What you can judge without having been there

More than you think. Whether an institution answers questions straight. Whether the money adds up. Whether somebody is being pressured. Whether an adviser has something to gain. Whether your child sounds like they are describing their own plan or repeating somebody else's. None of that requires having attended a university in this country.

What you genuinely cannot judge from experience is the mechanics — how the application works here, what the grades mean, what the credential is worth in this market. The useful move is to separate the two out loud, so that you can be firm about the first without being dragged into arguments about the second.