From Manisha Singal for First College Visit, a series of first college visit stories by business professionals sponsored by SmartCollegeVisit.

Would you believe it, but I never did have a college visit for myself! 

In India, during my time, colleges chose you, and only if you had really high marks (GPA) and if you went there early enough to stand in line and get the right form filled up! 

The reputation of the college was a good enough proxy for a "visit"...there was no recruiting and no incentives to attend....it was purely a seller's market.  Nevertheless, I got admitted to St. Xavier's College in Bombay (Mumbai now) which was a feat and a source of considerable pride for my parents.

Some two and a half decades later, our college visits were to the University of Virginia, the University of Michigan, Northwestern, and others for my son who was literally wooed by these schools.

I thought how very nice to be able to have a wide array of choices and get a preview of college life by attending classes by some of the star professors and staying in the dorms as a trial run to see if you liked the "feel" of the college.  The President of Northwestern University even profusely apologized for the cold breezes that blew off Lake Michigan in March/April, the weekend we visited Evanston!  (I must add that we did not visit any schools prior to admission, but picked only the ones my son might want to go to after receiving the admit letter).

So, while my own first college visit for my academic pursuits was a non-event, I thoroughly enjoyed all the information and attention bestowed on us at these American colleges.

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Dr. Manisha Singal is Assistant Professor of Hospitality and Tourism Management, Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech.  As an entrepreneur, she was profiled on Inside VT KnowledgeWorks for beginning an Internet company- an online bookseller prior to Amazon.com - that is still in existence.

In the photograph, Dr. Manisha Singal, pictured with friends, is third from the left.

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First College Visit on Handshake 2.0, a series of first college visit stories by business professionals, is sponsored by SmartCollegeVisit, a college visit portal with tools and resources for planning campus visit travel, college visit advice from parents to parents, not-to-miss college campus sites, and more. You're invited to subscribe to SmartCollegeVisit updates, to follow SmartCollegeVisit on Twitter, and to become a fan of SmartCollegeVisit on Facebook.