AMHERST, Mass. – It seems like only yesterday when Ben was pretending to be a Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtle or looking for Woody Woodpecker in the big tree behind our house.

Now, like many other families of high school juniors, we were off with him on a traditional spring break venture, looking at a string of Northeastern colleges on the first of several such outings.

The trip brought back memories of similar expeditions with my older children, as well as the very different process in my own time. I recall visiting several schools, none of which I got into, before discovering in August – after my high school graduation – that I was going to attend one I never had seen, Cornell.

Fortunately, the experience turned out to be positive – I studied government and minored in The Cornell Daily Sun. That convinced me one can worry too much about a decision that is as much guesswork and good luck as rational analysis.

Add to this the experience of my wife, Susan Page. She applied to one college (Northwestern), got in and did well – further reason to be low key about this.

Ben, however, has spent hours poring over collegiate Web sites on the Internet, debating the merits of schools with his friends and reading piles of unsolicited brochures he got in the mail.

The itinerary, for the most part, consisted of small liberal arts schools that seemed like collegiate versions of his high school.

While Ben was eager, his ninth-grade brother, Will, was a somewhat unwilling participant in this FFO (Fun Family Outing). We headed off open rebellion by bribing him with at least one book or T-shirt at every college bookstore on our itinerary; it is hard to complain when the main thing your child wants is another book.

Ben is a good student with good test scores, but the first stop underscored the environment he will face.

It was Swarthmore College in suburban Philadelphia, a beautiful and excellent school that showed poor judgment 48 years ago in putting me on its waiting list. There, we encountered a classmate (there are only 54 in his class), Ben’s eighth-grade science teacher and her son, and at least two others from Washington schools, underscoring the fevered competition for places in these colleges.

The young woman who showed us around was so positive about Swarthmore that I felt compelled to break my rule that parents should be seen and not heard to ask what, if anything, was wrong with Swarthmore. Citing her family’s Republican roots, she said it perhaps was a little too liberal.

Later that day, at nearby Haverford College, we encountered another classmate and someone from Ben’s driver education class. At Connecticut’s Wesleyan University, we ran into a prominent Democratic politician, shepherding his 11th-grade daughter.

By Thursday, the schools were blending together. So was our negative reaction to student guides, who all seemed to have studied the art of positive spin at the Bush White House.

At both Wesleyan and Tufts, we were told how terrific the food was. Surely, things haven’t changed that much. All teachers were described as accessible to students. All campus life was fun. All experiences were stimulating. No one had much difficulty in getting desired courses.

Still, we made progress in trimming the list. At Brandeis, in the Boston suburbs, we were turned off by crowded living conditions and the way the guide boasted about the ease of avoiding academic requirements.

At Tufts, we learned that, for our $35,000-plus per year, Ben could take a course about the White House press office, taught by a midlevel Clinton press aide.

And as we drove west toward Hampshire College, a re-reading of its literature prompted us to drop the visit and instead check out Amherst.

Though Ben steadfastly has ruled out any school attended by a parent or sibling, he seemed interested in Brown, where my cousin teaches French history.

In August, we will visit the Midwestern versions of the schools we saw this week.

Ultimately, Ben will decide where to go – or the schools will decide for him. If he doesn’t like his choice, he can transfer. Fortunately, we have no doubt: He will do well wherever he goes. Which is all a parent can hope for.

Carl P. Leubsdorf is Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News.