Ok, I may take a hit for this this little cake sprinkle, but I am always looking at the bathrooms in the public areas of the school (versus the dorms). I think they can be a reflection of other things. At my Ds school, in every building they are always clean and well kept and that always impresses me. We have visited schools where the counters are covered in water and towels/paper are on the floor. A clean bathroom tells me there is respect for the school and the other students (or they just have a really good janitorial staff). Not sure it means a lot or if my students notice it, but I do.
We liked the nerdy t-shirts kids wore at Caltech. And also the way the tour guide seemed to know half the kids on campus who felt free to rib her as well.
Both my kids liked the shabby furniture at Caltech - comfy stuff you could sprawl on. Some other campuses felt positively anticeptic.
In retrospect my younger son realized he cared a lot about how dorm lounge spaces were set up. His freshman dorm had biggish spaces on every floor with comfy furniture. His sophomore year dorm and a huge unused lounge on the ground floor and tiny uncomfortable lounges on the other floors. There was much less casual socializing in the latter dorm.
@twoinanddone thatās a really interesting perspective on homogeneous and heterogeneous groups. I seriously never thought of it that way. Thank you for pointing that out.
I forgot to mention that another thing related to diversity that we have noticed, or rather, itās been very noticeable to my daughter, is what I guess you would call type or style diversity in pairs or groups. On our very first visit to my daughters top choice, she was struck by a pair of girls who walked out of a dorm together and appear to be good friends from how they were talking. One looked like what D calls a ābasic white girlā and the other was alternative with piercings, blue hair, etc. And on our second visit to the same school, we weāre sitting near a group of three students who, based on their conversation, also sounded like close friends (I guess Iām an eavesdropper too!). One was an athletic-type girl, the second was a hipster guy with the requisite skinny jeans and horn rimmed glasses, and the third was a gender nonconforming student who was visibly a biological male but was wearing a flowy dress and one of those hippie flower crowns. My daughterās high school is so mind-numbingly homogeneous these things stand out to her and really attract her to a place.
@SuburbMom Yes, definitely food choices in addition to food quality. We visited one school that D ultimately crossed off the list for a multitude of reasons, where we were not given meal tickets but chose to pay to get into the dining hall because we always like to sample the food. It was a Saturday when school is in session and it was the only dining hall open for lunch on Saturdays. After we paid and stepped inside, we were really surprised to see how little food was actually available with almost no choices. Even though it embarrassed my daughter a little, we decided to get our money back and find another place to eat off-campus!
@CADREAMIN Thatās a whole other kind of sprinkle, lol. All the bathrooms in public spaces were perfectly clean and well-equipped where we visited, but I agree, it would bother me as well if they were not.
Math mm, funny u should mention the shabby furniture. My son asked for a loveseat and a room a/c. Both were left behind.
Hmm, my senior at a top LAC has probably never set foot in the library at her school. She spends lots of time in the math and computer science bldgs though, they have nice work spaces and group spaces.
Both my Dās were looking for diversity, coming from a very white suburban high school. My S was only looking for a school with a good program in his specific major, he cared about nothing else.
My kiddo applied to two very large and prestigious engineering schools and a small but well-regarded public in our state as a safety. Visits to the first two were OK but left her feeling cold ā they seemed very huge and impersonal. She attended an all-IB school that was very intimate. In January of her senior year, we visited the 3rd school for its scholarship interview process and to visit its Honors College. All who were invited to interview were highly encouraged to apply to the HC as well. Part of the application was a writing sample of +8 pp. The next Saturday, she submitted her IB Extended Essay ā a 16 page tome about art interpretation (remember, she was applying as a Comp Eng student!). Later that afternoon, the HC Dean telephoned her personally and told her how much he enjoyed reading her essay and would be sending it back with comments. The guy had read her essay in depth in a matter of a few hours! That was massively impressive. I knew from that point on, it was just a formality to wait on the other two collegesā decisions. Our #3 had instantly jumped to #1. She matriculated into that HC, got tons of credit for her IB tests and is about to start Junior year status in January. She loves it. We do too (coincidentally, it was the least expensive! oh darn!)
@1518mom, if your kid doesnāt care if people say hi, why should you? And if you want to know about research, check the research budgets and visit individual prof & department websites. Have him apply, and go back for accepted student days if he gets in. He will get a more thorough look then.
We had an approach thatās similar to the OPās. While on our tours we made sure to visit three places on/around the campus. 1) Library, 2) Bathroom (in the library perhaps), 3) Coffee Shop.
By visiting the library, we could get a sense of how intellectually engaged the students were. Were they reading or doing other work in the library, or was this just a social hub where students fluttered in and out to yuck it up or hang with their friends? Of course, these days, students really donāt need the library as much, since so much of what they might need there can be obtained online. But just gauging the level of noise in the main reading room could be revealing.
While at the library, we make a point to go to the bathroom. Not for the obvious purpose but to read the graffiti. If the graffiti was just the usual scatological stuff (āFor a good time call XXYY at ###-####,ā or āroses are redā scribbles), we knew this was a low brow student body. On the other hand, if the graffiti was literate, perhaps in the best cases involving successive visitors adding stanzas of clever thoughts to an epic poem, then we knew we had found an intellectually inclined college.
Having visited the library, there was just one more test: go to the coffee shop, either in the center of campus or a nearby neighborhood. We eavesdropped. Was anybody actually reading there, were students engaged in serious conversation, or were they all ear-budded up and staring mindlessly into the distance? Was this just a dating center?
Of course thereās more to learn on a visit to a college, but one virtue of our approach is that it only took about 15 minutes to do our survey of the intellectual orientation of the student body.
It would very much depend on what day of the week you visited to judge whether the student body was involved in intellectual pursuits. Some schools have few classes on Fridays so the students start the weekend early. A big football game on a Friday night or Saturday might make a difference in what they are doing for the weekend. My daughter first visited her school on a Saturday. There was a big robotics contest being held in the field house, a fraternity event going on on an athletic field, a soccer game in the stadium. I saw very little studying. If I judged based on that day, I would have concluded that it was a party school for geeky high schoolers. We stayed overnight as we had an appointment the next day, and Sunday the campus was dead. All we saw were a few students headed to the library (one with a case of Mountain Dew - guess it was going to be a long study session). I would have run in horror but my daughter loved the feel of the campus. She studied in the library every evening as a freshman because it was required by her coach. Once she made grades, she has little reason to go there as she can study at home.
My other daughter scheduled a tour on a Friday and because of some weather problems, we were hours late for the meetings with two departments, and there were no students around at all because classes were done for the week. At the department she was interested in, they couldnāt have been nicer, introducing us to everyone in the office, inviting us to a drama practice that night, even though we were about 5 hours late. Next day was a football game and thatās what everyone did. Really, all so nice to us. I have no idea if there were students talking about Proust or theories or atom bombs in the cafeteria or coffee shop but Iād guess they were talking about football, meeting each otherās parents, tailgating, or enjoying the game.
Even 40 years ago the boys at Colorado school of Mines did very little studying on Friday and Saturday, often having two day parties at the frat houses. From Sunday morning until Friday at noon, nothing but business but Fridays and Saturdays were for girls and beer.
This is exactly why itās good to check the library, on Friday and Sat if you can. If your child loves frats and football, then the empty library is a good sign. If your child finds frats and football a turn-off, like my kids, then the library where they attend should still be active on Friday and Saturday, maybe a little quieter, but still have activity.
My D ultimately ended up choosing her college based on little things. Really little things, in keeping with the title of this thread. She had paid the deposit at College A when she was offered a spot at College B during the summer. On paper the two colleges are very similar. Both are ranked the same, cost the same, offer lots of similar programs, have similar types of students, etcā¦ So she used tiny factors. College B is closer by four hours. College B offers a fun short term session. College B is in a large town. College B has very good study abroad programs. Finally, College B had always been right at the top of her list, and she knew she shouldnāt ignore that just because she had gotten used to the idea of going to College A.
For us, there were two things that my kids kept aware of. One was the physical state of the main buildings (academic, libraries and student centres) and dorms. Places that were well maintained (not necessarily new) was a bit positive (and the converse). Also new building projects were a positive, although this often was a sign of a more established school with strong alumni contributions. Lastly, my kids did not like schools where the info session and tour guides focused too much on the sports teams. They felt in their opinion that for some schools this was a red flag for somewhat unintellectual students.
@mackinaw I had to laugh at how you attributed much to the scrawlings in the bathroom in the library. I went to a school that most would not deny as quite intellectual ā but I can guarantee you the scrapings and graffiti in the bathrooms and study pods in my schoolās library contained the exact āfor a good time, call Joeā kind of musings.
If you were to find that stuff now, Iād say itās a strike against the college not for being prurient but a student body who is not sophisticated enough to be using Tinder or Grindr much! hahaha
Most of the bathrooms I remember seeing were kept scrupulously clean. I thought dual flush toilets was a plus, but I donāt think my kids noticed!
We were pretty turned off by one technology school because it seemed that every student walking around had earbuds in; no one was walking with each other and talking.
The biggest impact item on a college visit to my son was when the guide mentioned that the school get every Friday off, so essentially a 3 day weekend all year. SOLD!!!
We visited one college where my daughter said nobody was smiling - it was immediately off her list - she wanted people to be happy.
At another school she was turned off by the condition of the common area in a dorm - it wasnāt that is was sloppy - it just seemed like people had expensive stuff lying around that was being treated disrespectfully. This helped cross that school off the list.
āthe common area in a dorm - it wasnāt that is was sloppy - it just seemed like people had expensive stuff lying aroundā
Well, if people left expensive stuff lying around in a public place and it wasnāt being stolen, that could be seen as a positive. 
^ one of the most telling things about my kidsā HS was that kids could leave their MacBooks and expensive items out and about, and nobody worried about theft. Fwiw, it isnāt that the kids were all wealthy, either, there were a lot of kids on FA. It was their mutual respect for each other and themselves that made it possible.
DS did have something stolen from the locker room during an athletic event with a visiting school. It was an upsetting thing to him.
Iāve said before that I think the best way to get the real feel of a school is to go to a party there on a Friday or Saturday night. I know thatās not always possible, but if it isā¦go. How much drinking is there? Are people passing out? Are people pressured to drink? What do students talk about? What is the dancing likeādo random people come up and grind on you? Talk to students and ask if they are happy. Try to find one majoring in a subject of interest and ask about profs, difficulty of getting into courses, etc. My D ruled out one very highly regarded college because lots of people smoked at the party. (Sheās allergic.) At the college she attended, at least back then, smokers went outside to smoke.
There are 2 other things I think kids should consider:
ECs. At some colleges, you have to try out for almost everything. Want to be in the student orchestra as a non-music major? At college X, almost everyone who wants to join,can. At others, you may have to be better than all-state on your instrument to have a prayer of getting in. So many times, Iāve seen a kid choose College A because (s)he loves the a cappella scene thereāand never figures out before enrolling that one of every 10 kids who audition gets into a group. My D was very good at an EC, but was shocked when she realized she had to audition for it in college. Now, she got in, butā¦over half of the kids who audition, donāt. And they are stunned because they did that EC for 4 years in high school and just assumed that they could continue in college. A neighbor went to a top LAC. She liked to act and had been acting for a lot of years. In turned out that ALL college plays were put on by a drama society. You had to audition to join and maybe a third of kids got in. If you didnāt get in, you couldnāt act. At other colleges, you audition for each play, which usually means that you have a better chance of getting a role if there are multiple productions.
What else do you have to pay for? At many colleges, you have to pay to go to a movie on campus, to a basketball, hockey, or football game, to student drama and music productions, etc. If youāre on financial aid, you may not be able to go or it may be a rare treat. You feel less āpoorā when everyone can go to the basketball game for free with a student ID. Do you have to pay to participate in club sports or other ECs?