I’m going through this with my son now. The point of the visits we’ve made so far has been to evaluate the “fit” as far as teaching styles and social atmosphere, along with the size of the college. We’ve visited big and small and he is finding he prefers the smaller schools. I don’t think he would have known that without actually going to them. I also told him to check out the students - could he see himself hanging out with them? Was there at least one group of kids at the cafeteria or library that he would be comfortable sitting with? Was he comfortable with the general “Vibe” of the campus? At some point in all but the first visit, I’ve let him go off on his own with the tour group after awhile with the hope that it would be easier to get a realistic feeling of being there on his own.
We’ve visited 5 so far, all different from each other with the first one continuing to be his favorite and the last one now his second favorite. Living in New England, it’s pretty easy to find good schools within a reasonable drive time. I told him we don’t have to visit every one he’s interested in! At this point, he has a feel for different types of campuses and if he decides to apply to somewhere we haven’t been, we’ll visit before making a final decision.
I’m glad we’ve done the visits, it has been helpful to both of us, but I don’t think we’ll do many more.