"My dad knows I've got a short attention span," says (Dan) Morrison. "He figured if I took the virtual campus tours on the Internet and watched the videotaped tours given at different colleges, it would help me to eliminate at least a couple schools, without having to go through the aggravation of actually visiting them all in person."

The videotapes, produced by Collegiate Choice Walking Tours of Tenafly, N.J., offer a simple, straight shoot of the actual student-guided and -narrated campus tours at 330 colleges and universities across the country. While the 20- to 130-minute tours won't win any awards for cinematography -- they're basically home videos -- Morrison believes they "convey the flavor of the school, and for just 15 bucks a piece."

"Parents can expect to pay anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000 before their kids ever set foot inside a college classroom," says (Patricia) McDonough, who has spent more than a decade researching the college selection process. "That money is spent on college counselor fees, the $50 or more application fees per school, SAT coaching, guidebooks, and college visitation trips. Actually, it's not uncommon for indecisive students to visit two or three schools two or three times."