna name the university that's nearby, but I have a lot of families that tell me it was always gonna be that one. And now they're disappointed because they didn't get in and they can't figure out how they didn't get in. And everybody's crabby about that. Well, you know what, if you don't just focus on one, you're gonna find a lot of great options. And, uh, and they're, you know, they might be farther away. They might be nearby. In fact, you know, some of the colleges that I toured, I toured, you know, the very first one I got to was Oberlin college in Oberlin, Ohio, which is as famous as being a great liberal arts college with a music conservatory, a professional music school. Now there are some of those actually in the Midwest and, and Oberlin's in the Midwest too, but it's, I mean, it's almost to Cleveland, it's, it's a different part of the Midwest than, than I live anyways. And depending on, and where you're at listening to this, but, you know, there are conservator with liberal arts schools closer to Madison in Wisconsin, uh, Wheaton college and Wheaton, Illinois has won. How about Lawrence university up in Appleton? Right? So that same model, that's kind of unique. It's extremely unique. There's a couple within a few hours here. And I spent a lot of time, uh, at, at technical universities that really focus on, on stem majors. I was at, uh, gosh, the whole alphabet soup, R I T RPI WPI. Uh, I didn't go to MIT, but I've been there before. And, and there are places like S OE Milwaukee school of engineering. That's right in our own backyard at places like Michigan tech and Rose Holman Institute of technology. So if you're really open, there are those, those specialized unique colleges and all sorts of things close by. You have lots of options. If you keep your eyes open and you do a little bit of homework or ask somebody that does know about this number two, visit early and visit often, um, I'm, you know, for you history that that's a sort of a play on the, I don't know, the old Chicago thing about, uh, voting early and, and voting often, and I'm not gonna get into political debates about, uh, voting practices or whatever. But the point is that you need to get out there a lot and you probably need to do it sooner than you imagined the campus visit. It's the most powerful tool in your search for the right colleges, but it's also the most underused, overlooked and misunderstood portion of this process. It's the Rodney danger field of choosing a college. It gets no respect, right? And, and the things that I, that I love visiting are, are surprises and ownership. Let me explain these no matter how prepared I am. And I do my homework folks, I mean, talk to my wife, talk to my kids. I've been planning this trip for a long time. I spent a lot of hours building spreadsheets, mapping out things. So I knew exactly where I was gonna go exactly what I was gonna see all of that, but no matter how prepared I am, I'm always amazed and surprised and it's, and it's always different than what I expected sometimes in a negative way, but almost always in a very positive light. I almost always come away thinking, wow, that's not quite quite what I expected. Even, even when I've done all my homework and, and memorized a map of the surrounding area and done all of those things, things are just different when you experience them in person. Not because I'm wrong, but because all I had was, uh, an assumption and now I have ownership. Okay. And, and ownership to me means I get that place. I, I know what it's like there, and I'm, I'm sipping coffee late afternoon in my corn, big red bear mug. There you go. Um, I didn't buy many trinkets. I bought one sweatshirt and one coffee mug and, and a whole bunch of college pennants, obviously. Um, but I'm just thinking right now about the time I spent on that campus, I was there probably an hour and a half or so started at one end, went to the other and, and it varies greatly. And I can, I can describe that for you. I kind of close my eyes again. I can tell you what the light was like. I can tell you what it was like to stand on the west edge of that campus among the more kind of historical buildings there and, and gaze out to the, let's see to the west across this valley and these Hills over into the mountains there. And it's just core. And I, and I can tell you what it's like to walk along the, the, the, the busy street next to, to Boston university and how it doesn't even feel like a campus. And I, and I knew those things, right. I, I knew those things intellectually, but now I know them on an, on a more emotional level. And I, and I get that. I know what it's like to walk from there over to Northeastern, et cetera, and to walk around in that back bay neighborhood, that idea of ownership is, yeah, I get that place. I know what it's like for me, as, as a college planner, it's incredibly valuable because if we, if we go back to last podcast, I had just met with a family and, and a young man that I, uh, named Wayne because that guards his identity, no one under 40 is named Wayne. And I just presented a list of 10 or 11 colleges to Wayne. And that university of Wayne had had six colleges that I know really well. And I know a lot about, and I've, I've visited there in some cases multiple to times. Uh, but two of them, two of the ones that I hadn't visited were on my list. And it was, uh, it was Cornell actually. And, uh, renselaer Polytechnic Institute RPI. And so I was really excited cuz I said, Wayne, man, I'm gonna see these in about a week. And when I get back, we're gonna talk about it, et cetera, cuz he hadn't been there. He hadn't even heard of, of RPI. And oh, by the way, about a week after I was there, another one of my students visited those same two schools plus others that I had just been to visit. And I'm gonna get to that student in just a second, when we talk about, about cilantro. So I, I own this information. I get what it's like and you can, you can really experience things firsthand and that is incredibly valuable, right? Stop waiting to visit until you have it all figured out. Okay. The goal isn't to use campus visits, who, you know, make your final decision necessarily it's to help you figure it out now and explore, this is an extended shopping trip. I'm I'm almost kicking myself thinking, why did I wait so long to go visit these schools? Some of these are schools that I've, I've put on a lot of students' lists as possible, you know, choices. And, and I knew enough about them to, to say with professional honesty that, yeah, this might be a good fit, but now I can talk about them on just a, a much more comprehensive and level and with a deeper understanding of not just that campus, but, but that place, how to get there, et cetera, you know what I'm I'm just back and the car needs an oil change and I need to save up some more, uh, frequent flyer miles to, to book hotels, et cetera. But, but I'm already planning, uh, this next year. And, and one of the places I really wanna visit, I, I wanna go into Michigan. I was gonna do it this last fall. I, I decided not to. I wanna see miss Michigan. I wanna see Michigan state. I want to see Western Michigan, central, Michigan, Eastern, Michigan. Um, I wanna see Kalamazoo college. I've really wanted to see that I know a student that is there right now and that that's a pretty easy trip for me to make, but I also, I also wanna do another big trip. Now I just did California over or Christmas break, kind of tacking it on to a family vacation. And I just did this big swing out through the east, but I wanna get either down into Texas or into the Pacific Northwest one or the other and Chi, I just mentioned Michigan tech a few minutes ago. I still haven't been up there. I've barely been in the up and that that's an incredible option for mechanical engineers, stem focused majors. There's no reason I can't just run up there one day and stay overnight and, and drive back as well. Folks, if you're, if you're cutting this part short, the campus visit piece you are missing out and everybody gets to do what they want to do, right? This is America. But in my professional opinion, most families treat campus visits with, with a lack of respect. They miss the boat. You're so busy with work and sports. You can't take a couple of days to visit someplace. You might be for four years. That just doesn't make any sense to me. Visiting earlier, can, can bring so many benefits I've just met with, with four sophomores this week. And in all of those meetings, I really encourage them to go visit soon. And, and those, those wonderful families, we had great conversations, but I can even see in the parents' eyes a little bit of like, yeah, well maybe next fall. No, no, no, no, not next fall. Now, do you have a day off or can you possibly take a day off from, I don't know, the middle of may when things are a little bit slow, take a day off, even go tour something, you know, you and drive there in a day, just get used to it and, and, and get used to touring a campus. And I'll talk more about that in the next podcast as well. So we're just done with spring break, but if you're, if you're thinking long term, um, I really want you to make some time then, and there are other times as well to start planning this out and start putting into, into, um, I know your kids have soccer tryouts, but maybe your kid would've made the team anyway and maybe you should go visit some colleges. So we'll, we'll get to that. All right. Number three colleges are like cilantro, but not everyone loves cilantro. So, uh, I don't know when cilantro became a thing, right. Uh, but it's one of those things that, that a lot of people love and you, and you kind of think about, well, why didn't I know about this before? If, if we have cilantro, we usually have some in the, in the little vegetable drawer. If I go home and, and I make a burrito or I make some tacos, uh, with leftovers or whatever it might be. If I forget to put the cilantro in there, I get mad at myself. And I, I sort of have some revenge tacos within 24 hours because I want to use that cilantro cuz it makes everything so good. Right. And I, I, I love that flavor, but, but some people have this. I don't know if it's, if it's a gene or whatever, but it really tastes bad to them. I've heard it described as tasting, like soap, don't put soap on my tacos, right? So my point is that impressions, right? And our background story and, and a lot of things go into this process of visiting colleges and choosing colleges. And, and as a college planner, I can, I can lose 10 reasons why Cornell is a perfect fit for Johnny and Johnny can go there and he can hate it. And maybe it's because he broke up with his girlfriend or boyfriend, or maybe it's because he had a bad day or maybe something about it just doesn't appeal to him. And maybe I kind of miss the mark, but you can't, you can't force these things and you have to at least respect the things like first impressions and, and just subjective impressions for this whole thing. And the only thing I asked is, is when I'm working with a family, going through the college search process and, and they, they visit a college or even if they just do the, the research to, you know, here's your college list. And then I have them work on that for, for about a month or so. And then they come back and they, you know, they let me know what they liked, what they didn't, what questions they have, what, what work we need to do if somebody comes back and they say, I just, you know, I don't like this college. All I need to know is why. And if you can't come up with a good reason, I think you need to kind of revisit it, right. If you can say, you know, I think it's, uh, it's to this or to that or whatever. And you can, you can make, uh, a combination of a subjective and an objective analysis, uh, or decision on that. That's fine. So we don't wanna put all our eggs into those first impressions. Oh, I could just see myself there. Uh, but I, I wanna honor those and, and the student that was gonna go to Cornell and, and RPI, um, you know, they sent me notes. I'm gonna be meeting with that student next week, and we're gonna talk about all these things and it's gonna be really fun because we're gonna have, you know, firsthand experience, but we're gonna compare notes on what, you know, what a 17 year old really bright student saw and what a 57 year old white man saw, and those are going to be different things. And, and that person evidently doesn't have some of the same, you know, flavor preferences because that person, and didn't like one of the schools that I absolutely loved, and I'm not gonna try to Trek him into liking it. I'm just gonna try to learn more about why he didn't like it and how I can adjust his list and help him find the colleges that are perfect for him. You know, what the, the ma the things that matter to you, um, matter to you for a reason when, when I will in, around, on, onto these college campuses, and you can see it, if you watch some of the videos, um, uh, I'm really drawn to traditional collegiate Catholic architecture because it just like drips with tradition. And it makes me think of sitting somewhere, reading a book, not a Kindle, a book, and thinking deep thoughts, and that, that stuff matters to me, but that may not matter to you, and you've gotta figure out what matters to you and why. So just a couple of final remarks. Let me go through the list one more time again. So the three big takeaways, number one, you have lots of options, really hitting that lots of options, but it's gonna take you a little bit of work and time to find those number to visit early and visit opt, uh, often. And then the third one colleges are like cilantro, but not everyone loves cilantro. So kind of honoring that personal interpretation, um, a few final remarks, and it became very, very obvious, um, that, you know, even though I was by myself for most of this, Hillary joined me, I picked her up at the airport in Baltimore. We spent a couple days there, day down in Annapolis, couple days up in Philly, and then she flew back and I had, uh, another thousand miles or so to go and 10 more campuses, but it felt, it felt like a family trip, right? And, and every family vacation or family trip that we've ever taken. Um, you do lots of planning and, and you map out where the fun places to eat are, and where's the second largest ball of wine and all of those kinds of great things. But when it comes the day of, it's always a little bit different than what you imagined, right? And that's, that's part of the good thing. That's what I talked about in, you know, those surprises at, at campuses. And then kind of understanding what it's really like. Um, I left at 4:00 AM on Monday, March 7th, and, uh, we have underground parking and I hit the button there and I open it up and it's dark, which I expected. And there are about two inches of snow, which I didn't expect. Well, it's March Tom and you live in Wisconsin. So don't be so surprised. And I hadn't even thought to check the, the weather. Now, it, it didn't slow me down. It, it was fine. But the, just another example of it's a, it's not just being at these campuses, it's all of the time and space in between and all of the things that go with that. And, and probably the thing that I wanna talk the most about in terms of a campus visit, being like a family trip is everybody has their expectations and everybody has some kind of an agenda. And probably the, the, the trip from my own experience that, that really hits home with this, where I, as a father. Um, and I'm not getting parental advice here. I'm giving college planning advice as a parent. Um, what hit home for me was when, when Jack toured middle Tennessee state university in Murfreesboro, Tennessee Murfreesboro sounds like there's an extra R so, and, and Joe was long for the ride. And we had stayed in Nashville the night before, and we had a great time. And then it's like 45 minutes. You drive down to Murfreesboro, it's an easy drive. And this is the fall of his senior year. He's already been accepted there and he's been accepted at, um, uh, Memphis and a handful of other places too. And so we're gonna go see middle Tennessee and Memphis. And I think it to be, I think it's gonna be middle Tennessee. And I'm, I'm pretty jacked up about this fantastic, uh, music entertainment business program. We're gonna meet with the honors, uh, college people, really excited about this and, you know, Jack's 17. And so the minute we get in the car, he goes to sleep, right. And it's in the morning and he, he's just not a morning person. And he sleeps all the way until we literally park. And I'm, I'm excited driving, you know, I get off the interstate and you're, you're driving past all the strip malls and all the chilies and things like that on the way to the campus. And I'm just like shaking with so much excitement because I'm, I'm projecting. What's gonna happen. I, oh, we'll fly into Nashville and rent a car and we'll drive down here and we'll take him out, et cetera. And I'm looking for good places to, to go out to dinner and all of that, and kind of nudging him. And he just wants to sleep because he doesn't see the point of thinking about those things, the way that I think about those things. And he slept, like I said, until we were parked and then woke up and, and I had to really remind myself that this wasn't about me. This was about him and, and him making good choices. And, and I even go back to the, the mental picture and the, and the physical picture I have of when he went on his first campus visit with me as a freshman. And it was at Xavier, right. Go MUE tears. And we, I purposely sort of hung towards the back of like 10, 12 parents and, uh, students. And I waited for the group to walk ahead for a few seconds. Then I snapped a picture of him, you know, literally 10 feet into his first campus tour and all of this parental stuff. And, oh my gosh, it's scary. It's hard not to get emotional thinking about all of the trips that we've made to, to explore colleges. I, I wouldn't trade any of those regardless of, of, you know, he didn't go to Xavier or he didn't go to middle Tennessee state. Um, I wouldn't trade any of those experiences. And, and I hope you understand that yeah, family trips can, can turn out poorly. I'm thinking of national lampoons vacation, but this is just one more step along the way. This is like taking them to overnight summer camp or going out of town and to having your kids stay with relatives, right? This is one more step along that process. And it is a family trip, and there are a lot of emotions that, that go with that. So hope that made sense. And again, I'm, I'm not giving parental advice. I'm a college planner who is a parent giving professional advice. Um, I loved what I saw and if you stop me on the streets or you come in for a free counsel or something, and you ask me, I'll, I'll go off for about 15 minutes on different colleges. I'll talk to you about Cornell and how it was, um, sort of hard for me not to think about Andy Bernard from, from the office while I was there, which is a really stupid thing to think about. Um, upstate New York was beautiful and it was hilly. Oh my God, my Cal's gotta work out. Um, there were just so many interesting towns and places I can't wait to go back again. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to go back and, uh, go to our Facebook page on campus college, playing.com like us, it, if you feel called to do so, go back and watch some of my videos. I tried to, I tried to do a real quick snapshot. I did this about a, I dunno, a dozen times or so of like, here's the college. And then like, Hey, here's a pro tip for visiting colleges, and I need to compile those. I'll try to do that, um, in time for the next podcast, but go back and watch some of those. And I, I think you'll, you'll be interested in some of the things that I have to say. And then, um, this is a great time. Spring is a great time to plan. Okay. It's a great time to plan. And I would love for you to, to call text, email me with your questions or better yet, um, set an appointment from our Facebook page or our homepage go to on campus college plan.com, book a free consult. You can do it by zoom if you want, but I'd really love to, to meet with you in person, if you're comfortable with that, had a bunch of those this week with sophomores. And that's fantastic because we've really been able to talk about some, some really productive, healthy, solid steps for figuring out the next couple years and beyond, and to get everyone hopefully on the same page about like, there are a lot of great options. Here's what I need to do. And here's how I can find those, you know, many, many university of U colleges. It's not just about one. Right? All right. That's been the on campus college planning podcast. This is episode 10. I am Tom, your college planner campus visit tour guide and, um, parent giving college planning advice. And we'll see you again soon. Thank you.