Visiting a campus is going to give you the best sense of whether you can picture yourself as a student at that school. However, if you are considering 10 or more schools, it isn't always practical to visit each campus in person. The good news? Thanks to technology, you may be able to get a pretty good overview of campus from the comfort of your own home.
If you are thinking about applying to a particular school and you just aren’t able to visit before you apply, I encourage you to take advantage of a virtual tour.
What are your options?
1) Some schools have invested the money to create their own virtual tours. NYU's tour is outstanding, for example.
2) Many schools (over 600) have contracted with YouVisit to provide detailed campus tours that walk you through the school's outdoor spaces, facilities, classrooms, nearby city or town, etc. If you have a virtual reality headset, you can even connect it to their platform to have an even more engaging experience.
3) Campus Reel provides 15,000 videos that are student generated to give you a real idea of what life is like on campus. Learn about the school from the students who actually live and study there.
While you certainly can’t replicate the feeling you get from being on campus in person and engaging all of your senses, you can at least get some valuable information and have a clearer picture of what the school looks like and what it has to offer.