<p>We did a somewhat similar tour in February to get a feel of the Pacific Northwest during the rainy season. Although we wanted to go to Whitman, we decided it was just too far out of the way for us. Overall, I would say my D’s impressions of the schools were generally predominated with the people we met at the different schools. I really wanted her to like Reed, but she thought the people were too intense (even though I tried to select what appeared to be the most “normal” of the three tour guides). She really, really wanted to like Lewis & Clark, but the number of people smoking, the freshman tour guide and the torrential downpour did not help out. Willamette (despite the massive downpour getting from the car to the admissions office) went from a “probably not” to a “I’d be happy attending here” mostly based on having lunch with a current student assigned to us from the admissions office and a great tour guide. As you can tell, her interest is in small LACs so we didn’t end up at any of the bigger schools. University of Puget Sound also ended up as a possibility but lower on the list than Willamette.</p>