New Haven is a dreary, sad city but kids at Yale still manage. The South Side of Chicago has really cold weather (and some parts of it are dreary and sad) but U Chicago isn’t lacking for students. Walk two blocks in a certain direction off the U Penn campus and you are in a neighborhood which defines urban blight- and yet the line for Penn wraps around the city.
I’ll give you free advice for kids 2 and 3 (it’s worth what you paid for it, so feel free to ignore)
Find one thing to love about every single school on the list, even if you and your kids have to work a little harder at doing so. This is going to save you from a lot of agony down the road. Even the most mature 18 year old is still mostly a kid, and sometimes can’t see the forest for the trees. It is so easy to fall into the Groucho Marx trap, where only the colleges you can’t afford or won’t admit you are acceptable choices. But a little effort to make even humble U Buffalo attractive can pay off in the long run.
One of my kids had a school on the list (the parent pick- affordable and admittable) which was hard to get excited about- it was a pain to get to, wasn’t in a terribly exciting location, didn’t have the amenities or the sex appeal that some of the other colleges had.
My mantra was “College X- nobody is dropping in unannounced on a Sunday morning!” which the kid LOVED and took up as a rallying cry. I was not interested in adding more colleges of similar ilk, which were more expensive, just to get nicer weather or cooler bars for my underage kid to frequent.
Hope this helps you with 2 and 3!