Never did seeing the room become a deal maker or breaker, and I think it was more often a negative or a ‘dose of reality’ to see the rooms AND the bathrooms. It was more important to see where the dorms were on campus (right in the heart of things, off in a ‘village’, near the dining hall).
Lol at the filthiest dorm rooms belonging to girls. I was thinking that the WashU tour was kind of an outlier.
Or maybe they’re the only ones that actually let people in during the tours?
What is it with girls? We saw a dorm room that belonged to two girls during out tour of Stanford a few years ago. Total disaster. Quite amazing actually.
Have to say that my daughter’s room at home is a disaster. I feel sorry for her future roommate ; ). I struggled for years and now I just make her clean it to “dad’s standards”, once/week, and “mom’s standards” once/month. She tells me she will be more considerate to her roommate at school. We’ll see!
My daughter stayed over during accepted student days for her chosen college and told me the bathroom in the suite obviously hadn’t been cleaned all. She wouldn’t even use the shower. She said it was much worse than our house, (which is far from pristine, so it’s not like she never saw a dirty bathroom before 
).
My daughter always kept her room pretty clean. The boys? Not so much.
Spring is a busy time on campus. Teams are working out (and often traveling on Friday afternoons). Spring performances and exhibits are either happening or in final rehearsal/setup. Kids with bikes are taking long rides in the country. I suspect that the students you didn’t see were in labs, rehearsal halls, galleries, performance halls, and athletic facilities. At smallish schools with high levels of participation in ECs, I can see how the campus can appear empty.
@Otterma such a sweet answer. But I would assume even on a gorgeous spring afternoon, many are sleeping or lounging around.
Oh college life… 
Oops left out a word…bathroom hadn’t been cleaned all year!
I think campus size (shall we call it students per acre, or something like that?) has a big impact on how “busy” the campus feels in session.
For example, Bucknell and Notre Dame are very spread out schools and when you compare them to schools of similar size in student population, you might feel the campuses seem more empty than their peer schools that are on less land. For example, BC and Georgetown have more compact campuses so when the “bell rings” (when classes end say at 11:15 AM or whatever) you see lots of students buzzing about getting to their next class or on their way to the cafeteria or library. When the “bell rings” on Notre Dame’s and Bucknell’s campuses, you see a bit more kids out and about but it has a calmer, quieter feeling.
I have toured tons of schools and it took me a while to figure out that the students per acre impacted the feel of the campus.
Hope this made sense. Not sure if it explains it all, but this was a conclusion my kids and I came up with to explain the different feels of activity on the many campuses we toured.
Bucknell is of course smaller in population than Notre Dame, Georgetown and BC, but it is very spread out and felt very empty the few times we visited, even during the day on a weekday while school was in session. A lovely school nonetheless and I wouldn’t make this a deal breaker.
Speaking of students per acre, when we toured Haverford we had to ask if it was during a break and when they said it wasn’t several of the families looked surprised. It was a late morning tour and we saw virtually no one as we walked around the campus and toured areas like the cafeteria. A very large place for only 1,100 students.
Having just moved my son out of his dorm room: boys are messy.
Speaking of Notre Dame, the administration just installed a new webcam in the Administration Building (Golden Dome). It’s pretty cool.
My kid’s school has the dorm visit figured out. Freshman students can choose to sign up for it, like a job, by day and time, and they are paid for any slot they take, like Tuesdays from 10 to 2. The students know when they will have visitors and keep the room reasonable for their slot, and tour guides know which rooms to show when. I’m surprised more colleges don’t do this.
I find the CC obsession with dorms to be rather humorous. I think it is much more of an American parent obsession than a kid obsession. I just picked up my son from a dorm that would make many of you cringe. Unrenovated for at least the last 40 years. Built in bulletin board in each room that is so old that the cork is like cement. Beat up furniture. The old creaky dorm bed with a horribly thin mattress. And yet my son got sad as we emptied his room: “I can’t imagine a better home than XXX Hall.”
Quit getting caught up in how a dorm looks. What matters is what happens inside the building. Do the kids adult? Are they able to form community? Do they learn how to live with and respect others who are different than they are? Do they smile when they return to the building? And are they just a little bit sad when they have to leave at the end of the year?
Dorm visits were never huge for us but my H was borderline compulsive about seeing the library at every college we visited and eating in each dining hall so to each his/her own. Ironically, the only dining hall we missed was at the school S ultimately attended and a year or two later his college landed on Princeton Review’s worst food list!! But I wouldn’t change a thing for my S-- he had a fantastic four years there. IMO the most important thing is (assuming affordability) is fit.
On our tours, I would have liked to have seen dorm rooms, but few of the colleges we toured offered a peek at real dorm rooms. And when we finally were at a college that offered a look into a real dorm room, I was so embarrassed by the way that they did the tour - knocking on doors on a Saturday morning until some poor student answered and agreed to let 25+ strangers tromp through their tiny bit of personal space, I didn’t even go in since it seemed so rude.
Now I realize that it’s probably not a big deal to not see dorm rooms on a tour since there is such a huge range of dorm room types and conditions on almost every campus that seeing one room wouldn’t necessarily be a representative sample anyway.
My daughters were always interested in seeing dorm rooms, it definitely wasn’t me or my husband driving that desire. However, so few schools showed us dorm rooms we just anticipated not seeing them. And I agree that just seeing one does not necessarily represent the entire school’s housing system.
I also agree that sometimes the older, less renovated dorms can offer the best experience in other ways. My daughter and her crew all got bad lottery numbers and next year at their older 1700’s founded school (not that the dorm is this old!) will be in one of the “worst” buildings “on campus” (if you can call it that). However, its traditional dorm set up will allow her and her extended group of friends to all live on the same floor. She is so excited!! I hope she loves it as much as she thinks she might (socially that is).
As for dining, we always timed our visits with a meal so we could eat in the dining hall (and therefore tried to time our visits while school was in session, which wasn’t always easy). Tasting the food and observing the dining hall dynamics is always a fun part of the tour! I think it’s a great way to get a feel for the school.
Looking at dorm rooms was useful in early tours we took because I don’t think either of my kids really appreciated the decision they were making, and what college really means, until they saw a dorm room and realized they would be LIVING on a college campus away from home.
Otherwise, in looking at “safeties” and often their honors dorms, looking at the particulars of a dorm was useful because the kid would be living in that exact dorm.