My D is a junior and we are just starting the college process with her including her first official college tour today. I was quite surprised when our tour today did not include walking through a dorm, a dining hall, or the library. We walked by all of those buildings but not through them. We did walk through a multi-purpose building that included some classrooms but did not see any actual classrooms.
I have an older son who is a freshman in college - we did 7 campus tours with him and I’m pretty sure every single one of those included walk throughs of all of those of those key buildings as well as a view into an actual classroom.
In our college tour experiences, the higher ranked/more selective the school, the less they show you. Brown was one school where it was basically an “outside” tour.
That kind of limited tour is why we started adding a meeting with a student to all of our visits. The high school college counselor helped us find alums from the HS for any school where we didn’t already have a relative or friend. It was helpful to put the student meeting for coffee, ice cream or lunch after the official tour, so my student had the opportunity to ask questions.
Beware that since a campus may have several of each type of building or part of building (classroom, library, dorm, dining hall), one specific sample of each may not accurately reflect the whole campus.
Many colleges do not take the public admissions tours into residence halls. That is because anyone can sign up for one of those tours, including some creepy people.
Set time aside (such as in April) for accepted student days. They will probably show you one or more residence halls and the facilities for your particular college/department.
Some colleges don’t take tours into certain facilities because they take too long to get into and out of. For example, one college;s gym and athletic facilities were down a hill, and they didn’t want the parents to get out of breath coming back up the hill. Some colleges purposefully don’t take tours into certain facilities because they are out of date or crowded. For example, one university purposefully did not take tours into its library, because it was so small.
S1 graduated HS 2007. I too was surprised by how few dorms they showed us, and I agree that, at least during that time period, the higher ranked the school, the less they tended to show dorms. Kid3 saw a lot more dorm rooms, but they always showed a female room which was neat and clean or a empty room decorated just for the purpose.
Purdue took us through the back of a huge chem lecture hall, during class. I thought that must have been disruptive for the students.
The school we visited today was definitely more selective than the schools we visited with my son. It’s likely my D will visit other schools that are more selective than those we visited with my son so now I’ll be curious to see if this trend holds.
That was my complaint on many tours – though I was thinking the larger the school the less likely to see these things. I suspect, as mentioned already, it was at least in part due to not having enough time to cover the entire campus.
I’ve said this on other threads. The best tour was Harvey Mudd. They took us through classrooms, labs, the dining hall, and at least one dorm room. We spoke to students and teachers along the way. I was really shocked at how much they covered. Then again, it’s a really small campus so one can easily cover the entire campus during a tour.
Not uncommon. We always went to the dining hall to eat, visited the bookstore to look at course content, and sat on a green or whatever, if nice out- to get the real vibe. Library is a good idea, and art exhibit or concert or whatever else interests you.
We found the “we only let you look at the outside of buildings tours” to be so annoying and show a lack of respect for the time of those who had traveled to campus. It definitely seems to be as dos chicos said that more selective schools are guilty of this. At some of the selective schools you can’t go into a dining hall even on your own.
I was impressed when colleges tried to preserve the experience of current students and not have groups traipse through the locations of their daily lives.
Academics, info on libraries and dining facilities, and photos of dorm rooms should all be available online. Beyond that, as I mentioned above, there are ways to “get the vibe.”
I know some folks like to see a dorm but I agree with skieurope. – privacy and security issues. An empty dorm is one thing but I would not like strangers entering my daughter’s room or strolling down the hallway when school is in session.
Another option is to check YouTube for videos. At D1’s school, the dining and resident halls created their own videos. There are other campus life videos like moving-in day.
Some universities have floor plans for their various dorms posted on the school’s website. Also, the dining hall’s menu for the day/week might be available on-line.
I don’t think any of my kids used the physical libraries at their colleges. Online resources were more important to them. Back in the day I used to study in the library, but campuses these days have many more places set aside for study in classroom buildings than we had.
The library at Swarthmore was very nice, I recall from tours, but was not a factor in her decision to go elsewhere. We did not go into many dorms on our tours.
Carnegie Mellon has 360 degree videos of all their room types on their website. They show a lot more than one sample room. The rooms and buildings are vastly different.
I’ve been on the Harvard Campus for other events and it’s pretty horrific the way it’s been completely invaded by tourists. It didn’t feel like that when we were there. I don’t blame them at all for keep them out of the buildings. And the accepted students weekend allows kids to get a full look if they need it.
Based upon my son’s touring experience the size of campus was not the issue as he toured mostly large state schools and at all of them we did go into all of those buildings. With the exception of one, we saw staged dorm rooms not someone’s real dorm room and were never allowed to see community bathrooms. The exception was where the tour guide took us to his actual dorm room (he knew his roommate would not be there) as his dorm room was in the building that the tour was already scheduled to go through.
UMd-CP had a staged dorm room in their Admissions building behind plexiglass which was kind of interesting but they also still walked the tour through a real dorm building.
The Penn State tour provided a dining hall voucher which was very nice but was the only school of the 7 we toured with DS that did that.
Sometimes tours will change due to the size of a group. I went on a tour of of Princeton with my D on a Wednesday afternoon last spring and it was just us and one other family. The tour guide took us inside numerous buildings including the library, chapel , etc. By rule they don’t go into dorms. My wife and D went to a special event last month at Princeton and did the tour again since my wife hadn’t seen it and she said that they didn’t go into any buildings but their group was 20+ ppl.
Schools have no burden in the visit. The potential stydent and their family have all the liabilities. From the cost, time, research, etc. If college want to give me a window tour it speaks of it’s about them and not you. I have very specific requirements before I visit. Meeting with professor and advisor in my major, sit in a class, see the labs, and intend a club. If I can’t do all of them with the exception of the club, I will not visit.
Just got back from a string of college tours and, yes, was stunned at how little we went into any buildings, much less dorm rooms (we did see one: at Amherst). The best we did at two of the schools was walk through a hallway to get to another courtyard. Once you take the tour and get an overview of campus, you’ve got to go poke around yourself. Eat in the dining hall. Look at some wall postings. Wander through departments you’re interested in. Tours should be a starting point, not an ending point.