Questions to Ask for College Admissions
For the day you are physically on campus, whether that is an open day, a booked tour or a visit you arranged yourself. These are aimed at tour guides, students you meet in a corridor and whoever in the department will spare ten minutes, and they cover what no website answers: the food, where people study at midnight, how the walk home feels and what the place is like in the rain. Anything involving a figure is better asked of the office in writing, and Questions to Ask College Admissions covers that ground.
The questions
Open any question for the note
Can I sit in on a class while I am here, and can it be one in my subject?
Why ask it
Twenty minutes at the back of a lecture tells you more than the whole tour, and most departments will arrange it if you ask a few days ahead. Whether the request is easy or complicated is itself a small piece of information about the place.
Which building would I actually spend my days in, and can I walk through it?
Why ask it
Tours are routed past the newest architecture, which is often nowhere near where your subject is taught. Ask to see the real one, then look at whether the corridors have people in them at four in the afternoon.
Where would you take a visitor that the tour route avoids?
Why ask it
Put to a student rather than a guide, this gets you the parts of campus nobody is showcasing. The answer is sometimes charming and sometimes a residence hall that everyone dreads, and both are worth seeing.
How long is the walk from the furthest hall of residence to an early class in January?
Why ask it
Campus maps flatten distance and visits happen in good weather. A fifteen minute walk in the dark, four mornings a week, is a real part of what you would be signing up for.
Could someone from the department spare ten minutes while I am on campus?
Why ask it
Undergraduate coordinators and lecturers will often say yes to a student who is standing in the building, and they answer departmental questions far better than admissions can. Email ahead and name the subject rather than turning up unannounced.
Who is the lecturer everyone in this subject says to take a class with, and why?
Why ask it
Students answer this instantly and the reason they give describes the department's values: someone who teaches well, someone who opens doors, or someone who simply marks generously. That distinction is the useful part.
What did you eat here yesterday?
Why ask it
The dining hall on an open day is not the dining hall in week nine. A concrete answer about yesterday gets past the tasting session and tells you what a year of eating here is actually like.
Where do people actually study, and is there enough of it in exam weeks?
Why ask it
Every campus has a library in the photographs and a shortage of desks in December. Ask where the overflow goes and whether anything is open through the night.
Where do students go at eleven at night when the work is not finished?
Why ask it
The answer maps the parts of campus that stay alive after the tour ends, and whether food, transport and study space exist at that hour. If everything shuts at nine, that shapes the working day more than any facility on the tour.
How does the walk back feel after dark, and what does the campus put on for it?
Why ask it
Ask students rather than staff, and ask about the specific route between the library and the residences. Lighting, a late bus and a walking service are concrete things you can check on your way out.
How far is the nearest supermarket, pharmacy and doctor, and how do students get there?
Why ask it
These are the errands that quietly decide whether a car is necessary. Ask what happens when a shuttle stops running earlier than the shops close, since that gap is where students end up stuck.
How many people are here at weekends?
Why ask it
Some campuses lose most of their students every Friday, which changes the social life entirely for anyone who lives too far away to leave. Walk through on a Saturday morning if your visit allows it.
What is everyone on campus arguing about this term?
Why ask it
Noticeboards, the student paper and this question all point at the same thing: what students currently care about and what the institution is being pressed on. A shrug means you are talking to someone who has not been here long.
What would you change about this place if you could change one thing?
Why ask it
Almost every student has an answer ready, and it is usually the standing grievance: registration, advising, a housing lottery or the food. If three separate people name the same thing, believe them.
Where did you nearly go instead, and what decided it?
Why ask it
You are effectively asking a student to run your own decision for you, using a comparison they made recently. The reason they give is often more concrete than anything in a prospectus.
What surprised you in your first month here?
Why ask it
First-month surprises are the gap between the marketing and the reality, still fresh enough to be described precisely. Second-year students give the best answers because they can remember it and are no longer inside it.
How did you find your friends in the first term?
Why ask it
The mechanism matters: a residence floor, a society, a course cohort, a sports team. If every answer involves one route you have no interest in, that is worth knowing before you arrive.
How much of today is typical of a wet Tuesday in November?
Why ask it
Open days are staged on the best available day with everything open and everyone briefed. Asking the question aloud usually produces a laugh and then an honest description of the ordinary version.
What does the tour deliberately not show?
Why ask it
Guides are trained and following a script, so this is fairer put to a student who is not working the event. The older residence halls, the building site and the long walk are the usual answers.
Can I have the email of a student in my subject who does not work for the admissions office?
Why ask it
Ends the visit with a way to keep asking once you are home and the questions have sharpened. Whether the request is granted easily tells you something on its own.
Getting real answers on a visit
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Match the question to the person
Tour guides
Selected, trained and paid, which does not make them dishonest but does make them unrepresentative. They are excellent on daily logistics and unreliable on anything resembling policy, and it is not fair to press them on it.
Students who are not working the event
The most useful people on campus. Find them in a departmental common room, a dining hall or a launderette rather than at an open day stand, and second and third-year students in your subject give the best answers.
Department staff
Course sequences, seats in required classes, laboratories and studios, and what the first year demands. Email the undergraduate coordinator a week before your visit and ask for ten minutes.
Admissions officers
Process, deadlines and how applications are read. Save the visit for the things that need you to be standing there and send the rest by email afterwards.
Planning the day
- Book the tour, then add an hour on either side of it that belongs to you alone.
- Walk the tour route backwards on your own afterwards and look at what was not pointed out.
- Eat a meal in a dining hall, at a normal mealtime, and pay for it if you must.
- Read the noticeboards and pick up the student newspaper. Recurring complaints in print are real.
- Ask two different students the same question, so you have a comparison rather than one person's mood.
- Write everything down the same day. After four campuses they merge completely.
Common pitfalls
Spending the visit on questions the website answers
Deadlines, class sizes and the list of majors are published. Using your one day on campus to hear them read aloud wastes the only thing a visit gives you, which is presence.
Judging the place by the weather
A campus in spring sunshine is a different institution from the same campus in February. Ask what the long middle of the year feels like and discount the day accordingly.
Letting a parent do the asking
Students give franker answers to other students. If a parent has come along, agree in advance that some of the walking around happens separately.
Only meeting people the school chose
Guides, panel students and staff on stands are all selected. At least one conversation should be with somebody nobody arranged for you.