Universities will often let admitted students visit, sometimes overnighting with a host who is a current student, before they enroll. You can also take your kids to visit, take a tour, etc. Visits are especially helpful if your kids' choice set includes liberal arts colleges, which can have pretty unique cultures and be hard to rank (e.g., Reed College used to publicly spar with US News and was always under-ranked, St John's College is a totally unique educational model, etc.). And there a plethora of books with short blurbs explaining the character of different universities.
The truth is most college bound kids in the US go to the best state school that they get into. Maybe, for example, they choose Virginia Tech over Virginia if they are interested in engineering. But there's often not a ton of thought put into it. I'm glad you're thinking deeper about this though.