<p>We went to the “Freshman Dorm” during one tour. I could not believe the local fire marshall had not closed it down. It looked as if it was built in the 1930s and no work had been done since (except for the layers of paint). Lights, fixtures sockets looked original.</p>
<p>We were then taken to the new library which was very nice. One section was a large fireplace with two fine leather chairs. All I could think was too bad they didnt spend some of the $ on the dorms.</p>
<p>D did apply there and received scholarship $ but thankfully chose to go elsewhere. I dont believe I could have slept at night knowing that she was sleeping there.</p>
<p>We can combine some of these to create a College Tour From Heck. “This is, like, the science building…so yeah. That being said, let me, like, tell you about this pearl choker that I got from my grandpa, who, like, owns the parking fines concession here, etcetera, etcetera”
:D</p>
<p>“Cornell is about as diverse a school as you could possibly imagine.”</p>
<p>True, but it’s conceivable that the full extent of this diversity may not be fully captured in the selection of tour guides. It has been alleged elsewhere on CC that certain fraternities and sororities are overrepresented in this and have a role in perpetuating themselves.</p>
<p>However if such overrepresentation actually exists, it is not 100% by any means, I know that for a fact. There is actually a fairly extensive selection process, and the tour guides are very well trained.</p>
<p>GWU: moved their info session and we had to follow signs that assumed you knew where you were going. We finally found it but not after much anxiety. The info session was dreadful but the tour was quite good because they broke the students up by area of interest</p>
<p>American: we had a great info session with one of the wittier ad comm people I remember hearing and the tour was also quite good. I was amused (as were the other moms) with the young man showing us the laundry room and his fascination with esuds – his own mother would be so proud </p>
<p>In general, the backwards walking got on my nerves. I recently read an article that said schools were moving away from it. D pointed out that it was a practical application of marching band skills </p>
<p>BU had the worst info session & tour by far – we left midway through the tour.</p>
<p>It was fun to read this thread, now that we are past our touring days. </p>
<p>The variety of posts shows that within the same school there are a variety of guides. And even with the same guide different students will have different perceptions. </p>
<p>TUFTS - In the summer the Tufts office was pretty organized. Lots of visitors, but I bet nothing like during spring break. This was a school where the guides (a nice trio of students) were a turn off for my geeky son. It was a good clue that it was not the right fit. (He far preferred the MIT tour that morning, and ha later decided it was not a good fit either). The office was nice enough to indulge us a followup question session with an admin. </p>
<p>CASE - We had a trio of girls that we loved. They indulged our typical questions, our many music questions, and even my wild card time killer question on the bus ride at the end. (" Were there any pleasant surprised, factors not considered during original decision" - Answer was an eloquent statement about how nice it was to be in school with students that were so interested in learning"). These tourguides may be the same trio that did not impress an earlier post. Like I said, a lot varies by family. At Case it was the sprawling campus that was a negative for my son. But it’s a great school and gave us merit scholarship that would have made it same cost as state flagship. </p>
<p>CORNELL - Our tourguides were very casual. Like most guides, the walked backward. The one in flip flops had us worried that she would trip. </p>
<p>AMHERST - That’s the one we had trouble finding! </p>
<p>RPI - It was a suprisingy nice campus, at least in July. The team tourguides (1 male, 1 female) did a great job.</p>
<p>NORTHEASTERN (Boston) - They have nice info session and tour. If interested in Engineering, there is a special presentaiton on summer Wednesdays.</p>
<p>HARVEY MUDD - The tourguides were nice and surprisingly candid about letting families see the dorms (rather dumpy we thought, son didn’t notice).
Carnegie Mellon - The tour was good, but we also had the benefit of attending “Sleeping Bag Weekend”. We went January senior year. You don’t need to be accepted first.</p>
<p>Wow, these stories bring back memories … some good, but others …</p>
<p>D1 Worst Tour: The aforementioned Bucknell for the same reasons given in post #37. When D1 asked what students did outside “the bubble” the response was “Well on Saturdays the prison gives tours. The tours are quite interesting actually!”</p>
<p>D2 Worst Tour: Georgetown (again). We had the misfortune to visit on a really busy day, where the numbers of prospies and parents simply overwhelmed the staff. I counted three tour groups on the upper green alone … each group too large to be heard without shouting, and the guides didn’t shout. Additionally, a student had perished in a dorm fire a couple months prior, and some Georgetown students were protesting inadequate fire safety as tour groups passed by. As the saying goes, timing is everything.</p>
<p>My favorite tour was W&M, our tour guide was intelligent, charming and had the backwards walk down perfectly. Everywhere we went students would say, “Oh are you on a tour? You should definitely come here!” It happened at least 3 or 4 times. S is going there.</p>
<p>I remember on my tour of Connecticut College there was a lot of looping around. We would enter a building, then walk around the hallways in a loop towards the entrance/exit. People actually started to laugh when we entered their auditorium through one door then immediately exited through a nearby door.</p>
<p>Also, my guide was a cross country runner, and she could walk backwards very quickly.</p>
<p>Lehigh: tour guide is talking about alcohol giving the usual spiel about you can find it if you want it but it is against the rules, etc, as we are touring a dorm room. The door next door opens up, and all you can see is a shelf with literally 20 empty bottles of Wild Turkey.</p>
<p>Bucknell: they started talking about “Bucknell kind of people”, it was creepy.</p>
<p>UMass: don’t take tours in the winter at northern schools, it doesn’t matter how good the guide is, it will suck.</p>
<p>Hopkins: the info session guy was bragging about how 50% of students get FA, so I raised my hand and said “so what you are really saying is that this school costs $54K/year, and half the people in this room will get nothing”, and he got totally flustered. I enjoyed that way too much I think.</p>
<p>RPI: since I went there (looong time ago) I was able to interject some “why, back in my day” old man comments. This amused the tour guide, but probably wasn’t very helpful to others. Sorry about that. :)</p>
<p>What I learned overall is that the info sessions aren’t that useful, the tours can be helpful if the guide is knowledgeable and articulate, but you have to be very careful about drawing conclusions from things like how they are dressed or how they speak. The tour guide cannot be representative of 5, 10, or 20 thousand people. To decide a campus is “too preppy” because the tour guide has a popped collar is silly.</p>
<p>Often schools only show 1 library–would have liked to see more as that is where the students will hopefully spend a lot of time. Also would have liked to see some labs not just a classroom with desks in it.</p>
<p>Also would have liked to see fitness facilities at schools.</p>
<p>Some schools were really quiet when we toured on Saturdays becuase of away sporting events. We had to look hard to find kids at Wake Forest for this reason.</p>
<p>I like it when the school lets the kids eat in the dining hall to get a sense about the food and to meet students. I like even better when the school buys the meal!</p>
<p>Most of our guides were really good but generally it was hard to find guides that majored in any type of science or engineering. Nearly all were communications majors of some sort.</p>
<p>Penn had a great tour as did Cornell. Our thoughts on Lehigh are the same as others posted. Stanford has a lovely tour too. Our guide at Darmouth had numerous huge bug bites all over her legs. it made us wonder if there were a lot of mosquitos and biting flies around.</p>
<p>getting from the parking lot to the buildings was always a challenge. In fact, the schools should give an address or intersection for the parking garages. Would have made things easier. Sometimes the GPS would find 50 addresses at a given school so knowing which one to go to was important.</p>
<p>Info sessions were all very similar, but each one tended to give an idea of what they were looking for in the essay/supplement. Different schools had different focuses and I found this was the best place to learn what they were after.</p>
<p>We always took notice of the type of outdoor seating for the students. Some schools had lots of large tables and benches where groups of students could hang out and study. other schools had almost none and you saw lots of students studying alone (Columbia).</p>
<p>It was also interesting to look at the integration (or lack of it) at a school. Some schools we found lots of mixed groups eating together. One southern school was quite striking in the white and black students self segregated.</p>
<p>One school gave students a free T shirt from the bookstore for going on the tour. I thought that was very hospitable.</p>
<p>Well done, Slithey. Now if you can do it in a very heavy accent of some sort, at a rate about 60% faster than normal speech, walking ahead of (and facing away from) a group of
about 15-20, you’ll have it. Oh, one more…I really don’t want to hear any more about diversity and how many different countries are represented on campus. I can get that on the website if I care. Likewise, when the school was built, who endowed what, etc.</p>
<p>And (like many of you)any tour not prepared to show us a dorm room or 2, when we’ve driven/flown this far, and it is one of our primary interests, loses points in my book.</p>
<p>I agree about the dorm thing. “Sorry, we can’t get you into a dorm today.” Why not? Can we at least take a peek at the common areas? University of Rochester was one where we couldn’t check them out. Cornell - same. Wesleyan did – pretty typical, maybe slightly above average for freshman, upper class housing. Hamilton – really really nice old suites with fireplaces (non-working but charming). Nothing else sticks out in my mind, but before I let my D accept any applications, we must see the dorms and the dining halls and the student center. </p>
<p>I don’t think we got to see a dorm at Cornell, either.</p>
<p>Although, all the ones we saw tended to be very similar - small concrete boxes with old furniture. I’m not sure what is gained by seeing yet another small concrete box.</p>
<p>If a school has above-average dorms, it’s crazy not to show them off. I’d have questions if the dorm was too nice - like, are all the dorms this nice, what are the odds of getting a room like this, is this upper class housing only, etc.</p>
<p>There’s no excuse for not showing the dining areas and dorm common areas. More than half the schools we visited threw in lunch if school was in session, which was nice. Dining hall food is a lot better than it was when I was in school, I was pretty amazed.</p>
<p>“There’s no excuse for not showing the dining areas and dorm common areas.”</p>
<p>For some very popular schools, the excuse may be that there are so many tourists and visitors on campus that the students begin to feel like zoo animals on display, and cherish their few spots of privacy in dorms and dining rooms. I agree that schools that don’t get so many visitors should offer the opportunity to see living and eating spaces.</p>
This is a fair point. A lot of schools have a dorm room set aside as a “display model”–nobody lives there, and it’s usually right at the end of a corridor where tour groups can discreetly walk in, check it out, and get out. This seems like a good compromise solution, as long as visitors are prepared to suspend disbelief with regard to that room being comparable in size, amenities, and condition to the rooms their kids will actually be occupying.</p>
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