My personal impressions (not always in sync with what my kids thought):
Indiana - Very pretty central campus. Nice small town feel in the nearby downtown. But it was raining, school was on spring break, no official tour, so my impressions of IU were the least fully formed.
Michigan - Surprisingly unattractive central campus for a school with academic prestige and presumably money/donors. Also didn’t like that central campus was cut up by roads with vehicle traffic on them (most colleges route vehicular roads/traffic around/outside of central campus). That said, academics seemed strong. Ate at a student cafeteria - was outstanding - well beyond expectations. Also had a session at the Stamps School of Art & Design. While the prospect of art as a field of study for my oldest daughter had scared me (job prospects, etc), this school seemed pretty grounded and practical, and had a nice facility, both as a building, and some of the equipment within. Weather was brisk and somewhat chilly, but not too bad, for the day we were there anyways.
Valparaiso - Scenery/area a little flat/boring. Campus itself seemed pretty spacious and somewhat spread out for a somewhat modest sized school. Campus buildings seemed mostly fairly modern and nice. Not sure about academics, and my guess is that the quality of the students, overall, is more uneven than a place like Michigan. Student food here was also good, though a notch below Michigan’s.
School of the Art Institute of Chicago - Did not like at all. Campus/housing was spread amongst various floors in various buildings in downtown Chicago, but the buildings were not always very close (i.e. multi block walks in cold weather and/or at night where I would have safety concerns). Students didn’t seem to interact much with each other - didn’t seem to have much “college” feel at all. The course of study seemed very focused on fine arts (selling your paintings in a gallery or whatever), and less on more practical (IMO) artistic-oriented careers. Little apparent serious academic aside from art. Interior spaces of “campus” were often dumpy and dated.
Northwestern - Pretty campus. Strong academics. Chilly - windswept in parts + cool overall temperature. (Hard to read weather issues overall amongst colleges, as most were of similar latitudes, and given random factors of the weather on whatever day we were at a place, but I think in some cases, lake/building effects, etc might modify the “natural” weather for a given latitude). Didn’t try the food here. Overall positive impression.
Bradley - Nice medium sized school, in Peoria not too far from downtown. Compact campus (albeit with reasonable green/grassy space). Academics seemed reasonable, but again, likely noticeably below Michigan and Northwestern. This was the only place where we toured the student athletic center, and it was nice.
EDIT: I had originally included my impressions of the student guides at several of the schools - in part that was the most prolonged experience to what a student at one of these institutions might be like. The impressions were somewhat disparate - some positive, some not so positive. But, because those student guides (or others) MIGHT stumble across this post, I’ve edited out the stuff specific to the guides. Nonetheless, those impressions were a part of what I took away from the process. Similarly, in at few cases, impressions of employees in the admissions office shaded my impressions one way or another (though probably less so than with the student guides), but again, I don’t want to detail that here.
