I watched this video!! 
Too bad the main dining hall might be closed -but they can use their meal swipes at a few other places on campus (which seems unusual ? not sure). Hoping we might grab something at the on campus Mediterranean place.
Clearly your kid must have liked it! Anything that made this a ‘yes’ versus other options?
I completely loved it–I thought it had one of the best locations of any college I have ever seen, and it is all right there because the campus is so compact.
And then my S24 was like, nope, I want more of a campus.
So who knows, but that does make the visits fun!
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On the other hand, my son was totally freaked out at the idea of eating in a dining hall with actual students, so we never did. He also didn’t want to sit in on classes and never did that either. Nonetheless, he found exactly the right school for him. There’s no “ideal” way to visit a school, and it’s important to follow your kid’s lead to some extent. In our case, there would have been no benefit to pushing our son out of his comfort zone and it would have made it harder for him to focus on how the school felt to him. So we just did info sessions and tours, which we all found helpful, and he also met with the coaches for his sport whenever possible. That was helpful in providing a different perspective, and maybe some other kids could accomplish the same thing meeting with a professor.
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Totally agreed.
Between us, I am actually somewhat skeptical about how much you can really predict about what your life will be like as a student from ANY visit, no matter how you plan it. But what I think is really useful is for the kid to feel as excited as possible about wherever they do end up attending.
OK, so with that goal in mind, you are looking to end up with a reasonable list of colleges that the kid would be excited about attending. And if some preconceived visit formula or agenda or whatever detracts from that goal, that to me is not helping.
So yes, absolutely, let the kid guide you about what they would find to be a potentially positive visit experience. And then if they don’t like it anyway, great, off the list, there are always more.
That being said, some kids are pretty open to whatever, and some are like my kid and really want the parent to do all the hard work of figuring out what to do so they can just go along for the ride and react. So I think parents can fruitfully share tips sometimes about things to consider, but in the end the kid should be the decider–when they want to be.
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We always grabbed a copy of the student newspapers/publications when we visited campuses. Even during the summer there were old issues available outside almost every student center. These publications can give you an insight into student culture, what issues come up during the year, etc.
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@tsbna44 is right on the money with all three suggestions. If you can’t find a college kid to talk to, if you don’t feel comfortable on the campus, those are real data points. That’s why you should write down all your impressions right away. The good data is anecdata in this case, and over time you’ll start spotting trends in your impressions. My oldest DD was sure she wanted one whole set of things (medium large, not urban, lots of resources) but her notes told a very different story. So after a few visits she tossed the original criteria and just started saying she was open to anything.
Also Mac is in St Paul and it shouldn’t be too intimidating to find someone to talk to. Maybe see if Admissions can find someone in your intended department to chat about things. We were on one tour of the theater space at one school and glommed onto someone who turned out to be a music prof who told us all about the music opportunities for non-majors. Scatter your chats widely and you’ll find serendipity all over the place.
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He loves how compact the campus is and its urban location. Other options he had included a bit larger public (UNC and W&M, we had Match Madness at home, Parents of the HS Class of 2024 (Part 2) - #1671 by nmknh). So it wasn’t comparing among similar sized LACs. Which city/state played much larger role for S24. For example, he was not interested schools in west coast or southern states (we live in NC.)
Here are few thoughts I shared about campus visit in MN:
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All really good points. We know one or two data points (small classes, close connections with professors) from her current experience with a specialized academic program --but the rest? Location, campus size, even Greek life --those are all just guesses at this point.
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