Not at the undergraduate level you don’t. Even if a 17-year-old did manage to figure out concretely which set of traditions they preferred, it’d be difficult for them to accurately evaluate which way a department (particularly an undergraduate-only department, like at a SLAC) leaned. An undergrad education is supposed to give students a broad foundation in philosophy, with thoughts from both traditions; only after exposure to the readings and thinking in the field would a student even be able to formulate an opinion about which tradition they fell more in. (And some philosophers argue that the distinction is arbitrary, anyway.)
Philosophical Gourmet gives great advice for selecting an undergrad college.