To visit or not to visit?

When it comes to applying to colleges across the country, every senior and their family has a strategy. For Emma, waiting to visit colleges after she received acceptances just felt practical. After all, she spent the summer before her senior year working a paid internship with Intel and writing her common application essay. Between writing more supplements, playing volleyball, and juggling her honors classes in the fall, letting the college acceptances introduce and eliminate her real options gave her just a bit of breathing room.

But when Emma received acceptances into honors colleges from Oregon to Vermont and more acceptances from schools like Boston University and Brandeis, she felt more confused than ever. 

With merit scholarships ranging from $6000 (UO and OSU) to $20,000 (Brandeis) to $23,000 (UVT) per year, and the WUE scholarship at Colorado State, she didn't know how to pick. “After hearing back from all my schools, I wasn’t...