You have received lots of good recommendations for food and hotels in providence. Duck and bunny is adorable, and fish at Hemenways is delicious.
I think it’s fun to check out restaurants and shopping streets around campuses to get a feel for what it’s like to live there.
Best of luck to you and your daughter. Come back to let us know how the trip went and what she thought of all these fabulous schools. Really, she can’t go wrong with any of them.
Oh, one more thing: before or after visiting tufts, head to Davis square bc that’s one of the closest hangouts for tufts students. My son and his friends, when not hanging on campus, also go to dinner, movies in Cambridge and sometimes to boston, particularly for a celtics game once or twice a year. Mainly his friends head to Boston for internships, though, to go to the museums or to concerts, or as seniors for job interviews after being interviewed first on campus (final interviews are often in the city where they’ll either be working, or where a company’s headquarters may be, like Bain, Boston Consulting Group, or for instance, labs at tufts and Harvard med.)
Connecticut College was an all female college formed after Wesleyan stopped admitting women (in 1909) - it started admitting men in 1969. It does not have a football team. It has always been progressive, and tends to use different criteria for admissions than less progressive schools -such as Yale :-). As a result it is risky to use it as a “safety” based on conventional criteria.
Here is a quote from the seventies:
http://www.nytimes.com/1973/03/25/archives/connecticut-college-now-coed-debates-whether-men-are-taking-over.html
http://www.wesleyan.edu/fgss/firstwomen.html
@RenaissanceMom This trip is sounding like a ton of fun!
@Meddy Maybe this should be a five day trip and you can do Boston properly? I think you get a best parent award for this one. Your DD is going to be impressed with your insider knowledge.
For a site that happens to mention many good suggestions for Brown overlaps (irrespective of region), this Kenyon list of “The Company We Keep” can be interesting and useful:
http://www.kenyon.edu/admissions-aid/admissions-statistics/
With a few exceptions such as Connecticut College, Smith and Harvard, it would seem that most schools a typical Brown applicant might match well with would be included in the twenty other colleges listed.
With open/flexible curricula as a factor, this site could be useful as well:
http://www.thecollegiateblog.org/2012/07/30/pros-and-cons-of-the-open-curriculum/
Yes, excellent list!
I’m actually thinking of postponing the trip, just so we can eat everywhere you all mentioned! 
@Meddy I never get tired of the seafood and I live here.
A daughter of a good friend went to Kenyon. Great school, but not a good fit for her. Transferred to Conn Col. Better fit. Her parents were pretty liberal (Oberlin/Hampshire). Cultural fit is tricky. More important for some kids than others…
I believe the hotel at India Point in Providence includes parking, as well as lower rates that downtown hotels. Plus you get a water view 
@Meddy, I’ve read through this thread and can’t get a handle on what attracts your daughter to Brown. (Though I have to thank @merc81 for introducing me to the “streetlight effect.”) Brown’s open curriculum is one factor, but the more common distribution requirements – which is different from a core curriculum – are not particularly onerous to students who want to take courses across several disciplines, so I don’t think I’d use that as the major point of differentiation.
Could you describe more about what your daughter is looking for? There are several dozen colleges – small, medium and large – located within a few hours drive of Providence that are Brown’s academic peers and that have some area of cultural overlap. You could cover 6 to 8 in three days. Some doubling back is inevitable, but for the most part, once you get out the urban centers, it’s fairly laid back driving. The distances are not great, and the area is scenic.
The smaller colleges especially have distinctive personalities and academic strengths. Looking for “likes” works best when you can identify the factors that draw you to one school in the first place.
What are her general areas of interest – arts/humanities, math/sciences, social sciences? What are her main extracurriculars? (Even if she doesn’t pursue them in college certain ECs help in admission at certain selective colleges.)
For example, my son liked Brown because he was interested in art studio and art history. He ended up at Williams, but also liked Yale, Wesleyan, Kenyon, Hamilton, Conn College and Skidmore. The focus on the visual art was the common thread. He liked rural, outdoors activities which moved Williams, Kenyon, Hamilton up the list.
If your daughter prefers an urban environment, then Tufts, all of the Boston/Cambridge schools, Yale and Barnard seem like good options. Swarthmore, Haverford, Wesleyan and Vassar for easy accessibility to big cities. If she’s looking for progressive activism she might like any of the northeast selectives, but especially Wesleyan and Swarthmore. iI she’s interested in the arts (music, museums, theater) she might look at Williams, Wesleyan, Skidmore, Haverford, Vassar. I’m sure I’ve left a few out (like all of Maine and New Hampshire), but you get the idea.
^ Brown is also urban.
First, we had @merc81 to thank for “the streetlight effect”; now we have @momrath 's gorgeous example of “blind men and the elephant” effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant
Brown, Yale and Weslyan are doable.
@preppedparent If you’re sending her to Yale, I just wanted to take a moment and complain about that drive…
But really time that one outside of rush hour. You’re entering Groundhog day CT, where construction never seems to end.
In terms of schools that are easier to get into and might be appealing to someone interested in Brown there is Wheaton College in Norton Ma. and Clark University in Worcester.
Wheaton is a liberal arts college that started out as a women’s seminary and shares common roots with Mt Holyoke (Mary Lyon). It became a women’s college around 1912 (around the time the Seven Sisters grouping was formed) and went coed in 1988. It is sort of the “forgotten eighth sister” in that it has a cross enrollment relationship with Brown. Very strong in the sciences with lots of prestigious scholarship winners. Shares some cultural attributes with Conn College and Brown. Selectivity is low relative to quality of academics because of location and a late switch to being coed.
Clark University is really more of a LAC than a university. It is actually smaller than Wesleyan at the undergraduate level (about 2300 undergrads), but a little bigger at the graduate level. It was founded in 1887 as the first research only (i.e. no undergrad) university, but later added undergrads. It was one of the founding members of the AAU (an academic research fraternity that includes most of the Ivy League), but it later dropped out when it changed its mission to focus more on undergraduate education. Selectivity is low relative to quality of academics due to location and the fact that it does not match the research university classification very well. If it were located in the Boston suburbs, it would be much harder to get into.
D17 was adamant about NOT wanting a women’s college. Now she’s a very happy Smithie. You never know!
Time flies when you’re having fun they say, right? Heck, these have been the longest five months of my mom life! I wanted to circle back here and thank you all for your input. D18 was fortunate enough to have been accepted to a few of her top choices, including two mentioned on this thread that are serious contenders- Amherst College and Wesleyan U. So,if anyone is still around and has any input on these two fine institutions, I would love to hear your thoughts :-*