@TheGreyKing -
Just thought I’d mention - I also visited 7 colleges with CoyoteSon over the summer - we found those visits helpful for ruling school out, but IMO, there is just no good way for a,student to assess the “vibe” fit without students on campus.
By knocking schools off the list during the summer visits, we were able to use the 3-day weekends in the fall (Columbus Day, Veteran’s Day, teacher workdays) wisely to revisit the best schools to check out the vibe.
The second, fall visit helped CoyoteSon better craft his essays for the top contenders. However, there were some colleges that he liked enough to apply based on summer visit – and didn’t visit again with students until “accepted student” days in the spring. By then, I knew Conn College was not a good fit - and CoyoteSon saw that for himself within about an hour of starting the accepted students overnight visit…so this is just a cautionary tale that we could have saved the effort of the essay and a second, long overnight visit to a school that would have never made the list if we had visited with students on campus in the first place.