California College Tour 2025

Each attendee (parents and guests included) must fill out their own individual enrollment form to attend the tour. Please note tour prices are per person regardless of group size. Adults can only be placed in a room with students they are attending the tour with. If a parent and a student would like to attend the tour and room together, the student would fill out an enrollment form and select TWIN, and the parent would fill out their own enrollment form (with their information as both the traveler and emergency contact) and select TWIN. If the student does not want to room with their parent and would like to be paired with other students attending the tour, the parent must select SINGLE, and then the student can select any rooming option.

Yes! If you are attending as a group of three or four and would like to share a room with two beds, please let us know! Each person attending will fill out the enrollment form and select TWIN, but in the roommate request box, please note that you will all be sharing one room/beds. There is a $150 discount per tour fee for a group of three and a $250 discount per tour fee for a group of four! This will be reflected on your invoices. If you have any questions, please email us at tours@nshss.org

No! As an NSHSS member benefit, members and their guests can use the NSHSS member tour pricing. Please note tour prices are per person. Non-member pricing is reserved for students unaffiliated with NSHSS who would like to attend the tour.

Each attendee is responsible for their own transportation arrangements. NSHSS does not assist with airfare, and flights are not included in this tour price. With NSHSS members all over the country, it would be too difficult to facilitate flights for every member coming from different airports at different times. Some members are also within driving distance and don't need flights, so we are able to offer a lower price for everyone without flights included.

The package includes hotel accommodations for the week, charter bus transportation, all meals on tour days, guided tours and activities, a full-time tour director, refreshments on the bus, parent information packets, and all gratuities.

The CA College Tour transforms this experience into an enriching and exciting summer adventure in which students participate in campus tours, meet with admissions representatives, and receive materials to help evaluate each school.
Tour participants are also presented with strategies to get the most out of their future college visits. Students learn what questions they should be asking of campus officials, how to compare schools to one another, and what factors are most important for their college selection process. The university's student ambassadors will lead most tours, but others may be led by current university students, depending on the campus. Where available, campus tours could also include an information meeting provided by admissions office staff.

This a traveling tour with a very tight schedule. We are fitting ten university stops into five days while traveling up the coast, so a good bit of time will also be spent on the road. We will be doing A LOT of walking – anywhere from 10,000-20,000 steps and at least 5 miles PER DAY. We will be outside a lot, and it will most likely be hot since it is summer in California. Students are encouraged to pack comfortable clothes and shoes, sunglasses, hats, sunscreen, portable fans, and some snacks to keep with them during the day or to have at night in their hotel rooms. The hotels will also have snack bars with snacks for purchase, but it will be important to have non-perishable/non-melting snacks on hand during the day. When we leave the hotel in the morning, we will not be returning until we check into a new hotel at the end of the day. The days will be very long, but the experience will be worth it!!

NSHSS will provide a welcome dinner reception upon attendees' arrival in San Diego on Day 1. On each full tour day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner will be provided. Snacks and drinks will also be provided at various points on the bus, but make sure to bring some snacks or money to buy some snacks if you get hungry easily! On departure day, attendees can enjoy breakfast at the hotel before making their way to the airport. 

The NSHSS CA College Tour is only sold as an all-inclusive tour package, so, unfortunately, we cannot remove the hotel's cost from the tour price as that is a large part of the package. Keeping all tour participants at the same hotel makes it easier to keep everyone accounted for overnight so we don't run into logistical issues in transportation to and from the hotel and daily activities. This is also a traveling tour, so attendees are staying at a new hotel each night. The package, however, does not include airfare as members are flying in from all over the country, so that's great you are so close and won't have to worry about purchasing travel arrangements!

Upon arrival in San Diego, tour staff will meet attendees at the airport baggage claim. Students are encouraged to book flights arriving between 1 - 3 PM PST for minimal wait time. Once the entire tour group arrives, we will load onto the bus and head to the first hotel to check in!

As NSHSS tours are entirely optional to our members, we currently do not have any financial assistance programs for our tours at this time. However, payment arrangements are very flexible to allow participants to create their own payment plan and pay the tour fee in increments of their choosing at any time and as many times as they would like up until the final due date. We send all of our invoices through PayPal, which also offers several payment plan options. Please be sure to check out our NSHSS Scholarships page for multiple scholarship opportunities, where many of the scholarships are open to both high school and college students. Keep an eye out as new scholarships are always being added!