Visiting a college is extremely important when deciding where you want to attend for your college career. But if you don’t ask questions while on tours, how will you know everything? Read on for ten helpful examples of questions that are particularly important to ask yourself and the tour guide when visiting a college!
One of the most important aspects of college: the dining hall food. This will be the food you eat every single day. You’re going to want to make sure that your school will provide options that are edible. This will be especially important if you have allergies, are a vegetarian, vegan, or gluten free. Your options will be even more limited than most students, so while you’re there, make sure you talk to someone who can provide you with the proper meal information.
Think outside the box as well and ask questions such as the percentage of students who live on campus all four years, especially if you plan to live on campus. Make sure you know how long housing is guaranteed. You don’t want to get there and find out it’s only offered for two years. And lastly, ask how many students go home for the weekends. You don’t want all your friends ditching you on the weekend because they live close to home.
It is important that you ask this question to the right people. The tour guides and people who work for the school are always going to tell you what they think you want to hear because they have to. So find students who are going about their day and ask them for their opinion. They will tell you how something truly is, (similar to how my friends and I always make comments about our school’s food when we see prospective students walking past us in the dining hall).
In my case, there were not many schools that had what I was looking for, including schools I applied to. You want to make sure you find out if they’re offering exactly what you want to study before you get into the school. My friend was told wrong information about her major and now she has to transfer because they don’t offer what she needs.
This is important so you don’t get your hopes up. Yes, reach schools are part of the college application process, but you can’t have all your schools be reach schools or else you may end up out of luck. At the presentations colleges offer at open houses they typically inform you of the GPA and test scores they expect from their applications, so keep an eye out for those!
Scholarships and financial aid is the glue that allows many students to even enroll in college in the first place. These factors are essential, so make sure you know everything you can about what scholarships to apply for, the financial aid deadlines, the credentials for merit scholarships, and more. You’re going to need as much support as you can with the price of tuition these days.
If you’re not the most academically inclined, check to see if there is a helpful tutoring program and/or learning center options available. I’m terrible at math, so when my mom was helping me search for colleges, she made sure colleges had readily accessible math help. Not only that, make sure that there are professors who are willing to help you during their office hours and who are willing to make the time to help you. Nothing is more disheartening than an educator who could care less about you.
This is key to ask when visiting a college. If you want to have a large class where you may never see the same person more than twice, don’t be looking at schools that only have 2,000 undergraduates. You will not be happy there. Ask about the average classroom size. If you need a lot of one-on-one attention, again, don’t go to a large school. You will not be able to learn when you’re sitting in the back of a lecture hall online shopping to kill your boredom.
They are another important aspect of college you need to look out for when visiting a college. Internships play an essential role in your hiring after college. They look to see how much experience you have and if they have to teach you how to do your job or if you already learned how to do it. Career services is another necessary part of this because you want your college to be able to help you get a job once you graduate, guide you in the right direction, or at least prepare you for receiving a job.
Meaning Fraternities and/or sororities. If you’re interested in pledging Greek life, make sure your school has it. My university does not offer any Greek life whatsoever, so if you want to pledge a sorority, you would not want to get too invested in a school that won’t even have it.
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