<p>Although it is a seller's market at the schools we've visited, I agree that schools do themselves a real disservice when they don't present themselves well. An uninformed tour guide (Our Princeton guide, though clearly very intelligent and personable, couldn't answer some basic questions outside of his areas of expertise.) or, at one school, a horrendously self-important admission rep who repeatedly misused and made up words to the point that the younger sib, who had been pretty bored on the college trek, was finally so amused that he could barely contain himself, probably had a stronger influence than they should have. On the other hand, we all fell in love with a school where a couple of relatively minor shortcomings in the presentation had no effect whatsoever on D; she was so enamored that she didn't even notice, whereas at schools she didn't like as well, these same things would have been the kiss of death. It's so hard to make such an important decision based on what might be completely unrepresentative, brief encounters. But at least we came away with the sense that D could be happy at a number of different schools, a couple of them in the safety/match category, and that was a huge relief!</p>