My D22 did not ask on every tour — she generally only asked if she had an opportunity to talk with a guide one-on-one between stops or whatever— but two questions that helped her glean helpful info was:
Where/how did you meet your best friends on campus?
What’s been your favorite class so far and why?
D22 used the College Board’s Campus Visit Score Card, which is a one-page printable PDF on the Big Future website. It has a place to rank the various aspects of a campus - courses, dining, housing, etc - on a 1-5 scale with room for specific comments, and it also has a checklist of questions to ask. In the evening after a visit, she would sit down and fill out the worksheet based on that day’s events. It’s a pretty user-friendly way to organize your impressions, and these worksheets were really helpful later in narrowing down her favorites and writing essay supplements.
We didn’t keep a spreadsheet or anything. D19 did visit quite a few schools. She actually did 3 overnights a schools. We came to the conclusion most of the host kids kinda didn’t want to be hosts.
I generally think it is good to spend some time on campus/neighborhood away from a formal tour. Visit the Student Union/Center. Just watch what is going on. Read bulletin boards for information. Randomly talk to some people if you can.
Agreeing that it is helpful to ask random students if you can. It is even more helpful if your student can do so without you present. Students often provide different answers when parents are present
Try to spend as much time at each school as you can. Most of my kids’ schools were a plane ride away and we would often do 2-3 tours in a long weekend. I would try to stay the night before at a hotel close to each campus so we could walk around and see what the vibe was on a weekend night. We’d also try to find a local hangout where the kids eat so we could check out the vibe that way as well. We are going to a couple admitted students days and plan to go to a couple basketball games as they are big basketball schools and I figure it will be a great way to check out the vibe. My S22 is a sporty kid so school spirit is important to him. My D20 could have cared less about that but we tried to look for things around her interests when we were visiting her schools.
I agree with the other posters to visit more safety/match schools and less reaches. My S22 was amazed at how beautiful and engaging these schools can be. We live in Boston and he always thought BC was the best school ever. Once we started visiting OOS safety/match schools he realized there are tons of great schools out there. Also, don’t be afraid to use parental judgement when deciding what schools to visit. My D20 did not want a southern school, until we visited a few and she realized how great they could be and how nice it was to be able to wear shorts in November. She ultimately picked a school in NC that she originally had no desire to visit.
Don’t be afraid to ask questions. On our first few tours, my D was embarrassed when I asked questions. By the third tour she was nudging me to “ask my list of questions”. We spent a lot of time and $$ traveling for tours and wanted to make sure we learned something about the school. Most tour guides love questions as they get so bored giving the same tour over and over again. And don’t judge a school by the tour guide. My D did that on our first few tours. We quickly realized that tour guides are the over-achievers of the schools. Most kids in college are not involved in 12 clubs and triple majoring. My son loved one school where the tour guide admitted he was hungover. Son asked him what he did for social life and the kid gave an honest answer, frat parties as underclassmen and bars when they get older. Son was so sick of hearing about the theatre performances and school clubs whenever he asked that question.
Eating in the cafeteria or just sitting on a bench watching students go by can be invaluable. How are students dressed? Are they walking in groups? On their phones? Hanging out in the quad? Take out a map and look lost. See if any students stop and ask to help. We had some good conversations with students doing this and it also gave my kids a favorable impression that the students were friendly. Walk or drive the fringes of campus (all four sides) and check out the surrounding areas. Ask where the off campus housing is and check it out. Also ask about off campus rents as that can be eye opening.
I agree with taking notes when you leave. My D and I always wrote down our own notes in the car and then at dinner that night we would review them. She would always go first. I wouldn’t say anything negative unless she made the same point. My S was more hesitant to do the notes but by the third tour he decided it was a good idea. Also take pictures. You can find tons of pictures online but it helped us remember things we liked/didn’t like. I also usually tried to take one of the tour guide as that would help us remember details about the tour.
My main point would be to just try to enjoy this time with your kid. We’ve probably done too many tours but I wouldn’t trade the time with them for anything. At home they can be a bit contentious, but we always had a lot of fun on these trips. And if you can squeeze in anything fun whole doing the tours, that can be great too. Son and I did a ropes course on one trip and D and I rented scooters in DC and had a blast.
Similar to our situation. The college tours were certainly essential for my daughter to narrow down the thousands of options to certain type of colleges, and to “weed out” the definite “No’s” - several of which were a huge surprise to me.
However…, while her peers also had some “epiphany” at some point during their tours that “this” was “their” college - my daughter was almost frustrated by the end that she was still waiting for that moment. She could see herself equally attending several of very good choices - but none rose to the level of “dream school”. (The only one that had always stood out since childhood was the one around Washington Square 
- because of what vibe she had perceived back then.)
So for her peers, the visits were crucial, because several truly did “find their” school that had seemed unlikely and almost out of character for them.
Unfortunately for my daughter, once the admissions came in, all the remaining “candidates” had been insufficiently distinct, not just in her memory, so I don’t think detailed notes would have helped. We ended up visiting some for the first time, and revisited others, and at the end it was input from a trusted teacher-mentor that gave her the final “push”.
Four years later, she’s had a wonderful and successful college experience - and while we obviously spent money and time in cities and at colleges she didn’t choose, I still consider it time well spent (and which I actually fondly remember as a “coming of age” experience that I was allowed to take part in…)
I’m assuming your student is not a senior now. For my D22 what she thought she wanted changed a LOT between her junior year (all online because of COVID) and senior year. One thing we did that I think helped a lot was find her a sleep away camp on a college campus (we did creative writing because that is her thing). It was really helpful for her to see how dorm life might be and also to see how many different offerings and places to go there are on a college campus. She thought she wanted to be at a school with a street nearby with all of the typical college student offerings, coffee-shops, etc, but when she went to the camp at a small LAC that did not have that she realized the on-campus offerings were plenty for her. She ended up choosing an even smaller LAC outside about 15 minutes outside small-medium sized city. It is highly residential (almost all students live on campus) and has several on-campus coffee shops in addition to the cafeteria, etc, but definitely no college main drag. It is pretty remote and self-inclusive although kids with cars can go to the nearby town on the weekends.
If your student is younger I would say walking around campus is helpful just to get a feel for the place, but too many info sessions are kind of redundant. We started touring colleges in about 8th grade? We live in a college town and D22 has an older sibling and older friends so tagged along for several college tours for them. Some info sessions are good just to get a handle on what exactly an info session is, but after we sat through 3 or 4 of those we toured several colleges just by walking around, especially last summer when kids weren’t on campus as much and some colleges would not allow visitors inside buildings.
This fall when things started to coalesce more for my D22 (unfortunately they did not coalesce over the summer no matter how hard I nudged) we did more college tours that were more targeted where D22 was actively trying to decide if she wanted to apply. I think we did 3 or 4 tours this fall. We did the info sessions for them and the sessions were more relevant at this stage of the decision making process.
One thing that helped us - my D is a theater tech major - we found that the various theater programs were invariably accessible, to such a point that we would just open doors until we found people to talk to. Might not be as easy now, but certainly the thought is still valid. Reach out to professors and sked interviews, even by zoom. If it’s an arts program with studios or theaters or whatever, it’s worth just moseying around and seeing who you can buttonhole. (Because in theater, they are always there, trust me on this…lol). We had some great conversations with some great people and got valuable insight into the programs, how much work undergrads could do, the responsibility and work level, etc. It was very useful, and not something you get on a typical tour.
True - although occasionally walked out with new perspective, such as when NorthEastern explained their co-op system, or when somewhere else we had a whole presentation on their Honors College within the college.
I got lots of good answers to a similar question on this thread: Summer College Visits: What Questions Should We Ask? What Should We Notice?
When we toured, my daughter took detailed notes; my son took none. 
My daughter then created her own spreadsheet with the info, though it’s only been moderately useful as the process has continued. Everyone took pictures. We much preferred tours to info sessions, though the Bowdoin info session was a winner because the admissions director talked about what Bowdoin looked for in students–the kind of culture the college looked to create–more than specifics about classes and dorms and such.
Some colleges were eliminated because of location or “feel” but the process really didn’t do much in finding the “right” school. Touring felt exploratory more than determinative.
I have spreadsheets for our online research data collected. As for tours, I suggest making some notes (your kids notes) on your phone at a coffee shop/lunch right after the visit. Observations. Likes. Dislikes. And take a lot of pictures. On a trip where you visit several schools they all run together quickly if you don’t take notes immediately. IMO, most tours are 90% identical in terms of actual data/facts communicated. It’s the vibe and the little qualitative things that will set them apart.
the “don’t say anything negative” is a REALLY good point. We as parents have tried to stay very positive on all schools that our kids are applying to. You don’t know where they will end up and if it’s at the school you’ve been trash talking they may think you disapprove of them. it was been very difficult to get the grandparents on board with this!
Congrats to her- very exciting!
This is funny- we are just north of Boston and I attended BC and “I” think it is the greatest school ever 
but DS24 has made it clear that he wants anything BUT the northeast. The upcoming visits that we are doing are all in NC/SC so this is all very helpful- we are headed there during April Vacation week.
Great advice! We plan on visiting some Cali schools for winter break and I will definitely have my kid do this.
One other thing I thought of - most of the tour guides will be happy to give you their contact info so that your student can follow up later if they want. This can be helpful if you have a kid who doesn’t want to ask questions during the tour, or thinks of questions later. My S19 is a tour guide at his school, and they issue business cards to all the guides for this purpose. (He was himself in the camp that never asked a single question on our own campus tours.)
I would ask what the library hours are on the weekends. It was very telling at one school that was in the top two for one of my kids. We were OOS, and it became obvious that most of the kids went home for the weekends when the library was closed from Friday evening until Sunday evening.