the answer to that question is “it depends.” 
It depends on what colleges are on the student’s potential list.
For my kid (other people’s mileage may vary on this), it meant eliminating schools like:
- Evergreen State College in WA. Wouldn’t have been on the list anyway for long because it’s ‘too cold.’
- Reed College in OR. Like Evergreen, though, this wouldn’t have ended up on the list anyway because it was in the ‘too cold’ category.
- Columbia. But it’s too expensive, too cold, and they’d never accept her anyway. The political culture was a firm no.
- Any other college that “feels like” any of the above.
- Any college that has conservative rules like no people of the opposite gender in your dorm room without the door open, campus culture & policies which encourage students to snitch on each other for honor code violations.
- Any college that has mandatory attendance to church or chapel each week.
- Any college with a strong protest march culture
- Any college in the South where the campus culture & social life is dominated by Greek life (i.e., where 50% or more students are in a frat or sorority)
For D24, she ended up at an LAC in Texas. Students there are pretty chill, very accepting. There’s strong diversity there, people from all different backgrounds attend, strong support for 1st gen students. Not a big protest culture there. When there’s hot topics going on in the outside world, the faculty & administration organize formal debate & discussions in the biggest lecture hall on campus so everybody can respectfully discuss the hot topic and exchange ideas and listen to each other. To me, feels fairly libertarian with the vibe of “you & I are different but we can also find some common ground & although we don’t practice the same religion as each other & don’t vote for the same people, we can still hang out, get to know each other, and have a good time together. You want to go get some pizza?”
the other 2 LACs D24 applied to felt very similar.