How To: The Remote College Visit

While it’s difficult to replicate the understanding you get of a college by setting foot on its campus, time, money, and other commitments don’t always allow you to visit every college you’re considering. Luckily, universities have stepped up their online tour game, and there are plenty of other ways you can research a college online. Consider our step-by-step suggestions for a remote college visit that hews closely to the real thing.

10:10 AM. Instead of arriving 20 minutes early for the tour, signing in, and then getting coffee in the campus center (where you observe and eavesdrop on student life), pour everyone coffee and use laptops or smartphones to peruse the online student newspaper. What are people talking about in the Op Eds? What events happened on campus last weekend? Any other items of note?

10:30 AM. Traditionally, this would signal the start of a 60 minute campus tour led by a peppy sophomore econ major who talks about her preferred courses, her a capella group, and her favorite campus traditions. For your remote visit, take a 30-minute online tour of college-curated media. This could be an official virtual tour from the admissions webpage, student videos on the college’s YouTube channel, or images and links from the college’s official Instagram and TikTok feeds. Then take off those rose-colored goggles for 30 minutes of exploring broader campus views. Check out videos from campusreel.org, student reviews on niche.com, and click through #[UniversityName] tags on social media to see what kids are posting about the college, rather than what the college posts about itself.

11:30 AM. Ah, those final moments when you linger awkwardly while Dad asks some extra questions (and to which you are secretly glad to hear the answers). Replace that with joining the college or admissions office hosted Facebook group. Post there, letting them know you were hoping to hear a general perspective on a few questions. Sample Dad questions:

• What do students who don’t drink do for fun on a Friday night?
• Do all students on a dorm floor share the same bathrooms?
• What security measures are in place to protect students?

11:45 AM. At this point in an in-person visit, you would head to lunch at the cafeteria or a restaurant downtown. For your virtual visit, take a few minutes to review on-campus dining options, and look at Yelp and Google Maps to discover what is within walking distance of campus. Then have lunch together as a family and debrief everything you learned.

12:45 PM. Take some final notes about the experience and add them to a folder (either on your computer, phone, or a paper version) in which you gather all of your college visit information. Revisit your notes later on to determine which schools take priority in terms of actually stepping foot on campus as you finalize your college list.