College tour season

“In this age of Google, GPS, virtual college tours, electronic guidebooks and private college tours, there is still no match for the gut feeling one gets when stepping on a college campus and talking face-to-face with the people who make that community what it is. The campus visit is one of the most important and enjoyable parts of the college application process,” as The New York Times reports.

This week my wife and our son are on an out-of-state college tour: It began with Rice University in Houston; then they flew up to Chicago to visit Northwestern (where I went to grad school) and the University of Chicago; then they headed to Hanover, New Hampshire, to visit Dartmouth, and they are wrapping it up in Baltimore at Johns Hopkins tomorrow before heading home.

Booking this trip tested our acumen at using spare frequent flier miles (thanks to Southwest and United) and finding hotels next to campus.

It included some field trips too, such as a visit to NASA Space Center in Houston and the St. Lawrence String Quartet at the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth. (The same musical group visited Grass Valley last spring thanks to InConcert Sierra). It’s a small world.

The “six types of parents you’ll meet on a college tour” is here.

Author: jeffpelline

Jeff Pelline is a veteran editor and award-winning journalist - in print and online. He is publisher of Sierra FoodWineArt magazine and its website SierraCulture.com. Jeff covered business and technology for The San Francisco Chronicle for 12 years, and he was a founding editor and Editor of CNET News for eight years, among other positions. Jeff has a bachelor's degree from UC Berkeley and a master's from Northwestern University. His hobbies include sailing, swimming, and trout fishing in the Sierra. View all posts by jeffpelline