Here is my opinion. Sophomore year is a great time to look at different types of universities ie. privates, publics, rural, suburban, urban, etc. It is not a good time to be visiting universities for the sake of determining where one might want to matriculate. There are too many things that are unknown such as final grades, test scores etc. The student might very well change many of the parameters they have created or simply not know what those parameters might be in their sophomore year. By the summer before your junior year you may have a better idea but questions surrounding grades and test scores may still be a bit murky. Then things happen quickly. By 2nd semester junior year the student will likely have the first of their test scores back and have completed 5 of 6 semesters that will be seriously looked at by colleges. Hopefully by then the student will have a better idea of what parameters they have for a school such as type, size, distance, locality etc. It will be much easier to narrow down choices once those decisions have been made and your visits can be more useful. Much of what is important in choosing a college can be done from a computer such as majors, size, location, financial aid, scholarships, stats of students etc. The only thing a visit can really nail down is how does the university and the area feel to the student. It can be a game changer so I won’t minimize it’s importance but visiting a bunch of highly ranked schools will likely not achieve much. In my opinion 