I only did this for one school, but at the college I went to I was able to sit in on a class or two when I was visiting it before attending. You might need to ask for permission, but I'd imagine most professors/teachers would be happy to have people listen in. And more schools are recording classes and making them available on YouTube, so you can get a sense of the teacher's style.

Another thing one can do is, instead of picking a school, pick professors. Consider what majors the student might study, look at what professors are there, and look at things like what books they've written, have they written any interesting blog posts about their teaching, and that sort of thing.

Both of these approaches take more time than scanning a rankings, but it actually resembles much more closely how other decisions we make in life operate.

> some arbitrary evaluation function...

I think "wanting an Ivy" is a bit arbitrary, but wanting a small vs. a large school, or a school a certain distance from home, can lead to a very different experience over the course of 4 years.