@NYC2018nyc welcome aboard!
@cakeisgreat How about College of Charleston? I have family who graduated from there and really liked it. Coastal Carolina, UNC Greensboro, UNC Asheville, Roanoke, or Appalachian State? We toured Roanoke and it was ok but not quite right for my DS’16. Coworker’s daughter graduates from there and really liked it.
@soccamomma thanks for all the suggestions! Forgot to mention we toured College of Charleston and it’s on the list! S19 just got accepted with merit making it a real contender in price. Will definitely check out the rest of those colleges!
We got one call that I answered. The caller ID said “UNIV ADMISSIONS” so I was curious. It was High Point University. I’ve never heard of them.
@cakeisgreat Mercer is in Macon, GA About an hour outside Atlanta. Guildford may be too small but it is test optional in Greensboro NC.
Between ds’s two breaks (Feb & Apr) we’ll be touring the following: Catholic, Drexel, NJIT, Stevens, and Rowan. We have a few in our area we’re sprinkling in here and there over some weekends. That will wrap up all his college visits before end of Junior year, which was the goal. I love the tours too, so it’ll be kind of sad when it’s all over.
@SoccaMomma my D20 got a call from USF. She wasn’t home to take the call and isn’t interested in the school. No clue how they got her info.
High Point University is near me. It has an absolutely beautiful campus.
@cakeisgreat take a look at Flagler in St. Augustine - I love that school
@lkg4answers got a call with the same caller ID last night and paniced as I had just been discharged from a 5 day stay at University Hospital! Turns out it was from the Universisty of Minn. for DS20.
@3scoutsmom sorry that you were in the hospital. Hope you are okay.
@cakeisgreat You may also want to check out High Point. I’ve only seen pictures but would agree with @chb088 that it’s beautiful. A friend graduated from there and she truly liked it, albeit a couple of decades ago.
Welcome @Shmoo24!
I had my D20 check the CollegeBoard box because I enjoy all the email that comes in. She has a ‘college’ email account that we will toss at the end of the process, so we both have access to it. I found it helpful for D17 so she wouldn’t miss anything important from schools actually on her list. I used to click through all the emails from her schools in order to, theoretically, show interest. It was silly now that I look back at it…
Ahhh, High Point University. Home of the lazy river!
Over spring break we will be visiting: UIowa, Mizzou, and SLU (maybe). CWRU & UMinn later this spring.
I always felt the ROI was low for sitting in a class. Professors vary so much, and it takes some serious planning. Especially if you’re trying to do 2 schools in a day. We thought walking around campus or sitting outside a dorm was a better use of time.
My dd17 suggested to her brother (ds20) to NOT check the box and to remain under the radar. We had not thought at all about it. It is very different since by this time our dd was getting tons of booklets, postcards, emails, and phone calls. DS20 has received a few random mailers mentioning his PSAT or his SAT scores so we think that there is still some selling of data out there but not to the extent of when you check the box.
Welcome to all the new parents and returning parents. I imagine we will all become much more active as we go through 2019! This time next year we will all be in deep!
We are doing a Spring Break college visit tour too, still deciding the schools, but likely GA, FSU and UF.
I like to stay in the on-campus hotels when colleges have them. They are usually more interesting than a typical chain hotel and usually you can walk to the tour from the hotel.
I enjoy the college visits. My first job when I graduated from college was a leadership program where I traveled to a different college campus every few days to work with students. I went from huge schools like Ohio State to tiny schools. And went everywhere from Canada to South Alabama. It was such a fun job, and these college visits remind me of it in some ways.
Spring break college visits all booked. Totally student picked. UNC, Duke, and safety UTK.
We’ve already toured 6 others. This should be it.
We are going to SoCal again this spring (1st week of April, re-visiting USC and UCLA and touring
UCSD. D’s college list is 4 names long, all top-heavy, and might shrink even further if she doesn’t like UCSD’s foreign language department :(. I am worried, she is not, and the fact that she’s not worried worries me even more 
I guess what also scares me that D herself admitted today on the way to school that she has no work ethic in a sense that she never truly failed at anything, everything came easy to her without putting in much effort, she’s even turning her F in a DE class into a blessing in disguise, sort of. In some way, she reminds me of the Amazing
Mrs. Maisel At the beginning of the series, just swimming with the current, easily fixing anything that floats her way. And then something comes along that can’t be fixed, and it leaves her broken (at least for a while). Ah, I’m probably overthinking it too much 
We are still trying to figure out where to go for spring break tours here. We are thinking maybe FSU since it has computational biology which is D20s intended major. If anyone has a child who has attended FSU I would love to hear your thoughts on the school.
@janiemiranda I don’t currently have a kid there, but S20 and I visited FSU last summer and were shocked by how much we both loved it. It is on S’s short list. The campus is one of my absolute favorites. It’s lush and beautiful, fairly compact, and well-organized. It’s in the middle of Tallahassee, but obviously Tallahassee isn’t that big or overwhelming, so if you need something that isn’t on campus, it’s easy to walk to the “real world.” We found Tallahassee charming. The airport is close to campus and easy to navigate. (That matters for us.)
One of our tour guides was a very nerdy science girl who passionately told us about FSU’s fantastic research and academic opportunities. Another tour guide told tales of stereotypical college fun like dunking people in the fountain. It seems to be a place where a wide range of students can find their place.
Did I mention how beautiful the campus is? I couldn’t stop swooning.
@typiCAmom My D20’s list is currently at 2 and I don’t think either is right for her (wish I could combine them). Plus she has other issues that I won’t share on a public forum. I’m a wreck about it all.
@ShrimpBurrito Thanks so much! I think FSU will definitely be our spring break tour then!
@janiemiranda I’m eager to hear your thoughts on it!
Haven’t figured out spring break yet. Might do Cal Tech, Pomona College and USC. Not sure if we will travel out of state. We are doing UCLA in a couple of weeks and UCSB and their College of Creative Studies next month.