When you tour a school, the first thing to remember is bring a pen and paper with you. You're probably going to have a moment where you say, "This is the school," or you are going to go, "This is not the school." Either way, you want to jot down what happened at that moment because you could use that on your application. A couple things you want to look for while you are on a tour. First, you want to see if the school demonstrates the values and the characters they talk about in their literature. What does that look like in the classroom? The other thing you want to look at is what the students are doing in the upper grades. Are they showing a mastery of reading and writing and how it is demonstrated. Does it agree with your philosophy on education. The third thing you want to look for is, look to see how the teachers are supported. A private school that has the teachers that stay for five, six, seven years, is a school who really knows how to support their teachers and allows them to continuously learn and keep them excited in the classroom