Interviews & Observations
Parents
For our first deliverable we decided to focus on parental involvement because planning college trips is primarily driven by parent planning. We interviewed three parents, all of whom have at least one child currently in college and have either gone through or are going through the college application process with a second or third child.
Interview 1
Mother of two children, both children already in or completed college (UC-Berkeley and MIT)
- Parent 1 was very hands off throughout the process because her children are both athletes so most of their college visits were planned by recruiters. This allowed Parent 1 to put much more faith into the college system and not need to plan college tours and trips.
- Based on this information, we would like to conduct interviews with students who are planning their own trips or are going through the college process without as much parent intervention.
Interview 2
Mother of two children, both children already in or completed college (MIT and Washington University in St. Louis)
- Long process, has planned college trips for her two children as well as nephews, and other family friends
- Steps through the process:
- Determine the type of school the student wants (big/small, urban/rural, public private, etc.)
- Find out a few schools that are a good fit with the criteria (and fits the student's GPA/SAT/academic expectations) (used Barron's Guide)
- Use word of mouth to often find other colleges
- Plan a trip to visit colleges, which requires finding other good fit colleges in the area, finding hotels and restaurants close by and then planning the itinerary based on what times those colleges have tours and information sessions
- Difficulties
- Finding those schools that fit the student academically and then having a recommendations such as "people who applied to this school applied here too" because that can widen the knowledge of schools you may have never heard of or considered
- Needs to use a lot of resources to plan these trips, starts with collegeboard.com, then needs to do individual research on hotels in the area, rental cars, restaurants, and possible tourist things to do if it is a long trip. Required multiple websites, books and talking to a lot of people who had already experienced the process.
Interview 3
Mother of three children, two children already in or completed college (Providence and MIT), one child still in high school (junior).
- She has experience planning multiple college trips, both to single schools and to multiple schools in a given region.
- Trip 1 (Nashville / South):
- Planned for an upcoming school vacation, the trip was designed to combine sightseeing around different parts of the South with college visits in the area
- The trip planning process began with one college and destination in mind (Vanderbilt and Nashville), but she wanted to expand the trip to include more colleges and destinations
- Due to lack of familiarity with the area, she did not know of any schools around Vanderbilt to visit, but she had heard of Davidson and read about it in college books
- She thought that Davidson would be a good fit based on its renowned International Relations program and my sister's interest in international development and involvement with related extracurricular groups; she found information about Davidson's International Relations program through its website
- She used MapQuest / Google Maps to see how far apart Vanderbilt and Davidson were in order to determine whether a trip to see both of them would be feasible.
- While she had originally planned to return to Nashville after visiting a second school, once she selected Davidson and used the map to see the distance between the two schools, she realized that this was infeasible
- Unsure of where to stay around Davidson, she used recommendations from Davidson's websites to decide upon a hotel for the evening.
- She used the college websites of Vanderbilt and Davidson to determine college tour times
- Trip 2 (DC / Virginia)
- Planned for a long weekend (Friday to Monday), the sole focus of the trip was on visiting colleges.
- The initial plan was to visit schools in the DC area (Georgetown / American / George Washington), but those plans changed as she started to plan the trip and think about the daughter's preference for more of a campus setting.
- She had visited William & Mary about ten years ago and knew about UVA's strong reputation; for these reasons, she started to think about including these colleges in the trip.
- In the case of Georgetown, W&M, and UVA, she believed that proximity to Washington DC would lead to more opportunities for internships in the field of International Relations.
- As she began to plan a trip involving the first three schools, she realized that Richmond was between all of these schools; for this reason, she decided to include the University of Richmond in the trip. She knew people from our town who had attended this school and thought that this would be a possibility as a good, safe option for my sister, even if it was not the best fit.
- Initially, she planned to fly into DC and out of Charlottesville, but the lack of flights out of Charlottesville forced her to reconsider.
- After looking up tour times on college websites and accounting for the academic calendar (some of these schools will be on spring break at the time of the visit), she came up with the following itinerary.
- Fly into DC on Thursday night, and drive to Williamsburg (W&M) the same night
- Do a morning tour / info session at W&M and drive to Charlottesville (UVA) for an afternoon tour / info session
- Drive to Richmond (University of Richmond) on Saturday morning, and take a tour there. This school was less of a priority, so the fact that info sessions were not offered on Saturdays was less of a concern
- Drive to DC on Saturday night, and spend Sunday walking around George Washington / American
- Take a tour and do an information session at Georgetown (very well known for its international relations program and thus a higher priority) on Monday before flying back to Maine on Monday night
- Comments and Insights:
- She used college websites and college books to learn more about the schools and the particular programs that would be good fits for her daughter.
- She also used existing knowledge / word-of-mouth information about the reputation of the school as a factor in determining which schools to visit.
- She expressed a lack of trust in materials from the College Board and did not use their website.
- She did not know many schools in the South (that could be tied to Trip 1) that might be good fits for her younger daughter, even after having visited the Carolinas in the process of searching for schools for her older daughter
- She went to individual college websites to get times for tours and information sessions; she also used the college websites to learn more about the programs that might be of interest to her daughter
- Some schools on the trips (especially on Trip 2) were considered higher priority than others, and so she wanted to invest more quality time on the trip into those schools
- Multiple iterations were required to find the best itinerary that accounted for different constraints and preferences.
Common Problems
- Finding schools of interest subject to criteria
- When the geographic area is unfamiliar, it is more difficult to find schools of the right caliber and right fit
- School websites and college books (e.g., Barron’s, Fiske’s are helpful for identifying the programs that are popular and/or renowned), but then for things like online sources some parents (e.g. Parent 3) lacked trust of existing online information sources (saying: “I wouldn’t trust the College Board”).
- Building an itinerary
- Parents found it difficult to satisfy all time and geographic constraints in building the itinerary and had to iterate
- Parents obtained tour and travel information from college websites and booked travel arrangements on various websites (bookings.com, etc.)
User Classes
- Parents: parents of high school juniors and seniors who may be planning a trip to visit colleges. In addition to looking for schools in a certain area that fit criteria based on the student's needs (e.g. certain GPAs/SAT scores, sports teams, location, extra curricular activities) they will also need to find lodging and plan itineraries that allow them to go to tours and info sessions of various colleges so that multiple colleges can be visited in one trip.
- High School College Counselors: often help students select their colleges and may plan group trips to visit various schools in a certain area. Want a centralized place to be able to send students and parents to look at prospective colleges in a certain area.
- High School Students: want to find colleges within their academic range. Often not as concerned with the area, and don't usually plan their own college trips (although some do). Want to see comparisons between schools and see which ones have the programs and extra curricular activities that align with their interests.
- College Admissions Officers: want to ensure that visiting prospective students can go on tours and attend info sessions easily and get a positive impression of the school.
- Transfer Students: students who plan to transfer colleges often want to visit their perspective new schools. They also need to plan these trips, as well as find out who to talk to about transfer admissions versus regular admissions. Transfer students are also often interested in specific departments/labs on campus.
Needs & Goals
Based on the parent interviews we have determined that there are two main needs when planning college visits, and then many higher-level, more specific goals within those needs that would be achieved ideally by a single tool instead of requiring multiple websites and books to achieve these goals.
- Find schools of interest for the student (students, families, counselors)
- Identify the student’s interests, strengths, and preferences
- Find schools which meet the student’s criteria
- Renowned and popular academic programs in fields of interest
- Campus style and size that are suitable for the student
- Within the desired geographic area
- Build an itinerary to visit schools of interest in a given area (students, families)
- Find college tour / information session schedules for different times in the college academic calendar
- Identify external time constraints
- Determine and book suitable travel arrangements given distances between schools on the itinerary
- Find nearby attractions, restaurants, and events