If you are a college bound senior planning to do some final campus visits before making your big decision you must read this article.  Jay Mathews is a columnist for the Washington Post on college admissions.  His column is always, smart, witty and honest. I really like this one on banning parents from  final college visits.  Part of the article is posted below.

You can feel the excitement. The college acceptances are about to arrive. (There will be rejections, too, but this blogger is a devout optimist, so humor him.) Each college that offers admittance is a different fork in the road of life. Which would be best? Often, the April visits to the campuses that have accepted you are vital to the decision process.

So why mess it up by having all those parents there, asking irrelevant questions, bragging on their kids, taking photos, making incorrect assumptions, embarrassing the admittees and spoiling what should be a fun time full of future possibilities?

When my children asked that I stay away from a campus visit that was important to their final selections, I said okay. I know we are paying the bill, but aren’t they likely to do best at a school that appeals to their tastes rather than ours? Shouldn’t they be allowed to soak up the ambiance by themselves, without us butting into conversations and offering, without invitation, our own reflections on each school?