College Tour '10: Georgia Tech

ATLANTA, GA
Georgia Tech
From a parent

My husband, son (a HS Junior) and I went on our first official college visit. We picked Georgia Tech because it is one of the few schools on my son’s current list that we could visit in a weekend.

Before our visit, we knew Tech had at least three positive attributes - proximity (five hours door-to-door by air from our Florida home to campus), price (even for an out-of-stater, it is less expensive than most private college tuition), weather (winters in the south are tough to beat).

Our son spent an entire day on the Tech campus. He went to two classes and we joined him on the campus tour (wear comfortable shoes), at the general info session and at the info session for prospective engineering students.

Our tour guide was amazing. He was energetic, enthusiastic and informative. While the info sessions repeated some of the info on the Tech web site, there was a lot of new info also.

We learned about Tech’s high rankings in each field of engineering. On the tour, we saw the sports complex (which has THE pool and diving boards from the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta), we heard about the new biotech facilities that are just about complete, and we walked through a sample dorm room. I wouldn’t mind going on vacation there.

At the end of the visit, our son decided to keep Georgia Tech on his list. During Spring Break, we visited five [more] schools in Boston and Los Angeles. All but one school will be on the list come September.

This is one in a series of reports that parents and students are contributing about their campus tours this spring. If you have visited a school and would like to participate, email me a brief report at theanswersheet@washpost.com. You can find out more about College Tour ’10 and how to write about your college visit here.

Go to http://timespace.washingtonpost.com/project/college-2010/ to see more college posts in the series.