Do You Need a Mock Site Visit? (Yes.)

Accreditation site visits are a lot like the opening night of a play. You've spent months (maybe years) preparing. You’ve built your narrative, gathered your exhibits, aligned your departments, and practiced your talking points. Your team is finally center stage. But what if their shoes are too small, making it harder to dance? What if you're allergic to your stage makeup? These are all things that you want to find out before the curtain rises.

Ask any sky diver, theater professional, or Adam Sandler in The Wedding Singer; there are things you do not want to discover on the big day. A mock accreditation visit is the dress rehearsal your institution needs, and skipping it means risking everything you’ve worked so hard to prepare.

A Site Visit Is Like Theater; Rehearse Accordingly

A site visit is a live performance. No re-dos. And no matter how beautifully written your self-evaluation is, that’s not the main event anymore. The reviewers are showing up, watching your team in action, and deciding whether what you wrote actually holds up when they ask real humans real questions.

This is where a mock visit with our team (or another outside party) comes in. It’s your chance to block the scenes, test the transitions, and catch forgotten lines before you’ve got a live audience. Your faculty and staff are your ensemble. Some have leading roles, some are supporting cast, but all of them are visible to your reviewers.

Maybe the CAO starts referencing an old policy. Maybe your Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Financial Officer aren’t on the same page about how discounts are working. Maybe someone on your team responds with, “Oh, I didn’t know they were going to ask us about that.”

These are things you don’t want to happen during the show. To quote Eminem (something I will never miss an opportunity to do): You only got one shot.

This Is the Place to Invest

A theater can spend a fortune on glossy brochures, beautiful lighting, and state-of-the-art microphones, but if the actual show’s not good, the show’s not good. It’s easy to spend resources on shiny deliverables or PR-optimized messaging, but a site visit is about authenticity, clarity, and confidence under pressure, things that only come from preparation.

A mock visit is one of the most high-impact, high-return uses of your institution’s time and budget at this stage. If you’ve made it through narrative development and document prep, the end zone is within reach. Don’t fumble now.

Sniff Out the Stage Fright

Some people shine when the spotlight hits. Others panic. If Jenny in Student Services handles questions like she was born to do it (calm, articulate, and unflappable), but her colleague Michelle breaks into a full-fledged panic attack, let’s schedule Jenny for the interview.

A mock visit helps you figure things like this out early. It gives your team the chance to rehearse under real conditions and shows you who naturally commands the Q&A, who needs a script, and who maybe just needs to stay backstage this time.

Nobody’s out to make Michelle feel bad; this is about strategy. A mock visit's whole purpose is to give you time to work with people like Michelle beforehand, offering coaching, building confidence, or simply giving them a heads-up about what to expect. You’re curating the best version of your institutional story, and that means casting the right people in the right roles. You want your ensemble to feel confident, not cornered.

Catch the Gaps and Glitches You Can Still Fix

Even the best-prepared institutions have weak spots. Maybe it’s a narrative inconsistency. Maybe two departments use different internal terminology for the same initiative. Maybe a reviewer stumbles across a 2018 policy on your institution’s website. These aren’t catastrophic on their own, but, little by little, they do chip away at your credibility.

Sometimes it’s not even the content that derails the visit; it’s the logistics. Nobody remembers the Wi-Fi password, the person assigned to prepare the conference room forgets that’s their job, the site visit team ends up standing outside the Student Success Center while the person assigned to greet them is in a totally different building.

When you’re deep in prep mode, it’s easy to miss the forest for the footnotes (or the fact that the HDMI cable you need for your presentation is still missing).

A mock visit surfaces the kind of issues that matter most: gaps, glitches, and avoidable headaches that could distract from your institution’s actual strengths. You still have time to fix them, smooth them out, or clarify context. But once reviewers are in the building (or on Zoom), that window starts to close. Think of a mock visit like turning on the house lights before the audience arrives. It's your last chance to sweep the stage, run the cues, and make sure no one trips on a power cord.

How We Can Help You

Here’s what it looks like when we facilitate a mock site visit. First, we help you create your interview schedule. Who needs to be in the room? Who thinks they need to be in the room? We help you sort that out.

Then we show up onsite in our evaluator costumes. We are weirdly formal. We do not pull punches. We don’t try to put you or your staff at ease. We ask the hard questions like it’s the real thing (that is, after all, the point).

We press on weak spots, follow threads when something sounds off, and keep asking until we hit either clarity or contradiction. We take exhaustive notes (both the glowing moments and the areas where things start to wobble).

The next day, we turn back into our regular, chatty, friendly selves and walk you through everything we found. We tell you where there are inconsistencies, which policies need attention, and which talking points were actually just wishful thinking. We point out employees who shine and suggest who might need more rehearsal (or a break from the stage altogether).

We also check your logistics: everything from room signage to Zoom links (you can’t tell your story if the mic batteries die halfway through).

Here’s the Bottom Line

We want your mock site visit to end in applause (metaphorically—though, hey, if an evaluator does clap, take the win). A mock visit is your best bet for making that happen. Before the reviewers arrive, give yourself the gift of a dress rehearsal. Find the weak spots while you can still fix them. Discover your star performers before the stakes are real. And walk into your site visit with the kind of confidence that only comes from having already done it once.

The curtain's going up either way. You might as well nail it. We can help.