I can’t imagine seeing more than 2 schools in one day, and even 2 may be a lot, though I know there isn’t often any other option. I found out from doing this with two kids in two years that the last school on the tour seems to be the one they like least, although in one case, we returned to it when she got in and had a completely different opinion of it.
Also, while surrounding area is nice, I really wouldn’t recommend placing so much importance on it, unless you have the kind of kid like D1, who really really wanted a city and goes into it all the time from campus. This is based on a personal sample size, ,so make of it what you will, but most kids I know when we went to school, (myself included) and most of my Daughters’ friends, spend much more of their time on campus and don’t venture out much more than the nearby streets. Sure some are like D1 and go every weekend into the town or city nearby, but I’d hate to rule out great schools in less interesting areas than Nashville because I as a parent would prefer to spend parents weekend touring a fun city. Only if my kid were adamant about it being important and I knew it really mattered to them. D2 thought she also needed a city until we looked at smaller more rural schools and she fell in love.
All other things being equal, I find the “special visit” days to be more informative than the regular “info and tour” days. The special days usually include student panels, department sessions, special sessions regarding honors programs, study abroad or other interests. My D found sitting in on classes to be very useful, so I’d schedule that if possible.
Very important: take notes! (And try to convince your kid to do so also). Even if you don’t see a ton of schools in a short time period, things will blur and you’ll forget what important piece of info was from what school.
As far as timing, in-session fall or spring is best, followed by summer (at a time when summer classes are in session). School breaks will make it hard to get a feel for the school. Your kid’s spring break can be a great time if it is different from the college’s spring break. This is how my D and I did our great northeast tour – fortunately only one college (of eight) had the same spring break as hers.
Oh, one last thing – eat in the dining hall if possible. Aside from sampling the food, this is a great place to observe students interact with each other.
Agree with the posters who advise to take notes. Even if you don’t want to write during the tour, write some notes and your overall impression shortly after the visit. Actually it’s more important for your child to do this than you! And it’s fun to look back on those notes too a couple months later. (ie; really smelly dorm, ice cream sandwiches in the admissions office!) If there are things your child is particularly interested in ie, study abroad, a specific major/program, it can be helpful to have notes on those topics to compare at a later date. Or sometimes something would stand out, that only 1 or 2 colleges spoke about. My D would often take a few photos to help her keep track.
To avoid fatigue, we sometimes visited one college that was within a 1-2 hr drive on a random day off from school. Felt like we were making good use of that day as it can be tiring to do a weeklong of visits, though we did that as well. Fall/spring visits are better then summer visits due to students on campus, but I disagree that summer visits will not give you a good perspective of the school. Some schools have a lively summer population with kids doing research on campus, if you visit closer to the start of school there will be a lot of athletes on campus for pre-season, sometimes you will run into lots of kids doing their summer orientations, and at a some schools there are quite a few student volunteers working in admissions/tours, so you can get some perspective from more than just your tour guide. In fact, we visited one school on a fall Friday afternoon, no one in the library at that time, not too many kids walking to/fro class on a Fri afternoon, no one in the dining hall at that time - so some of the summer visits, we actually felt like we saw more kids than we did on a Friday afternoon with school in session.
I think the standards are different for each family. Some kids school map is the entire USA. Others limit themselves to the east, west, south, midwest etc. Others like myself was limited in-state schools. We drove from Dallas to Houston and visited the schools my son was interested in. We then drove from Houston to San Antonio and then Austin. We were able to do many informal visits.All this was done over a weekend. We made a few more day and weekend trips that covered other parts of the state. He was able to narrow his choices and we then set up formal tours. I will echo the advice of not letting your kids fill their list with reach schools due to it being a recipe for disappointments. The process becomes more easier once your child is able too rule out schools due to size and location.
Unannounced visits serve no purpose (it’s not a daycare where you might catch them beating a kid!). Sign up for the tour and get credit for showing interest. If you just show up, there may not even be anyone to show you around, and there will be no info session on financial aid or anything else.
Yep, this is a family vacation, for better or worse. Try to make it fun for the younger siblings by doing a tour and info session in the morning, then a fun outing in the afternoon.
My son actually got some good info by going on his older sister’s tours, so we didn’t need to visit those schools again two years later.
With regard to planning where to visit: how can you tell ahead of time what sort of town/neighborhood a college is in? Different guidebooks may list the same school, according to their own criteria, as being in a city or in a town or suburban, or even town vs. rural, but that doesn’t tell you if there is anything interesting to walk to around the campus.
We live near the state flagship so D1 and D2 had spent a lot of time on that campus by the time they were in high school. They also saw the University of Chicago before high school because their dad and my parents went there and it’s relatively close to our home. My husband took both daughters on a spring break trip to see some east coast schools when they were in high school. But each applied to many schools sight unseen, and I’m pretty sure that D1 didn’t visit the university she ended up attending until after she was accepted. It’s 2,000 miles from here, so that made sense. I wish I had been able to spend more time at the schools my daughters attended while they were in college but I felt no strong need to go on pre-college visits with them.
After 880 posts here, you have to ask? 
You start a thread on the Parents Forum asking about a few specific schools and the neighborhoods around them, preferably with the names of the schools in the thread title. You go walk the dog. You come back and bingo, there’s your information.
I’m a Californian who has now taken 3 kids on separate East Coast college tours. Each was actually great fun. My points:
- if you have a contact at the college (student who graduated from your h.s., or a friend of a friend who is a professor) reach out and see if they'd be willing to meet you for 30-60 minutes. Most often, they will love to meet, and you will learn SO much more about the college from these insiders than from the tour, imo.
- I've had great tours and awful ones...sometimes at the same college different years. You have to look beyond the quality of the tour guide.
- yes, take notes. Useful for the "Why XXX" essays.
- We tried to maximize, including a number of 2-colleges-in-a-day days. That's fine if they're close, but with driving this can get exhausting. @Lindagaf I don't know how you fit 3/day !!
- Yes, have fun diversions. I took two kids to Broadway shows as we passed through NYC.
- The campus information sessions are a waste, imo. Go to a local info session when time is not such a premium. Same info.
- walking the city/neighborhood and eating at a real local restaurant (never a fast food place) are important.
- sadly many tours don't show you dorm rooms, labs/classrooms, or even the library these days. I have no qualms about sneaking into these places. (another reason to reach out to a contact on campus.)
Good Luck!
We have two kids. College visits for both were actually combined with family vacations. One of our parent criteria for college choices was either within a three hour drive of our home…or within an hour of close family friend or relative.
We took both kids on two college trips. We visited family and friends…and visited colleges near where these folks lived. We took trips to Texas, the southeastern states, and California. We also visited the mid Atlantic states. Each trip,was 7-10 days long. We saw 4-7 colleges depnding on the length of the trip.
We also found time to enjoy visiting the friends and relatives…and seeing and hearing about the local things.
@pickpocket , it worked when colleges were near each other. So one day, for example, we did Dickinson, Franklin & Marshall, and Lafayette, (which was on the way home.) Another day we did Tufts, BC, and Northeastern. (We had to attend an info session at Northeastern, because there wasn’t any good way to escape it. It was super weird. We felt like we were watching a very long advertisement, because it began with a slick vido presentation.) Anyway, we were on a mission. We were tired at the end of those days, but it didn’t lessen any impact for my daughter. We had plenty of quality talking time on our trips, and saved money by minimizing hotel and food expenses.
Yes, we did some fun stuff too. We spent most of a day doing Gettysburg, which was really neat. On another occasion, we spent a half a day in Newport, RI. At one of the colleges we did a walk-by, because it happened to be on the lovely Cliff Walk in Newport. Wow, that college probably has one of the most stunning locations in the US. (Salve Regina, I’m looking at you.) So it is possible to mix business with pleasure:-)
I think many people aren’t aware how expensive these college road trips can be. We really tried to minimize costs, but gas, hotel rooms and meals out get really expensive. Not to mention time. These trips are time consuming. If it’s doublng as a family vacation, that can be a way to justify the expense. My son never toured a single college with his sister. We didn’t see the need to schlep him around, because he wouldn’t have enjoyed it. In fact, my son did visit Dickinson, after my daughter went back post-acceptance. She did a day on campus, and my son and husband then got to visit Gettysburg. There will be revisits to consider too. Do what works for your family.
Many tours don’t show dorms, we found. Ask after the tour if you can go in with one of the guides. You might be able to. I would certainly never miss the cafeteria. You can get a great feel for a college by visiting one. If you visit when the cafeteria is closed, there is often a campus cafe, or atrium-type area, where students will be hanging out. As I said before, visits are best when there are lots of opportunties to see students.
One strategy that worked for us that was a little unusual: my H took not only our S, but two of his best friends on a 9 day college touring trip. The boys had similar GPAs, test scores, ECs, family financial backgrounds. We lived in the Midwest and they wanted to see schools on the east coast and there was no easy way to do that, so they did an epic road trip.
The boys decided what schools to see, the route/itinerary, and signed up in advanced for those schools which required interviews/registration for info sessions. They did a few fun things as well, but we were all focusing on schools that met full financial need so we had a limited budget. The 2 friends’ families chipped in some $ for gas/food and they stayed in budget motels with one room/2 beds. They did a few drive-bys that were on the way, but got to visit a lot of campuses and did a lot of tours. I think they saw something like 17 colleges in the 9 days.
Having the 2 extra boys on the trip worked really well. My S is pretty pleasant, but it kept H and S from being at each other since the other two boys were there, and the other two boys probably behaved better since H was there and not their own parents. Having this combination elevated the behavior of all.
My S ended up falling in love with a school he visited on the trip, in a state he had never been to before, and applied ED. He graduated in May. Another boy also ended up attending a school he visited on the trip. The third boy only applied to Ivies (they visited a few on the trip) despite our advice and was waitlisted at all of them. He ended up attending a school on the west coast instead.
@marian, Those 880 posts were mostly accumulated on high-school-related topics; I’m just dipping my toes into the college forum now. But yes, the question deserves its own thread. I was just being lazy. 
Your question about college locations is a good one. And it does tie into this thread. In our family case, we had either friends or relatives near the far away colleges who could give us welcome information about the college locations. For the colleges closer to home, we had been in those places ourselves (Boston, NYC, etc).
Our kids both wanted an urban college. But for both, on our first trip with each, we went to urban, suburban, rural, large and small, public vs private, so they could see a little of each.
For example…on our SE trip we took the kiddo to University of Richmond, University of SC, Elon, Davidson, College of Charleston, Wake Forest and UNC Greensboro. A little bit of everything. We have a good friend in Columbia SC, and another in Charleston. And a good friend in Greensboro.
For the OP and any new parents starting this journey:
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Use the divide and conquer strategy - the parent who can leave work/take time off takes the student for long weekends or just summer visits- other parent stays home with other children. Often results in better bonding and more of a “our list trip together” experience.
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I’m in the camp of it’s absolutely fine to visit in the summer.
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Start a new thread and post where you are geographically, some general stats about your student , some general info about your EFC / what you found on the NPCs, and where you might want to focus your first trip. I guarantee that within 24 hours the helpful people here on CC will have bombarded you with their wealth of experience and your trip planning will be done!
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Hotels posted on the University website don’t necessarily offer the best rate. Plug the school into google maps , hit nearby hotels, then check rate at the closest 3 - 4 hotels.
Have fun, it’s a great time and something I would do again in a minute!
Thanks, @thumper1 ! I just started a new thread, like a good little CC-er.
I realize every case is different, but in my D’s case, the only trips that mattered were those AFTER acceptance. She is an undecided major and a very good student. We initially tacked on a few college visits to trips we were otherwise taking; wife’s business trip, other kids out-of-town EC’s. The college visits themselves were sort of boring and did not differentiate anything about the academics of the schools, but fun to see the sights. She probably got a vague idea of the kind of school she wanted to attend, but we realized that it would be ridiculous to visit a lot of schools. My wife and I realized that the most profound experiences we had in college had nothing to do with anything we could have detected on a visit. She made her own list, but I made her apply to a few schools. After acceptances, 3 rose to the top, and the trips were quickly done.
We were unable to book one of the regular college tours at UCLA. So I posted a gig request on taskrabbit.com. I asked for a current upperclassman or recent grad to give us a tour. So we were able to have a great tour just for our family for a small amount. Just a tip on an alternate way to go because tours often fill up at the times you are free to look at the college.
@aDadofTwo we never did more than 2 schools a day. When we flew into a city to visit schools we were booked on the official tour/info session. My S14 was only interested in schools that required a flight. (we live in MA…only visited our state flagship…not one other NE school!). In hind sight…with him we didn’t need to have visited as many schools. We visited many “reach” schools" and we knew that we would revisit if/when he was accepted. He also was a kid who said “I could be happy at all of these schools”. He definitely identified the type of school that he liked during the first few visits. We actually only went to one Accepted Student Day as he knew that it was the school for him and he declined to do any others after that.
With my D18 we are just starting this process. She is interested in schools that also require flights…we have talked about not doing as many visits before she is accepted. All kids are different. I will add that some visits were as a family as we were on vacation in the area. A few other visits were just to visit schools. I did one bunch and my H did the other “bunch” . It was nice “family time” with our S. My last comment…when we were at information sessions…when the campus tour starts some schools let you pick your tour guide and some assign you to a guide. My son would look at the kids and listen to their majors/bios. He would pick “his person”. The kid that he could relate to was the tour guide that he wanted to go with. We occasionally moved to a different group or he would choose “his person”. That strategy worked well for us. I also am a big advocate for if you know a student there…;try to meet with them after to tour or even just talk. That has been helpful as your student guide can make or break a tour. My son loves to informally tour with kids from his HS who are touring his current school, If you or your kid know anybody who is a student there try to meet with them…for a tour, lunch, dinner…whatever works. Better than a group tour! Good luck and enjoy the process!