Also a lot. I have one child and we visited - Lafayette, Muhlenberg, Lehigh, GW, American, U Del, Princeton, Drew, Vassar, Columbia, Fordham, Brown, Tufts, BC, BU, & Northeastern, (we did multiple visits to Columbia, Tufts, American, and Northeastern). For most we did tours and info sessions - for Princeton and Lehigh we just walked around (we visit Princeton often just to go to the art museum). Started early - I think it was sophomore year. For almost every trip we tried to make it a mini-vacation - visited museums, took Amtrak to get there, stayed in a nice hotel and ate at nice restaurants, etc.
Kid 1… U of North Texas, BU, NE Conservatory, SMU, UMD, Catholic University, Peabody Conservatory, Duquesne, University of Hartford.
Kid 2 U of Richmond, Drew, College of Charleston, U of South Carolina, UNC Greensboro, Davidson, Elon, SMU, U of San Diego, Pepperdine, Chapman, Claremont McKenna, Santa Clara
I’m missing a few…because we went to 28 between the two.
Kid #1 - 4 schools spring break junior year. Said he only cared about CS programs, all colleges looked the same, dorm rooms are all the same (he’d seen 3 different schools at CTY as well, and had taken classes at Columbia in high school). Of course he didn’t get into any of the schools he’d seen so we visited 4 schools in April senior year - he chose the one with the best CS program and loved it.
Kid #2 - cared about location and feel. Visited 2 February junior year, 2 April junior year, 3 September senior year. In April senior year he visited a super-reach that he hadn’t visited but had gotten into EA, and 3 other schools for a second time.
When I was applying to colleges, I didn’t do any visits. I wasn’t planning on applying to any nearby colleges, which made visits awkward. Instead I did a lot of research about possible schools, which I found more than adequate to make application decisions. However after applying, I did the prospective freshman “weekend” (I stayed 3+ days) at Stanford in which you stay spend a few days on campus, staying in a dorm with current students. If something had turned me off enough to not attend, I probably would have visited my 2nd/3rd choice as well.
DS visited UNC, Duke, Elon, NC State–all near us–in or before sophomore year to get a feel for different kinds of colleges. Once he had his scores, we toured Penn and Hopkins to scope out some high reaches. He applied to a bunch of others he never saw, including Case, where an admitted-student visit convinced him he’d found his people.
Kid 1: 1 prior to applying, just one to which he visited the admissions office: Reed (my alma mater). He visited no other colleges as part of his “college search.” But he’d been to quite a few colleges in connection with participating on the national policy debate circuit, and he spent the summer in debate camp at UMichigan, which he applied to and was admitted to. He applied to 6 colleges in all. He attended the University of Chicago. He had never even seen UofC prior to attending “admitted students day.”
Kid 2: visited 9-10 as part of college search tour that she made with a classmate. But several of these were schools her classmate was interested in and she had no interest in. For example, she visited Oberlin, Colby, and Bennington with her classmate (on a tour for which my spouse and I did the driving), but she did not interview at any of those three. She applied to six (three that she never visited): Pratt, RISD, SCAD, KCAI, CMU, MICA. She was admitted to all of them. Attended RISD.
Kid 1 - interested in larger schools with Engineering programs and strong sports programs in the Midwest. Visited Milwaukee School of Engineering, Minnesota, Iowa State, Iowa, UW-PLATTEVILLE, UW-Madison, Illinois, Purdue, Michigan state, Michigan, and Ohio State. Applied to 6 of the schools that he visited.
Kid 2 - only a freshman. Visited some with his older brother . Too early to tell what really interests him.
0, well visited the department of interest at one where she spent 7 summers attending music camp so knew the campus well. Not a music major and doesn’t attend the school (though would have been happy there), and she loved spending summers there. She is very happy with her choice of school though she never visited until attending.
Not too many before applying – just Rice, a couple of UCs (UCLA and UCS), USC, and two of the Claremonts (Scripps and Pomona). D did a school trip to the mid-Atlantic and saw UVA, William and Mary, Georgetown, U.Penn, and U.Md.
Once acceptances were in, she saw Yale, U.Chicago, Grinnell, Davidson, Vandy, Wash. U, and Stanford. Never bothered seeing the others.
K1: Johns Hopkins, Cornell, URochester, BostonU, Western WA, UWashington.
K2: most of the above as a sib + Willamette, Lewis&Clark, Reed, Whitman, NYU, Vassar, Bard, MHC, Amherst, Smith, Wesleyan, Sara Lawrence, Muhlenberg, Clark, Beloit.
I need to add…we never just scheduled a trip for the purpose of college visits with either of our kids. We combined our college visit trips with visits to family and/or friends.
We also had the parent criteria…colleges had to be within 3 hour drive of our house…or within 1 hour of a close friend or relative.
We did quite a few with each kid probably alittle over 10 each but none of the visits were random…it helped trim the application list to between 5 and 9 colleges for applications. But it means I have sat through info sessions and /or done walking tours at over at least 35 colleges since none of mine had overlapping colleges on the visit list. They all did their instate visits on their own because they could drive and they were all day trips or they had already been to the unis visiting friends who attended. It is helpful to get that application list trimmed down otherwise the whole process would be daunting if the whole country is an option.