Pulling Teens Out of School for College Visits and Big Family Trips
Senior year, college-visit season. The schools Jax visited, how we structured the trips, and the case for pulling them out for both college tours and big family travel.
Jax is a senior, which means this past year and a half has been the great college-visit campaign. We pulled him out of school for, by my count, eleven days for college visits, plus a few additional days for a big family trip that I am not apologizing for. If you are a junior parent eyeing senior year, here is what we learned.
For context: Jax wants USC for film. He is the kid who has been skiing backwards with a camera since he was twelve, who volunteers at Woodward filming the campers, who has built a reel that is genuinely, parentally-biased-but-honestly impressive. We organized our college-visit list around film programs, with USC at the top and a sensible spread of alternatives.
The schools we visited
USC (Los Angeles)
The dream school. Two visits — one in spring of junior year for the information-session-and-walking-tour version, one in fall of senior year for a more in-depth film-school day. The film-school visit included a class observation, which was the single most valuable hour of the entire campaign for Jax.
UCLA (Los Angeles)
Same trip as USC the second time. The film school is more theoretical, USC is more production-focused. Helpful comparison.
Chapman (Orange)
The dark-horse film school. Smaller, more intimate, real production access for undergrads. Jax came out of this visit more interested than he expected.
NYU (New York)
A New York trip combined with an aunt visit. Jax loved the city, was less sure about the program structure for him specifically. Worth visiting anyway.
Loyola Marymount (Los Angeles)
Tagged onto the second LA trip. Solid film program, beautiful campus, became a real backup option.
The structure of a college trip
What we learned, in order of importance:
Fly in, fly out, do not road-trip the whole thing
We tried road-tripping the LA schools the first time. Three days in the car was a lot. Second time we flew SLC-LAX, rented a car for two days, flew home. Cleaner.
Two schools per trip, max
Three is too many. By school three, the kid blurs them all together and stops processing. Two schools, two days, with a meal in between for actual conversation about the visit.
The information session is optional after the second school
Every information session is structurally identical. By the third one Jax could have presented it himself. Skip it on subsequent visits and use the time for a class observation or department-specific tour.
The class observation is the gold
If a school will let you sit in on a class — especially in the actual major — do it. Jax sat in on a USC production class and a Chapman editing class and they were the two clearest signals he got.
Eat where the students eat
Sit in the actual student dining hall. Listen. Watch. He learned more about Chapman's culture in a forty-minute lunch than in the official tour.
The pulling-out-of-school question
I will say this clearly: senior-year college visits are a legitimate excused absence and not a single one of Jax's teachers blinked at it. Park City schools — between the standard PCSD posture and the unique overall culture of this town around outdoor education and family travel — are genuinely flexible about senior-year visits. Eleven days of absences for college tours did not affect his standing.
The big family trip exception
We also pulled both kids out for a week in March of Jax's junior year for a family trip to Mexico that I am not going to apologize for. It was Jax's last spring break before everything got busy, Maddie was a sweet-spot eighth-grader, and we made an irreplaceable family memory. They both made up the work. The teachers were uniformly understanding.
Tips for visit-season-parent moms
- Block out the calendar in August. Senior fall fills up fast.
- Build a shared Google doc with the visit calendar, the questions to ask, and the impressions afterward.
- Make them write the impressions before bed each visit night. Memory fades fast.
- Go to financial-aid sessions even if you think you do not need them. You usually do.
- Buy the school sweatshirt only at the school they actually choose. Otherwise the closet becomes a graveyard.
Senior year is a mode shift. You are not parenting a high-schooler at home anymore — you are parenting a young adult who is auditioning their next chapter. Pulling Jax out of school for the visits was, hands down, the right call. We learned which schools fit, ate a lot of overpriced campus pizza, and Jax submitted his USC application this fall feeling genuinely informed. — Tricia P.