For us, we’ve decided that we are in this for a 4-year commitment so even if we lose the full experience first semester (worst case scenario I think at the moment) then it’s still worth it to us.
Where the c-19 situation played into the equation is in us having to rethink through the financial implications as I suddenly lost all income for the next 6 months at least, so we had to make sure we can make that work still financially.
Also, the lack of revisits really put schools we hadn’t visited at a big disadvantage over schools we had visited during interviews for us. Still, in this virtual revisit world, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how much we HAVE been able to learn about some of the schools. Honestly some have done an excellent job! In fact, if we didn’t already have a few options we had visited in the fall that we loved, I think we would probably be sending DD to one of the schools we never visited.
That said, if I had never visited a boarding school at all, I might be more reticent. But having seen 12 of them in person already, it does become easier for me to fill in the blanks for the stuff we can’t see during the virtual visits.
Also, as @Golfgr8 (I think?) says (I believe quoting HK?): we aren’t sending our kids to a school. We are sending them to people. I am spending a lot of time getting to know the people at all of our options.
Last thought: I’m not sure I would feel the same way if she were disappointed in her options. Meaning — if she hadn’t gotten into her top choices, I could see us just stepping back and waiting again until next year. Or stepping back and letting waitlists play out, because I do think that if someone has a bunch of waitlists, there is a decent chance for major movement this year. (Extra true for FP folks I’m going to guess. I am sure that others are similarly affected financially and if they are in the fence, they may pull back.).
As a parent of an international student, we know well that we can not visit these boarding schools at all this time. Coming from Vietnam, most of the accepted schools in US are better than any in our country, so we are just thinking about financial problems, especially the Coronavirus is impacting badly on the economy in our country.