Visiting colleges (part 3) - Where to go

• Where to go: multiple colleges per day. At the risk of sounding like a glutton for punishment, it's worth going to at least two colleges per day to get the comparative opinions flowing.
  
  It's not "easy" to do this, it can be a little overwhelming to see College A in the morning and College B in the afternoon. But it forces the student to start thinking about what they liked more at College A. Unless the student knows in advance exactly what he/she wants, this will be very useful.
  
  It's probably worth going to at least one aspirational school and one safety school, as well as multiple schools the student expects to be able to get into. Urban/rural, large/small, homogenous/diverse, artsy/techie -- it's worth exploring all of these dimensions. The results can be surprising.
  
  In our case, my daughter realized something she didn't know in advance: she didn't want to go to a school that was small or rural or homogenous.
  
  
• How to go: map out the trip. Google maps makes it very easy to create personalized maps.
  
  For instance, I created "Top Liberal Arts Colleges in the NE" to figure out the locations of about 30 top colleges, which then helped us figure out what was desirable and what was feasible.
  
  I made the map open for collaboration, so anyone can view it as an example or to add to it. To find it, click here or go to Google Maps, click on My Maps in the upper left, and "Browse the directory."