<p>Best: St. Olaf. The tour guide was exceptionally knowledgeable.</p>
<p>Surprisingly good: Santa Clara. One tour guide for a very large group, and he did a great job.</p>
<p>Among the best: Rochester. (I’ve done that one twice now.) I think the tour did an excellent job of hitting the highlights and giving a sense or what the campus is like. Or maybe it’s just that UR has my favorite library.</p>
<p>Breakneck speed: MIT, but it was interesting and I enjoyed the student speaker in the information session.</p>
<p>It was pouring when we toured Princeton, so we got an “archways” tour. They also gave us a free poncho, which we did not open. The tour was not exceptional for what it included, but the tour guide left me with a very favorable impression of Princeton.</p>
<p>Best: Hamilton College. Really good tour guide, everyone there seemed happy. I only took the tour because it was convenient, but I walked away extremely impressed. </p>
<p>I also really liked the Dartmouth tour, but I had fallen in love with the school before the tour even began. I don’t think it had a huge influence on me.</p>
<p>I had a wonderful tour guide at UVA a couple years ago when I went with my brother. He was class president, really enthusiastic about the school, and he brought his group to his dorm room, which was one of the really nice ones on the quad (I’m blanking on it but I’m pretty sure UVA has its own name for it). </p>
<p>I love Stanford as a school, but I was suprised at how abysmal the tour guide was. They don’t suffer fools gladly there, but the tourguide seemed… dim. I had expected them to be awesome, given that my reasonably charming brother was rejected by the tour guide program, but we only went in a tiny circle on campus, and didn’t talk about most of the landmarks I knew we were passing. </p>
<p>I think it’s important to walk around the campus a bit on your own, because the tour guides are not always a representative sample of the population, and it’s important to check whether the students actually look happy, not harried or miserable, especially at the more elite schools.</p>
<p>What makes a good tour? Are you only asking about the quality of the tour guide?
I think a good tour is dependent on the college itself. If you are simply disinterested or the campus looks uninspiring, even the best tour guide won’t make the whole experience stand out.</p>
<p>Agreed … but, to me, the most interesting observation after visiting a ton of schools is just how great the choices our kids have are. I’ve been to about 30 schools over the last couple of years and there are only 2 (I think) that really turned me off totally. There were lots of others that didn’t draw me but I certainly get why they would draw others (for example, urban schools while I like sprawling campuses). We’ve been to schools rangin from top tier national schools to low end private and public schools here in Mass and I continue to come home and say … wow, that was better than I expected and I can see kids being very happy at that school. For any one kid finding the right type of place (city-rural, big-small, right level of students, right majors) is a challenge … but I’m also coming to the conlcusion that there are a ton of schools (like 100+) for any individual student … the trick is not finding THE school but one of the many-many fine options for each student.</p>
<p>Nicely said 3togo. This is my first time through the college search. After our recent visits, daughter also realized she needs to look beyond the name/prestige/ranking of a school and at a wider range of factors. Her college list has changed, and she realized now she really does want catholic/engineering. As she said, it’s about what I think, not what some magazine that ranks colleges thinks!</p>
<p>We have been on four tours so far and my favorite tour guide was at Texas A&M. He told a really bad “Twilight” joke but other than that he was very informative and enthusiastic about his school while taking the time to show us the inside of several different style of dorm rooms.<br>
My favorite tour was the OU (University of Oklahoma) where they not only did a beautiful job on the tour showing the insides of several buildings including dorm rooms, but asked each student to introduce themselves telling what their interest (major) was and then pointed out each building of interest to each student. OU did in fact pass out ice cold OU water bottles to each person before we started our tour and gave out free t-shirts at the end. Oh, and they paid for our parking also! At the University of Tulsa today we got a free lunch on campus AND a t-shirt! I think the t-shirts are a wonderful perk! UT, A&M did not give anything and you had to pay for parking!</p>
<p>For my own interest, what was wrong with the RC tour? I live right down the street from RC and know it has been going through some tough times. If they are doing tours wrong they need to know that.</p>
<p>We went on tours twice, on two separate visits. Our first tour guide was sick, AND she had a big group. Because she was sick, it was hard to hear & she wasn’t very enthusiastic or awake. I know they couldn’t help it, but it was a little frustrating. The second tour wasn’t bad; I had a bad overnight visit beforehand and I wasn’t feeling very generous toward the college. The only real tour problem was with coordination of multiple tours all going at once - we kept running into other groups and standing around, waiting in an uncomfortable silence. But, it really wasn’t a tour problem. RC just wasn’t the right fit at all for me.</p>
<p>Among the LACs we visited, Grinnell’s was the best: We had our own personal tour guide who targeted his tours to S’s interests (even though S was a science guy and he wasn’t). He really knew the school and the town and recommended where to eat. And the interviewer was so nice-it lasted over an hour-he was sold by the time he left.</p>
<p>The worst was at Yale over spring break-they clearly hadn’t anticipated the crowds (Why not, I wonder? Surely, they have given tours over spring break before) and had to recruit guides at the last minute, so we all stood around waiting. We were still a crowd of 50 per guide and could barely hear what was being said. The guide was enthusiastic but we felt we had really wasted our time.</p>
<p>Best tours were at Lehigh and the University of Rochester. Both guides were great and the tours were very complete.
Best info session was at Tufts which featured a guy from the admissions office who presented an hour-long comedy/info session.</p>
<p>Worst session: The College of New Jersey which treated 800 high school juniors as if they were just starting the process. Note to TCNJ: if the kids are in the audience for a visiting day, they already know how to search for colleges.</p>
The only real tour problem was with coordination of multiple tours all going at once - we kept running into other groups and standing around, waiting in an uncomfortable silence. But, it really wasn’t a tour problem. RC just wasn’t the right fit at all for me.</p>