@happy1 makes some excellent points. I agree that ED gives a boost at many schools. At small schools (ie; less than 2,000 total students) with a lot of sports, perhaps the bump is not as great, as hooked applicants take a bigger % of the spots, as there are not that many spots, but as schools increase in the size, a lo of times, the number of sports is not increasing, so there can be a bigger boost. For instance a school with 2,000 kids and a school with 4,000, who each have 28 varsity teams - the smaller school has less room in ED for unhooked kids. Schools without football teams will have more room. My D also applied ED successfully. We did ask admissions if there was a boost and they said yes. Now a bump doesn’t mean, that if you have a 1350 SAT score and the avg SAT score for that school is 1450, that you will get that boost, but if you are solidly within or above the range, it can be a help.
About your spring break visits:
Don’t overbook. Allow time for relaxation and for stuff not about colleges, ranging from homework to waterfall hikes to down time for the kids on their iPads or whatever. I definitely felt my son needed down time between visits. We mostly did only one tour a day. We wandered around campuses on our own and ate in dining halls, etc., but he was too wiped out after tours and interviews to want to do anything more formal, like class visits or department visits or anything. After some terrible info sessions, we stopped scheduling those, since we know how to read brochures and websites and the sessions seemed to reiterate what is in those. That allowed us more time to wander around on our own, at our own pace, to eat in dining halls, and to rest.
Planning around available interview times is important. Our April break junior year involved visiting six colleges, five of which did not offer evaluative interviews. He did interview at the only one in that grand tour’s area that offered an evaluative interview (Hamilton). Even though we were passing somewhat near Skidmore, we saved our Skidmore visit for August, because Skidmore did not allow students to interview until after their junior year had concluded, and they do recommend an interview. This was true of many colleges. We did not want to spend the time traveling or the money on hotels/gas/ferry if we could avoid visiting twice!
About early decision:
I am a big believer in early decision after this admissions cycle. My son’s experience getting in ED was so wonderful. What a relief it was! And while some of his friends are in an agony of anxiety right now, he has been enjoying interacting with future classmates on the GroupMe for his college, and he has done some really cool things with his extracurricular activities. (He is still doing tons of schoolwork- no signs of senioritis!)
In his high school, both hooked and unhooked applicants (and some of the unhooked applicants were fairly typical applicants for whom their ED choice was a bit of a reach- e.g., test scores in lower half of middle 50%) did really well ED, especially at prestigious LACs. In past years, almost no one went to top colleges from his high school! Naviance was scary, as were the annual PR reports of where the top kids were going. But this year, we rocked it ED! Kids got into Amherst, Williams, Middlebury, Wesleyan, Franklin and Marshall, U of Chicago, Columbia, Brown, Vanderbilt, Tufts, Duke, etc. early. (The students accepted to Amherst, Brown, and Columbia were recruited athletes.)
I do not know why there is a difference from past years. It surely is not scores, because last year the high school had six National Merit semifinalists and this year it had only one (who does not know her college yet).
I do not know most people’s financial situations, but those who talked about it were happy with their financial aid offers early decision. We are primarily a middle class/ upper middle class area.
But the kids who applied to the most selective colleges early action or regular decision, instead of early decision, are not doing so well with admissions to selective colleges so far. Lots of bad news from MIT yesterday, and top kids were surprised by deferrals from Northeastern and U Michigan in the early action round. (Hoping the next three weeks yield some better news for them! Such nice kids.)
I think that anyone applying early decision somewhere should also apply to a safety school early action. Hearing yes from a safety school may make it easier emotionally when you are deferred from a reach. Then at least there is no feeling of panic that you will not be able to go to college!
We checked the CDS for the schools D was interested in to figure out the RD vs ED ratios. Super easy to do. Google and to locate the common data sets. Then look at first-time admissions data. It’s helpful to keep a spreadsheet of info.
Also, an idea of a friend of mine that worked for us. The CASUAL visit to several schools is helpful. Like driving through a neighborhood when you’re thinking of house shopping. You get a feel for different places and you can help narrow down what the child wants in a school. Like every time you’re driving someplace and you know that you’re passing a school, just slow down and drive through it. You’d be amazed at what the child learns that we as parents take for granted. For example we were driving through West Chester PA, cute town, cute school. Saturday afternoon. We saw lots of students wearing matched t-shirts and then groups of them hanging out on lawns wiht BBQs going and beer cans in hand. D said, appalled: what are they doing? I said: those are frats and its Sat afternoon and it looks like they are starting their parties. She instantly said: I don’t want any school like this. Later we drove into Haverford – just about an hour away – and we happened to park behind a car with a bumper sticker that said something nerdy and witty and she said: I love this place. Those sorts of mini experiences help you narrow your child’s focus. For her clearly she didn’t want a fratty party scene. She didn’t know what that looked like before the quick tour (and she only saw the most benign aspect of that). She did like the implied intellectualism of Haverford, however. We went on from there to drive through Bryn Mawr, then over to Muhlenberg, Lehigh, LaFayette – all in one day. She loved the majesty of Lehigh until she read the stats (which she looked up herself) about the Greek scene and she loved Muhlenberg because it had much of the feel of Haverford but was classified as a safety for her.
We spent EXACTLY 10 minutes at the schools (timed on our phones) to get a feel and then did the research later about schools that felt about right. Also this quicky tour early in the process helped us to plan future trips – skipping the big fratty schools and focusing on the Muhlenberg/haverford type schools.
great idea @Dustyfeathers about the casual drive-throughs if you’re in the area. I still think, though, that the ED rate can be very misleading at some schools if your child is unhooked; I know that a lot of schools require their legacies to apply ED if they want the bump, and athletes usually apply ED.
The ED rate can be very helpful for some schools so it worth investigating. For example, Elon for 2017-2018 had 378 ED applications and admitted 373. 
@citymama9 Thanks for asking – yes, still love Denison! Kid is definitely challenged by wonderful professors, and has great group of friends, none of whom are in greek life. Feel free to PM me for more specifics – I try not to “oversell” here on CC, but it has been the perfect home for my intellectually curious, athletic, artsy, kid who did not want a homogenous or monochromatic college culture.
I can’t thank you all enough, You’ve all been a tremendous help. So much great information here. I can’t imagine going through this college process without you all.
@Midwestmomofboys Thanks so much. I will definitely pm you before we see the school. So glad to hear your son is having a great experience.
@Dustyfeathers We applied the same technique of using some of those “drive by” looks as we called them just to figure out if it was worth going back and digging deeper. A couple of points to keep in mind when doing this is whether the school is in session or not. Hamilton looked abandoned when we drove through after touring at Colgate. The second point is that some schools, ie Muhlenberg used to really value students contacts. Not sure if this is still true but by simply driving by or stopping and walking around would not put the student on the admissions department radar and not count as an official visit in their eyes. So by all means use these drive by looks to see if it passes the eye test but then do your homework and dig deeper if you think you might be interested.