The Virtual Visit

I was presented with an interesting idea last week that after pondering I believe warrants a blog post. (Note: this was supposed to be yesterday's blog.)

The idea is this: To go green on your campus visit just do the virtual visit rather than going to the campus in person. This decreases your carbon footprint by not driving/flying to the college, eating out while you're there, etc. and if you just hop on your computer you can see the campus just as well.

I'm not 100% sure I'm on board with this.

Now, don't get me wrong. I think the idea is great as far as a more environmentally friendly option AND a way to see the campus without spending the money. In these harder economic times it may not be financially viable to physically go to the campus if it's 200 miles away for some families.

However, from what I've seen on the virtual tours I've taken of colleges you will have a few general impressions that can be said on any college campus:
1. The sky is always blue and it's always sunny.
2.The grass is always lush and green on the many green spaces on campus.
3. You can stroll along the fairly empty sidewalks between classes.
4. The other students are all amazingly good looking.
5. Campus is spotless.

None of the things on my list are really that horrible or give a totally false impression of the college, but it makes the school generic. Not that campuses don't keep themselves clean but when 50,000 students take over inevitably there are bits of paper and/or trash blowing around, as well as a LOT of students milling around. Also the green grass makes me laugh- having attended college in MN seeing green grass on campus was something that only happened for a little bit at the beginning of the school year and then again at the very end. And seeing the students milling around or playing football in the green spaces or gathering for whatever reasons students gather is the way you can feel that the college is some place you would like to be or not. Perhaps it's the opposite and there are never students milling around anywhere in real life... either way I don't think you can get the "feel" of a place via looking at some nicely put together marketing images of a college.

Where does this leave the online campus visit? Where I think it has value is when you're in the stage of choosing between 6 colleges but don't want to/can't visit all of them. That could be a major trip (with a major carbon footprint) so if you can get a vague feeling from the online visit and narrow that down to two or three colleges I think that's a good start.

So I'm again a little torn- I see the value of a online campus visit- but overall I never think it should be the final decision when attending a college and it should never ever take the place of actually visiting the college. Just take the hybrid car. :)