If you are a Belmont parent of a teenager, odds are good that you will visit a college campus this summer. We register for tours, make the drive, search for the visitors’ center, follow the earnest tour guide walking backward, and hope for a sign that maybe this is the school where our kid will be happy. The college where we had the great ice cream wins over the one with the big dead rat.The schools may be different, but all college tours are about the same. I have a mental Bingo game of sights and stories that come up again and again. The tour guide noting that the dorms were built by prison architects. Parents asking all the questions while their kids, the prospective students, cringe. A campus ghost. The library is slowly sinking because the designers forgot to take into account the weight of the books. Bingo!Like everything with college decisions, it’s too much information and not enough. My son Charlie just finished his freshman year and reflects, “I remember very little of what the guides said– just one who was honest and admitted the cafeteria food sucked.”My own college decision experience was skimming through “Baron’s Guide to Colleges,” and its one-paragraph summary, acceptance rate, and tuition. If I was intrigued, I could request a glossy brochure of happy students strolling through campus– the Gen X version of a tour.“I can’t remember ever having a conversation with my parents about applying to anything but two state schools,” remembers Kelly, parent of college-age kids. “In typical Gen X fashion, I did it all by myself, including dropping them off at the post office to make sure they got postmarked by the right date.”As Kelly alludes to, the sheer analog labor kept us from applying to fifteen or twenty schools, as so many of our kids do. The hard copy of the application, the transcript, the letters of recommendation sealed in an envelope with the teachers’ signature across the seal to prove secrecy, the check for the application fee…all had to be assembled and brought to the post office. Then we waited for a thin (boo) or a thick (yay) envelope, which we did not film ourselves opening.Kristin has visited six colleges so far with her rising senior. For her own applications “I had to do a lot of digging on my own, but no matter what prep I did, the whole process felt like a giant roll of the dice.”I can’t say which process is better. All I know is that one version saves the parents a lot of time, energy, and money. Last year, we launched Charlie at his top choice university (McGill in Montreal) where he has been happy, so some other parents think I am an authority on the whole business. I am not– I am just the parent of a kid who knows what he wants..“Do you have any advice?” another mom asked me hopefully.My wise and insightful response: “Everything will probably work out for the best.” I know, right?! My son’s friends had wildly different experiences– picking the school with the best financial aid package instead of the dream school; getting in early decision vs. off the waitlist. And yet somehow, they are all pretty content with where they ended up.In the end, glossy brochures or college tours, it’s about the same. None of the preparation tells the real story of the friends you will stumble into and the professors who will inspire you. Those unpredictable connections are what makes a meaningful university experience.Just don’t get me started on paying for college, as that is an unsolvable problem, and I have no advice at all.Jessica Barnard works at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. She is a former employee of Grub Street Writers and is secretly writing a romance novel in her spare time. Jessica received her MA in English from the Harvard Extension School in 2021, so even as a Gen X-er, she can relate to the Zoom graduation generation. While originally from the U.S. Virgin Islands, Jessica has lived in Belmont for 15 years with her husband and two children.The post Column: Generations Making the Choice with College Tour vs. Glossy Brochure appeared first on Belmont Voice.