I'd guess somewhere around 30 -- nearly all in connection with a prospect day -- starting in freshman year of HS.

We did eight formal tours before November 1 of the year my kid applied. Three in one driving trip and four in another. The last was a quick plane flight. Two reaches, four targets, and two likelies. Plus, early junior year we did an informal swing through three schools near one set of grandparents that represented a large rural state flagship, a less-prestigious state school, and a small liberal arts college so they could get a feel for what size, location, amenities, price point, etc. they were comfortable with. They went to school for 13 years in the same neighborhood as an urban flagship and a highly-selective private, so they had those bases already covered.

We did 10, starting summer after freshman year. She applied to 9 of the 10.

Kid applied to four colleges in-state and we visited three. The fourth tour kept getting canceled due to weather conditions, but an older sibling went to school there so kid has visited the campus a number of times and knows it well.

I think somewhere between 10-12. A couple were summer programs where my student stayed on campus, and others were formal admissions tours and visits.

About 6 per kid. Add a couple more that we drove by and/or didn't seriously consider. (For example, we went to Notre Dame for a football game, but my kids wouldn't have gotten in, so didn't even apply. Love it, though!)

Visited 5. Applied to 4 of them. Then another 5 which we did not visit. Made the visit to the chosen school after acceptance.

Visited five, applied to three of them, hated two. Applied to six without visiting.

Current sophomore and we will do some generic visits around the area this spring for exposure to big, small, urban, suburban but I have a feeling we will do a lot of visits in 11th and fall of 12th. A fit check is going to be really important, and it’s really hard to get that through websites and virtual info sessions. No point in applying to a bunch of schools that might look good on paper but it turns out you wouldn’t want to attend.

Probably 15 in junior year. We spent spring break road tripping. It helped him get excited for the idea of college, rule out several that were originally on his list and pick some favorites. That said, he still applied to a wide variety of schools. Now that he has most of his acceptances in, we're visiting a few not covered the first time and revisiting one. His favorites are complete opposites, so no clue where this will land yet.

We did about 8. But we dragged the younger sibling along, which proved to be efficient. We found visiting colleges very useful since DC was looking to apply ED.

Kid 1 didn’t want to visit any. Kid 2 we have planned visiting 5 or 6.

Anonymous wrote:DC is a junior and we are planning to visit some colleges over spring break. We are trying to visit the ones they are most interested in/ have the stats for, but it feels like they keep adding to the list every day. One friend's advice was not to visit any college before they get accepted, but I feel that is a bit too extreme.
What is a good happy medium of how many colleges to visit before applying?

Oh, jeez - probably 20?

Recommend visiting Philly if kid is not sure what type of environment they want: You can visit Swarthmore, Villanova, Penn, Drexel, Haverford in a short drive to see a variety of campus types

My kid is a junior, and we haven’t done any official tours yet. But we’ve done self-guided tours at a few. My son does not have a list of places he may want to apply— I am trying to get him to engage. I know seniors who toured before applying, but they’re re-visiting the campuses anyway after being accepted.

Quite a few because we planned trips over both sophomore and junior year spring break.

Of all of the schools we saw, DC applied to 3 of them (and ultimately applied to 10 more that they hadn’t seen) Trips were centered around seeming as many different types of schools as possible vs “these are the schools you’re applying to”.