Saving on College Visits

The rising cost of gas and lodging is making the pre-admission college tour more costly. Here are some ways to cut back

By Alison Damast

When Irene Koehler and her 17-year-old daughter, Ariela, set off to visit four colleges and universities in Southern California this fall, they knew they would have to approach their trip with a frugal eye.

So instead of flying, the two drove 1,700 miles roundtrip, starting from their home in Fremont, Calif., got bargain deals on hotels using travel Web sites like priceline.com, and ate their meals out of a cooler in their car trunk or at school cafeterias. It was just one of a number of creative cost-saving concessions the mother and daughter duo employed (or deployed) during their trip.

"I was thinking when we got to this point, we'd have an East Coast trip like a lot of families do and hit on opportunities to see a number of schools that are farther away," said Koehler, who estimates her family saved about $1,000 on the California trip. "But it is just not financially practical now. We needed to have a different plan"

The college tour, a coming-of-age ritual for high school juniors and seniors, is becoming prohibitively expensive for many families as the economy slides into recession and the cost of gasoline, hotels, and restaurants skyrocket. With the average cost of applying to a group of colleges—application fees, exams, and campus visits included—in the range of $3,500, the campus tour is an easy target for budget cutters.

Families like the Koehlers are eliminating visits to out-of-state colleges, using virtual college fairs and online tours and sending their children on group tours of schools. Some are deciding to postpone trips until their child has been accepted into the school, while others are only visiting schools within driving distance from their homes.

This trend is likely to become more pronounced in the coming year because of the economy, said James Boyle, president of the group College Parents of America. And then there's the option of eliminating school visits altogether. "There are always a fair number of students who don't go on tours," Boyle said. "You're probably going to see more of that happening now."

As prime college tour visiting season gets into swing, here are some tips on how families can save money and time while scoping out schools:

1) Do online research:

Most schools offer virtual tours on their Web sites, a good way to get an initial feel for the campus and the school's offerings, said David Hawkins, director of public policy and research at the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC). This can help families whittle down the number of schools on their list for visits. "If you do your initial legwork online, then you might have a much more realistic and economical college tour planning process on your hands," he says. There are also a number of Web sites with tools that allow you to compare schools by enrollment, costs, academic programs, graduation rates, student life, and learning outcomes. For example, sites like www.collegeportraits.org, launched in September, offers data on more than 300 public four-year colleges and universities, while U-CAN offers similar information on 728 private colleges and universities. Armed with information like this, parents can take a more "strategic" approach to the college visit, Hawkins said.

2) Wait until you're admitted:

Many students will make two trips to college campuses, one when they're figuring out what schools to apply to and another after they've been accepted. One way to cut this cost in half is to eliminate one of those trips, said Katherine Cohen, CEO of ApplyWise.com and an admissions expert. If a family decides not to travel to schools in the fall, students can still express their interest in a school by meeting with an admissions officer at a local recruiting event, Cohen said. She recommends students check with schools to see when admissions officers will be visiting a nearby city.