Zillow, the website that can estimate how much your house is worth, released a survey earlier this year that suggested that Americans only spend five hours researching mortgages.

Americans devote about the same amount of time planning vacations. It’s significantly less time than the 10 hours that consumers devote to buying a car.

That made me wonder how many hours parents and teens spend researching colleges?

I’m not talking about all the days, months and even years that families STRESS about college. I’m curious about how many hours families spend researching schools.

I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around how many hours that I spent! I visited 21 colleges with my daughter over a one-year period and I think I saw 14 colleges with my son Ben. Visiting colleges, however, is just one part of the research. I happen to think it’s the funnest part.

I’d love to hear what people think is an appropriate amount of time to research colleges. Any thoughts?

If you’re wondering how you should be researching schools, here are a few of my past college blog posts that could help:

10 College Websites For Finding Great Schools

Finding a Great College in Your Region

10 Secrets of America’s Best Colleges

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution, an Amazon best seller, and she also writes for CBSMoneyWatch. Follow her on Twitter.