It’s a time full of anticipation around this time for Roosevelt seniors, and with the looming thought of letters that will make or break us, we find ourselves anxious and unsure of our life paths. A big part of senior year is making that decision based on finding a good education, how the college’s academic style suits your learning style and getting good scholarships or financial aid. However, something a lot of people don’t take into account when making this decision is the importance of the campus and the surrounding town.

I can speak from experience when I say college visits can change your entire list of top choices. For instance, I loved Kenyon. It was in my top three choices last year, and the pictures on the brochures made me fall in love. It seemed like a beautiful, lively campus...until I got there. They had said it was pleasantly isolated upon a hill in the information packets I’d received, but it felt as if no connection to the bordering towns existed. I had pictured a clustered campus with a lot of people, but while the campus was actually in one block with outlying dorms further off the main block. By the end of the visit, I realized I couldn’t see myself there, and I previously had been really passionate about enrolling in the following year.
If anything feels wrong for you about the town, the campus or the atmosphere the students provide, it’s more likely that it won’t end up growing on you, but becoming a prominently annoying element in your college residence.

On the other hand, I applied to Vanderbilt (a school in a completely different environment than Kenyon) not really thinking about going there, but then I visited the campus, and now it’s my favorite school.

So what factors should you consider in figuring out where you fit best? Consider your hobbies. If you’re outside a lot and you love close-knit, rural, isolated communities, consider those liberal arts schools on your list to narrow it down. On the other hand, if you do a lot of small town activities, you could be growing tired of the monotony of the environment, so look into visiting one of the urban schools you’re considering. Even if you can’t decide which city you want to be in if you applied to a lot of metropolitan schools, try to visit one just to see if city life suits you.

Visiting gives you a feel of the people you’ll be around, the sights you’ll see every day and the kind of intellectualism you’ll experience. If exercise and nutrition are important to you, consider their workout facilities, activities, dining hall menus and so on. If you love books, consider the on-campus bookstore and the library. Maybe the architecture of an older campus would impose a sense of seriousness and motivate you more to study, or the noise of a city outside would keep your head in the books.

Okay, now let’s say you’ve picked out your top schools. You’re in love with all three, and you’d really need to visit them in order to decide which fits you best. Mom and Dad can’t go visit because they’ve got busy jobs and it just costs too much money. How can you be sure you’ll be happy in the town? Talk to professors or staff who work at the college or university. Sometimes they’ll give you a buttered-up version of what the student experience is really like there, so try talking to current and former students as well. They’ll give you a more honest and blunt response without trying to convince you to give them your money.