Share your suggestions for evaluating schools without seeing them in person

@Publisher - for US, the handbooks factored into who we applied to. Suffice it to say, based on fit, including info we learned in the handbooks, two of the three you mentioned didn’t make it into our “apply” pile. Does that equate to us turning them down? Shrug.

I will say, we would have been happy to have kiddo to go to any of the schools to which he had the good fortune to be accepted. Reading the handbooks after the fact would maybe help make fine distinctions between schools, but not help on determining whether the overall vibe is the best for kiddo. There is nothing like being on campus for that.

The question is what people can do to help make a choice if a visit isn’t possible, though. All I am saying is handbooks helped us compare and contrast. Honestly, the academics are all stellar at the schools you listed, so you have to find something else to go by. Manuals were a wealth of information for us. Ymmv