Money Saver: Visit Colleges Virtually

With the average cost of a four-year college hovering around $25,000 a year, parents are looking for new ways to cut costs and minimize debt.

Enter virtual college tours. Since colleges and universities started offering online tours, more than 45% of American adults have utilized the service, according to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Here are the five Web sites for your virtual college visits.

Campus Tours: Search alphabetically, by state, or by name to find which schools are included. In addition to videos, prospective students can view school demographics, tuition, majors offered and admission requirements. Still interested? You can even request an application directly through the site.

Ecampus Tours: Pick a state and search online to discover if your college choice is one of the 1,200 schools available for a virtual campus tour. Wake Forest University, the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Texas are just a few schools you can visit online.

CollegiateChoice.com: This Web site provides DVD walking tours of campuses, but for a fee. For $15 per tour (plus $6 shipping for one to five videos/$10 for six to 10) students can choose from over 350 colleges and universities worldwide, including Oxford University, The University of California, Berkeley and Harvard University. DVD tours run between 42 minutes and two hours.

CollegeClickTV: Click the colleges with videos tab to browse the available list of video tours. You can also sort by rank, state and size to make it even easier to find a school that meets your preferences. Carnegie Mellon, Duke University, and the University of Chicago are among over 200 public and private schools with videos online.