<p>I’m annoyed by the lack of a campus map (not always can get off web site)</p>
<p>“Session will be in the XYZ building”
(Where the H IS the XYZ building?)
“Oh, just ask one of our guides that are around to assist”
(I don’t want to find a guide-just a map,please)</p>
<p>MY D rolls her eyes at this: every school seems to have this-
“It’s tradition that before exams students come here to this (statue,carving,etc) to rub it’s (whatever) for luck.” It seems to be kind of fake, at least it comes across that way.</p>
<p>Good:</p>
<p>Map, showing dorm rooms without us having to beg</p>
<p>Parent: Is there a lot of drinking on campus?</p>
<p>Tour Guide: Well, the upperclassmen can drink, but here in the freshman dorms where I’ll show you a typical room, they’re very strict about drinking. </p>
<p>[insert 2 minute Make Good Choices - We Have Counseling monologue here as we walk into the dorm.]</p>
<p>Tour Guide: Swipes key card, opens door to room, kicks aside empty Bud Lite carton…</p>
<p>At Minnesota the tour guide did the entire thing walking backwards, like most tour guides, but he never once turned around, looked over his shoulder, anything. He walked absolutely straight like he really did have eyes in the back of his head. Up and down flights of stairs, across a busy road, through crowds of people, etc., etc. Son became so enthralled by kid’s ability to walk backward I think he missed half the tour.</p>
<p>I took my son on a UDel tour on an off day. Only 3 groups were present. The rep sat us in a circle after the usual slide show/video, and gave some practical advice regarding the essay. She said something to the effect “if it makes us laugh or it makes us cry, it’s a good essay” with “us” being the admissions committee. She also added not to write about a sports season ending injury, or my summer doing community service in Costa Rica (they get lots of those).</p>
<p>On the negative side, when touring BU, during the info session the rep compared it to NYU, and commented in a derogatory way, about the neighborhood around NYU, and the people that live there. We live in that neighborhood and are those people. Needless to say, we left that tour early.</p>
<p>In my experience, the best tour guides are those who ask beforehand about the students’ academic or extracurricular interests and then try to tweak the tour to show the dance facilities or the science library or whatever. I understand that sometimes with larger groups this can be more difficult, but if there are multiple tour guides or a more experienced guide it’s worth attempting.</p>
<p>I, too, liked starting from a more central location so that I could visualize where things were in relation to that central location as we walked along.</p>
<p>I also really liked when tour guides told anecdotes, especially about things that really make the school distinct, much more than when they just told facts I could get off the website or from an info session. I can distinctly remember that my tour guide at Brown talked about how the Open Curriculum helped her realize that her original major wasn’t right for her, and that my tour guide at Smith talked about an unpaid internship she was able to take because of funds every student gets for a summer internship.</p>
<p>I don’t like canned info sessions reciting information that is right on the front page of the website, especially because a torrent of banal questions inevitably follow.</p>
<p>Parking instructions should be clear. Talking to campus security may give a feel for another side of the school, but it shouldn’t be necessary to park without a punitive fine.</p>
<p>Tour guides shouldn’t be preschool camp counselors, and overly condescending instructions on where to walk are not appreciated.</p>
<p>Guides should be mindful of U-turns on the tour route. Nothing is more awkward than a pileup as everyone crams against the wall to let the guide get back to the new “front” of the group.</p>
<p>Maps are good.</p>
<p>Maybe I’m unusually negative about the whole topic, but unnecessary and blatantly contrived references to Harry Potter and Hogwarts are incredibly annoying.</p>
<p>If it’s a sunny day, be mindful of glare. Not everyone will have brought sunglasses and nothing is worse than the whole group having to stare at a blazing halo of light from the sun behind the guide.</p>
<p>If you get hit with a tough question, an honest reply will be far less damaging than awkward attempts to cover.</p>
<p>Colgate - free ice cream at the end of the tour.</p>
<p>Tufts - existential information session. When it was over I turned to my S and said “What was that all about?” S - “Dad, I have no idea!”</p>
<p>RPI - computer center in former chapel. Also, old football field in the middle of a quad of academic buildings. It was so unique, why did they move it?</p>
<p>At Davidson we had an uber-prep SoCal guy lead our tour; he seemed like a caricature of a priviledged elite. Major was French/Art history. He was wearing topsiders, jeans torn just so, double popped polos, blazer, and RayBans. Had a lot of good party scene stories to tell. We just had a hard time connecting with him.</p>
<p>Worst tour with my daughter: Georgetown. Immediate aftermath of a cold spell/blizzard, wind whipping through the cold stone campus, all of the cement covered in ice. We stood freezing on top of one building (where students like to come and sit up on the roof patio/terrace) while the tour guide showed us the closest Metro station in the distance, calling it “not too far away” - it looked like you’d have to hike for miles across the tundra to reach it. I told D “Usually it is nice in DC!” Daughter thought the students touring with us reminded her of the students from a local (Ohio) Catholic women’s high school, and that they were not really her type. I told D “But those were the kids on the tour, not the kids who attend the college…” The Georgetown admissions office didn’t do anything wrong but really, this was D’s least favorite tour. (We know Georgetown has great programs in D’s area of study and I still recommend it!)</p>
<p>Worst tour with my son: Case Western. As noted above, the info session was good; the tour didn’t leave us with that great of an impression. It’s a pretty big campus, and the walking tour was supposed to be an hour and lasted two hours, even though half of the buildings our tour guide wanted to show us were inexplicably locked / would not respond to his key card. And it was a hot, humid day in August. We’re from around here so we know - “Usually it is cool in Cleveland.” This was my son’s least favorite tour so far. The tour made him rule out CWRU which I had considered a plausible school for him. I like the programs, the location, and the possibility of merit aid. (I still think CWRU is a great school!)</p>
<p>'Parking instructions should be clear. Talking to campus security may give a feel for another side of the school, but it shouldn’t be necessary to park without a punitive fine."</p>
<p>The corollary: parents need to follow the school’s clear instructions! If we say to park at X location and take the train because there is no parking on campus, please believe us. Don’t ignore the instructions, arrive an hour late in an angry huff, and bark at me: “There’s nowhere to park!” Right, that’s why I told you on the phone that you needed to take the train.</p>
At GWU our guide did this through the streets of DC. He did ask those of us nearest him to warn him if he was about to walk backward into traffic!</p>
<p>
It’s funny how some tour guides seem completely “in character” for their school, and others not. We had a pretty ditzy, valley-girl kind of tour guide at Cornell, which really caught us off guard. OTOH, our Hampshire tour guide seemed right out of central casting–a plump goth-girl theater major who led the tour barefoot and wearing a Southern Indiana U. T-shirt.</p>
<p>Most of our visits were great; Goucher, Skidmore and Brandeis stand out in memory as the best. Our only real disaster was Bard; I left a visit report about it last summer so I won’t rehash it in detail here, but UMDAD’s phrase “existential information session” rings a bell.</p>
<p>I grade tour guides based on how often they use “like” inappropriately. As in, like, every other word. It gets, like, tiresome. D1 (who is one of the worst offenders, we are waiting for her to start inserting random "like"s into multisyllabic words) started noticing as well. Now, at the end of a tour, she’ll comment without me prompting her that the tour guide never used “like”. </p>
<p>My honor roll so far includes Clark, Bryn Mawr, Pomona and Pitzer. I’ve seen that you can’t take that as representative. Following the Claremont tours, we stopped by the campus Hillel. The students there were, like, totally using like, like all the time.</p>
Cornell is about as diverse a school as you could possibly imagine. This diversity includes all manners and styles of dressing. There will be girls with six-figure wardrobes who never wear the same outfit twice and there will be girls who only wear t-shirts and mom jeans. The majority of students are middle to upper middle class and represent neither of those two extremes.</p>
<p>Bucknell - info session was so board. Tour guide wasn’t able to answer some standard questions from parents. It’s off our list now.</p>
<p>Lehigh - D didn’t like the school when we drove around the campus and the town. But the tour guide was so great, I would say he is the best tour guide among the 20 colleges we visited. Lehigh is now on the list !</p>
This reminds me of our GWU tour guide, who kept inserting “With that being said” at apparently random transition points–there was rarely any noticeable connection between the thoughts that preceded and followed it. “We have an outstanding internship program…with that being said, across the street is our library…”</p>
which I had considered a plausible school for him. I like the programs, the location, and the possibility of merit aid. (I still think CWRU is a great school!)</p>