My kid thought they wanted a big school, and then while on a tour she said "college is scary!" Shifted to mid-size schools.

One kid wanted an elite school in the Northeast corridor, but applied to a few Midwestern schools that were good fits. The other kid preferred a big public school in the south, but applied to a couple Midwestern schools that were good fits. Both ended up doing well at schools in the Midwest. They ended up being easier to get into & having lower net prices.

My kid's preference hasn't changed since he was 12. Totally depends on the child.

Kid #1: similar to a PP, the basics stayed the same in what he wanted. He never fell in love with any school, and didn't make up his mind until April 30 that year. He's a junior at that college now and doing fine.

Kid #2: she fell in love with a school her sophomore year, she's still in love with it now in her junior year, and I don't see it changing before she submits applications this Fall.

Almost nothing stick until summer before senior year. It wasn’t real yet.

Kid #1: Had a strong gut preference. Kept an open mind and did apply to a variety of "types" of schools, but came back to the gut preference and enrolled.

Kid #2: Started with a very open mind. Looked much farther from home than Kid #1. Thought she wanted small. Ultimately picked mid-size and much closer to home than she had anticipated.

For my kid, the basics stuck. For him that was mid-size, suburban setting.

But his intended major changed, his desire to continue to play his sport in college changed.

I'm glad we started tours in his sophomore year, we didn't have to jam them all in later, plus covid came his HS junior year, just as all of his friends were about to do whirlwind spring break tours and all were cancelled.

We started touring early and DS just committed to one of the first schools we visited. He didn’t even apply to the others we visited that year.

He was invited to paid campus visits but didn’t make it through the admissions process at two schools. One did a formal academic pre-read that he passed and the visits went well but he didn’t meet “institutional priorities”. They didn’t let on about this until they had taken up a lot of his time and gotten him excited about attending.

I actually think attending visits as a sophomore is better because it’s more driven by the student/family.

Don’t take how the people you meet at the tours treat your student as gospel. Apply widely.

I think the more information gathered through tours, the more they can really figure out what they are looking for in a college.

My kid changed so much between sophomore year and senior fall. His tastes and preferences and attitudes and interests changed a lot. But, it was still useful to start looking at in-state and affordable schools that he might be able to get in starting in sophomore year.

He wasn’t able to register much or make sophisticated observations as a sophomore, but I was. I encouraged him to keep an open mind.

The school we toured first early in HS is the school my kid is attending. Kid had a very strong sense of what felt right, which didn’t change throughout the process.

Almost nothing stuck from sophomore year. Schools we saw that kid loved, kid didn’t love by senior year. Same with schools seen and disliked. Kid applied to those with interest.

My kids' preferences changed, even from the beginning of senior year to the end. We had a mix of sizes, distances and public/privates on the lists.

I wouldn't worry about distance at this point. That part may change with maturity (or not, both of mine wanted to be within a 4 hr drive). Just focus on general characteristics.

My kids were pretty clear early on in their preferences and did not change -- no cities, one wanted big and the other small.

We are doing the first official tours with my sophomore this spring. We were on a trip that passed by a school that seems like a potential match, so we toured there, and are also looking at a couple local schools.

Kid's reaction to the school we toured was basically "I liked everything about the school. But I don't want to be that far away from home."

I am wondering how much impressions from this point stick. Do kids who want to stay close to home at 16, feel that way at 18? What about kids who want small schools at 16?