<p>you can’t replace a college visit in my humble opinion. A school may look great on paper, but that means little when a prospective applicant actual walks the campus & interacts with people.</p>
<p>Both my college age kids, when formulating their lists & winnowing them down, used the visits as their main focal point. Hard to distinguish which part of the visit (tour, info session, just walking around, interview, overnight w/ friends in some cases) is best or worst. The point is that all of these 1st hand interactions are very important in forming an opinion, much better than reading a guidebook, chatting with friends, or watching a video. My kids would definitely not have considered or selected their institutions (& be happy about it) if they hadn’t visited…and for their respective selected schools, they each visited twice before deciding, but at least once before applying.</p>