This summer my oldest daughter and I are hitting the road to visit college campuses throughout the south east. While we live in Charlotte, NC, we are considering schools both in and out of state. Since my daughter is excited to attend a university with a vibrant school spirit and hopes to participate in marching band, we had to add Clemson University to our list. I’m sharing all my tips and tricks and a peek inside the tour to help you and your student navigate a college tour of your own. But don’t miss my general college tour tips here, too! If you’re starting from the south side of Charlotte, NC like we did, plan for about 2.5 – 3 hours in the car depending on traffic. However, if you want to see campus in person, take part in an information session with an admissions officer, and get a guided tour with a student guide, you’ll want to register for a campus visit before you go. Be sure to sign up with one of their open dates, you can find all the information you’ll need to register here. During our visit, we were asked to download the Flowbird app to pay for metered parking on campus and around the city of Clemson. They suggested finding a white-lined, numbered parking spot near the visitor’s center and paying for the metered parking. We found a spot up around back from the center towards the residential areas. We decided to schedule our tour for 1pm in the afternoon so that we could explore the area a little beforehand and then head to Atlanta afterwards. Our schedule went as follows: We had the hardest time finding the visitor’s center because it is tucked back behind the Wilbur O. and Ann Powers College of Business. There’s visitor parking behind the business building and my phone map kept trying to lead us to that building instead. I’m including this photo of the visitor’s center so you can spot it down the walkway behind the business building. You’ll be assigned an information session with an admissions officer who will present the basic information you need for applying to Clemson University. This is an excellent place to ask any general questions you have about the admissions process. The presentation lasted about 30 minutes. We had the unfortunate experience of walking in 104°F temps on a bright sunny afternoon and nearly melted! Check out my car’s temperature: The walking tour lasted for about an hour and a half and our guide tried to stop in shady spots as much as possible. During our visit, the walk was pretty gentle and easy but the campus does have some fairly steep hills. There were also some stairs so if that is a problem for you be sure to request an accessibility-friendly tour when you register. See the steps in the photo below? This is the business college and was part of the tour: If it is important for you to see the inside of these things, be sure to ask your tour guide about how to make that happen. During our college tours, I always tried to pick a restaurant on or very near to campus so my daughter could get a feel for the fun places she could eat during the weekends. If you find parking there, it would not be the worst spot to just leave your car for the duration of your visit. The visitor’s center is a little walk away. The restaurant features traditional sports pub fair with plenty of hot and spicy appetizers, burgers, wings, ribs, tacos, salads and more. We wanted to keep things a little on the lighter side since we knew we’d be walking in the intense heat so decided to split an order of “Bird Dog Fries” and a large salad among the three of us. Bird dogs are a classic Clemson football game day food and they inspired the recipe which was more than enough to fill us up before the walk. Be sure to ask them for more information if this is of interest to you! I’m saving all the campus pics in an album on my phone for easy grabbing when the time comes. NOTE: This was my daughter’s idea, not my own. If you think your child would feel way too much pressure with this, skip it! They don’t need any more stress placed on their shoulders. For us, there was just a simple feeling of excitement and potential and hope surrounding that pic. We know she’s an awesome kid who will land some place that is the right fit. Maybe that will be Clemson University, maybe not. You could plan a visit around several nearby things like the Greenville Zoo, especially if you’re bringing younger siblings along for the tour. My husband and I spent an anniversary weekend there one year. We stayed at Pettigru Place and here’s my list of the best places to eat for a romantic trip to Greenville. We both loved the size of campus and appreciated how pretty everything was landscaped and arranged. It is the kind of campus where you’d feel very safe walking around at all hours of the day. Everyone we met on campus was warm and welcoming, our server at lunch was a recent graduate who absolutely gushed over her experience in the nursing school. (FUN TIP: Always ask your waitstaff if they’re students, they usually are and almost always have great advice.) Clemson was already one of my daughter’s top picks for school, the tour only firmly cemented that choice and she’s eagerly awaiting her decision results!
