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Resources for families with teens doing the college visit circuit.

Like thousands of other families, this past school break, we hit the road that ribbons past colleges in preparation for that rite of passage: college applications. Like that of so many others from our area, our road leads to Boston. No wonder; with 250,000 students attending 50 colleges in a 50-square mile area, the Boston Metro area probably has more colleges students than any other on the planet.

In planning the trip, I found it extremely helpful to check the websites of the different universities we wanted to visit (usually the web address is the name of the university followed by ".edu"). Under "Visiting Campus" each university usually posts a schedule for general information sessions, and for campus tours led by students.

Campus Visit to the Rescue

Boston colleges attract so many visitors that a company has emerged just to provide assistance to out-of-towners. Supported by the 16 major schools which tend to draw largely from outside the state (including Harvard, MIT, Brandeis, Tufts, and Wellesley), Campus Visit (888/99VISIT) publishes incredibly handy, free annual guides with invaluable maps and detailed driving instructions. It's Boston edition, called "America's College Town" (781/431-7755), is chock full of marvelous tips about making the visit more productive. The company also helps facilitate hotel bookings at discounted rates, and provides savings on USAirways and 50% off Amtrak. Similar services and free annual magazines are also available from the same website in Philadelphia, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Columbus. 

"Our goal is to facilitate," says Todd Hoffman, a former marketing professional for a major Boston hotel, who runs the company with his wife, founder Cherlene Hoffman. "Our aim is to prepare families, so they have faster, better, cheaper visits. If they do, we think they will think more highly of Boston."

One reason they started their company was that it was so hard to get a hotel room, particularly around the peak campus visiting times, which tend to coincide with other happenings in Boston (and when are there not happenings in Boston?).

"One of our objectives was to get people to take their time, spend the night, and definitely not to do more than two tours in a day," he says. People think Boston is small enough, but even if you could cram three campuses into one day, Todd advises against it. "Physically, you may be able to, but then you can't remember it all, and it backfires. If you are fitting three campuses into a day, you are not doing it right, you are not giving yourself enough time to decompress. This is such a big decision."

Indeed it is. Choosing a college is one of those life-changing choices, perhaps not quite as significant as proposing marriage, but certainly on par with going for a job that may involve relocating your family. With the cost of higher education today, this may well be the second biggest investment a family makes, after owning their home. For the student, college is one of those major steppingstones (we think, anyway) to career and (when you consider that many people meet their future spouse at college) even their future family. I am thinking these heavy thoughts as we continue our odyssey, the current edition of Campus Visit in my lap, and we make the turn off the highway to our second campus of the day.