College trip Virginia and NC
 

We would like to plan a trip to see colleges in the south from where we live in Maryland (DC area). I'm not sure how many colleges we can see/day -- is two too many? We would like to see U of Richmond, William and Mary, U VA, and Washington and Lee in Virginia. We would like to see Duke, Davidson and possibly Elon in NC. We definitely want to see Emory, but should that be a separate trip (flight?) or can we reasonable tack that on. Any info is helpful. We can do this in spring break or the summer.

You need to contact the school to see what times they offer tours before you can organize a schedule. If the 2 are in the same town you might see 2 in a day - but if they're any distance apart and you really want to see anything and talk to students doing more than 1 a day is difficult.

You could easily see Duke and Elon the same day. The others you listed are probably too far apart to visit the same day.

Even if you could see 2 colleges a day, I wouldn't recommend it. The admissions sessions will all start to sound the same and you'll get confused over what school wants what info, etc. Even the campuses, buildings, etc. may start to look the same. Try to spread out the college-viewing trips as much as possible.

Emory is WAY too far a drive from the rest of these schools. It's 4 hours from Davidson to Atlanta.

Some of the colleges you mention are not easy to get into. Prior to setting any appointments, I would look at the admission criteria to insure I'm not wasting a trip. If is also not uncommon to do admission testing when you do your visit. I am not sure at what stage of picking a school you are in, but if you are at that point, I wouldn't do more than one a day.

I would go so far as to say, if this young person is considering those schools, he/she must be well qualified academically. Almost all are in the upper echelons of degree of difficulty of entrance. It is wonderful to have those choices, obviously through diligent HS work. I cannot see the possibility, or even the "fairness" to child or school, of doing more than one per day. If this is just a "drive by" then, maybe a couple could be done per day.

My dtr is a freshman at Elon and we did a similar trip from New England 2 years ago. We flew into BWI and did a Washington/Maryland/Virginia/Pennsylvania circuit for about a week. We were often able to see 2 schools in a day by booking the early AM Admission session, grabbing lunch at a drive-thru and heading off to the second college in the afternoon. After seeing way to many schools in 95 degree heat (it was summer), it became a blur to me but my dtr remembers much of it. The Admission sessions all start to sound alike and how many academic classrooms and dorms can you see (for some reason they love to show you the laundry room on these tours).

You could then drive down to NC to see a few schools there - depends on how long you have. We averaged 1 1/2 schools/day. It is impossible to see 3 in a day, even if they are across the street from each other.

Then as a separate trip, she went to see Elon (and had planned to see other college in this area) but said she was done.

You will get lots of advice. Our son saw 2 colleges, applied to 3, and was done. As one Dad said to me on a tour "girls just love to shop" - and so we saw many more schools before our dtr was done. Everyone advises seeing school when it is in session - that was just not an option for us and it worked out fine.

My D is also a freshman at Elon--loves it!! When we did our NC tours we saw two colleges a day. We got an early flight into RDU and did a 10am tour of UNC and an afternoon tour of Duke. Then we drove to Winston-Salem spent the night and did a morning tour at Wake-Forest and an afternoon tour at Elon. You will need to find out what times the tours are and be very organized, I knew exactly how much time it would take to get to each school, had everything planned out so we didn't have a problem.
D didn't care for WFU so didn't apply but loved Duke-didn't get accepted, was accepted (out of state) to UNC, chose Elon because she was accepted as an Honors Fellow--good scholarship money.
Good luck with your search!!!