My D20 has been on 6 college visits so far and we’re doing 3 more at spring break. I think it’s good if you can. If not, go to accepted student days.
@ebh87 It’s challenging to be an introvert in this world. Hard to be seen. For these kids, environment is paramount and I would imagine a small, nurturing LAC would be a good match.
Peer learning is such an integral part of institutions now – it’s one way to learn, not THE way. As an individual contributor, who has a daughter who is also an individual contributor (although not an introvert), we bump into this pedagogy regularly. Sometimes, she can circumnavigate and sometimes she has to play to game. But the question on an AO’s mind is – why should we offer you a seat at the table. It’s easier to say yes to kids that wear it all on the sleeve – it’s more noticeable, more sortable, and easy to intuit and read. Introverts take more time, more energy, and patience. But a quiet voice can be quite a powerful voice in my experience. You just have to want to hear it.
To add to @lkg4answers’ ideas in post #3578, an additional way to demonstrate interest for the schools that care (and to get helpful information) is to sign up for webinars that many schools offer. If the applicant gets on the email lists for the school, its honors program, a specific department, etc, s/he is likely to be notified about webinars, or information about them can be found on many schools’ websites. The student logs in to the webinar, which the school can track, and participants usually has a chance to ask questions via messaging, which they also track. Often the webinars are run by AOs. We found them very helpful with our S18.
Curious how you think upperclassmen friends are impacting your DC’s college search? My DD has a lot of friends that are seniors and is going through lots of the ups and downs of their acceptances, deferrals and denials with them. There is good and bad in this. Good: She totally understands now that “safeties” are a moving target these days and she will need more than one. She has zero at the moment ? Bad: She is dismissing some schools based upon criteria that may not be completely her own (“boring” locations, etc). The peer pressure is very real here and she has not applied anywhere yet! Anyway, I cannot wait for this crew to make their choices so she can see how reality shakes out and we can get back to HER search based upon HER criteria. We need to get spring break tours nailed down soon, but I may just have to hold off on a few suggestions while this works its way out.
We are also trying to decide on some tours to do over the spring break. Trying to decide whether we should look at the safety type schools or the reachy ones? Having trouble finding match type schools that meets her criteria for a number of reasons.
Out limited experience re school tours, for high reaches, we don’t even do the info session anymore, just self-tour to get a feel of the schools, for matches/safeties, demonstrated interests often “require” us to register and take the info session. Self-tour is a lot more flexible and time-saving. @janiemiranda
@makemesmart Thank you. About how many schools in each category is your child going to look at/apply to?
We’re planning on Spring Break college tours too. I used the Niche map tool. It works really well and we were able to see schools that are nearby or along the route. This was helpful because we’re unfamiliar with the area. You can also use filters like school size, standardized scores, and major.
My 2cents on the spring break tours…choose schools least likely to have snow or schools that have tunnel systems. It’s no fun tromping around campus in the snow. We had planned to do some tours last spring break with D19, but decided it wasn’t worth it after the first couple in snow/wintry mix. I’m not planning to do any with D20 this spring break, unless we’re revisiting somewhere D19 is accepted (fingers crossed). But then, D20 went along on half the tours we did last year with D19, so she’s seen a few. Though, D20 still has no idea which schools, what type of school, what major, etc., so we need to narrow things down a bit.
We toured Penn, UVA, Villanova, and Georgetown over the summer. We toured an in state safety about a year ago. We toured UGA last month. And are touring Duke, UNC and another safety over spring break. The application list will end up with at least 2 of each type of school on it.
I’m in the midst of planning 2 tour trips right now. We have a 4 day weekend next month (early Feb) so are going up to Oregon to see a couple of places there. I have a thread on here about our spring break trip - my kids’ school choir is going to NYC right before their break and I’m going as a chaperone. D20 and I will break off from the group on the last day and do a 5 school tour through NY, CT, and Ohio and fly home from Cleveland. I’ve registered for all of the school tours now but have to finish booking hotels and rental cars and that return flight.
@washugrad we live in a suburb of Cleveland! 
D’s spring break is at the same time as most of the colleges she is interested in, unfortunately. I don’t want to tour an empty campus. The only school that is still in session during her spring break would involve a big trip with airfare, hotel, etc. Just seems like a lot of money for a short trip. But it’s her top choice for now so we’ll see.
Second @SoccaMomma’s post above about snow/college tours, we ran into that issue during last spring break, as we planned to tour NE LACs when a huge snowstorm came, we had to cancell four of our six tours. Depending on when your spring break is, (ours is always in early March!) it’s good to have an “escape plan”! But, it might also be a good thing to see whether your kid could “tolerate/live through” weather like this, as all the beautiful campus brochures are often from more pleasant seasons.
@janiemiranda we currently have more reaches/high reaches (about 5-6) than matches (2) safeties (1). DS is a potentially recruitable athlete, his current communications with coaches are all from high-reaches. I wonder whether there are some “magic number” of schools we should/need to have for each category other than high reaches.
That was my thought on touring Rochester in March @makemesmart I think she should see the reality of “spring” in some of these locations.
We have an introvert too. (Actually, we have three, but the other two are already done. 
) There’s some food for thought in this article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/one-group-that-definitely-faces-prejudice-in-college-admissions/2018/08/05/906095e0-9668-11e8-a679-b09212fb69c2_story.html?utm_term=.347025045c8f
Re: tours, D20’s spring break is not until mid-April and most of the colleges she is looking to visit will be in session as their spring breaks seemed to be in March. We will likely visit New Orleans, maybe Raleigh/Durham, and Boston. We would also like to get to Chicago but might be too much for a week trip?
@HarrietMWelsch great article. Three of my four kids are introverts. I worry about D if she needs to attend competitive scholarship days. I don’t see how she can compete with other students in that kind of environment.
Re: introverts, I used to work in public accounting which has a lot on introverts and ESL or first generation professionals and the ones that got promoted faster tended to be the extroverts. And the higher you moved up in the firm having leaderships qualities, managing large teams, and having excellent sales skills was critical to promotion. This can be a challenge for some introverts. This is one of the reasons I am glad D took an AP Seminar class last year as she had to do both group projects and oral presentations, pushing her out of her comfort zone. The AP class means close to nothing for college admissions but I think provided her some important “life skills” she can take with her to college and the real world.
Our spring break is in March. I forgot some schools’ are in April. We live with snow every winter, so they’re used to tromping around (HS) campus in the snow. Definitely, if you want to experience the reality of tromping around campus in the snow, then visit in winter. OTOH, we visited some DC area campuses last summer in 90-100 degree temperatures, and that was no fun either, but gave our kids an idea of how it may be in that climate. (D19 loved that weather!)
@socaldad2002 My daughter is taking the AP seminar class this year and she is also introverted. This class is definitely helping her become more self confident with group projects and presentations. I also believe this class is helpful for those “life skills” you are talking about. It helps that D has a really great teacher for the class.