April could 
be a stressful month for college-bound students and their parents – a month to choose which college to spend the next four years. Such a decision is weighty for a teenager and more so for the parents. College is expensive in US, the four years of education involve hundreds of thousands dollars even for public school. We don’t make such decision often in our life.
If one gets admitted to more than one college, it is a better problem to solve. As we pared down to 2 to 3 colleges, we made trips to Ann Arbor, Michigan and Seattle, Washington to visit the campus in two weekends. These trips feel like business trips which we want to get as much done as possible in a day or two. The trip itinerary includes hours of walk around the campus with guided tour, “food tasting” at the cafeteria, neighborhood scouting and downtown visit. We also like to talk to the student. Even asking for directions is educational to get a sense on the helpfulness, social maturity and communication skills of the students.
Outside o
f the ‘site’ visit, there is the financial planning. College in US is outrageously expensive with 5-digits spending annually to cover tuition and boarding. If the parents do not provide, the students will be in a six-digit debt the day they graduate from a 4-year public college education. The more economic way to get a degree would be attending a 2-year community college, then transfer to a state college. Or they can crawl through thousands of scholarship opportunities, and that requires a level of motivation and hard work not often found in the teenagers of this generation. For parents who can afford to provide the 4-year, the debt-free students may not empathize the many years of parents’ hardwork to just afford their education.
Is college decision an emotional decision or a rational one? A 17-year old does not approach
decision making in the same way as their parents who are thirty more years older. The beauty of a youth is that they can afford some costly decision. In between supporting a teen’s decision vs dictating a decision, a final decision will be made by May 1st.
As my daughter confirms her college choice, I realize deeply she is leaving home in a few months, and the question echoes ‘have I done everything I can to get her ready?’
oliviatamccue 
I do not recommend skipping college visits (the due diligence of knowing what one is getting into), but do you really believe a few hours of visit would give you sufficient or even some truth to make the best decision? Would a sunny day at Seattle cause you to change your mind? Would a young funny energetic tour guide make you to generalize to the whole student body? Would you be more impressed by a well-rehearsed college tour program of a private school than a unprepared student drafted a couple minutes before the tour of a public school? Nevertheless, you might still find important pieces of the puzzle to help you or your teenager to narrow down the choices. But I tend to believe any choice will work out just fine! The moment you let your teenage to apply to a set of colleges, you have already made an implicit decision to let your teen to pick among them. More likely than not, the mind has been made up at that time – not influenced by the college visits.