Visit Choices

Presumably a majority of readers of this blog are high school students, parents of students, or potential transfer students (if you’re a current student reading this, don’t take any offense, but you could probably find a better source of information). Which means that one thing most of you will want to do relatively soon is come up and visit our campus. That’s right, this post won’t even be about the campus itself, just the visits, so if you’ve already had a tour you can go ahead and skip this entry.

You’ve got three main choices for dropping by the campus. You can take a tour of the Allendale Campus, which is what most visitors do. This tour covers dining, housing, academics, the whole nine yards, and normally includes two to four families. When you visit is completely up to you, just realize that there aren’t a lot of students on campus during the summer (despite having summer classes), and a majority of dining is closed down during that period. Summer tours do have one advantage, though, in that they have the opportunity to see more of housing, while school year tours can only see the apartment style dorm. The second option is to have a counselor appointment, which can be done individually or in conjunction with a tour. This is a chance to sit down, more or less “one-on-one” with an admissions counselor to talk about admissions, costs, the application process, etc. Keep in mind that this isn’t the same as an academic advisor; the counselors won’t be able to tell you what classes to schedule. The third option is a Preview, which is a group visit that is similar to an appointment in that the same basic information is covered, but in a much more structured format. Approximately 10 families meet in one of our conference rooms, and an admissions counselor walks through all of the basics of the school. In all of the situations there is the opportunity for the same information, it’s just presented in different formats.

One alternative to all of these is to come on one of our student visitation days, which occur periodically throughout the school year. These are the largest visits that we offer, with the tour groups breaking down to between ten and fifteen families. On the plus side, we have presentations by financial aid, housing, admissions, as well as representation by some of the faculty on campus, so there are lots of opportunities for info on these days.

If you’re interested in any of these options, call us at either (616) 331-2025 or 1-800-748-0246. You can also schedule online, but the available dates on our web site tend to be more restrictive over the phone, just due to the fact that as the online times start to fill up they’re taken off the calendar, but there are still some openings. Don’t forget you can post questions.

-Kyle

One thing I forgot to mention when I published this entry, but it would help if you check out a date about 2 weeks in advance, just for the sake of organization.