It’s an unfortunate fact of life that any aspect of a visit, whether it is indicative of the fit and quality of a school can affect how a student (or anyone) perceived the school. I hate that part of visiting.
Weather can be an important part of the school environment, however. A fair weather person , a Florida kid, long distance visitor, just might be better off visiting, say Syracuse during a blizzard warning. Its a reality of going to that school. The pollen count of Williamsburg, the rain of Seattle, the heat in Texas are all things that just might need to smack someone in the face before they understand the effects on them.
My son, who was a tour guide at McGill, told me that tours went ahead rain or shine of blizzard. On several occasions he would start a tour with around 25 people. The temperature may have been 20 degrees F and snowing. By the end of the tour there would be perhaps 10 people left. He would announce that they had just passed the first admissions test: they were heart survivors. Guides were provided with coupons entitling those who finished the tour to hot beverages at the library café.
We’re from Southern California (UC Santa Barbara has bitterly cold and wet winters in comparison). Daughter toured DC area school in a major wind storm and it was snowing during Boston area tour. …
…She’s going to Boston.
^^hearty survivors that is.
What I have done all winter is check the weather apps frequently at potential college locations for D20 who is applying next fall. For example, one target college is UW and not surprising Seattle had weeks and weeks of solid rain and overcast skies (even snow this year) which may play a factor in D’s college choices. Other locations I monitored included New Orleans, NC, Boston, Chicago, and NorCal.
To the OP, I absolutely think the weather during college visits plays a big role in overall impressions of a college. We recently visited Tulane, Duke, and UNC-CH and the weather was beautiful with lots of students wearing shorts, T-shirt’s and playing frisbee, “sunbathing” and generally hanging out in the grassy quads with their laptops. If we had visited in say January or February I’m sure we would have had a different overall impression.
I think weather is an important factor for some kids when choosing “best fit” colleges. Again, really depends on the kid.
We toured Boston University during a rare October Nor’easter. It rained so hard the poor tour guide just gave up and told us we could bail on the tour if we wanted to. We couldn’t even look up to see the buildings because the wind and the rain were so fierce. Didn’t phase my daughter one bit. She loved the school and even used the nor’easter story in her “Why BU?” essay to show how serious she was about wanting to attend. We went back to the campus the next day on a Sunday but it was dreary and empty. Didn’t matter - she still loved it. On the flipside, she saw U Mass Amherst on the same trip. The trees were showing full fall foliage and the weather was picture perfect. The entire campus looked like a movie set. I loved it and wanted to enroll my 46 year old self. I still think it’s the best campus she visited out of all of them. My daughter? She was underwhelmed. Go figure.
Fond memory from a few years ago. When we toured Dartmouth in summer, it was downpour, and we were totally drenched. The tour guide conducted the tour mostly in the library. Later when we checked into hotel, we learned from TV that it was the biggest storm that year. It didn’t faze my son one bit.
When we toured Texas Tech it was over 100 and the campus was way too spread out. I had to drop out of the tour and let my son continue on his own. He never said that was the reason he didn’t love it but it seemed to have a lot to do with it. Mississippi State was pouring rain and he never liked the campus.