You’ve heard the warning before, “Never buy sight unseen!”  Every year students return home after their first semester of college, disappointed in their choice.  Every year students transfer to new colleges searching for that right fit.  And every year students continue to accept attendance at colleges and universities they’ve never seen.

Fancy web sites, glossy brochures, and colorful college view books certainly contain good information, but they can also disguise some negative features important to you and emphasize others that are positive, yet have no bearing on your decision.  Don’t rely primarily on information provided in marketing material such as pamphlets, brochures, web pages, and catalogues.

So how do you know if a college is right for you? Today it’s critical for college-bound students to actually visit college campuses as part of their college planning process. To get a real feel for the college or university where they will be spending the next four to five years of their lives, nothing beats actually visiting the campus.

What you do in preparation for the visit and what you accomplish while touring the campus will determine the value of the trip.  Plan ahead, have a game plan and follow through.

Here are some things to think about:

How’s the Fit?

Visiting the campus allows you to get a real feeling for a school.  By immersing yourself in the school’s atmosphere you can discover if it’s a place where you will be comfortable on a daily basis or a place you can’t wait to get away from.  A one or two day visit can’t possibly tell you everything you want to know about the school, but it does provide an inside look into the different academic, environmental, and social aspects of the university.

Don’t limit yourself by just strolling the grounds during your visit. Go inside the buildings and snoop around.  Visit different classes.  Talk to professors and students.  Taste the dining hall food and hang out at the student commons.

Involve Your Family

College visits are a great way to spend some quality time with your family.  Seek their perspective.  Ask their advice and opinion on the campus.  They need to feel comfortable with the college as well.  After al1, this may be the place you’ll be spending the next four years; it wouldn’t hurt for your parents to know the area for when they officially visit their full-time student.

Have a Plan

You should gather as much information as you can prior to visiting the college. This will make it a successful trip.  Don’t arrange your visit during end-of-the-semester finals week.  Everyone will be too busy and stressed to pay you any mind, even if you just want directions.  Plan on a fall weekday during September or October because classes will be in session, and the campus will be in full operation.  You’ll be able to get more attention from the students and professors earlier in the semester.

Packing Your Bags

You’ll want to make a lot of phone calls before your trip.  Find out if the school offers a campus tour during your visit and if there will be time to schedule a meeting with an admissions and financial aid officer, in case you want to arrange interviews.

Ask what materials you will need to bring with you.  For example, if you’ve requested an interview, the staff member may want to see a copy of your high school transcript and test scores.

Before visiting the campus:

1  Make sure the day and the time to visit is convenient and practical.

2  Arrange for a campus tour if required.

3  Request an interview if appropriate.

4  Ask that school information be mailed to you.

5  Ask if you need to bring any information with you.

6  Write out questions you want to ask and information you want to gather.

7  Find out if special accommodations are available or make motel reservations.

8  Request a course schedule and activity calendar.

9  Determine the driving time between your home and the college.

10  Get the names and numbers to contact once you arrive.

A two-day visit requires a place for you and your family to stay. Does the college have special dining and sleeping accommodations?  If the school does not provide housing, ask about local hotels, including their phone numbers.  Lastly, but probably most critically, find out the driving time between your home and the college.  If it’s a lengthy drive, you may want to fly instead.

First Impressions

Don’t allow your first impressions to dictate your overall feeling for the

school.  Whether it’s everything you expected it to be, or nothing like you imagined, there are so many places to visit and things to accomplish (classes to visit, people to talk with, and facilities and buildings to explore) before forming a lasting impression.

During the campus tour, pay close attention to the tour guide.  Oftentimes, he or she will give you tips on the best places to study and where you can eat to escape the infamous dining hall food.  Don’t be afraid to ask questions.  They are there to help prospective students.

After the tour is over it will be up to you to find your way around campus. Visit the student commons.  Here you will find a myriad of things: students lounging on the sofas, game rooms, retail food joints, the campus post office, meeting rooms for student organizations, and bulletin boards announcing group meetings, concerts, festivals, want ads, and ride requests.

The bookstore, the library, and the computer labs are places you’ll want to visit.  While in the bookstore, check out what’s for sale.  If you think the new books are too pricey you can probably find used ones to buy.

The library should be on your itinerary.  Check to see if students really study there or just hang out to socialize.  If it’s a large university it will probably have several specialized libraries.  Visit as many as you can to see which ones would suit your studying style.

The computer labs would be a great stopping point to see if there are enough computers for the students or is there a long waiting list to get on.  Does the attendant know what’s going on?  Is he or she helpful?  What are the lab’s hours of operation?

Moving about the campus, keep in mind that students and professors can answer any question you may have.  Ask students for their opinion of the school and campus life and whether they have encountered difficulties during their first year.

Find a couple of professors to ask how tough the classes are and what they expect of their students; what qualities they think a student should possess to do well academically.

Write It Down

It’s critical to take good notes during your visit.  After being on campus for a day you will probably feel like you’re a real college student, but remember that you’re still only a visitor and won’t be coming back for some time.  So any impressions you have of the campus will more than likely fade over the next few days. It would be a good idea to take notes during your visit.  Write down anything that comes to mind.  Did you get all of your questions answered? Write it down. Any information you put down will be helpful  later as you weigh your options and make your final decision.

A Photo is Worth a Thousand Words

It’s also not a bad idea to bring your camera and take pictures.  Comparing photos will help you remember your likes and dislikes when you’re trying to choose between several different colleges and universities.  In conjunction with your notes, photographs are a great way to remember distinct features of the campus.

When the Dust Settles

Once you’re back home and have a chance to relax, contemplate your visits and start formulating your initial impressions.  Write a thank you letter to your tour guide and interviewer.  Expressing your appreciation for their time and valuable insight is the polite thing to do and gives you a chance to ask any additional questions.  Plus, your thoughtfulness may just get mentioned to those in decision making positions.

Can’t Get Out of Town?

While it’s extremely beneficial to actually visit the campuses of those colleges and universities you are thinking of applying to, sometimes it is just not possible due to family circumstances, time restrictions, or even finances. Don’t worry.  There are alternative methods offered by schools and guidance offices that will help you make your college decisions. 

Many colleges and universities offer videos and CD-ROMs.  Check your

career center in the guidance office or library for the materials.  The college will even send you a free copy.

The Internet is another good alternative.  Browse the school’s web site.  There are normally pictures of the campus as well as facts about the college, the students, faculty and the degree programs.

And don’t forget those college fairs.  You can gather a great deal of information on a number of schools in a very short time, and there are representatives, admissions officers, and alumni on hand to answer all your questions.

Even though there are alternatives to a campus visit, it is still strongly recommended that you make every effort to see the college or university first hand before you sign on the dotted line.  Remember, “Never buy sight unseen.”

This is a great article to put in perspective the misconception that one must attend a prestigious college or university in order to be successful. 

by Carol Hymowitz
Provided by CareerJournal.com

The college diplomas of the nation’s top executives tell an intriguing story: Getting to the corner office has more to do with leadership talent and a drive for success than it does with having an undergraduate degree from a prestigious university.

Most CEOs of the biggest corporations didn’t attend Ivy League or other highly selective colleges. They went to state universities, big and small, or to less-known private colleges.

Wal-Mart Stores CEO H. Lee Scott, for example, went to Pittsburg State University in Kansas, Intel CEO Paul Otellini to the University of San Francisco, and Costco Wholesale CEO James Sinegal to San Diego City College.

This information should help allay the anxieties of parents and their college-bound children who believe admission to a top-ranked school with a powerful alumni network is a prerequisite to success in the upper echelons of business management. Today’s crop of chief executives are, of course, at least a generation older than current college students, but they are in the position to hire and say they don’t favor job candidates with certain degrees.

“I don’t care where someone went to school, and that never caused me to hire anyone or buy a business,” says Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, who graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

What counts most, CEOs say, is a person’s capacity to seize opportunities. As students, they recall immersing themselves in their interests, becoming campus leaders and forging strong relationships with teachers. And at state and lesser-known schools, where many were the first in their families to attend college, they sought challenges and mixed with students from diverse backgrounds–experiences that helped them later in their corporate climbs.

Bill Green, CEO of Accenture, never planned to go to college. The son of a plumber, he took a construction job when he graduated from high school in western Massachusetts because he didn’t think he had the ability to pursue more education. He changed his mind when he visited friends at Dean College, a two-year community school near Boston.

“Walking around campus, listening to my friends talk, I realized they were being exposed to a big world–and I had a chance to take another shot at learning,” he says.

At Dean, he got help from faculty members who devoted themselves to their students, not “doing research and writing books like professors at four-year schools,” he says. Rather than post student-meeting times on their office doors, they posted their class schedules. “All the other time, they were available to any student who needed help,” says Mr. Green, who worked part-time to pay for part of his tuition.

Inspired by an economics professor who made the subject “fun and relevant,” Mr. Green went on to Babson College to earn his bachelor’s and M.B.A. degrees. But he credits Dean with teaching him to think analytically, to gain confidence in his abilities, and to learn to work with people.

“You can go to a top-end school and end up dramatically underperforming, or you can go to a place that cares and blow away what everyone thinks,” says Mr. Green, who still stays in touch with his economics professor, Charlie Kramer. A trustee at Dean, he feels angry when he encounters “parents who are afraid or ashamed to say their son or daughter is attending a community college,” he says.

Some 10 percent of CEOs currently heading the top 500 companies received undergraduate degrees from Ivy League colleges, according to a survey by executive recruiter Spencer Stuart. But more received their undergraduate degrees from the University of Wisconsin than from Harvard, the most represented Ivy school.

Harvard’s nine current CEOs include United Technologies’ George David and Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer. Among Wisconsin’s ten current CEOs are Pitney Bowes’s Michael Critelli, Kimberly-Clark’s Thomas Falk, and Halliburton’s David Lesar. Carol Bartz, chairman and former CEO of Autodesk, majored in computer science at Wisconsin and used a scholarship she’d won for women gifted in math to help pay her tuition.

Some non-Ivy League schools have long been training grounds for particular industries. The University of Texas-Austin, the alma mater of Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, has churned out numerous oil executives. Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, is known for its computer-science graduates. But some of today’s most successful CEOs got their start on small, isolated campuses.

A. G. Lafley, Procter & Gamble’s CEO, chose Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., because he wanted a solid liberal-arts education and to be assured a spot on the intercollegiate basketball team. A history major who graduated in 1969, he was elected president of his sophomore class, became a fraternity officer, and spent his junior year studying in France.

“I learned to think, to communicate, to lead, to get things done,” he says, adding that those qualities are what he seeks in job candidates at his company. “Any college will do.”

Berkshire Hathaway’s Mr. Buffett didn’t even want to go to college. He enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School as an undergraduate at his father’s behest. He stayed just two years, then returned home to Omaha and graduated from Nebraska within a year.

At his father’s urging again, Mr. Buffett applied to Harvard Business School, which rejected him as too young, he says. By then, he was devouring the books by investors David Dodd and Benjamin Graham, who advocated investing in companies that had “intrinsic business value”–a view that became Mr. Buffett’s guiding investment principal.

When he learned the two men were teaching at Columbia University’s business school, he wrote to them to ask if he could attend their lectures. He earned a master’s degree in economics at Columbia in 1951. “But I didn’t go there for a degree, I went for those two teachers, who were already my heroes,” he says.

One reason more Ivy League alumni aren’t CEOs may be that many have traditionally chosen careers in investment banks and at big law firms, where they could earn big sums quickly and wouldn’t have to start in entry-level management jobs.

“A lot of people who earn degrees from tier-one universities and business schools aren’t willing to start at the bottom of a huge company” and spend years scaling layers of management and hoping to reach the top, says Richard Tedlow, a business historian at Harvard Business School.

The exceptions are some founders of high-tech companies who never completed college. They found their classroom studies less compelling than their own ideas. Bill Gates quit Harvard to start Microsoft, Michael Dell quit the University of Texas-Austin to start Dell Computer, and Steve Jobs quit Reed College in Portland, Ore., to work at Atari and then found Apple Computer. None ever returned to college to complete a formal degree.

What do they think about this decision today–and would they advise young people to copy them? In a graduation speech at Stanford last year, Mr. Jobs said college, like any life decision, is up to each individual. “You have to trust your gut,” he said.

His decision to quit Reed after one semester was “pretty scary” but ultimately “one of the best decisions I ever made,” because instead of taking required courses that didn’t interest him he spent the next 18 months auditing classes that did.

A calligraphy course he audited strongly influenced his design of the Macintosh computer ten years later. “If I’d never dropped in on that single course, the Mac would never have had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts,” he said.

Quitting college also eased his guilt about spending his adoptive working-class parents’ savings “when I still had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure that out,” he said. But dropping out “wasn’t romantic,” he warned. “I didn’t have a dorm room so I slept on the floor of friends’ rooms and returned Coke bottles…to buy food.”

Thomas Neff, chairman of recruitment firm Spencer Stuart U.S., warns: “It’s the exceptionally inventive person who can do this. If you have a big, big new idea, you can get venture financing–and if you wait to graduate someone else may capitalize on your idea first,” he says.

But for everyone else who wants a professional or management job at a big company, a college degree is a necessity–including for jobs at Apple, Microsoft, and Dell. And increasingly, employers also expect graduate degrees for management-track candidates. Close to two-thirds of top CEOs have either an M.B.A., law, or other advanced degree, according to Spencer Stuart’s survey–and some executives who didn’t go to Ivy League colleges got Ivy credentials as graduate students. P&G’s Mr. Lafley has a Harvard M.B.A.

Robert Iger, CEO at Walt Disney Co., decided in high school that he wanted to work in television and attended Ithaca College in upstate New York because he felt its strong communications program would nurture his career dreams. “I was in a place that supported creativity and individuality with a focus on what I was most interested in,” says Mr. Iger, who took liberal-arts and hands-on broadcast courses. After college, he got a job working for ABC-TV, now a unit of Disney.

Anyway, by the time someone has been working for a few years, or held one or two jobs, their employment record counts more than their educational background, recruiters say. And companies seeking to fill CEO and other senior jobs rarely consider candidates’ degrees. “It’s what you’ve accomplished that matters,” says Mr. Neff, “not what you were doing at 21.”