What Is Accepted Students Day and Is It Worthwhile?

Last Updated on January 27, 2020 by Jill Schwitzgebel

The acceptance letters arriving in the mail or inbox are cause for celebration! But often, those acceptances bring some stress for students.  Sometimes, students have sent in their applications six months (or more!) before receiving that acceptance.  It may have been a year or more since they set foot on that campus.  And in that time, their memories have faded.  Or maybe, they have different priorities than they did six months ago (after all, they’re teenagers).  Or maybe the college simply did not offer the financial aid package that you had been hoping to receive, and a school lower on the college wish list came through with some money.  That’s where attending an Accepted Students day (also known as “Admitted Students day”) comes in.  These days are to help students make their college decisions.

Colleges will typically hold an accepted students day or weekend in the spring, prior to when the student needs to make a college decision.    Usually, they will offer a few date options.  Every college will handle these a little bit differently, but generally, you can expect that your student will have a chance to attend a class, eat in the dining hall with current students, and at some schools, spend the night in the dorm. 

Most schools also have concurrent programs for parents while their students are off exploring.  Those can range from some basic seminars about financial aid, to what seems like almost a full blown college freshman parent orientation. 

See also:  What to Do After Receiving the College Acceptances

Why Attend?

Attending accepted students day gives students one more chance to experience the campus environment and get questions answered.  They may have questions that they hesitated to ask prior to admission because they didn’t want their application to be flagged for any reason.  This is an opportunity for them to truly imagine themselves as a student on the campus and may help to prevent buyers’ regret.

So what should a student be considering when returning to campus for one of these visits?  Actually, they should be thinking about many of the same things that they were considering when looking for colleges for their application list.  Only this time around, the list is already narrow and they’re a little more mature and able to think more realistically about whether the college really feels like a good fit to them. 

Hopefully before even applying to the college, you and your student did the research to know things like the graduation rate, the sophomore retention rate, campus crime statistics , and job placement or graduate school rates.  This time around, your student should focus less on those statistics and more on how the school feels to them.

Consider:

• Does the distance to campus suddenly feel too far from home?  Too close?
• How does the campus size really feel?  Too big?  Too small?  Or is it just right?
• How does the class size feel?  Who is teaching it?  Is it a full professor, an adjunct, or a graduate student? Are students quietly taking notes and maybe looking at their phones or are students engaged and discussing?
• How is the dining hall experience?  Is there enough selection there?  Are there other dining options?  What are students saying about the food in general?
• Are the students friendly and willing to chat?  What’s the overall vibe? Can your student see themselves as part of the community?

Ask:

• Will the college match a better financial aid package that your student received from another college?  (You’ll need to bring a copy of that offer with you to show them.)
• What organizations, clubs, and intramurals are available on campus? What percentage of students are involved in these extracurriculars?

Why NOT Attend?

Occasionally,  I have heard negative reports about Accepted Student days.   Complaints seem to happen most often after overnight visits.  Most commonly, if there is a complaint, it’s that the host students did not interact with the visiting seniors and that visiting students were left with nothing to do for an evening. There is no question that is an uncomfortable experience for the accepted student and it will negatively impact their opinion of the college.  I have never personally heard of a student who changed their decision about a dream school based on a bad visit experience, but there are always stories that circulate about that situation.

Bad experiences are easily avoided if the college has a good accepted student program in place though.  Before committing to an accepted student day or weekend, I would question the college to be sure that they have an itinerary of activities planned for your student. Hopefully, that itinerary has plenty of time for them to get to interact with other accepted students.

If an overnight visit is involved, ask about those arrangements.  At some schools, students earn service hours for hosting a student in their dorm room, but there is virtually no requirement for the hosts to provide any entertainment for the visiting student.  I think that’s when students run into issues.  It may be completely fine if the college has activities planned and the student will only be in the room to sleep.

Conclusion

By the time you are sending your students off to an accepted students event, you  have come a long way through the college search and admissions process.  This is one of the last steps before launching your teen in a few short months.  It’s bittersweet.  I think that attending an accepted students event with them can help both parents and students feel more comfortable about the step that’s coming next.

I recognize that this time can also be difficult, if you and your child differ in your opinions about the best place for them in the next year. But, assuming you have already negotiated financing with them, now is probably the time for you to step back and listen as they make their final decision.