<p>A mom posted recently about getting a $75.00 parking ticket while making a college visit. It made me think about the visits we made over the eighteen months or so. It begs the question, what did you see/experience during your tour that you liked or disliked? </p>
<p>One thing that surprised me was the student led campus tour. Some of the schools had well-prepared, articulate tour guides while guides at other institutions seemed silly or ill-at-ease speaking in front of a group.</p>
<p>Cornell. Tour guide was a sweet and well-informed rising junior. She was wearing pearls. Did admissions tell their guides to dress as if for a dinner date? Are the majority of students wealthy? I immediately wondered if my d would fit in. This dressiness wasn’t representative of the other students we saw, but as far as making us feel comfortable, it didn’t work. </p>
<p>What do you think?</p>
<p>Everybody on every tour wants to see a typical dorm room, and they usually don’t show you one. The only place I recall seeing one was NYU.</p>
<p>Just MHO, but I would have been more comfortable with the pearls/over-dressiness than some of the attire we saw floating around campus one warm spring day. Geepers, girls, put some clothes on.</p>
<p>My favorite was the tour we had at a school with a strong agriculture program. The sweet young tour guide, shook her curls and chirped, “before I came to X, I thought horticulture had to do with horses!” Needless to say, darling son did not apply.</p>
<p>The Georgetown guy was wearing the male equivalent to pearls - a button up shirt, bermuda shorts and topsiders. It did make my long-haired son concerned that it might be too preppy. He did apply and didn’t get in so it ended up being a moot question.</p>
<p>I thought the room where they did the info session at Stanford was too nice - it looked very corporate. I really prefer a little shabbiness in my colleges!</p>
<p>Our second tour at Tufts was given by a young woman from China. There were several choices of who to go on tour with and her tour group was by far the smallest because (I suspect) she had a fairly strong accent. I thought she was fine, and not that hard to understand really, I shared a house with a Chinese grad student though, as well as living for years overseas so I’m pretty used to foregin accents. It was interesting to get her perspective and to see which parts of the tour were identical to the previous one. Most of the families who did go on that tour were internationals.</p>
<p>The Asian accent was a real problem for us at Knox. The guide seemed very pleasant but, not only did she speak too fast, but her accent was heavy and very hard to understand.</p>
<p>Probably the strongest requirement for that particular job is ability to communicate well. To my mind, that automatically rules out heavy accents of any kind.</p>
<p>Liked: free ice cream cone at the end of the UWisc-Madison tour!!</p>
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<p>IMO, pearls aren’t a signifier of wealth – esp when for all you know, they were $20 fakes from the mall. They’re a signifier of someone who knows how to portray a polished, elegant / refined look – frankly, shouldn’t every young adult know how to do that when appropriate? But not “wealth” per se.</p>
<p>Our Mount Holyoke guide was clearly someone from a privileged background – not showy at all, but you could tell by the way she carried herself, spoke, experiences she’d had, etc. I don’t see why that would be a turnoff – there were all different types of girls clearly evident on campus, and this guide was obviously a campus leader who was going places. Not everyone has to be purple-spike-hair-push-the-envelope or rolled-out-of-bed-slob. And I don’t think subtle wealth should be intimidating – otherwise, you’re going to have a hard time at any elite college, IMO.</p>
<p>My S and the other boys loved the fresh out of the oven chocolate chip cookies at Brandeis – very friendly staff.</p>
<p>Still disappointed about a really bad tour guide at Haverford which soured my son – enough that I’ve sent him back for another visit, but first impressions die hard.</p>
<p>GWU guide for the Mt Vernon campus was ditzy.
Gtown, Bryn Mawr, and Mt Holyoke were the best we’ve seen – followed closely by Brandeis and Wellesley.</p>
<p>Tufts ran a disorganized office – they were overwhelmed by the sheer # of students (this was spring break) and it wasn’t helped by a rainy day; nonetheless, S enjoyed the tour and right now it’s his first choice.</p>
<p>I like when I get a real sense of place and orientation on tours – starting from a central green, that type of thing.</p>
<p>One of my client families took a tour where the airhead guide bragged about the international student body and all the different countries they came from: “Japan, Honduras, Hawaii [!!]…” They stopped listening at that point.</p>
<p>At Loyola (Maryland) our tour guide was a freshman girl who hadn’t outgrown high school “umm, yeahs” and hair flipping. :rolleyes: We couldn’t bear to hold a conversation.</p>
<p>Our biggest lesson from college tours ended up being to avoid open house days. Thery’re chaotic mob scenes with tour groups trying to avoid each other. For D we will definitely be planning on “appointment” style visits.</p>
<p>Oh - don’t go on and on about how you magically swipe the card and it lets you in everywhere. We know. And we also get that the emergency blue lights mean that the campus police respond.</p>
<p>We also had a ditzy guide at GWU, who earnestly went around one dorm pestering her friends to let our group into their room. Of course, the person who let us in was someone who didn’t give a hoot about who saw his room. Not a good impression.</p>
<p>The guide with the pearl necklace at Cornell was an anomaly. My son and his roommate used to complain about the casualness of the girls at Cornell (and how the Ithaca College girls looked so much better!) I had to point out that they saw the Cornell girls from early morning on while the Ithaca girls were usually there at night for a party. Big difference in effort. Believe me, overdressing is not typical of Cornell.</p>
<p>I loved the session at Virginia, where a young graduate of the school gave a lengthy and interesting talk completely off the cuff, and hated the presentation at Georgetown, a bored admissions rep reading off Powerpoint slides. Thanks, but we can read.</p>
<p>Negatives for me- These were actually seen at a few schools we toured:</p>
<p>Broken glass/beer bottles and other garbage on the ground, red cups laying in front yards immediately off campus on week-end mornings, dorms that I would never consider having my child live in (two them were redone the following year, but the idea that the college would even house students in those for the last 20 years made me scratch those schools from our list). One small school with only 2 families at the info session focused on an international student (apparently wealthy), and gave us the cold shoulder!!!</p>
<p>Our best tour was Cornell and was led by a recent grad and a freshman engineering student. Classes were over for the year and they were both just as happy as they could be.</p>
<p>Our worst was Georgetown where the young woman was dressed very scantily and her “freshman helper” talked only about the food. Oh, and when I tried to tip the taxi driver, he said for me to keep it. I would need it if DD chose Georgetown.</p>
<p>And I hesitate to post this because it will make ME look stupid; however, we had a terrible time finding Lehigh. After driving around the area down by the river for what seemed like forever, my DD turned to me and said: “If I have to go here, I am not going to college.” She did not apply even though her impression improved somewhat after we did find it and she went on thetour.</p>
<p>Wow - we had a terrific info session AND tour at Gtown, enough that we emailed the school to compliment them on the young man who led the tour. Just goes to show.</p>
<p>American U: the adcom person was not well spoken / articulate at all, and I didn’t like the continued chip-on-the-shoulder references to Georgetown. We all knew the presence of Gtown was the elephant in the room – talk about what YOU have to offer, please, instead of cutting them down, which looks petty.</p>
<p>
That was almost our exact experience of Bard. We somehow drove past the turn off ended up quite a ways north of campus and were directed back on tiny back roads through farmland. It just emphasized how much in the middle of nowhere it was.</p>
<p>The Georgetown tour was such a turn-off for my morally conservative daughter that she just about crossed Georgetown off her list. Everyone seemed to think that it was a great school for what she wanted (languages), so because we are close, we went down to visit again and she had a wonderful visit with a department chair. She did apply and was accepted, but in the end went elsewhere.</p>
<p>Negative:
<ol>
<li><p>Spending too much time in an area where no one in the group has expressed interest.</p></li>
<li><p>Referring to a building on the left when it is on the group’s right.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I think the best tour guides are the more experienced ones. They have a better idea what visitors are interested in and usually have broader knowledge about their schools.</p>
<p>About dress-- it gives prospective students an idea about whether she will fit in, but the prospective student needs to remember that the tour guide is not necessarily typical. (It can be reassuring if the tour guide doesn’t fit the stereotype for the school, at least if the prospective student doesn’t match the stereotype.)</p>
<p>About the tours: 1. Provide an orientation to the campus layout. 2. Include, but go light on the gee-whiz or nifty things (historical or beautiful buildings, technology, and specialized facilities) because not everybody will have the same level of interest. 3. How students use spaces-- for example, what are the good or popular places to study or take a break from studying?</p>
<p>U Rochester - had almost a private tour. Guide was incredibly friendly, open and talked to us about everything we wanted to know. Couldn’t see a dorm room though.</p>
<p>Case Western - again, almost a private tour. Had three girls give us the tour - they took turns in giving us information. D thought that all three were kind of “weird” - and wondered why the school didn’t have presentable guides take us on the tour. The info session was good - the tour didn’t leave us with that great of an impression.</p>
<p>Cornell - very energetic freshman guide - loud and clear, could be heard by the big group. Her enthusiasm was great to see.</p>
<p>CMU - incredibly boring info session. Speaker used a monotone voice throughout the presentation, read from the slides and gave absolutely no new information. Tour guides though were really good - they handled a big group well - talked loudly and clearly and kept it moving all the time. Seemed very practiced.</p>
<p>Lehigh - we didn’t take in an info session/tour - but we drove around campus. On a friday evening in the summer. D took one look at the hilly deserted campus + the not-so-good neighborhood surrounding the school and that was that - it is now off her list!</p>