When I went on col­lege tours, I asked a lot of questions—just not always the right ones. We spend so much time dis­cussing majors and minors, perks and places that it’s easy to miss some cru­cial details of a col­lege visit. Here are some aspects of col­lege life that I hardly thought about but are really worth considering:

1. Laun­dry facil­i­ties
   Con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, col­lege stu­dents actu­ally do laun­dry (some­times). And when they do, it’s help­ful if the facil­i­ties are eas­ily acces­si­ble, clean, in good work­ing order, and do not require 17 quar­ters to do a sin­gle load of laundry.
2. On-campus aca­d­e­mic sup­port
   I only thought to ask about the pro­fes­sors, but they’re not the only ones doing the teach­ing on col­lege cam­puses these days. Upper­class­men are fre­quently employed as tutors in their areas of strength and can be a real life-saver the night before an exam or while you’re strug­gling with a paper. I didn’t truly under­stand the use­ful­ness of aca­d­e­mic sup­port ser­vices on cam­pus until I became a writ­ing advi­sor myself—these stu­dents are usu­ally paid to sit around and wait for stu­dents to come to them with ques­tions. Ask away.
3. Near­ness of essen­tial busi­nesses like phar­ma­cies and gro­cery stores
   Obvi­ously, many schools are in cities and this is not a big issue. When I toured col­leges, how­ever, I often asked about stuff to do around town, prox­im­ity to poten­tial intern­ships, and things like that. But it’s easy to for­get about basic neces­si­ties and it makes a big dif­fer­ence if get­ting a pre­scrip­tion filled is going to be easy as pie or a reg­u­lar hassle.
4. Avail­abil­ity of late-night nour­ish­ment
   I tried the turkey sand­wich in just about every cafe­te­ria and mess hall that I vis­ited (and yes, the col­lege I chose did make an excel­lent turkey sand­wich). I asked how stu­dents liked the food and tour guides are usu­ally pre­pared to answer ques­tions about vegetarian/vegan options, kosher choices, and accom­mo­da­tions for var­i­ous food aller­gies. But when I toured col­leges, I did not antic­i­pate the kind of sched­ule that a col­lege stu­dent keeps—naps taken at 6 p.m. before a late-night study group means that meal times are neb­u­lous at best. Know­ing if you can snag a grilled cheese at 10 o’clock is key—because oth­er­wise you’re going to want to buy some Easy Mac at that gro­cery store we discussed.
5. After-hours study space
   Again, as a high school junior and senior, I did not accu­rately envi­sion myself as a col­lege stu­dent. I set up the desk in my first dorm room with such care and atten­tion to detail, but I would guess now that I did the major­ity of my school­work else­where. Some­times I had so many books that I needed a big­ger space, other times I was work­ing with class­mates or didn’t want to dis­turb my room­mates. For the first half of my col­lege career, my school’s library was not open 24 hours a day and this made a big dif­fer­ence in where I stud­ied. I never thought to ask about this on a tour, but once I was set­tled into my first semes­ter, I was seek­ing out new places to study: the com­mon room, dorm com­puter labs, an empty class­room. Col­lege stu­dents’ lives are 24/7 and that means find­ing study spaces to fit such a non-schedule.

So what ques­tions did every­body else ask on col­lege tours? What do you wish you’d asked?